We had the pleasure of attending the 2009 TEDMED Conference last week in San Diego and were absolutely inspired by the variety of speakers & topics as well as the opportunity to reflect on how science, technology and medicine have intersected to suggest a different future. The following are a few reflections looking back on the themes and presentations:

• Researchers can now re-create organs using DNA from samples of organ tissue applied to a ’scaffold’ that shapes the replacement organ but then disintegrates within several weeks. Imagine needing a transplant and being able to use your own tissue samples to create one in a lab in short order before your procedure.
• Nutrition and exercise still and will always have a major part to play in the prevention of disease. A no-brainer seemingly, but the frequency of this theme throughout the talks was a poignant reminder. For further insight, check out What the World Eats.
• Changing techniques in educating children, focusing on prevention and evolving the way we approach geriatric care will be important for a healthier life cycle. Making healthier behavior more fun was also a theme that we hope to see realized in education and health care in the coming years.
• Screening your genes is now a viable and relatively affordable solution that helps you understand what elevated health risks you face. Speaker Anne Wojcicki described the story behind 23andme.com and offered attendees a free account. Navigenics also provided a similar, competitive solution focused on screening your DNA to empower you to take stronger preventative measures against disease you run higher risk for.
• Being able to visualize disease and bodily functions is key for many people to quickly and easily understand them. Visual communicator Alexander Tsiaras gave a demo of TheVisualMd.com and PatientsLikeMe.com founder Jamie Heywood showed the audience how effective it was to pool data from a community of people sharing the metrics and symptoms of their disease. In fact, their data was more effective and far easier to understand that a recent clinical study.
• Human life spans may become significantly longer as a result of the technologies focused to combat disease, leaving many unanswered questions about population, resources, quality of life, etc. Speakers Aubrey de Grey and David Sinclair actually consider aging a disease and believe that with cellular maintenance and a modified diet, people can live dramatically longer.
• Shifting the paradigm of healthcare from large, expensive hospital centers toward smaller clinical centers as well as the home will be instrumental in making it more affordable. In the future, smaller neighborhood clinics and centers equipped with Nurse Practitioners offering primary care can allow for more affordable, effective care leaving surgical specialists to oversee more complicated procedures. CVS’ Minute Clinic was just one example. At home, advances in robotics and even common sense solutions like improving the clarity of prescription drug containers will provide seniors with more independence later in life.
• “Not everything that counts can be measured.” A famous Einstein quote provided ground for speakers like Dean Ornish, Deepak Chopra, Aimee Mullins and others who reminded us that positivity, motivation, collaboration, community, consciousness and love have a lot to do with health. There was a general feeling that while researchers and technologists have made amazing discoveries, the “silo” approach to advancement needs to be revolutionized to include different types of thinkers working together.

Registration is already open for the 2010 Conference for those who wish to attend.

Just read a great article on TechCrunch regarding the future of media – especially for industries concerned with digital rights management such as Entertainment:

“The only way to block the incredible ease of pirating any content a media company can generate is to couple said experiences with extensions that live in the cloud and enhance that experience for consumers. Not just for some fancy DRM but for real value creation. They must begin to create a product that is not simply a static digital file that can be easily copied and distributed, but rather view media as a dynamic “application” with extensions via the web. Read more

A few days ago, TEDMED 2009 speaker Steve Cole referenced the following video as an example of how making ordinary things more fun can potentially increase fitness and attitude in subtle ways:

Read more

(Another reason to love Campaign Monitor)

This morning we discovered just how powerful and flexible the Campaign Monitor Template system is for enabling clients to craft and send their own Newsletter or Email Campaigns through the system. Using their proprietary Template Tags, you can customize virtually any section of an Email Campaign template you want while making higher level elements such as the overall structure, branding and footer elements locked through the system.

Here’s an example of a template that’s fully editable by a client in our system:

Everything you see from beneath the logo to the Salutation is editable, including the hyperlinked image in the right column.

Here are a few helpful tips on how we created it:

The Main Newsletter Title:

The main title is simply a Heading 1 Tag with the following inside of it:

<$title link=’true’ default=’Enter Title Here’>

Repeating Content Blocks:

In Campaign Monitor, content blocks consist of a Repeater element with other elements nested within such as headings, images and paragraphs. In this case, we have a Heading 2 tag, a Paragraph beneath it. In other templates, we’ve included the ability to float an image to the right of the paragraph. In this case, we’ve inserted a “Clearing” div above each repeated block so that every content block you add clears the right-aligned image and starts underneath it.

Here’s some sample code:

<repeater>
<h2><$title link=’true’ default=’Enter Body Content Title’$></h2>
<$description default=’Enter Body Content’$>
</repeater>

The coolest thing about these proprietary tags is that the tags that say ‘Enter Body Content Title’ or ‘Enter Body Content’ can be changed to anything you want so the more you extend the template for clients to work with, the more you can guide them by customizing the headings they see when inputting their content.

Single Images:

The most basic form of allowing a client to upload an image is simply to use this tag:

<img src=”<$imagesrc link=’true’$>”>

Now, in the event you wanted to lock the width, apply a border, align it or margin it, you can add on parameters to the image tag like so:

<img src=”<$imagesrc link=’true’$>” width=”200″ align=”right” border=”0″ style=”margin:10px;”>

Once you start playing with these tags inside of Campaign Monitor, it becomes clear that you have access to a great deal of flexibility for custom templates.

View a full list of Campaign Monitor Template Tags.

Justin Bingham is one of those guys that never disappoints with his insight into development. In a series of posts on his new blog he clearly outlines the advantages and pitfalls of hybrid development practices. What I really like about the detailed descriptions he offers is that he combines both the technical and the psychological aspects of managing and delivering a successful project. It’s easy to follow a step by step methodology. On the other hand being empathetic to client and team needs while still being alert to bullshit gives you serious advantage over just following process alone. This except hits at the core of Justin’s point…

Respect your Bullsh*t Meter. Some people will say just about anything to get your money.  You can ask all the right questions, and still get fleeced if you don’t listen carefully to the answers.  Look for any elements of inconsistency.  If someone tells you that they adhere to agile development practices, ask them later on in the conversation how long they usually spend putting together their technical specification document before they start coding.  This is a lot like being at a party and having someone tell you how much they love the movie that you were just talking about, and then later dropping an obvious reference and watching it sail over their head.  Steer clear of these people, and steer clear of these firms.  They’ll say anything to get you to like them.  Don’t be afraid to tune your meter if you’re having trouble identifying them.

“Come up to the lab… and see what’s on the slab.” – Dr. Frankenfurter

It’s been a big, bile-filled week for new application launches and the evil scientists behind them. Both Squidoo’s Brands in Public (another in a long line of brainchildren from Seth Godin,) and Google’s Sidewiki have bloggers and traditional journalists clamouring to dissect and criticize these potentially game-changing additions to our online world. And the villagers are definitely restless.

What is Google Sidewiki?

The latest offering from the Google Labs has been live for a few days now and opinions, especially within the search engine optimization/marketing industry, have been flying fast and furious. Sidewiki has sparked as much debate as any application to ever come out of their underground lair, and that’s hardly surprising considering the massive impact it may prove to have on brand reputation management and other aspects of user-generated discussions in the social sphere.

At its simplest, Sidewiki allows any website visitor to leave a comment about it which is then displayed for any other visitor to read, should they have the capability turned on. Anonymity is not an option, however, so this should greatly reduce the number of participating trolls, rivals and doodie jokes. Reactions from around the web:

Goggle’s new Sidewiki web annotation feature doesn’t allow anonymous commenting, and that is an excellent thing. The Web has been held hostage by anonymous comments for far too long. But, Google is also treating other peoples’ content as its own, and that’s bad. – David Coursey

Somebody should have asked the “is it evil?” question. That’s why it’s there. I sense no one did. – Jeff Jarvis

 

Several of us here at FTS have installed the new toolbar and are getting under Sidewiki’s hood. First impressions seem to all come back to one thing – will the lack of anonymity be enough to keep the new tool useful or will it degenerate into a chorus of moans. As the old adage goes, if someone has a good experience they might share it with one person. If they have a bad experience they will scream it from the rooftops. The jury is understandably out – but the potential for a great addition to the Google toolbox is definitely there.

What is Brands in Public?

Seth Godin, usually heralded as nothing short of a marketing genius, has kicked up a lot of dust with his latest Squidoo-centric baby. Similar to that network’s user-created “lenses”, Brands in Public will allow companies to create and manage the same sort of entity centered around their brand.

You can’t control what people are saying about you. What you can do is organize that speech. You can organize it by highlighting the good stuff and rationally responding to the not-so-good stuff. You can organize it by embracing the people who love your brand and challenging them to speak up and share the good word. And you can respond to it in a thoughtful way, leaving a trail that stands up over time. – Seth Godin

 

As with a lens, BIP will pull in and syndicate any brand mentions it locates via RSS feeds – news, blog posts, tweets, videos, images, etc. Where the problem for the new service’s detractors lies is its $400 a month price tag. While the hefty cost is a good thing when it comes to making sure the brand-specific real estate is actually owned by its associated company and not an affiliate marketer or competitor, it has also created the impression of extortion among many:

Give Squidoo $400 a month. Or your brand gets it. – Meghan Keane

Wow. I’d personally like to welcome Seth Godin to the world of brand-jacking and hostage taking. I didn’t know you had it in you. – Lisa Barone

 

If you’re a highly visible company Godin and his team intend to create your brand’s dashboard for you. In fact, they probably already have. If you want to have some degree of control over this entity, which will surely end up ranking very well in the search engines for your brand-specific searches, you have to cough up the dough. Monthly membership includes:

• The ability to highlight positive blog/news mentions.
• The ability to respond to negative comments left on the “lens”.
• Being able to interact with your audience via contest and poll modules.

It would also appear that you can make money for charity (or contribute to Squidoo’s bottom line depending on your payment choices) via the Amazon, CafePress, etc. affiliate revenue modules which the network has offered since its inception. It’s Squidoo for brands. At a hefty cost. I don’t like its chances and I think big-business participation will be done begrudgingly as part of an existing online reputation management strategy which will now require an additional $400 a month. I could be wrong, though. There’s always the Stockholm Syndrome to consider.

Skill #4: Financial and Employee Management is Daily Task

Do you know how much cash you have in the bank? Do you know who owes you money and how late their payments are? What’s your sales pipeline look like? Who’s the person in your business most likely to leave in the next 6 months? What projects are profitable and which will lose money?

If I called you any time night or day would you have these answers at your fingertips? The only way you can know these things is to have systems which are updated daily. It doesn’t matter how big or small your business is you need to know what’s going on every day. Don’t wait for the monthly management meeting or the annual sales conference to get the bad news. Know every day how the business is doing.

We use a series of very inexpensive web-based tools, project management systems and processes to monitor our business. We’ve even gone so far at to use our iPhone’s to monitor or bank accounts, projects and profitability. On a recent trip overseas I was able to check in on the team and the fifteen or so project we were working on. In about 5 minutes I was able to check on the work progress, project and employee profitability, accounts receivable and payable and cash flow.

We use a daily list of tasks to manage everyone’s schedule. These tasks are broken down into simple daily to-do lists. Each morning a team member will check the backlog and know exactly what their priorities are. The managers can check the aggregated to-do lists, called universal backlogs, and see who is doing what.

If you’re a manager you need to be spending about 30 – 40% of your day working directly with your team members. This might be a series of short meetings or updates. On the days that I’m in the office I walk around and ask each person a series of informal questions. Some examples are,  “what are you working on?”, “anything you need help with?”, “any client or project issues that you need some help with?”, “is there anything blocking you from getting your project done?” and “have you spoken to your client contacts recently?” I find that by doing this daily I can solve lots of small issues instead of waiting until review time when the issue has now become a monumental festering problem.

In a world where things change daily or even by the hour there can be no perfection. Websites are not things you create, launch and ignore. They are out of date the day you launch. If you have a website or run a web business get used to the idea that perfection is the enemy. Waiting for the site to be perfect before you launch is dangerous. Launch before you are perfect and then make changes every day.

We recently relaunched our own site after months of nitpicking back and forth. Eventually we decided to just get it out there and deal with the consequences. Guess what, there were none. A few small typos here and there but nothing that we couldn’t fix in a few minutes.

If you are working on a new idea or planning a small project like an iphone app or a widget, here is a quick guide to getting it out the door without falling into the analysis paralysis trap:

1. First, let new things happen without too much judgment about their future possibilities.
2. Second, find easy proof points without spending any money. Like finding a customer who’s Read more