Paul Wallbank – Brilliant Communications

Author: Paul Wallbank

  • Head in the clouds: ABC Nightlife

    What is cloud computing and why does it matter to most homes and businesses?

    Join Tony Delroy and Paul Wallbank to discuss cloud computing and what it means to the ordinary business and household on ABC Local Radio across Australia from 10pm on August 19.

    Tune in on your local ABC radio station or listen online at www.abc.net.au/nightlife.

    If you’d like to join the conversation with your questions or comments phone 1300 800 222 within Australia or +61 2 8333 1000 from outside Australia.

    You can SMS Nightlife’s talkback on 19922702 or twitter @paulwallbank using the #abcnightlife hashtag

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  • Failing Fast: Google Wave’s real business lesson

    A key philosophy underlying much of Silicon Valley’s successful companies is the “fail fast” concept where a business releases a rough version of a new idea and asks the world what it thinks. Should people like the idea, it gets developed and if they don’t, it gets dropped and everybody moves on to the next brainwave.

    The “fail fast” philosophy was behind Google Wave’s dropping last week, as CEO Eric Schmidt said at the Techonomy Conference on the day it was announced; “….we release it and see what happens. It works, you announce product, you ship it…”

    Until recently, “failing fast” was restricted to hot shot Internet businesses but as the cost of product development falls due to better collaboration tools, testing methods and global outsourcing, it’s become easier for all businesses to experiment without risking an organisation’s future.

    This is very different from the old style of doing business, a good example of how things used to work was Boeing’s development of the 747 Jumbo Jet which was a $2 billion dollar bet, $14bn in 2010 dollars, on a big lumbering subsonic jet in the mid 1960s when the future of aviation seemed to be with sleek supersonic aircraft like the Concorde.

    While Boeing’s bet paid off, it took 15 years and nearly sent the company broke.

    Most of today’s businesses aren’t locked into 14 billion dollar and 15 year investment cycles as we can test products with simulation tools, computer aided design programs, fast prototyping and oursourcing services like o-desk for labour and alibaba.com for manufacturing without risking the farm.

    For most businesses, it’s not even a matter of spending time and money actually developing ideas, usually it’s something as simple as testing a new idea by buying a domain name and setting up a low cost website on a cheap hosting service for under $200. If the idea flies then you start looking at spending real money on making the product ready for the broader market.

    Failing fast presents a great challenge to the traditional organisation where the slightest failure is a stigma. In the new economy, a risk adverse culture is going to be punished by competitors who accept that not every idea is right for its time and learn lessons rather than punish those associated with the unsuccessful project.

    While this is bad news for large organisations run by risk adverse managers it is one of the great opportunities for nimble and smart companies. If your business is prepared to take small risks, learn from the misses and celebrate the wins then your business could well be on the way to being the next Google.

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  • Asking the tough questions

    Last week saw three challenging questions cross my desk — “What on earth is cloud computing?” “Can you explain the National Broadband Network?” and “Why does the Internet matter?”

    All the questions ended up being rolled into an article that was picked up by radio and television. Which in itself is an interesting study on how Twitter and blogs drive other media channels.

    That these three questions had to be asked shows how poor those of us in the technology sector have been in explaining the great opportunities the digital era offers businesses and communities

    For too long we technologists have been locked into talking about gigabytes and megabits, HTML and XML while not explaining what these tools deliver

    In most of the tech industries, it’s assumed that if something is shinier and has more features then it’s better for the customers.

    This is best seen in the social media circles, where most experts are blinded by the fun of using Twitter or Facebook and struggle to explain what they can deliver to business.

    Bizarrely this has resulted in a whole tribe of social media experts who claim there is no way we can apply business measures to their blind recommendations that your organisation should be tweeting out status updates every hour.

    A blind acceptance that newer or cheaper is better has locked many big and small customers into at best dysfunctional deals. Worse still, is the “we’ll save a fortune with this new widget” mentality we discussed in last week’s column that is nothing but a trap for people who should know better.

    Promising cheap, new and shiny has allowed many technology vendors to lock ill informed buyers into upgrade cycles that have delivered increased costs for little benefit. Internet providers, telephone companies and outsourcing multinationals have exploited customer ignorance to deliver massive profits over the years.

    This isn’t to say there aren’t cost savings to be had by adopting new methods and technology, there clearly are. But it relies on the customer, in this case your business, to understand how the new ideas will benefit their workplace.

    It comes down to the user to ask the tough questions, if you don’t understand what the computer tech, web designer or social media expert is talking about, stop them and ask.

    Tough questions are good for the experts and gurus. It forces the good ones to think about the solutions they recommend and gives the poor ones the hint that other industries might offer better prospects for selling snake oil.

    Most importantly, it’s about allowing you to understand what’s going on without jargon and verbiage. Having a clear, concise view allows you to make better, informed choices.

    With a changing business environment, it’s too important to be bluffed or ignorant about what these tools mean for you and your industry. Ask the hard questions so you can make the right decisions.

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  • The freeways of the future

    “I don’t see why the Internet is important to me” said Maggie, the first caller to our “is the Internet the ultimate consumer’s revenge “ radio program.

    Maggie’s question is a very good one at a time when governments, businesses and households are investing heavily in Internet technology. Just a few hours before the radio show I’d been invited by television program A Current Affair, to discuss if Australia’s 43 billion dollar investment in a National Broadband Network is worthwhile.

    For Maggie and ACA’s viewers, the answer is “yes, it is very important” — the Internet today is what the motor car was to the early 20th Century and railways were to the 19th Century. Communities that aren’t connected will miss the benefits of the 21st Century economy.

    To illustrate how important it will be, let’s have a look at Maggie’s life. We’ll assume she’s an older person living in a regional Australian town or one of the fast growing fringe suburbs of a big city.

    Probably the most immediate change the Internet delivers for Maggie is how it is giving her a stronger voice as a consumer and citizen. This is what we discussed on the ABC program, how Internet tools like social media are giving customers and voters their voices back.

    With reliable broadband Maggie can be researching products and voicing her dissatisfaction with government and private organisations to the world in a way that would have been impossible a few years ago.

    Those Internet tools also growing communities around her as like minded people across the world and in her own district are connecting online then meeting in real life at events like Coffee Mornings.

    Not only does the Internet connect communities, it connects families — one lady recently described to me how she speaks more to her daughter living in Brazil through Skype than she did when they lived nearby. The net brings friends and families back together and helps overcome social isolation.

    Exclusion in education has always been a pressing issue, once upon a time you had to be in Cambridge or Oxford to access the world’s great minds. With a fast reliable Internet connection, the kids in Maggie’s neighbourhood can listen to a Harvard or MIT professor’s lecture without leaving their hometown.

    Bringing knowledge to local communities will also help Maggie should she have to have to go to the local hospital, the local doctors will be able to consult specialists without Maggie having to travel long distances to get specialist advice.

    Importantly for Maggie and her local hospital, the access to online training resources mean the local staff will be up to date with their professional development and across new trends, ensuring Maggie’s standard of care will be equal to the big city teaching hospitals.

    Solving staff training issues also delivers benefits for the local business community. It means the Maggie’s son Tim, the owner of a local plumbing business, doesn’t have to pay for expensive training courses or to travel into town to attend business conferences.

    The net also means Tim can access the world’s best business minds without leaving his office. Which gives him benefit of running his business more efficiently and profitably.

    For Tim’s kids, it also means they aren’t excluded from the entertainment world. They can stream and download the latest things happening and share equally on social networking sites. They may be in a small town, but they can play in the big world.

    Having these education, business, training and entertainment resources strengthens communities. It means kids and entrepreneurs can live in their home towns and still participate in the global economy. It means Maggie is a valued and important citizen of her country and the world.

    Fast accessible Internet is more than important, it’s vital just in the ways roads, railways, canals and the telegraph were in their eras. The investment in these freeways of the future is necessary to grow strong and dynamic communities.

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  • Five free, easy and essential online business marketing tools

    Five free, easy and essential online business marketing tools

    The web has become the shopping strip of the modern economy, where potential customers see what every business has to offer without leaving their home or office. According to the the Sensis e-business report over 90% of businesses and 70% of consumers now do an online search before buying a product or service.

    So every opportunity to promote your business online has to be grabbed, even if you don’t have a website. Luckily there’s a range of free and easy to use services to help your business be seen online.

    Five of the easiest and most important free services are listed here and it’s best to use all five to help you get the most online visibility for your business.

    Google Places

    The first and most essential service every business needs is Google Places. Having a Places listing puts a business in the Google search results directly below the paid spots at the top of the page.

    It’s a pretty powerful location on the web real estate map and, being free, it’s hard to refuse. Given how Google is by far the most used search engine, a Places listing is essential even if you already have an extensive web site.

    Google Places  allows you to upload logos, pictures, descriptions, and other details which makes it an even greater opportunity to get the message out to your customers. For many smaller business, particularly those in the trades, a Google Places page may be all the web presence they need.

    Facebook Pages

    The marketer’s social media tool of choice, Facebook recently celebrated reaching 500 million users. For businesses, Facebook offers the Pages service which allows you to set up a page for your business.

    Facebook’s greatest advantage is it lets your customers talk directly to you and to each other. It’s an excellent way to bring your fans together and keep track of what’s happening in the marketplace.

    While setting up the page is simple, there are some sophisticated ways you can improve your Facebook presence. Facebook themselves have good tutorials and sites like SEO Moz have good examples of how to get the most from Facebook pages.

    Blogging platforms

    Until recently blogs were used as online diaries, today they have become a flexible, free and easy way to set up a web presence.

    The two biggest free blogging platforms are WordPress and Blogger. WordPress is the more flexible of the two while Blogger is quicker and easier to setup.

    An advantage with using a blogging platform is they are very easy to update and offer far more flexibility and customisation than the other free tools. Keep in mind you can use WordPress on your own website or take up the paid option to use your own domain.

    True Local

    News Limited’s online listing tool is important for Australian businesses not just because it connects with News’ online and offline publishing networks but also for their content sharing agreements with Google, Navman, Yahoo!7 and some of the mobile phone companies. This means a listing on True Local goes onto all of these services.

    True Local offers a number of listing levels ranging from free to $220 a year. Interestingly, News’ Premium service charges for much of what Google Places offers for free, which is one reason why Google is the preferred free site. True Local’s reach in both search, partner sites and offline channels makes it important for business to be listed on the service.

    Sensis Listings

    Telstra’s directory service, Sensis, offers a free Yellow Pages listing which appears in both their online and printed versions as well as Telstra’s online and mobile services. While listing here will mean you’ll get a polite but anxious call from a Sensis sales representative offering you a deal on a Yellow Pages paid ad, it’s still a very important channel given Telstra’s market share.

    As Ken in the comments has noted, Sensis don’t allow you to add a website address to the free listing. While this reduces the effectiveness of a Sensis online listing, it still means your business will appear in Telstra’s online and mobile searches, so it is an important channel to be listed on.

    These five tools are a great help for all businesses, regardless of their size or web presence, and each can be set up within in a hour. You could have all five working for you within a day.

    Get these free tools working for your business so customers can find you on the web.

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