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As you can probably see, I’m not blogging here much anymore. Not because I don’t care, but because I’m actually so busy doing web strategy work now - which is really a lot more fun than writing.

I do blog every now and then over here;

Mick Liubinskas at Pollenizer Blog

It’s been a while since I wrote on this blog, but this issue is crucial.

Elias has written a great post about the Internet Filtering issue here in Australia and I wanted to have my say.

Summary - In an effort to protect the Australian youth from potentially harmful information and material on the Internet, the Australian government is proposing to filter all information at the ISP level and decide what gets through.

In an effort to understand the argument from both sides, I can see how this would appear to be a good solution. There are sites out there with offensive material that I wouldn’t want my children, or anyone probably, to see. Only showing approved material would reduce that risk dramatically and the ISP’s are the ‘junction box’. So I see how a busy politician can sign this off as a nice, clean, quick fix.

But it would be a bad fix. A disastrous fix. A fix that heads us down a very dangerous path that will not even work. Here are my reasons.

1. You can’t filter the Internet.

The Internet is not a finite set of media. It’s unlimited. It’s pervasive. You can’t effectively filter it and trying to just means that all the really good stuff gets blocked, damaged or obfuscated too.

The Internet is as open as conversations are. Shall we also filter our verbal communication too? Everyone who wants to say anything must first submit it to the government body for approval, then wait 4-6 weeks for it to go through the department, then if it’s approved, you can say it.

2. Banning and burning books has never worked.

You are trying to stop people learning about ideas that they want to learn about. Banning books, newsletters, websites doesn’t stop that information for wanting to be learned, in fact in history the opposite has happened. Human nature increases the desire to find out what is hidden from us.

3. It tries to deal with the symptom not the cause.

I’m not talking about taking the websites down at the source. I’m talking about dealing with the issue of looking after our children.

Putting a filter on the Internet is like bringing in a nanny full time to raise our children. We’re abdicating responsibility for something that is too important. Unlike Whitney, I *know* that children are our future, and I want them to live amazing lives and take our world to unimaginable places. This is not going to happen if I, you and everyone else spends so much time at work, gym, pub, that we don’t have the time to be with our children. Enough time to listen to them, talk to them, understand them, help them.

They say that if norms are not enough, then laws don’t matter. In this context, this means that if our kids don’t know enough not to be looking for, reading or being influenced by the websites we’re trying to filter, then blocking them can never work. It never has in history.

—-

The Bottom Line

Don’t filter the Internet. You can’t, it won’t work and you shouldn’t.

—-

More on this topic;
USA Today
Tom’s Tech Blog

Q. What do you get if you cross a mental aerobics class with the hefty world of enterprise business without the need to get on a plane?

A. The Enterprise 2.0 Forum

Great news is that it’s on again.

Tuesday, February 24.
8.30 to 2pm
Luna Park, Sydney

I’ll be there again to hear the live feeds from the USA and UK.

At Pollenizer we are definitely doing a lot more enterprise work, which is great. I’m enjoying the challenge of convincing risk-averse corporate types to be brave. What we’re seeing now is that the cost of NOT being open and collaborative is worse than the risk of doing it and getting it wrong. So it’s going to be a very big year in this space.

The think I like about this conference is that it’s not quite a Barcamp and definitely not your average, boring conference. For starters there is plenty of wifi - which is great, and most Australian conferences don’t think about it.

Ross also makes sure that there are tags so the Twitterverse and flickr pics can be herded.

There is also mini-open-workshop sessions where you gather around big round tables and yell and scream at each other about things you’re passionate about. So much fun.

Anyway, @trib is there, @kcarruthers is there, @bigyahu is (probably) coming, and I’ll be there. Looks like trouble brewing!

Last week when I was flying to Brisbane I tried to access the Qantas club of which I am a paying member.

I was denied.

My client had booked a Virgin flight (startups saving money, which is good to see).

It gave me the shits. It’s not a perk you get as a part of your ticket. I pay for it and it’s not cheap.

Also, the cost to them is minimal. A cup of coffee, a danish and some power.

If I got in normally due to my frequent flyer status, then I understand since it’s a loyalty thing and I’m not flying loyally. (But even then I think it’s dumb, it just forces people to the Virgin lounge).

Bad brand building to say the least.

So I wrote them an email.

“Hi, I don’t fly enough to get free access but I value the benefits when I do and so I pay for QC membership.

Recently on a work trip my client booked me via Virgin Blue, even though I’d prefer to go Qantas.

For the second time in a year I tried to access the lounge in Sydney but was denied access.

I can understand that you prefer that I fly Qantas every time, but sometimes it’s not possible.

I cannot understand why as a paying member to a club, I am not allowed to use the facilities regardless of who I fly. It’s very frustrating and greatly diminishes my respect for your customer service and the value of the product. This is also considering that to use the lounge is no great cost to you. It’s mainly for a nicer place to sit with ample power points to work from.

I’m very disappointed in Qantas for this and hope that you are able to raise this through management and have it changed.”

And I also pointed to this blog post.

I’ll see if I get a response from the big corporate machine….

UPDATE: January 14, 2009

I got a call from someone in the customer support centre for QANTAS. He clarified the policy, which I was very well aware, and said he would report it to management. I told him I wasn’t clarifying, I was complaining. He said he understood, but couldn’t help me. Let’s see if management are listening. They obviously aren’t on Twitter or the blogosphere.

I haven’t blogged here for ages. But I am blogging. I’m just doing more of it on the Pollenizer blog then here.

Personal experiences and non-Pollenizer quarterly board committee unanimous triplicate approved posts will still go here.

But, in way of a quick update on what I’m doing right now….

* Out of my skin excited about 2009 for Pollenizer, me, the web and mobile worlds, the Sydney web community and most things in general.
* Loving the momentum of Mogeneration and the amazing work of Tom and Keith.
* Working on some hawt projects that are wonderfully challenging and filled to the brim with good people such as Photo Art Gallery, Lingopal, Messmo, Mixin and a few that are under the radar right now.
* Smiling broadly over summer in Sydney with Sydney festival, surfing and warmness (although I hate sleeping in this heat….).
* Looking forward to opening the new Pollenizer office which is Sydney’s hottest new co-working space.

Wow. Back to it!

Laurel asked a great question which I’ve answered many times one-on-one over the years but never blogged.

How do I blog?

Well, there is 99 ways to skin a cat and more to blog. But here are my normal blogging methods.

The Wit

This one comes out of the blue, hits me quickly and I blog it before I’ve thought about it. No spell check, no research - right off the top of my head. It’s hit rate is about 20%, which means that most of the time no one sees it, comments or cares. But you don’t mind since it’s also just recording your thoughts and it didn’t take much time.

Sometimes you hit gold, which for a blogger means a reasonably large group of people care about it. This happened to me with Ginger Kids which was a post from an email I got which took me about 10 seconds. It’s been going for four years, has over 1,000 comments (which are getting quite rude by the way) and was ranked number 1 in Google for a Ginger Kids search before the South Park episode came out. It’s not a grand claim to fame, but I created it and it’s my baby.

My process is like this;

1. Think of it - (10 seconds)
2. Open Flickr (2 seconds) (it’s on my link bar)
3. Do an advanced search for creative commons licensed photos (like this one). I like to find things that are going to make my blog look cool, different, colourful or all three. It’s rarely blunt, more likely subtle, like this one being a pen, when I’m obviously typing - get it? (10-30 seconds)
4. Click Blog This - Flickr lets you link up Typepad (my previous blogging platform) and Wordpress (my new platform to Flickr and let’s you blog automatically straight from there (as shown here) which makes blogging so very easy and frictionless. If I couldn’t do this, I think I’d blog half as much. (2 seconds)
5. Type type type, putting in the major links, but I often don’t bother too much. This post is a high link blog. I should do it more though. Links are the lifeblood of the web and blog respect.(10-45 seconds)
6. Hit post, check that it doesn’t look stoopid and then move on.(10 seconds)

The whole thing can take less than a minute. Seriously.

The Fester

Some blog posts grow on me. I think about them, think about making them a Wit post, but then I think it deserves something more. I let it simmer and simmer until it’s ready. I don’t actively research them, but I know through my readings and thought that it will become what I want and be ready when it’s ready. No rush on these ones.

Some times they fall off the stove, and I never post them, which is probably a shame. I should create more drafts, but I generally do Fester posts using the same process as Wit posts, just with more forethought.

The Thesis

This is a thesis post. I thought about it today, opened a tab so I’d remember to do it, started writing, did some research, added a bunch of links and wrote. I still use Flickr, I just care more about what I write. Flickrs blog tool doesn’t have save, which means it’s dangerous but I normally copy every once and a while, or just jump into Wordpress and give it the royal treatment.

–00–

So that’s how I blog. Every day could see all three types, or five Wit posts if I’m feeling saucy.

And I love it. I’ve loved blogging since 2003 (another priceless gift, along with Flickr, from my mate Phil). I love getting comments, or just knowing that someone, somewhere read it, but even if they didn’t, I’d still blog. It’s not a tree falling in a forest with no one around. It’s a splash of paint on a wall and the wall is great, but the act of splashing is much, much more important.

So if you’re not blogging - start. Right now. Go to Wordpress.com get a free blog and write something. It doesn’t matter what it is. Just write. And keep writing. Don’t worry what people think (they rarely do). And then write to me and say “Woohoo, look at me, I’m blogging!”.

And if you’re already blogging - BLOG MORE!!

Then we can all get together and sing the old blogging song.

Thanks for asking Laurel.

I use Flickr Fan by Dave Winer to get photo feeds from AP and Alliance France Media. It sends to my desktop and screensaver amazing pics from media photographers around the world within 15 minutes of them being uploaded. It’ amazing. You can see events unfolding as the day wears on.

A picture of Barrack Obama came up on my screen this morning and I noticed he had a cool watch. So I Google searched “what watch does Barack Obama wear?”. I got wiki answers, Yahoo answers and then the right answer.

It showed a pic of him wearing the watch I’d seen and learned that it is a watch provided by the Secret Service. So cool!

I love all the seemingly small value things that came together to bring me this “Sweet” moment.

1. RSS Feed from AP.
2. Feed tool from OPML.
3. Dynamic desktop.
4. Google search being fast.
5. Easy web publishing.
6. Image access.

I Love The Internet!

There is lots of talk about VC’s being the bringers of doom for startups, self-fulfilling prophecies and money falling off the planet.

My brief take on it is that things have changed. Not terribly much, but terribly. We’ve gone from a growing market to a not growing very much at all market.

What does that mean?

Things are going to be a bit harder now.

What things?

Most things.

* Raising money - not much loose cash around and VC’s can be pickier.
* Getting sales - less investment for growth. However, if your product is about reducing risk or reducing costs and the return is clear and short, then you may find it a good market. That being said, most budgets are tightened which , makes things harder.
* Hiring good people - when optimism is down, people are less likely to take risks on your band of merry startupers and come with you on a perilous journey.
* Being optimistic - it is one of the roles of the entrepreneur and it’s now harder. It’s easier to sing when theirs a choir.

So what?

Welcome to the job. If it was easy, then everyone would be doing it and you wouldn’t be earning your millions.

Plus, it takes a few years to build a good business, so be patient, focus on creating value, try to turn that into revenue, keep costs low and by the time your hitting third gear, we’ll be coming out of the bottom of this and you’ll be ready to grow.

If you’re a startup who hasn’t hit your goals and doesn’t have serious traction/revenue, then you’re probably not going to make it. You should have focused more and made hay while the sun shone, because it really did shine.

That being said, consumers are still online. They are still clicking on things, buying things, paying for software, reading blogs. Companies still want to reach these consumers, communicate globally and have a happier workforce. There are still cathedrals to be built here.

So, all the four things I mentioned above that are harder now (money, sales, team, optimism) are all in your hands. They are all doable. Someone will do them in the next three years. The difference is not going to be the GDP of USA, the FTSE or the exchange rate. It’s going to be hard-fought, persistent, brutally focused luck.

Enjoy.

I saw the email below in my inbox and realised a few times that morning I’d been talking to clients about how to encourage your customers/users/peeps to do things. How to get them to sign up, fill in their profile, add reviews, invite friends, etc.

—–

Dear Mick,

From 1st - 31st October 2008 we’re giving away $1500 in entertainment vouchers from our friends at Strike Bowling Bar.

A Strike Bowling voucher? What does that mean?
That means you can shout your mates to quite a few games of ten pin at Sydney’s finest indoor bowling experience and put a hefty amount of money behind the bar to keep them happy all night long with food and drinks. They will love you forever!

All you need to do is write a review to be in with a chance of winning.

Up for grabs:

x1 $500 voucher
Awarded to the overall best review of the month. This will be judged across all categories. Review any business in any category. If the business you want to review isn’t in RAYV - simply add it!

x1 $500 voucher
Awarded to the overall best review of the month in the category of Active Life.

For both of the $500 prizes, we’ll be looking for reviews that are honest, funny, informative and also opinionated. Of course, we’re not looking for all of those requirements in the one single review, although if you can do that, that would be pretty impressive.

x2 $250 vouchers
Lucky dip! That’s right, like pinning a tail to the donkey and smacking the bejesus out of a pinata, we’ll be blind folding someone in the office and laughing at them fall over their own feet as they try to pull out two lucky winners from a database of reviews.

You gotta’ be in it to win it - as they say.

The more reviews you write, the greater your chances are of winning!

For more information on the competition - please click here.

Want to write a review now? Click here.

Have a great long ‘Sydney’ weekend.

The RAYV Team

—-

I guess their are two methods - the Carrot and the Stick.

1. The Carrot (Cake) - means to give them an incentive. Do this and we’ll give you something. By far the best way to do this is just to offer the core value of your product and make sure that it’s strong enough. “Sign up, fill in 10 forms and you’ll get to use our cool service”.

Thinking about how to tell people just how tasty your carrot cake is, is important.

Tell them too much and they’ll go away. - “This carrot cake was first developed back in 1948, it’s ingredients include water, flour, carrots…”

Tell them too little or the wrong things, and they might not be sold. - “It’s cake.” “It’s carroty”. “It’s made with fat”.

The problem often is that people want different things but you only have one home page. That’s where prioritisation comes in. A general heading, then let people easily get to what they want.

Some want it straight away - don’t make them watch a video or go through the 5 benefits to get it.

Some want a video - give them one.

Some want lots of info - give it to them.

Some want examples and testimonials - give it to them.

Structure your information so it’s easy for people to sell themselves. And make sure you have buy/try now buttons in multiple points at every step. Don’t make it hard for them to get the carrot.

Other Peoples Carrots

Often your service is not quite awesome enough yet to get people to jump through hoops, so you might have to do something extra. This often means you have to offer something else. Sometimes you piggyback in on someone else’s carrot cake. They get you for free as a bonus and if they like it, they’ll use it.

Sometimes you have to give them things they want to do it. Money, prizes, information. “Sign up today and win an iPod!” That’s OK. It’s just a little nudge in the door and then it’s up to your product to deliver. Be wary of this though. You might be attracting the people that want the iPod, not the carrot cake.

The Stick

Hmmm, I’m thinking through this and wondering how you give people the stick. Bundling can also be considered the stick. We used to do this at Kazaa. Give away a free service, but you have to have these other adverplications to get it. Hopefully that they are not completely painful (*ducks*) to be considered a stick, but it’s not what you want, so it is a cost.

Can anyone think of stick examples of this?

I guess watching interstitial ads is a stick for increasing CPM rates.

Things to remember when trying to get people do do things online;

1. Put yourself in the customers shoes. What do they want, what would they be prepared to do to get it (sign up, pay you) or what would you have to do for them to get them to do it.

2. Focus, focus, focus. (Of course) don’t try to offer too much at once.

3. Patience. Don’t chop and change it. People do things in their own time and for their own reasons. It might be a ten step process over 5 weeks until they really get and love your product. Don’t rush them and don’t change it so much they can’t find that love.

4. Test, test, test. Make sure you have the analytics setup so you can track everything and spend a lot of time being sure they really are ‘finishing the whole plate’.

What’s your experience?