Flickr Viral
I despise viral. I hate most of the attempts to do viral crap. It is rather amusing to see companies spend big bucks on Agencies with the hope that a video (the usual suspect for virality) will make it to YouTube's home page and score a big hit in terms of views. This sort of strategies tend to fail, even when they do score big numbers. And scoring big numbers is getting increasingly difficult.
Yesterday we had a very interesting day at work. Let me recap how things turned out first.
A couple of weeks ago Engadget published some shots of a small Pocket PC that were snugged out of our Beijing headquarters. This was rare. We usually keep concepts strictly confidential and behind closed doors. Yet it leaked. What to do?
David Churbuck decided it was time to put our money where our mouth was and contacted the Beijing design labs team, discussed the possibility of going open on it and so it was decided. We needed to be clear on what that shots actually were. Transparency, remember?
We were to publish a blog post on Friday. After editing and prepping the post I uploaded the pictures to the flickr account, marking them as "private" so none would see them but me.
I also started a little tease on twitter, using our @lenovosocial account:
Calls to newly posted pictures at twitter
The idea was to create some expectation towards the blog post. To be honest, that didn't work. At all.
Thus came Monday. We made the final adjustments to the post and, since I needed to insert the images into the post I marked them as "public" in flickr. Hell gates went wide open.
Within minutes the pics were picked by the main gadget / tech sites. We know they watch our flickr stream, but not that closely. While I was prepping to publish it went crazy.
We were expecting some level of visibility, but this wildly surpassed our expectations. Our aim was that the blog post should get the attention, not the pictures.
What ended up happening was a 2 wave shock. While many sites and blogs talked about the pictures and went into wild speculations about what that little pocket-fitting-thing would actually do we were publishing the official story. After pushing that live and starting to draw attention to it there were updates all over the place, letting people know that what they were looking at was a concept.
There were many lessons learnt. Most of those shall be kept private for the time being. The ones I can share with you here are:
- Content is still king (even when content is just pictures)
- "Viral" will happen in unexpected ways. And the not-so-prefabricated virals go to greater lengths than the agency stunt ones.
- Innovative design is the key for a company in the PC industry
Things didn't play exactly as planned, but they turned out nicely nonetheless.
(Post en español!)
Holy!
It is rather seldomly that I become speechless. When it happens it is because something too good or too bad happens.
Fortunately it is something good that has caused it.
I was not going to talk about it, yet it has become public and this I think I need to address it.
Prometheus @ Rockefeller center
Today I was granted the "Prometheus Award"; the top-notch Lenovo Marketing recognition. The best part of it is that it is given by peers, not by management.
The sheer fact that the people I work with everyday consider me worth being awarded is mind-blowing. I don't think I have enough words to thank the awesome people I find myself working with on a daily basis.
Although David (da Boss for those readers outside of the lenovo entrails) says he had nothing to do about this I know differently. If it weren't for him (and Jim) making a leap into the void and getting me into their team this would of never been possible.
The fact that a guy who has managed to inspire and challenge me in so many ways writes this about me makes me feel almost too good about myself.
Enough self-promotion for the day. I only have "thank you" left to say.
2008 in review
Despite economic crisis and some personal dark notes 2008 has been an awesome year. Putting it in perspective is a hard task; too much happened.
Beijing 2008.
Until September everything in my life had olympic rings attached. Unlike some other projects, we had a due date written in stone: 08-08-08. Everything needed to be oiled and working by then. It was one-in-a-lifetime oportunity.
"Voices of the Olympic Games" was a fun and demanding projects I was ever involved with. I have written several posts about it all over the months. Here's a link to the tag "Olympics" in this same blog in case you want to read them all.
On the "lowlights" side of things: during the games my father got seriously sick and passed away the last thursday of Beijing 2008. Talk about messy weeks.
Public Speaking.
I am really fortunate. Some people think I'm worth listening to, and I was invited to speak at We Media Buenos Aires, WordCamp Buenos Aires and DigitalTalk. Hopefully I'm getting better at this thing of trying to share ideas, visions and experiences with others.
Oddly enough I think I get more out than I give back to this events.
Huge thank you to the people who invited me.
Lenovo.
It has been a crazy year at lenovo. Olympics, new product launches (such as the X300, the IdeaPads, NetBooks, servers... ) and a global crises.
I got a little bit more settled in my role within the company. I must admit I don't quite like "settled" and I will be looking at new ways to make me uncomfortable and drive myself mad soon.
Personal.
Despite the noted lowlight, it has been a nice year personally. The most important news is that I'm bound to become a parent in March.
There's still a lot that needs to be worked out. I really don't like living in Buenos Aires, particularly I'm not fond to raise a kid here (since I was able to grow up in the mountains and forests of Patagonia) and my apartment has started a self-destroy sequence some months ago.
Yet the good news is so overwhelming that all the problems and issues become secondary.
Also, in the "growing family" department I got to meet a "new" Brother. Life has some very strange twists.
Posting.
I haven't been posting too often to this blog. Yet I think there are a couple of entries readers might find interesting:
- This series of posts on mixing metrics, social media and maths.
- A post in April doing some futurology thinking if Social Media Marketing could survive a crisis. (Also available in Spanish at Mariano´s Blog)
- Then I put Social media in perspective Stating that it is not the center of the universe.
- Two pieces from this same month: on Influencers and on Shopping Processes.
Note: it is an interesting exercise to read thoroughly a year worth of posts to see how much rubbish I usually write and how little substance.
For 2009.
High expectations and profound changes. They will either happen or I'll force them to happen. Although responsibilities should increase with parenting the adventure and nomadic spirit within me is about to burst.
Post-vacation, post-Olympic cleanup
Picture a bomb exploding inside your computer. Imagine that it scatters files, folders and emails all over the place. On the desktop, under various folders under that lousy micorsoft idea that is known as "My Documents", and every other corner of the hard drive. That should give you an idea of the state of (un)tidyness my ThnkPad yields.
I got to the point where I had more stuff on my desktop than my desktop was able to display. And I use small icons. And I have a 1400 x 1280 screen resolution. Finding anything had become an ordeal.
And I havent yet mentioned emails. Amidst 24 x 7 Olympic watch and way too much stuff to handle, admin and think some emails went without reply for far longer than I like. Usually I reply within the hour; while clearing stuff today I noticed some had gone without a reply for some 20-odd days. Shame on me.
So, after all the fun and exitement that the Olympics represented I'm down to the task of trying to put some sense back into my file system and email. It is similar to the day after throwing a party: you have to clean up everything. Only difference is that I get to clean my computer without a hangover.
Refreshing Voices
What on earth led me to believe this week was going to be somewhat quieter? The exact oposite is true; it has been a crazy week, with little sleep, lots of things to do and some fire drills.
We have just made a minor face lift to the "Voices of the Olympic Games" site.
Odd timing, you might think, since we're only 1 week into the games and with one more week to go. Well, we realized he had an overflow of content coming in, and felt that our visitors might loose a lot of the action.
What has happened is that most of the page is absolutely dynamic and ever changing. There are only 2 elements that remain static, and I might "fix" that soon...
We have such an overflow of cool video, pics and posts coming in from where the action is happening that there might be some sort of information overload!
Now visitors will be able to see 5 featured stories, the latest 4 youtube videos, the twitter feed, the latest pictures and the latest athlete posts on a single glimpse.
Go ahead and pay "voices" a visit; then let me know what you think!
Decision making times
My first post with a "29" in the age field. Interesting times.
I'm in the verge of having to taking some decisions soon. Somewhat scary, I must admit.
As usual I can't say too much (what did you expect?) but the plot thickens and things will sort out one way or the other.
The good thing is that all options look good. Certain paths seem more promising than others from a certain point of view. But looking at them from a different perspective other paths arise as being best.
How do you take your own decisions? How do you weight what is best in the long run?
Anyway, fun times ahead, I'll keep you updated.
de-google-ized
Off the phone with my ISP. They have "technical issues" with Google. I need a panic Button.
Whenever I try to use the search, iGoogle or many other services I don't get a server not found or a timeout or any error, just a blank page.
Although I have to work on Google I welcome this if it does not last longer than a couple more hours. I need to work on other areas, and this gives me the perfect excuse to get my head off the gadgets and stuff for a little while.
Life Globalized
6:30AM, dragging myself out of bed. I'm not a morning person, and ever since the Government decided to apply daylight savings time I'm still off the clock hours. It feels like 5:00 or 5:30 AM rather than 7. I quietly drag myself to the living room, power up the suspended ThinkPad and try to bring my senses back to life. It usually takes me about 1 hour to feel coherent enough to cope with any logical arguments. This time around I don't have that option it is already 7:00AM and I must dial into a conference number to talk to our guys in China.
Only half hour into the meeting (which I lead) I start to feel like I'm grasping some sort of sense and getting to communicate some concepts. Communication is a problem all by itself. In this instance I have an interpreter on the other end of the line translating my words into Chinese and asking the team's questions for me, then translating those back to English. The impression I always get is that when I say things like "This is not going to get approved" it'll get translated to: "we need more spaghetti".
It is not a minor task to try to bring teams from different parts of the world together. Language barriers and time zones are limitations that are hard to cope with. I don't expect people in China to talk in English (or Spanish), quite on the contrary I feel in debt because I wish I knew some Mandarin to enhance our dialogs instead. As for Time zones, I'll just say that wife has already learnt to ask when we can have dinner or go to sleep, since I usually have some appointment with the other end of the planet at the oddest times.
But it is all well worth the efforts, in most cases. There is such an underlying richness and potential behind the sheer fact of counting with all those differentiated human backgrounds that make me gladly do those things, even when I hate the world around me as I turn off the alarm clock at 6:30 AM for a conference call.
Cultural clashes are a significant portion of such interactions. What one can regard as a smart comment, or a funny allusion might be interpreted as insulting or not understood at all. Words must be chosen carefully and the tone in which statements are thrown out through the impersonal phone line must be well tuned and orchestrated. Engaging is also quite defying. I know how to wind up people in my own culture, but that does not quite work the same way for people with a completely different background. I struggle to motivate people from across the globe, people whom I've never seen in my life.
The difference that cultural background makes on the way people solve similar problems is a power that only a handful of companies are able to unleash. What usually happens is that a certain way of doing things is choked down the throat of everyone, the results are usually not pleasing.
If imposing methods and ways of doing things is not the answer, what would that answer be. To watch and learn. An acute observation of the subtle differences of a way people in distinct cultures work and interact can yield as a result some changes and tweaks on how to improve methods and processes to fit perfectly. It is only through that that a good result can be achieved.
I'll use an example that is close to me. Argentina is an odd country in many ways. Our everchanging political panorama, economic crisis and sparse resources force most of us to be in a continuous state of adaptation. Since there is not a maturity (from society or government) to plan with more than a couple of months we become great improvisers. Thus, semi-chaotic situations seem to fit best the "Argentine Breed". On the other hand long term planning and process set up are not our best strongholds and neither can we adapt well to structured processes (this, of course, is a very broad generalization, you get the point).
In a world where working with colleges with the most differentiated backgrounds is an everyday thing only those companies who are smart enough to adapt to the particularities of every place will have a leading edge in terms of service and production.
End of year marathon closure
Home sweet home. Over the past couple of weeks I've spent well over 60 hours in buses traveling around. That is over.
After a 22-hour bus trip worth of a horror film (with two passengers getting sick right there, and a small kid who yelled a good 14 hours) I'm finally safe and sound at good old Buenos Aires.
Spending time with the family was good. That does not happen very often in my life, since we're all scattered around. Having to work while doing so put my concentration to the test. I somewhat passed. I'd give it a C+.
This next couple of weeks promise to be a representation of the term "sweatshop". I might rant, but I actually enjoy deadlines, stress and a couple of tons worth of pressure lingering right above my head. Business as Usual makes me numb, I'll take a good crazy deadline and complex project anytime.
My soul staying at Buenos Aires up till the end of February, when I plan to take a short vacation.
I've survived another end of year, and, quite surprisingly I feel more full of energy now than in December. Impeccable timing, I'd say.