Author Archives: David

DRM is Hazardous to Your Revenue

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I answered a question yesterday about tools for applying digital rights management (DRM) to electronic products such as PDFs and digital video files.

The short answer is that you do not need to act like an big media executive in how you offer digital products. Applying DRM to your electronic publication products is counter productive in most cases. I offer a few more thoughts on this in the short slide presentation below.

http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=why-drm-is-stupid-for-small-publishers-1198077090748605-4

As an aside: I’ve been having fun with slideshare.net this past week, as you may have noticed. The key to using this as a medium for sharing your ideas is to design for it. Slides from my presentations are optimized to support my talk. Slides on slideshare need to stand on their own.

Update: This set of slides is currently featured on the Slideshare.net home page. Nobody can resist a good DRM smackdown.

Why you should hire Mickie Rops

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Mickie is an excellent consultant because she says thing like this when asked if she is an advocate for certification programs:

If certification is really right for the field, then I’m an advocate. If it’s not, then I’m not.

Sounds obvious but she makes the point in her post that a lot of consultants are happy to help you build a certification program whether your field needs it or not! You need advisors who will question your basic assumptions before you make significant investments instead of cheering you on without analysis.

Rapid and Participatory Publishing

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Here are the slides from another presentation I gave at ASAE’s Great Ideas conference: Rapid and Participatory Publishing. In this presentation I discuss two cases of traditional book publishers who have leveraged the Web to enhance and extend their publishing efforts. These models are a great fit for most associations that have existing publishing operations. The short-form ebook model could also be a good option for an organization looking to get into book publishing.

http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=rapid-and-participatory-publishing-1197386679816952-5

I have an article discussing this material forthcoming in ASAE’s Journal of Association Leadership. The new issue with my article should be out this month.

Why Innovation Matters

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So why does innovation matter? What we did last year worked well enough. Why change?

The answer is that the world is constantly changing around you. Look back five years and consider any element of business, politics, society, even your own personal relationships. I challenge anyone to point to one that has not changed at least moderately.

Given that change is constant, doing what you have always done is not going to get you the same return. If you decide you want to actually raise the bar on what you are achieving, then innovation becomes even more important.

That is why innovation matters. It is required for the ongoing survival of your organization. It is paramount if you wish to improve on your current position today.

http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=innovation-technology-and-risk-1197310164675873-2

Shopping Online at Work

Posted on by David
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I am quoted rather extensively in a West HR Advisor feature article on whether and how to monitor employees shopping online at work.

This article won’t be available online for long, so check it out now if you are interested. Funny how the president of an internet usage monitoring system recommends tracking both time spent online and content viewed by your employees. Gee, why would he say that?

My rebuttal:

Given the pros and cons of time-based monitoring, employers should put more effort into performance management. “Employees should be evaluated on how well they are achieving the outcomes they are supposed to do for their employer, not how long they spend surfing the web. If someone is meeting or exceeding their goals, who cares how long they spend online at work?” Gammel asks.

I even get the bottom line quote at the end:

“Ultimately, those who want to goof off will find ways to do so even if the web isn’t viable. This is a management and motivation problem, not one of monitoring,” Gammel says.

You have more fundamental problems in your business than online shopping if you have to go Big Brother on a regular basis. Installing nanny software may seem easier in the short run but it is not going to help improve the value of your employees’ contributions to the organization.

Here is an idea: if you know your employees are going to be shopping online during the day anyway, why not make it a benefit?

Announce that each employee is encouraged to spend up to 2 hours shopping online for the holidays. Tell them they have to work out coverage and scheduling with their bosses but that you want to recognize all they do for you year round by making their shopping a bit easier. You gain good will and scheduling efficiency while losing nothing that wasn’t going to happen anyway.

What is Innovation?

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I gave a presentation at ASAE’s Great Ideas conference this past Saturday on innovation, technology and risk for associations. This post is the first of several I’m going to write this week on elements of the presentation. A good question to start with is: what is innovation?

Innovation often gets mythologized in the business press to the point that mere mortals feel that they cannot hope to do something innovative in their work. However, to innovate merely means to do something as you haven’t done it before. Not much more to it than that.

Peter Drucker, in his seminal book, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, defines two kinds of innovation: supply-side innovation and demand-side innovation.

Supply-side innovation is when you improve the use of your resources in support of existing value delivered to your customers. This is often in the form of greater efficiency but could also mean achieving the same end via means that result in improved employee morale, for example.

Demand-side innovation refers to changes that create greater value for your customers. This could be improving an existing product or service or creating entirely new offerings. The impact of the innovation is on the value received/perceived by the ultimate customer.

Looking at it in those terms, it is easy to realize that you probably innovate something every week if not every day. Innovation is merely the creation of new value.

Update: Here are the slides from the presentation:

http://static.slideshare.net/swf/ssplayer2.swf?doc=innovation-technology-and-risk-1197310164675873-2

Lighting up a Board Meeting

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I’ve been exploring photography a bit as a hobby recently and have been reading up on technique. Via a great blog on lighting, Strobist, I found this video which might be valuable to a lot of my association executive and event planner readers.

David Tejada walks us through how he lit a conference room to do head shots and some candids of a board meeting. I found it pretty interesting and it shows how a good photographer approaches doing a potentially deadly boring subject. You can see more of David’s videos on YouTube.

Good lighting is not an accident.

This is also a great example of using social media to spread your ideas and value, drawing people to you.

Lack of Paper Leads to Slides?

Posted on by David
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I am preparing for two sessions I am presenting at ASAE’s Great Ideas conference in Orlando. One is about new models for book publishing that leverage the Web and the other is on taking risks with technology.

ASAE has gone paperless for their conferences in the last few years, to save money and a few trees. All the handouts are available for download via their web site. I just noticed how this is impacting how I design my sessions, however.

I like to present visual models for some of my ideas and walk participants through using them in their own work. This keeps everything very practical and helps to translate the material I am sharing into tangible results for the people in the session. If I could distribute a workbook or set of handouts, I could do without slides completely. But I can’t count on anyone actually having the handout in front of them. So, I have to do slides.

It’s a bit counter-intuitive but I think that banning all paper handouts can actually counter another change ASAE has been encouraging, which are more interactive sessions that rely less on slide decks. What do you think?

Unleashing the Strategic Potential of the Web Audio Program and Workbook

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I have launched a new downloadable product based on the presentation I gave last week.

Unleashing the Strategic Potential of the Web Audio and Workbook

This includes over an hour of audio from the session plus a workbook with which to develop your organization’s web strategy. I focus on how you can take your organization’s overall strategy and translate it to the web, maximizing the contribution that your site makes to your goals. Learn more here.

Here is a short sample of the audio:
[display_podcast]

Just for my blog readers, enter ‘blog’ without the quotes into the discount field to save $10 on the purchase price.

Unleashing Web Strategy in Cambridge Maryland

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I am presenting this afternoon at the Maryland Non Profits Annual Meeting in Cambridge, Maryland. The session, Unleashing the Strategic Potential of the Web, is about aligning your web strategy with that of the overall organization.

I will introduce several concepts and tools that are useful for defining and creating strategic alignment. We will then walk through the process right in the room. Everyone should leave with a good start on defining how their site should contribute to their overall mission and goals.

I am making an audio recording of the session. Let me know if you are interested and I’ll give you first crack at the audio product when it is ready.

Update: See the store for this now.