sábado, 21 de enero de 2012

Matar a los intermediarios




Una queridisima ex-alumna que trabaja en el emundo del entertainment me envió ayer un enlace a esta charla en el TEDxRiodelaplata que se hizo en Argentina el 1 de Noviembre de 2011.



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VEYn3bXz34

Hernan Casciari, escritor bohemio, hincha del Racing y Catalan de adopción por amor, cuenta su historia desde que en 2001 montó un blog por soledad que llamó "ORSAI", fuera de juego, al sentirse así entonces: escribía pequeños cuentos, relatos vivenciales que llenaron su blog de seguidores y evangelistas.

Debido al éxito, la industria editorial le contrató para ofrecerle una colaboración profesional: libros, columnas en periódicos, etc. a cambio tenía que dejar el blog para poder vender en el mercado lo que hasta ahora se regalaba. Hernán dejó su blog para dedicarse a ser autor de pago.

Por razones comerciales, sus libros se editaban sólo en España, México y Argentina al no ser negocio hacerlo en Centro América, Bolivia o Paraguay (donde él si tenía lectores y fans).

Las Editoriales y el Periódico (los más grandes del mundo en Castellano) le pagaban a él el 8% del valor  de venta mientras el distribuidor se llevaba el 50%; además le robaban, pagándole derechos sobre una fracción de lo vendido, al no tener acceso a las cifras de ventas reales.

Hasta que un día, arrepentido por su decisión mercenaria, ofendido por la explotación sin escrúpulos de los dueños de la cultura escrita, públicamente "les mandó a cagar", volvió a abrir su blog y a tener un contacto directo con sus lectores, utilizando el crowdsourcing para buscar financiación y apoyos que le han llevado a publicar una revista sin publicidad, ORSAI, donde escriben y diseñan grandes autores, desde el pequeño pueblo de Cataluña donde vive y que sus propios lectores distribuyen en todo el mundo; la revista es trimestral pero esperan hacerla bimestral: 6 ediciones al año, 100 gramos de literatura pura, sin publicidad e intereses interpuestos, SIN INTERMEDIARIOS.

La revista se vende por el precio de 15 periódicos en la zona de destino, desde los 16 euros a los 8 dólares,pero AL MISMO TIEMPO también se publica un contenido en pdf en el blog, para aquellos que no quieren o pueden pagarlo.

La revista y el blog quieren ser una editorial: necesitan 5,000 suscriptores de pago para montarla (tienen ya 2,831) y tienen 10.000 seguidores en Facebook.

http://editorialorsai.com/

Lo mas curioso es que para facilitar la distribución de la revista los propios evangelistas de la marca están en contacto y esto ha dado pie a crear un bar en Buenos Aires, ORSAI, lugar de tertulia y vino, también financiado por los propios lectores (un loco ofreció 80,000 dólares para el proyecto, otros pintarlo gratis, ..) y han decidido crear otro bar en Barcelona y otro en México, para triangular cultura hispana, volviendo quizás a las experiencias literarias que hicieron famosos al Café Gijon en Madrid, un slow-drink con Neruda, Márquez y Vargas Llosa.

La historia de Hernán es la historia de todos los creadores que hoy dudan si apoyar al mundo de los "derecho de autor",  la ortodoxia que le da algo de comer, a sabiendas que les explotan y roban, o echarse al monte y luchar contra las SOPAs y todas las Leyes SINDE del mundo, entre lo malo conocido y lo bueno por conocer.

Por un lado autores mediocres, famosos pero con las pilas creativas ya descargadas y que no entienden el nuevo mundo digital, tienen todo el interés del mundo en apoyar el "statu quo", cobrando sin ruborizarse dinero que deriva no de sus creaciones, sino de las tasas impuestas sobre los medios informáticos vírgenes (CDs, pen drives, etc.) que recauda una empresa siniestra como la SGAE, con al frente personajes rancios como Batista, con un pie en la cárcel.

Hernán ha demostrado que publicar en pdf el contenido digital de su revista no sólo no quita ventas a sus revistas, sino las aumenta, por el efecto viral; ha entendido que la gente que descarga gratis la revista nunca se la compraría y por lo tanto no le quita nada al autor, haciendo al mismo tiempo un mundo mejor y más culto para todos.

Naturalmente es mucho más fácil empezar nuevos caminos cuando eres un desconocido que cuando eres famoso, al no tener nada que perder, pero sospecho que cada día más autores de verdad seguirán el ejemplo de Hernán y de Alex de la Iglesia: confieso que hasta ahora no había visto ninguna de sus películas pero al ver su ejemplo, las he comprado todas.

miércoles, 11 de enero de 2012

Cork Marcheschi










Cork Marcheschi es un gran escultor de la luz: Californiano de la banda de Andy Wharol: le conocí este verano en San Francisco y tuve el privilegio de visitar su estudio en la playa de Pacifica. 


Me enamoré de sus obras y adquirí unos "bowls" encendidos que cambian de luz cuando se tocan y tienen en su fondo unas piedras (en efecto son leds) que se iluminan al tocarlas, al cerrar el circuito eléctrico. 


El efecto es mágico y la sensación en los dedos increíble. Para mi representan el "Fuego" del hogar de los antiguos romanos, trasladado al siglo XXI.

Cork es profesor en Berkeley, tiene obras en todo el mundo (lugares públicos, museos, colecciones privadas, ...) y es una gran persona: le encanta cocinar el "Timballo" (una pasta Italiana complicada y pesadísima) y tuvimos una charlas increíbles en su casa de Potrero Hill.

Pongo mis obras (las bowls) a disposición de Instituciones y Fundaciones que quieran hospedarlas para compartirlas con su público.

Os adjunto su página web donde "pasan" sus obras públicas http://www.corkmarcheschi.com, unas fotos de sus creaciones (las bowls son las de la ultima foto)  y un link a mi canal de Youtube para ver un video con las 4 bowls encendidas.


sábado, 7 de enero de 2012

Marketing for non profits (NPO)


Marketing is an unfamiliar concept for many nonprofit organizations.

It's important these organizations understand that marketing is more than just the old sense of making a sale or obtaining a donation. 

Marketing is a way to satisfying the consumer and donor needs, but where does the nonprofit organization start?

Below are eight steps that will get you started in brainstorming marketing ideas that could make a significant difference in the bottom-line of your organization.

1. Define your target market, research similar organizations and associations.
2. Determine the desired outcome of your marketing efforts.
3. Using the information gathered in Step 1 and 2 develop brochures and marketing materials that describe the benefits, services, donation opportunities, and values of your organization.
4. Develop a social media marketing strategy. Social media such as Twitter and Facebook can provide you with ways to reach out to those interested in your organization in a low cost and effective way. Social media works great when it comes to reaching those who are passionate about causes that individuals hold dear to their hearts.
5. Develop and maintain a professional internet marketing presence by creating a web site. You can use a web site as a great resource to display useful information, news, monthly newsletters, events, create community, share alternatives to donating money, and showcase the benefits of your organization.
6. Research and maintain your prospect and customer databases. Do not let these resources be wasted. Use them for special mailings, follow-up telephone calls, event invitations, alliance development, research profiling, and market segmentation.
7. Show and advertise the results and objectives that your organization achieves. You fill find that it is effective to showcase those that are receiving benefits, inversions, activities, and projects.
8. Always actively search for alliances with other organizations, commerce, government, advertising media, and business. This step alone often brings the most benefit to nonprofit organizations.

USING SOCIAL MEDIA FOR NPO BRANDING

It is no surprise that in a recent study, it was shown that nonprofit organizations have been setting the pace for the use of social media in marketing since 2007.

Social media is a cost-effective option for Nonprofit organizations to market themselves without needing an exorbitant amount of funding.

The report showed that nonprofits were leading both corporations and universities in the use of social media tools, while they were more familiar with the tools and were using them significantly more often.

Nonprofits had even delved into monitoring attitudes of others with regard to the use of social mediums, which is light years ahead of even some fairly large-sized businesses.

An updated study showed that even today 89% of charitable organizations are using some form of social media in their marketing.

This includes the use of blogging, podcasting, message boards, social networking, video blogging and wikis. If this research isn't enough to convince you that social media is a viable tool for your nonprofit organization, consider that 45% of these organizations stated that social media played a very important role in their fundraising strategy.

Why does social media work for Nonprofit organizations?

Stakeholders take an interest in causes that relate to them and social mediums create an overall integrated experience with those very same stakeholders.

Additionally, social mediums enable nonprofit organizations to create relationships and engage with their constituents. This allows them to nurture their online communities which, in fact creates, a viral marketing affect with little or no effort. 

Moreover, the costs associated with this marketing effort are often less expensive with better return-on-investment than traditional marketing efforts.

The realm of social media helps equip individuals with an outlet and tool to help in growing their own nonprofit organizations, as well as enabling individuals who have a specific interest in a charitable organization and who want to share it broadly.

Social mediums provide a central place for nonprofits organizations to collaborate and connect. And, as touched on earlier, they help Nonprofits gain feedback from constituents and stakeholders in the organization.

As a nonprofit organization it's important to take the proper steps when delving into social mediums but, as you can see it, has proven to be beneficial to many organizations just like yours.

How can you get started in the social media marketing of your nonprofit organization?

It's important when entering into social media that if you decide to do it internally you'll want to create a social media policy and a marketing plan that uphold the core principles of your organization. Your policy and strategy plan should include the following:

1. Who will be your spokesperson and the voice of your organization?
2. Will the voice of that spokesperson be personal or professional - what does that split look like?
3. Who will be in charge of responding to conversation and social media buzz that is created?
4. Who will be monitoring the social media effects?
5. What, if any, monitoring tools will you or should you use?
6. How will you protect the brand of your organization?
7. Which vehicles in social media will you use? Your choices include blogging, podcasting, message boards, social networking, video blogging and wikis.

This will get you started in creating your policy as well as your strategy.

The worst thing that could happen is that you start a social media marketing campaign, but do not interact or engage with constituents and stakeholders.


Finally please find attached a BLOG DEDICATED TO NPO MARKETING by Jocelyn Harmon as a reference.

jueves, 5 de enero de 2012

Open source learning and free online education



Please visit Richard Baraniuk conference at Ted.com, about open source learning: he is professor at Rice University and he explains the vision behind Connexions, his open-source, online education system. It cuts out the textbook, allowing teachers to share and modify course materials freely, anywhere in the world.

Moreover, please find attached the translaton of part of my blog post about on-line education and the same matter, with a list of great places for open learning.


Finally, please read this great post about MITx FREE ON-LINE EDUCATION a great initiative of MIT to allow free online courses to anybodywith an internet connection, in addition to the existing MITOPENCOURSEWARE offer (with more than 2,000 free courses) I already reported in my previous post.


The big difference will reside in the fact that MITx courses will have interaction with educators and an assistance title issued by an MIT foundation.


I hope this would inspire you and increase your sharing actitude. 

¿Education online or Face to Face?
It is impossible to explain processes and the dissemination of knowledge that some business schools are carrying out since a long time, to those who imagine a business school as something like the experience they had while studying at old style universities: repetitive classes, with tyrants teachers using the same notes year after year, with memory processes, and so on.

None of this takes place or has any meaning in the institutions where I collaborate: Students learn from the environment, their classmates, debate and discussion, from the high performance environment that we are able to crate together: the materials are meaningless without this process.

And that is precisely what leads to an intelligent and sane person to pay $ 150,000 for four years of education at MIT, where many of the materials used during the courses are available for free on the same network (MITOpenCourseWare ).

The explanation lies in the massive use in classes of the "case method", a variation of the Socratic method which can stimulate the brain to develop by itself, with the help of the classroom environment, discussing a case based on a real company.

When we think of online education, our mind automatically goes to clichés associated with the self-study materials that a student goes solo, to multimedia lessons that are prepared once and used for thousands of people, one after another.

Again, none of that has to do with what happens in the EOI online learning and other business schools, where there is always a work group, a group discussion, a teacher who is intervening and moderating forums: this environment acts in a similar manner to the face to face method.

Of course we use blogs, wikis, video, podcasts and all the paraphernalia that offers on-line universe, so the experience is diverse, multi-sensory and certainly memorable, but the teacher's presence is essential in his role as moderator, director of the timings of the program.

In my opinion, a well-planned online session can be superior to a Face to Face class in terms of depth of analysis, richness of interaction, quality of material contributed by each stakeholder.

Education is at a very interesting point: Seth Godin believes that the impact of technology in education will be higher than many other industries are suffering, such as newspapers.

Online education makes the world flatter and it is our duty to give it a try to give an opportunity to existing talents, anywhere, anytime, anywhere.

Finally, think of the experiment carried out by a professor at the New York State University with 64 students in class; he divided them into 2 groups of 32 each by chance and the first group was given a normal class, recording it.

The other students were sent a podcasted, recorded class and all 64 students did the same test: Guess who got better grades?

Those who had received the recorded class, among other things, because they had the power to hear again the most difficult passages.

Those who attended the class taking notes, got second place and then everyone else.

A class with a teacher is only useful if there is debate, discussion and entropy at top level, from teacher to the class and vice versa, if not, better to record a podcast. The same thing happens to students who do not participate in class discussion, which generously share their knowledge, experience and know-how.

Also for these students would be better to see the recording of the class every time they would like: by not participating, they have not broken the dynamics, they have not changed the course of lesson, have not guided the class to their areas of interest.

"I-tunes University” is very popular among students worldwide and you can find there cases and teaching materials for free, published by the best institutions in the world.

Please find attached (in alphabetical order) the sites where I find very valuable information to compare my programs, find new case studies, articles, etc..: There are even entire courses with Sylabus, class notes, cases, grade, etc.

Johns Hopkins http://ocw.jhsph.edu/
Umass Boston http://ocw.umb.edu/
Many colleagues and I believe that the best place for our class presentations power points is "Slideshare.net" or "Authorshare" and "Vimeo" and Mediateca EOI the best places for videotaped lectures: thus everyone with an access to the Internet can train him/herself as they wish.

A world of better trained people, by themselves, by me or my colleagues will surely be a better world for me and my children, is not it?.

Please visit Ken Robinson conferences at Ted.com, especially this: "Bring on the learning revolution!"

Let's be different.

martes, 3 de enero de 2012

Some advices to start-uppers

I want to share with you an email I sent to a young great friend of mine who is starting up a successful company and now in the process of making its financial projections (Revenues, Ebitda, Operating profits, Free cash Flow, etc.).

TEXT
.................
Anytime you are in doubt, please listen to this Steve Jobs famous speech: I heard it 20 times but I listen to it again anytime I need it.


I have no comments about your financials: its reality will depend on many things, including your personal engagement, your team passion and commitment, your rate of customer engagement and loyalty, market situation, global economy, competition innovation, luck, ...

You will be only in charge and really responsible for your own effort and commitment: the rest will not depend only on you and professional investors know it very well.

In my opinion, financials are not the most relevant thing at the actual stage if your goal is to execute your idea and launch your dream to the market: make all business models you can think about and pivot them all with some real customer; after that, your business model will be more solid and your message stronger.

Professional investors want an idea about how big is your potential market, how engaged and diverse is your team, how much it will cost you to acquire a new customer and its Life Time Value, how you can protect your company when the big guns will enter your business (if they will not acquire you before), your burning rates, your traction timing (when you will start to create revenues and break-evening). 

Talk about your risks and try to evaluate them.

I do not suggest you to evaluate your company on the base of a discounted free cash flow method, for nobody, neither you, knows it for sure (it is valid when you are generating positive cash flow in a long while).

Do not try to say "I will get 2% of the market" for it is very general: it is much better to say how much kind of customers you can get in the next 2/3 years. 5 years is very far away.
....................

lunes, 2 de enero de 2012

Top Tech trends of 2011



Top tech trends of 2011 is an article published in ALLTOP web site (by Guy Kawasaki) which together with MASHABLE represent two musts to follow to stay updated in digital and social media businesses.

Here, just 10 examples of companies who are championing the reported trends:

1.        GROUPON http://www.groupon.com

2.        FOURSQUARE http://www.fouresquare.com/

3.        DROPBOX http://www.dropbox.com/


5.       QUORA http://www.quora.com/about/

6.        KICKSTARTER http://www.kickstarter.com

7.        INSTAGRAM http://www.instagram.com

8.   (BIG DATA)  EVERNOTE http://www.evernote.com/

9.   (INTERNET TV) HULU http://www.hulu.com

10. (MOBILE COMMERCE) EBAY http://www.ebay.com  

Here a full story about mobile commerce:

These trends seem to apply well to mass merchandising but do you think they have some application in the B2B (Business to Business) industries as well?