A crazy story in The Washington Post about victims of bike thefts turning into vigilantes. Like the article says, people take this common type of theft very personally. I certainly did.
I wrote about my experience for the Post back in 2002. After my bike was stolen, I was pissed, and was sure that my bike was still somewhere in the neighborhood. I kept my eyes open and several months later, I spotted my bike leaning against a tree. Here’s my story.
People writing (maybe) at SXSW 2007.
This poll got me thinking about the endless debate (among writers and techies, that is) about the best word processing tool. As a writer, you think I would have a strong and absolute preference for one software program over another. After all, an easy to use writing tool is vitally important to my trade.
However, like most writers, I’ll write with whatever’s available, whether that’s a clay tablet, pen and paper, or software program outfitted with the latest features. Here’s what I’m using now:
Word 2004 for the Mac – you really can’t escape Word if you work in an office these days. Like Starbucks, it’s ubiquitous. I use it because it’s on my computer at work and I have to. I hate its constant, distracting whirr of activity, the noisy autosaves, the stupid autocompletes, the aggravating formatting issues.
TextEdit – a lovely little program, ideal for short bits of text to dump into web pages, email messages, Word docs and Scrivener (see below). It’s a perfect word processor for laptops because it’s not a resource hog. With it, I’ll write text for my novel that I then paste into Scrivener.
Google Docs – the successor to Word. Google is the company that will dominate our work lives like Microsoft once did. Deal with it. I use Google Docs for things I want access from home and work and to share with others. For example, I have a doc of furniture I want to buy, complete with links and photos.
Scrivener – a program that causes well-deserved spasms of joy among Mac novelists. Though it was created by a non-programmer, it’s a nearly perfect example of a Mac program. It keeps you organized and gets out of your way when you want to work. It’s doubled my productivity through it’s ease of use. I spend every weekend in it, working on my novel.
Pages – my next love. I took the first couple chapters out of my novel and dropped them into Pages. I quickly created a book cover and, my god, it looked like a real book! That’s inspiring.
For me at least, my workflow would go TextEdit -> Scrivener -> Pages.
However, all this debate over the perfect word-processing tool is a distraction, like discussions among photographers over lenses. In the past, I’ve written with incredibly primitive tools, like manual typewriters. What matters most is writing.
Mark your calendars. DC Shorts is returning September 13-20. Like last year, the action will take place downtown at E Street Cinema. This year, we will present 89 films and 7 live script performances, culled from 14 countries. I say “we” because I was one of the script judges.
Also check out Rough Cut, the City Paper’s blog covering the event.
Yesterday, I attended the Web Managers Roundtable at the Grosvener Auditorium at National Geographic. The Roundtable is a monthly get together of web managers from around Washington, sponsored by Aquent, Omniture and other companies. The subject of the talk was “Marketing Optimization: The Holy Grail of Continuous Improvement.”
Betsy Scolnik, President of National Geographic Digital Media, provided the introduction to the main speaker, Jim Sterne. Nationalgeographic.com had 73 million visitors last year. They overhauled all their sites in the last two years, investing in major hardware and software upgrades.
Jim Sterne then presented on “Marketing Optimization: The Holy Grail of Continuous Improvement.” Sterne has written six books on Internet advertising, marketing and customer service. He is also is the producer of the annual Emetrics Summit (in DC, Oct 14-17) and is the founder of the Web Analytics Association. He’s been involved in web marketing since the beginning – I saw him speak way back in 1998.
He defined marketing optimization as measured, incremental improvement. You examine the data, see what’s working, and adjust your site accordingly. “If you treasure it, measure it,” in his words. With web analytics, you can test strategy and messaging on your site.
He believes that we’re just at the beginning of the web analytics evolution. Web sites are swimming in data on visits, page views, click-throughs, etc… And now, with services like Omniture, Web Trends and Google Analytics, that data is easier than ever to access and present. But the question is, what questions do we want answered? Which numbers matter and what actions do we take based upon them?
The good thing is that this data eliminates decisions made in a smoke-filled room or by the whim of a CEO (“I want a red button.”) Everything can be measured now. With A/B testing, you can try two different versions of the same web page and see which performs better. With multivariate testing, you can try multiple elements on the same web page in several different versions and examine the results. Companies are also adjusting their offers based upon user behavior – think how Amazon changes their home page based upon what you buy or look at.
Smart companies are using this information to gain insight into consumer behavior. There’s a marked difference between what people say they do (“I exercise regularly.”) versus what they actually do (“I never miss a happy hour.”)
Why does this matter? Because the Internet is where people learn about your organization, it’s where you’re defined. Consumers don’t know the different parts of your organization. They expect messaging to be coordinated across all media – web, print, call center, etc… And they want you to speak to them in their language.
Brendan Hart and Ted McDonald from nationalgeographic.com then discussed their marketing analytics efforts. Sterne was theory; they were reality. In their view, marketing optimization is an art and a science, since consumer behavior is constantly changing. They’ve focused on a set of Key Performance Indicators. Out of the wealth of data available, they suggest following the numbers that are most relevant to you – visitors, page views, time spent on site, newsletter signups, orders, etc… To do so, they use Omniture with an Excel plugin to produce weekly traffic reports. These reports are distributed across the organization and people are trained in how to understand the data. Content is adjusted accordingly. For example, they expanded a section on the “Seven Wonders of the World” that proved to be popular.
Overall, the philosophy they’ve followed is Strategize, Optimize, Monetize. For example, they tried out a “subscribe” button on their home page and then changed the color and made it bold, because it performed better this way, and led to more subscriptions.
What was interesting was the divergence between theory and practice. Sterne is right – web analytics are a powerful tool. However, these tools still require humans to examine the data and take action based upon their interpretations of that information.
My favorite Pebble Beach pic was included in a Schmap guide.
I’ve let Schmap use several of my photos. Here’s how the describe themselves:
Schmap is a leading publisher of digital travel guides for 200 destinations throughout the United States, Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The innovative technology behind Schmap Guides is also used by clients, partners and bloggers to power schmapplets – a range of fully customizable map mashups and map widgets.
They found my pics through Flickr. On Flickr, you can choose to make your photos available though a Creative Commons license… or not. I have my photos listed under a Attribution-NoDerivs license. This is a pretty broad license – I’m saying that other people (even for-profit companies) can use my photos as long as they attribute the picture to me (by running my name under it) and that they can’t remix it into other works of art.
There’s been periodic discussion on Flickr and elsewhere on Schmap and other services and the ethics of sharing photos. Some take the perspective that the photographer always must be paid for use of their photos. I, however, am not a professional. I take pictures because I enjoy them. If some little magazine or web site wants to use them, and can’t pay, that’s OK. I’m more interested in getting my pictures out there, sharing them with the world, than with making a profit.
A similar debate took place in the early years of the Internet. Shouldn’t writers get paid for their online content? As a writer, I think they should. Early attempts at renumeration for writers, like “micro-payment” schemes and putting things in “walled gardens” have largely failed. Why? Because the web is awash in written content. Nobody (and that means you and me) wants to pay. And now, for better or worse, the web is awash in free photos.
If you’re not going to get paid, why take pictures and put them online? Or, for that matter, why write? If you enjoy these activities, you’re going to do them, and not care about the value the market assigns your efforts. That, in my view, is the mark of the true artist.