The Future of Business

Eventbrite Gets It Right

I have a problem to solve. I organize specialized in-person and on-line events in the information security and Open Source niches. Managing events is a tough thing to do and any real help is a welcome thing. I've been looking to hire staff to do it for me, but that is only a partial solution. I still need to write event descriptions, set prices, set up promotions, and create PayPal payment links. Hiring someone to just post that information on the web seems like a bit of a fancy expense. Fortunately, I don't have to do it, because I found Eventbrite, who are now doing it for me, for a tiny fee.

Out of so many on-line services that vie for our attention, they are the ones who actually got it right. Instead of building yet another social networking site those guys built a tool for a specific purpose. And so far, I have nothing to complain about. Why would I complain when they are making money for me?

It takes a minute to open an account, then as much or as little time as you need to write a description of your event, define the maximum number of attendees, set up tickets (early birds, regular, groups, special offers, etc.), and once you are ready to announce your event one click will post it on the Eventbrite's site. There are many things to like about it, but the one I love is the way they handle the financial side of things. You give them your PayPal account address and they will automatically transfer the money paid into your account. One simple web form (four fields!) is all you need to fill in to create special promo codes, discounts, and affiliate programs. It really couldn't be simpler. For example, it has taken me 15 minutes to create a page for my upcoming webinar Surviving the War on Business Travel: Don't Let Anybody Steal Your Data. In that time I posted and edited the event description, added tickets, created an affiliate program that pays 50% of the ticket price, posted that information on the web, to Facebook, drank a small cup of coffee and tweeted about it. Evenbrite automatically creates an RSS feed for all of your events (you can subscribe to ours here) and they will add your affiliate programs to their own public affiliate page and feed. Having access to those feeds lets others easily republish that information on their own websites or even automatically join affiliate programs. You will also get HTML code for selling tickets on your site, an email tool to announce new events (just copy and paste email address of the people you want to notify), and they will event help you print the event badges. All that for a small fee that you can add on top of the ticket price or take out of the ticket price.

They also have their own affiliate program, so you can start making money promoting Eventbrite even if you don't host your own events. You can opt out of any such feature (why would you?) or password protect access to it, so you are always in control.

I particularly like the way they handle affiliate program setup. I've been looking for something like this for years and I have always been disgusted by the dodgy spamming, hard to use sites that were set on extracting every single penny from me offering while nothing in return.

You can join Eventbrite for free. They are not in the spam business, they are a legitimate site and I really enjoy using their services, which is something I say very rarely about those Web 2.0 sites. Speaking of which, their site is not quite the Web 2.0 eye candy extravaganza and that too might have something to do with the fact that it works so well. The core Web 2.0 technologies (RSS, Google Maps and Facebook integration) are there and done right, which means less copying and pasting for you.

There are not many webistes that offer a complete solution to real-life problems, but Eventbrite does and I am a devoted fan. Recommended!

Surviving the War on Business Travel: Don't Let Anybody Steal Your Data

I will be delivering a 3-hour webinar (web seminar) on the subject of protecting your data in the times of War on Terror. It has produced an unfortunate side effect in the form of War on Business Travel, in which everybody's electronic equipment, documents, and data is fair game and can be taken from us under the blanket of fighting terrorism. There is no way to appeal, no way to complain, and nobody to sue for the losses. Things are getting silly and I want to help you find legal ways of protecting your data while you're on the road.

The webinar will be of interest to business travelers, salespeople, researchers, politicians, government employees and conference speakers.

You can save 20 Euro off the price of the webinar with coupon code WOT123

On-line Course: Mastering Google Docs

DATE: Monday -- Friday, Feb 9 -- 13, 2009
TIME: 9:00 am PST (Pacific), 11:30 am CST (Central) 12:00 pm EST (Eastern), 5:00 pm GMT

On-Line Training
Mastering Google Docs

PRESENTER
Jacek Artymiak

Mastering Google Documents is an on-line training class for the users of the Google Documents office suite. It is recommended for existing users who want to get better at using it and for those who want to evaluate it before making a decision to switch or deploy it in their organizations. We focus on the practical side showing you how to make best use of the tools provided by Google.

Google Documents is an online office suite that offers a word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation package combined with online collaboration tools. It is accessible from any computer running Microsoft Internet Explorer or Mozilla Firefox browsers and requires no installation. Google Documents is available for free. It is a serious alternative to desktop office software. The ability to access the same repository of documents from any location is a very appealing feature for teams with members working in different locations.

Class Timetable

You will attend ten sessions. Each session will be 90 minutes long. There will be two sessions per day. Session A starts at 9:00 AM PST (Pacific Time) and ends at 10:30 AM PST. There is a 60-minute break after Session A ends. Session B starts at 11:30 AM PST and ends at 1:00 PM PST . To complete the course, you need to attend both sessions, A and B on the following days:

Monday, Feb 9, 2009, Tuesday, Feb 10, 2009, Wednesday, Feb 11, 2009, Thursday, Feb 12, 2009, Friday, Feb 13, 2009

Session A Start Times

9:00 AM PST (Pacific Time) 11:00 AM CST (Central Time) 12:00 PM (noon) EST (Eastern Time)

Session B Start Times

11:30 AM PST (Pacific Time) 1:30 PM CST (Central Time) 2:30 PM EST (Eastern Time)

How Do I Attend?

You will receive a link to the registration page a week before the class is due to begin. You can attend it as long as you have an active broadband internet connection and a computer running the one of the following operating systems: A computer connected to the internet, running Microsoft Windows XP, Vista, or Mac OS X. We use the GoToWebinar service and it requires installation of client software. If you are going to attend the class on a computer managed by your organization’s IT department, check that you are allowed to install the GoToWebinar client. It is strongly recommended that you use headphones to make sure you don’t disturb your colleagues.

What Will I Learn?

You can find a short summary of this course ner the end of this page. If you'd like to know more, read the complete Table of Contents for this Course

Questions?

Write to training@devguide.net

Price

97 Euro per person for 15 hours of training. A full set of training materials included in the price of the course.

Course Schedule

This is a short version of the complete Table of Contents for this Course

• Document Management
• • Creating New Documents
  • Managing Your Document Collection

• Word Processing with Documents
• • A Quick Tour of the Interface
  • Editing Documents
  • Adding Structure to Documents
  • Enchancing Your Documents with Visual Elements
  • Adding Interactivity with Hyperlinks
  • Adding Polish to Your Creations
  • Collaborating with Others
  • Power Tools
  • File Management
  • Printing Documents

• Getting Your Point Across with Presentations
• • A Quick Tour of the User Interface
  • Designing Your Presentation
  • Delivering Your Presentation
  • Power Tools
  • File Management
  • Printing Documents

• Crunching Numbers with Spreadsheet
• • A Quick Tour of the User Interface
  • Entering Data
  • Editing Spreadsheets
  • Formatting Data
  • Working with Functions and Formulas
  • Managing Data
  • Visualizing Data with Charts
  • Enhancing Your Documents with Visual Elements
  • Collaborating with Others
  • Power Tools
  • File Management
  • Printing Documents

• Collecting Data with Forms
• • Designing Forms
  • Creating Forms
  • Enabling Forms
  • Publishing Forms
  • Processing Answers
  • Communicating with the Participants

• Tips for Collaboration, Document Exchange, and Worry-Free Travel
• • Mastering Online and Offline Collaboration
  • Problem-free Document Exchange
  • Traveling without Fear
  • Security

About Jacek Artymiak

Jacek Artymiak owns and runs devGuide.net, a publishing and training company. He's the author of "Mastering Google Docs".

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My 25th Mac Anniversary Story

Not your typical 1984 Macintosh story.

Happy Birthday, Mac!

You Will Get Caught

I have written about the wrong way to use social media before in my previous posts about how not to use Twitter (post 1, post 2). This time I want to give you some food for though if you were thinking of paying someone to post fake positive reviews on Amazon.com (via /.) or other on-line shopping or recommendation sites. Anywhere in fact. Just don't. You will get caught.

How Not to Use Twitter

In my previous post I gave you an example how to be a Twitter spammer and assemble a useless and unresponsive community that does not care about you. In this post I am going to give you some ideas on using Twitter to do some serious damage to your brand.

I like a certain company's products a lot. They are not some big guys, they make just a few products, but those products work and I depend on them every day. Hundreds of thousands of people depend on them all over the world. They have recently launched a great new product combined with a service that will take off like wildfire in its market. It is that good. Unfortunately, they have no idea how to market themselves on Twitter. As far as I know they have only two employees on Twitter, both responsible for the company's relations with the outside world. A week of following those guys taught me that they have two too many.

Person no. 1, a Community Liaison hasn't replied to my tweets for a week, which itself is not necessarily going to turn me off. Tweets get lost. No big deal. What is a big deal is the fact that there have been zero updates for a week. Think about it. If you had a cool new product or service and an opportunity to reach a lot of important people on Twitter, wouldn't you want the world to notice? And I'm not talking about spamming, but legitimate non-pushy activities like soliciting user stories by giving some incentive for those who reply with particularly interesting stories?

Person no. 2, Chief Evangelist, is tweeting like a mad bunny about everything but her company or their new products. She's let me know about her ears getting sweaty at a party, and other bodily problems due to her travels and partying, but I learned nothing about the company she's working for or their product. Not a single Tweet mentioned either. If you are on Twitter and put your job title and the name of the company you work for in your profile, then people will follow you to learn more about your company, not yourself. People are interested in what you are evangelizing, not you personally or the things about your body that make you feel uncomfortable.

Based on those two cases, I recommend the following strategy to damage your brand on Twitter:

• Put your marketing team on Twitter.
• Tell them to list the name of your company and their job titles in their profiles.
• Make sure they all include your company website's URL in their profiles.
• Tell them to follow these two strategies, for Customer Support and Community Liaisons personnel: ignore everybody, especially their @ tweets and direct messages; for Chief Evangelists: post nothing at all, or post every 5 seconds about your sweaty palms, waxy ears, stuffed nose, or tight underwear, but never, ever mention the name of your company, products, or services.

As always, you can follow my advice, but don't blame me when you loose money, market share, or the last shred of credibility in your community for doing what I tell you.

More Freelance Design Ideas for 2009

Following my previous post, here are a few additional ideas for freelance designers, aka. the stuff I need and other might need it too.

• Templates for video podcasts. Logos, transition, lower thirds graphics, overlays, etc. Producers want their videos to look good. Have a look at TWiT Live, Mevio, or Revision 3 for ideas. Have a look at Videocue, Wirecast, Visual Communicator, or Vlog it! for inspiration.
• Themes for Pligg. Anyone can start a site like digg. Help them make it look good. 
• Templates for printable CD/DVDs. As I recently discovered, I lack the talent and the time required to design labels for my CD/DVD kits. Design something unique and you may have me as a customer. You can sell it on istockphoto, or stockexpert. These sites are not for photos only. They accept videos and vector images. Have a look at CD printing/design software like CD Jaquet, Disc Cover, DiscLabel, Discus.
• Icon sets for websites in sync with templates. I really need this. I know it is a huge effort to design a professionally looking template, but it would be a great idea to be able to buy supplementary icon sets. You can sell them on istockphoto, or stockexpert.
• Templates for eBooks! (for laptops, desktops, smartphones, iPod Touch/iPhone). I do an on-line seminar for authors and publishers interested in this new medium. I also wrote a book on the subject, which will be published in January. Subscribe to my book mailing list to be notified when it ships.
• Templates for Mailing Lists. I use AWeber to manage my mailing lists. While I don't like HTML mail, some people like it and there is reliable research that shows that HTML mail has a higher conversion rate than plain text mail. Consider selling HTML and plain test email template designs.

Follow Up to the Mastering DimDim Webinar for Jan 5, 2009

I'd like to thank everyone who attended my webinar. You've been a great audience! I hope that you learn a lot, as I have learn a lot from you. I want to answers here those questions that I couldn't answer yesterday due to the  time restraints.

• Is is possible to give someone control of your desktop via DimDim? Not yet. You need GoToMeeting or GoToWebinar to be able to do that.
• Why was I using GoToWebinar to show DimDim? I had to use another screen sharing application to show the DimDim presenter interface. To be fair, I use DimDim to show GoToWebinar presenter interface. As great as both tools are, they cannot show their own presenter interface.
• How can I create my own polls? Redirect people to a web page with a poll after they leave the session. You create that redirect by editing the session settings. You can create free polls with a number of tools, e.g. PollDaddy, FreePolls, 99Polls, PollCode.
• What's the difference between DimDim free and Pro? Visit DimDim.
• Do I have to dial-in to take part in the meeting? No. This option is available for those participants, who cannot join via web.
• How do I manage people on the dial-in connection? Just like you manage those on the web connection, i.e. click on the participant's name and give them the microphone.
• Do I have to join using my computer? No, you can join the meeting from any computer running any type of browser. It could be a computer in an internet cafe on the other side of the world.

I do want to do more of these webinars, but to do so, I need to know a little about your preferences for the days on which you'd like to attend them. I would be very grateful, if you could complete the poll below. Thank you and don't forget to visit the home page for my Online Collaboration Tools book!

You Too Can Game the System on Twitter: A Stupid Marketer's Guide

I promised you that I would save you money and I am going to keep my word. Here is how to save money by not giving it to Twitter marketers, Twitter community organizers, and anybody with the word Twitter in their job title. Read this post carefully, it is not what it seems to be.

Twitter is quickly becoming a new avenue for marketers who are interested in spreading the word about their own or their sponsor's products and/or services. They've heard that the best thing that could happen to them is to have a lot of followers, but follow only a few Twitter users, which seems to be one of the new measures of 'authority. And, as the "Twitter consultant's" thinking goes, those with a lot of authority attract even more followers eager to read buy whatever crap they want to push. But there is a tiny problem, there is no easy way to get those huge numbers of followers. How do you do it? How do you get those oodles of followers? You hire a "Twitter consultant," buy books, courses, (i.e. spend, spend, spend...) and maybe get a few hundred followers.

Or, you take a shortcut that works just as well, if not better. I'm going to give it to you for free. Here's how you get a ton of followers on Twitter without trying.

Find someone who has a lot of followers and follow the people they are following. There is a limit of 2000 users you can follow when you only have a few followers, but that's not a problem. Follow those 2000 users (you can do it in a day) and you will soon be getting followed by hundreds of users who will reciprocate.

If you are lucky, you can squeeze out approx. 700 followers out of a well chosen group of 2000 users followed by you. But that doesn't have to end there. Wait a couple of weeks and unfollow everyone. You will be able to follow another 2000 people and maybe extract another 700 followers out of that new group. Repeat the process several times and you too can end up with thousands of followers while you are following none. To those who don't know how you've done it, your following/followers ratio will smell of really high authority.

Except, you'll have no authority at all. Your community of followers will not really be worth much. You will know nothing about your followers and they will not care much about you. Most of them will be trying to game the system and squeeze out some commissions. A lot of them will be bots. You will be reaching thousands of users, yet selling to no one. Why? Because true authority, respect, and attention has to be earned. You have to have something interesting to say, what you are pointing people to must be of interest to them. You should get out of the picture altogether and become a middle-man between your followers and something that has value to them. Only then you will be able to grow and monetize your community. And guess what? It takes time and effort. Just like anything else. There are no shortcuts, but the networks that grow organically are made of true fans. You want true fans. You really do. Just ask Mick Jagger.

Free Training: DimDim

DATE: Monday, Jan 5, 2009
TIME: 8:00pm PST (Tuesday, Jan 6, 5:00am GMT)

WEBINAR
Mastering DimDim Webinar

PRESENTER
Jacek Artymiak, author of Online Collaboration Tools

Please join us for a free live training webinar.

During this webinar you will learn the following things:

• why on-line meetings will play an increasingly important role in your work
• how to use on-line meetings to work more effectively
• what is DimDim
• how to use DimDim
• which features are useful, which ones you should avoid

Attendance is limited, so the sooner you register, the better your chances of booking a free slot.

Feel free to share this announcement with your friends and colleagues.

Date: Monday, Jan 5, 2009 at 8:00pm PST (Tuesday, Jan 6, 5:00am GMT)
Duration: 120 minutes