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Talking with Ford’s Head of Social Media

Barton George — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 12:12:00 GMT

Last week I attended the Web 2.0 expo in San Francisco. In case you thought that social media was just for web 2.0 start-ups and teenagers, one of the cooler talks I saw was given by Scott Monty, the head of Ford Motor’s Social Media efforts. I was so intrigued that I thought I would grab him for an interview. He graciously agreed and here’s the result. Enjoy!

To watch in High Quality: after clicking play, click the “HQ” button that will appear on the bottom.

Some of the topics Scott tackles:

Ford’s goal of becoming one of the world’s leading social brands.
Setting content free.
Innovation is made up of small tweaks on existing platforms that build value over time.
How did Ford come to decide they needed a head of social media and how did they pick Scott.
The two things coming up that Scott is most excited about: the Fiesta Movement and the evolution of Fordstory.com into Ford’s social media hub.

BTW, If you want to follow Scott on Twitter, its @scottmonty.

Barton George
Sr. Director, Business Development, Blueprint process mapping tool
Lombardi Software

Learn about Blueprint and sign up for a 30 day free trial

Top 10 Tech Skills: Process Modeling tops the list

Barton George — Tue, 07 Apr 2009 12:32:00 GMT

Last week I came across an article on NetworkWorld.com that listed today’s “Top 10 Technology skills.” The list was based on work done by Foote Partners, which conducts quarterly assessments of IT pay trends in the US.

Foote Partners’ CEO David Foote says “what’s unique about this downturn is that IT departments are hiring talent in certain areas – such as business process modeling and project management – while laying off in others connected to weak product lines.”

And, indeed, coming in at the top of the list was Business Process Modeling:

1. Business Process Modeling

Business process management, methodology and modeling is one of the few IT niches that saw pay gains in the fourth quarter of 2008, according to the quarterly IT salary survey compiled by Foote Partners. In particular, companies were willing to pay for workers with ITIL IT best practices and CobiT IT governance experience. Pay for these skills was up 10.3% from a year ago and 5.6% from the previous quarter, the Foote report says.

Kevin Faughnan, director of IBM’s Academic Initiative, says business process modeling is one of the key skills that business majors should be studying. “It’s about how does our business work, what are the business processes and how do we analyze them,” Faughnan says, adding that this is a key issue for companies to consider before applying IT to solve business problems.

This seems to make sense to me. It is always important to know your business processes in order to be able to modify and refine them to keep pace with change… and today there is an extra helping of change that we all must not only keep pace with but get ahead of. Business Process Modeling is a key first step.

And the rest…

For the curious, the other 9 skills were:

2. Database
3. Messaging/Communications
4. IT Architecture
5. IT Security
6. Project Management
7. Data Mining
8. Web Development
9. IT Optimization
10. Networking

Barton George
Sr. Director, Business Development, Blueprint process mapping tool
Lombardi Software

Learn about Blueprint and sign up for a 30 day free trial

Talking “Cloud” with Rajen Sheth — Inventor of Google Apps

Barton George — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 00:41:00 GMT

Cloud computing is one of the largest forces in IT in 2009. With the deeping of the global economic crisis it has only gathered more momentum.

In the beginning of the year I attended Cloud Connect in Mountain View to learn more about what was happening in this space and what the key players were thinking. The conference kicked off with an “Evening in the Cloud.” At this opening event, representatives from Google, Amazon Web Services, and Force.com tried to convince three heads of IT as to why they should move all their IT to the cloud. (Not sure who convinced whom, but it was an interesting debate nonetheless )

Representing Google was Ragen Sheth, its lead Product Manager and the person credited with inventing Google Apps. After he finished speaking I was able to grab a few minutes with Ragen to learn more about what Google’s been doing in the Cloud. Check it out.

Take a listen:

>> My talk with Rajen (9:47): Listen (mp3) Listen (ogg)

Rajen Sheth of Google Apps.

Some of the Topics we tackle:

How Google Apps is Google’s platform for businesses to run applications in the cloud.
Google App Suite is all about bringing the cool things Google has created on the consumer side and presenting it to the businesses.
Gmail opened up a whole new model for people to build web-based applications by bringing in AJAX.
Over the last 3-4 years a lot of really advanced apps have been built in the browser that utilize the unique leverage points of the cloud.
CIO’s have switched from “no way,” to talking feature sets when the subject of the cloud is brought up.
What will we see in 09 in the cloud? (The recession should help to drive adoption.)
Is Rajen seeing more cloud-interest from big or small companies?
When will we hit the Cloud tipping point?

Barton George
Sr. Director, Business Development, Blueprint process mapping tool
Lombardi Software

Talking with the President of Dell Americas about Cloud Computing and the Economy

Barton George — Tue, 13 Jan 2009 13:05:00 GMT

When I attended the RackSpace Customer event back at the end of September I was impressed with the talk that Paul Bell of Dell gave (Paul reports to CEO Michael Dell and is responsible for all business operations for Dell in North and South America). [Note: in the re-org that was announced at the the end of the year at Dell, starting next month Paul will now be in charge of the group that focuses on government, education, health care and the environment]

Dell and the Cloud(s) (sources: my hand + the football Dell gave out at the conference + Friday’s sunset)

In his keynote Paul talked about Cloud Computing and the challenges the economy was presenting Dell and its customers. I caught Paul after his talk and asked if I could tape a podcast with him. He graciously agreed and here’s the result that I recorded at the end of last year.

Take a listen:

>> My talk with Paul (11:59): Listen (mp3) Listen (ogg)

Some of the Topics we tackle:

The key Cloud characteristics: Speed to deployment and ease of turning on/off
The need to separate the “real” from the fictitious when it comes to the Cloud
The interest Paul is seeing in the Cloud from smaller companies
Two of the biggest ways Dells plays in the cloud 1) supplier of infrastructure 2) deliverer of IT as a service
How on one hand the tough economy is driving interest in utilizing the cloud while at the same time it is causing a slow down in the sales of cloud infrastructure
The economy (starts ~7:30): Looking back at what happened in 2001 and trying to gain insight
How the economic malaise that hit North America has finally caught up with South America
How Dell is planning to help customers during these tough times.

Barton George
Sr. Director, Business Development, Blueprint process mapping tool
Lombardi Software

Morphis: Accidental Process Consultants

Barton George — Tue, 16 Dec 2008 23:28:00 GMT

Morphis is a company that provides currency supply chain management software and counts among its customers the U.S. Federal reserve as well as central banks, ATMs and armored car companies around the world. Process mapping was the furthest thing from their minds when they started in business but they quickly found out that if they didn’t start leading their customers in process mapping sessions they wouldn’t be able to sell their product.

Last week I chatted with Gary Faulkner of Morphis about how they found themselves unexpectedly leading process mapping sessions for customers or, as Gary likes to describe the turn of events, “A funny thing happened on the way to the software business.”

Take a listen:

>> My talk with Gary (6:59): Listen (mp3) Listen (ogg)

Process mapping enabled a pair-o-dime shift for this currency manager. (sources: my fingers and my dimes)

Some of the Topics we tackle:

Conundrum: Morphis is meant to be customized to fit a customer’s process but if a customer can’t describe their process how can Morphis be customized?
Being new to process mapping they were looking for something that was intuitive and easy to use.
The power of seeing the process laid out visually and the importance of working on the excercise collaboratively.
How Morphis’s implementations are all done virtually over Webex around the globe

Barton George
Sr. Director, Business Development, Blueprint
Lombardi Software