I’m addicted to ads. Though I would say “obsessed” is not a strong enough word for my feelings toward my DVR, I still stop to watch commercials often. I caught this link via adfreak - 101 Classic commercial ads. Below are a few of my favorites:
We talk a lot about content management on the RD2 blog… usually about which tool works best in which situation… Drupal vs. Wordpress, open source vs. enterprise solution… etc.
In determining the ROI of a CMS solution, there are several factors that need to be taken into consideration. There are the benefits - increased organizational efficiency being the major one for most users. The ability to easily keep their web presence up-to-date is invaluable to many of our clients. But there are also costs. I recently found this great article by Vitamin entitled: The 5 hidden costs of running a CMS system.
The costs Vitamin details are:
I think my favorite quote of the article is a comment on the cost of commitment:
“Once your content is in a content management system it is not always a simple matter to get it out. With such an investment in both time and money it is important to make the right selection of system. Changing your mind later is expensive.”
All of these costs must be considered when selecting an approach to a CMS - often, even before selecting the CMS itself. As with most things, it’s important to have a plan. Start by detailing your needs, including future releases and potential functionality that may come down the road. Keeping all these factors in mind will help aid your CMS implementation, no matter where you are in the decision-making process.
I love a cool tag cloud. Wordle allows you to create custom tag clouds based on any site, RSS feed, or block of text. You can then customize with font, color, and shape choices.
Here’s one I created from the RD2 blog:
Addictive.
Internally we’ve been discussing the book Groundswell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff of Forrester Research. We meet once every week or so (it’s hard to get a big group of us together for an hour on any one day) and discuss in depth what the ideas mean to our business and our clients.
My favorite part of the book is the technographics ladder, which breaks online users into types based on their participation online. Our goal as community builders is to realize where users are on the ladder, and create applications that allow these users to connect online the way they want to… and potentially move users up the ladder to engage even more with the community. We tailor features, functions, content, tone, etc. to these users - knowing the potential users even affects the way we think about design and technology. This initial analysis helps us immensely to ensure the success of a project.
There are a lot of great nuggets in this book, and I highly recommend it for anyone interested in reading more about online communities, and how people are making themselves heard online. For more on Groundswell, check out the official website.
Eric’s last post was about the rules of the competitive aspects of Productivity Suite, but I wanted to highlight some of the great conversations that are going on in the blog portion of the site. There’s been a lot of great content Productivity Suite this week. Here are some highlights:
Push your Gmail to your iPhone - Eric posts on a hack he found to make his iPhone sync with his email in real time - so he never misses an email.
Fitness At Work: Starting Simple - Ronan posts about starting small and incorporating fitness into your work day.
Long Term Goals and Anime - I (Caitlin) post about some cool things I’ve seen and read lately around setting long term goals, and recap Dan Pink’s new book (written in Manga style) “The Adventures of Johnny Bunko: The Last Career Guide You Will Ever Need.”
Check out the content and let us know what you think!
We’ve been posting screencasts on Nuts About Southwest, our latest project with Southwest Airlines. When building the site, it was important for us that users be able to access as much content as they wanted on the site, or view each piece separately in various forms. This way more users could interact with more content in more ways, fitting various life styles and preferences. The last few screencasts have been focused around how to interact with Southwest content off the actual site - so far, on Flickr and through RSS feeds. The latest screencast is on how to subscribe to Southwest’s podcast through iTunes.
Enjoy!
Nuts About Southwest part 5 - Subscribing to the SWA podcast in iTunes
Other screencasts in this series:
For some people, RSS (Really Simple Syndication) is a way of life. For others, it’s just another acronym that they kind of/mostly/pretty much understand. In part 4 of our screencast series on Nuts About Southwest 2.0, Eric discusses RSS basics using examples from the various feeds on the Nuts About Southwest site.
And don’t worry, I’ll be back around next time. Enjoy!
Nuts About Southwest part 4 - RSS Feeds
Other screencasts in this series:
“Help me Obi Wan Kenobi, you’re my only hope.”
We’ve been having some internal discussions lately based on a (seemingly) simple sentence in some of our internal documents: “RD2 is an acronym for our methodology: Research, Design, Develop.” This got us talking about our name.
While “Research, Design, Develop” simplifies the process and is not entirely unrepresentative of our Approach, you may have noticed on our Community page that there is no one whose job title sounds like “Research.” You may have also noticed the sentence that says “We are a small community of strategists, designers, technologists, and managers.” Where do all these departments fit in?
In response to some discussions on what our name really means and how it defines us, Chris sent out the following email. Enjoy:
When coming up with our name, I had a list that I was keeping which had over 250 possibilities. It was aggravating as hell because just when I would come up with something that I liked, the domain would be taken or there would be potential trademark issues. I’ve been lucky to have good guidance on some of the things that people don’t often think of when inventing a name for their new company. I retained an attorney to do trademark searches etc. for names that could be construed as legal conflicts down the road. So, the challenge was this:
… This eliminates so many damn possibilities.
David Slack then came up with a sample identity that I liked, but he was trying to sell me on something with my name in it, which I hated. But some of the words that we used in the branding exercise had to do with simple, minimal, effective — boiling the methodology down to: research, design, develop
The Dallas Company, Not the Robot: So, RD2 was born. I like the movie Star Wars, but don’t take it the wrong way… It’s not like I have a hidden stash of Star Wars action figures that I play with in the bath tub…
At first I was not very into the name because of the close sound of “R2-D2.” But after really, really thinking about it, my conclusion was that it’s not so bad having a familiar sound of the famous little droid. It’s not as if this is a negative brand image. In fact, R2-D2 is on the side of Good… fighting the opposing forces of the dark side. R2-D2 has a mind of it’s own… it’s willing to explore. R2-D2 traveled with Luke Skywalker to the Dagobah System, where he met with Yoda. Without “R2″, Luke may never have become the great Jedi Knight. R2D2 is a messenger, a confident little droid with a quirky personality yet has the intelligence from many distant galaxies. R2 wanders without hesitation through a fire fight with storm troopers and confronts the root of all intergalactic evil…a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away. R2 periodically gets in trouble, falls down, gets back up, and lives to see another fight. R2 is a survivor!
So, we knew that RD2 was going to forever be the subject of an association with this famous little droid. And how bad is that? We’re not KFC, having to move around our name and long standing brand to hide what was once an appropriate image, prior to the American Heart Association’s campaign against fried food, trans fats, and so on.
The little wise cracks are actually not only harmless, they are a compliment. The way I see it, we have nothing to worry about unless George Lucas releases a sequel to Return of the Jedi, with a twist… Where R2-D2 was, all along, a secret spy for the Emperor, and was an instrument of terror and intergalactic mayhem, then I think we will find ourselves in the same brand quandary as KFC. Until then, I’ll gladly accept the “accidental” association.
The point of all this is that the brand is far less about the name. It’s a beacon for the story. It’s a symbol that becomes associated with a mantra, a community, an emotion, and if we’re lucky…an inspiration. At first, we shifted the meaning of RD2 to Research, Design, Develop. It was appropriate for the time and conditions for our business. It was short for our Methodology. And what do we know about Methodologies? They are [edited]s… everyone has one. Methodologies are becoming like mission statements. You always have one, but no one really wears them like a prominent tattoo any longer. A good friend of mine, Sally Herbert, is the best consultant I have ever worked with. She never used the word “Methodology”. As sophisticated as she is, she never used those big MBA words. She always went right to the “Approach.” So, when you hear me say it, that’s a phrase that came from her. The word “Approach” to me seems more as if you are prepared for action. You have your tools, instruments, landing gear, and all of your focus aligned and ready for what’s ahead.
The name of a brand is in the story, and over time becomes an emotional connection within those who are part of it and within the community that surrounds it. A mission statement and methodology are more like the English aristocracy. It’s just an ornament on the tree. It’s there, but really has little to do with the day to day goings on.
So, who is RD2? We’re a determined little company who knows how to build online communities, engaging an audience with our clients. We have a history, a methodology, and all that mission statement stuff… But most importantly we have a specific Approach which we have used successfully to systematically solve complex problems. If we get to know you along the way, maybe we’ll have a few cold ones and talk about droids, battle scars, and the thrill associated with the lifecycle of a company that simply never quits until it finds it’s way…
Oh, by the way… RD2, Inc. and it’s logo are a registered trademark!
- Chris
We’ve added a lot of functionality to Nuts About Southwest (Airlines), and we’re filming this screencast series to be sure that none of the cool new features get lost in the excitement of a new site. The following screencast is “a behind the scenes look” at the flickr images you see on the Nuts About Southwest site. It presents a basic step by step look at how to post images on flickr and to the Southwest Airlines group.
Presenting, part 3: Nuts About Southwest part 3 - The Southwest flickr Feed
If this is basic knowledge to you, you are among the few flickr users who know how to join a group (many don’t). If this screencast shows you something you didn’t know before, you’re definitely not alone.
Other screencasts in this series:
UPDATE: The CNN URL has changed, but you can also check out the press release on Yahoo business here: http://biz.yahoo.com/iw/080506/0394111.html
==
We’re thrilled to see this press release on CNN Money on the Nuts About Southwest launch.
If you scroll down, you’ll see a quote from our very own Chris Ronan:
“Southwest took a big step when it launched Nuts About Southwest two years ago, and they’ve proven their ability to conquer the most difficult challenge our clients face — consistently creating great content,” said Chris Ronan, President of RD2. “What’s different this time — we know that the Southwest Team generates meaningful content, which has allowed us to focus more on context. We asked ourselves, ‘Who are the users? What are they reading? How do we give them a more diverse tool set to communicate with Southwest?’ In applying these contexts, we can think of Nuts About Southwest as a platform for many applications, instead of just an application itself.”
The launch has been several months in the making - and we’re all really proud of our team who has been working hard to get the site up!
