Selected for the Code Blacks

I am privileged to be a part of the 2009 Code Blacks - The NZ team of Web Geeks travelling to Sydney on May 11th to take part in the 2nd FullCodePress competition.

The rest of the team are/seem to be very experienced and well known in NZ Web circles. Not exactly sure how UI was selected as PM but it may have something to do with my very much fly by the seat of my pants approach to project management. Although I have trained and been involved in many different 'official' or company project management methodologies from Prince 2 to Shift and Intergens fairly solid waterfall methodologies and even dabbled in Agile, I find that if you are working with true professionals who are good at what they do then a more relaxed approach can win every time. Think good communications, visual tools where ever possible and just go for it.

Many people will not agree but it always seems to get the job done - and done well.

What's Next After Web 2.0?

Average Article on ReadWriteWeb on what impact the finanical crisis is having on where Web technology is heading including some picks and trends by their 'experts' which are all to predictable...

What's Next After Web 2.0

To sum up in a few words; Semantic, Google, Acquire, Web Services, Open, Facebook.

Come on! There's nothing new here.

The Google Reflex

Read this interesting article on Gen Y insights blog themarketingstudent.com about the different ways Gen Y'ers and Baby Boomers shop.

Baby Boomers trust the sales person, traditional advertising and marketing and often relinquish control of a transaction. In a store they can often be heard saying "Which one would you buy....", "What would you recommend..."

Whereas Gen Y have developed a distrust for traditional sales and marketing. Before they visit the store, they have researched online, read reviews and know everything they need and what to buy.

Most likely starting with Google. It calls this the "Google Reflex". I know this has been true for me when researching products or services for a very long time - I have almost got to the point where I think shit website = shit company or product.

How do Sales and Marketing teams handle this?

Change of tack

I've decided to broaden the content of Web NZ to include some of my other interests. I'll still post on anything I find interesting in the online world, on YouTXT, Usability, what I'm up to professionally and New Zealanders doing cool things - like Dave ten Have and Ponoko making it to TechCrunch. And then, by all accounts making a big splash in a very big pond by getting named "..the most original idea.." by the review panel.

I admit, it took me a little while to get my head around what exactly Ponoko is or does but it is one of the most original ideas I have heard in a long time. In a world where most "new" web businesses are just different takes on existing ideas - done differently and occasionally better, Ponoko is a modern day example of "Kiwi Ingenuity" that sets the bar for NZ software companies. I have worked briefly with founder David ten Have (or Dave5) who was my boss at Trade NZ about 10+ years ago, and John Lewis from Intergen who is a kick-ass coder with serious business nous. They are both really smart guys and I wish Ponoko the best of luck.

Go TUANZ. Awesome promotion.

This is great example of a NZ organisation using YouTube to promote their cause.



Is it viral? Is it effective? I think so.

In the 10 minutes since I 1st saw it in the Google reader widget on my iGoogle home page, I have watched it, posted a comment on Rod Drury's blog, emailed it to one friend and am now adding it to my blog. I think so.

Finalist in FullCodePress competition

It seems I've been shortlisted as a finalist for the FullCodePress competition against Australia on the 18th August.

What is the FullCodePress? Officially, "...the brainchild of the people at Webstock and WIPA. In essence it’s a geek Olympics!" but to me it's more like the C4 48 hour film festival for websites.

I'm stoked to have made the final 3 - Fingers x'ed because the winner is drawn from the hat.

2007 Web 2.0 Award Winners Announced

SEOmoz has announced the winners of their annual Web 2.0 awards. Although there were a few surprises it was great to see Threadless recognised as the premier Web 2.0 retail site - something I've been saying for ages :-)

There were no kiwi sites there but it was great to see Grant Robinson get a mention for his truly addictive "Guess-the-Google"

It also made be stop and think that so many of these winning sites are part of (almost) everyday life on the web. Think about it -

• Del.icio.us, Digg - Social tagging / news
• LinkedIn - isn't everyone?
• YouTube
• Google - iGoogle is my home page + Google Reader, Docs, Analytics, AdWords, Gmail and Blogger
• Picasa organises my photos on my machine and online
• LastFM is what i listen to at work (and it listens to me too)
• And that's just for starters - there's many more that did not win awards such as TradeMe

YouTXT - Creating and Sharing Information by SMS

I’m pleased to announce that a new service that I’ve been working on has gone live! YouTXT is a service that brings TXT marketing to smaller organisations.

Some of the benefits to businesses:

• Free to setup, no ongoing costs for the business
• Easy to use site for managing TXT codes
• Detailed reports on campagin effectiveness
• Our success depends on your marketing success, we’re motivated to help you succeed!

If you are offering a service and would find benefit by allowing potential customers to TXT for more information then this would be a fantastic service for you. YouTXT is a small business that’s looking to help small businesses succeed by enabling this type of service to businesses that don’t have multi-national sized budgets for marketing. We really look forward to seeing how you guys use this service and I’m really excited about the prospects for some new features we’ve got planned.

More detail about how the service operates can be found on the site. If you would like to discuss with us about how this service could be adapted to your organisation please feel free to contact me.

My partners in this venture are the stars - JD from Mindscape, and top notch creative Sam Allen
Check it out here: http://www.youtxt.co.nz

All the cool kids are doing it

Card Sorting and Usability Testing - Part One

In the past couple of weeks, I've taken part in two practical exercises which have really hit home the importance of involving real users to improve the information architecture and usability of a website - and how the two are linked.

The 1st was a Card Sorting exercise while at a UPANZ seminar on Information Architecture by David Pomeroy, and the 2nd was sitting in on some Usability Testing sessions run by Optimal Usability. I'll cover Card Sorting today and the Usability Testing later.

There is plenty written about cart sorting in IA books and websites but I had never read a good definitive article, nor had the chance to take part in it. Although the exercise was really simple my take on it is that it is an exercise using a series of cards, each labelled with a piece of content that make sense to particpants (users). It would be great when creating a site map and helps identify the following:

1. How users see the information
2. How different groups of users react to the content
3. How many categories of information are there
4. What the categories should be called

I think it is an easy exercise to sell to clients because it is Simple (Hey - if I can do it... it must be), Cheap, Quick and involves real live users.

Since then, I've looked for good articles and this is one of the best on the Boxes and Arrows site. Card sorting: a definitive guide

I'd love to hear others thoughts or experiences...

How do I enhance my businesses reputation - without being obvious?

Recently, a colleague of mine posted on his blog how customers can leverage the internet to communicate dissatisfaction with a businesses products or services to a huge online audience, it's potential negative effects and how this makes good customer service even more critical to successful business.

Well - I think that's what he meant anyway.

There are examples of New Zealand websites that are dedicated to this. E.g. http://www.mytradesman.co.nz/ where punters can review the work of sparkies, builders and plumbers etc for all to see. Along with the real horror stories, there are some great reviews of Tradesmen who had provided excellent customer service - which has got to be great for business.

However, I ask - how can a business leverage the internet to enhance it’s reputation and increase sales or grow it's business - apart from just providing better customer service?

I could create a Blog and rave about my products and services - Many companies already do this to good effect with ’sponsored’ blogs by exployees and evangelists. E.g. Microsoft, Oracle.
But the web user is pretty sophisticated nowadays, and take what they read with a grain of salt.

Are there more effective, less obvious ways of increasing a businesses reputation?