Series of Tubes

Return of the Blogger

First, allow me to apologize for my fairly lengthy absence. My paying job felt that I should actually do some work for them in exchange for the money they lavish upon me. Between the rapidly slipping print deadlines and the fact we were running with half a crew, things were seriously hectic. On the few occasions I wasn't working late, I was either too beat or too uninspired to post anything.

That's unfortunate, because a few of the things I had meant to mention are now old news. I've got the time now, so I'm going to necro-blog a couple of items. (Lexicographers please note: If nobody has claimed coinage of this term yet, I'd like to do so now. Blogging about things that are no longer quite current may seem pointless, but it deserves its own catchy name, dammit!)

1. Congratulations to all the people who appear on InsideCRM's Top 20 CRM Blogs. I'd like to make special mention of Paul Greenberg, Denis Pombriant, Brent Leary, Chris Carfi, and John Carini—I respect their work a lot, and I know them all personally to some extent. I've spoken to about half the list at least once, and I need to get to work meeting and reading the other half. If I eat all my vitamins I might grow up to be on such a list someday.

2. Burger King is seriously pissing me off with their commercials, which shouldn't be so surprising since the entire premise is them pissing-off their customers by playing practical jokes. What sort of genius thought telling hungry American fatties (of which I am one) that their favorite fast-food burger will no longer be sold was a good idea for an ad campaign? Of course people are going to be angry and confused when you tell them the Whopper is no longer available. Cognitive dissonance will do that to them,especially when it's tied to jackassery like what you pull. It's not even a new idea: Go listen to the first verse/stanza/whatever of Run-DMC's 1980s classic You Be Illin' and you've got the same shit happening in reverse at Kentucky Fried Chicken. BK customers would act the same way if you responded to their order by saying, "Your mother is a whore, would you like fries with that?" Don't tell me your burger is off the menu; don't try to give me a Big Mac instead. Trotting out your 1970s-throwback mascot with his big head is not a suitable consolation prize for jerking me around on camera. Give me my Whopper or I will murder you. Customers are not toys, you assholes.

Now for today's lesson: It's entirely possible to get angry at an airline for being too efficient. I just flew back from North Carolina where I was visiting with my sweetie and her family. My flight (Delta 6158) pulled away from the Jetway slightly early, and we were on our way to be first in line for takeoff. This did not work out as planned, and we had to wait 10 minutes or so while other flights went ahead of us. "Not a problem," I thought, figuring that the crew was trying to right by us. Our approach to JFK was similarly delayed as the tower tried to fit the still-early arrival into the pattern, and we circled a few times.  "Perfectly understandable," I mused—there are a lot of planes in the air today, and  we're doing things out of sequence a bit. A smooth landing was followed by another brief delay as terminal space was cleared for us.

I was the third person off the plane, and I made my way directly to baggage claim, where I waited. And waited. No announcements were made for which carousel would host my flight's luggage, and the flight was never posted on those lovely LED signs. I asked a few workers if they knew where 6158 would unload, and they waved in the general direction of the only carousel that appeared to be working. I'm used to waiting 5 or 10 minutes for the bags to catch up with the passengers, but I was there for nearly an hour. The place was getting sort of empty, and I was getting frustrated, when I happened to glance behind a corner, back near a service access door. I noticed a handle that seemed familiar, and went to investigate. I had found my bags. Apparently, the plane had unloaded fully in the 3 minutes it took me to get to the baggage claim area, and everybody knew about this but me—the guy who practically jogged to get there first. Did I mention the lack of announcements, signage, and assistance? On the strength of their performance today, I'd like to offer up a special "Snatching Defeat" award to Delta Airlines for turning speedy service into something bad.

Venting complete, for now.

Happy Holidays to all, whatever your holidays may be. I pretty much missed Hanukkah this year; Christmas isn't my thing, though I gave and received richly and with love—that whole sweetie-and-her-family thing I mentioned; I'm pretty much ignorant of the Muslim holiday that happens this time of year; Kwanzaa seems to have lost currency lately; and Festivus ain't nothing but an ice cream. Just be good to one another, and enjoy the new year if you can.

Reactions from SAP, and more

Earlier this week I attended the 2007 SAP Influencers Summit, since somebody apparently confused me with a Mover and Shaker from the Coffee Generation. That's what I wished I was; the conference was packed to the eyeballs with content, so much so that I think I should have had a partner or a methamphetamine IV. Either that, or the press and analysts portion should have been two days long instead of one.

I'm partly at fault for this, no doubt. I registered late, and decided it would be easiest if I worked a full day and then took a train from New York to Boston. Long story short, I didn't get into my room until about 11 pm, and the festivities started at 7 am the next morning. Ouch. No rest for the wicked, either; all the executive Q&A sessions were held in the press room, so there was no way to get away from the constant onslaught of information, whether to write it up or to tune out and maybe get a nap. No such luck this time; my noodle was pretty well baked by the end opf the day, and then I had a train to catch. It was delayed with signal problems, so I didn't get back to my own bed until 1 am Wednesday. Happy Birthday to Me. *zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz*

The conference itself, though overloaded, was very informative. SAP has got a working SOA platform (NetWeaver) upon which all of its new CRM products hang. I stress working because most other vendors seem to be hedging when it comes to going full-bore SOA. Either the middleware is still in development, or the package is "Web services enabled," which is like having an HD-ready TV but no tuner; nobody has committed to saying, "we're SOA now." SAP is there, and doing it, and calling it enterprise services instead of Web. There's a significant difference, to my way of thinking: Web services are disconnected things that plug into a framework via a browser; enterprise services build and serve your enterprise. Terminology is power.

Side note: SOA is a powerful way to build infrastructure and keep the things that work. I love the idea. I even understand it a little. But it's going to be a good while before even the best SOAs are widespread enough to cause change. And they will probably never be ubiquitous. I had a great chat with Bob Stutz, SAP's senior VP of the Product and Technology group, about this. Bob's very easy to talk to, accessible, and he knows his stuff. He's also spent enough time in the IT trenches to know that not everybody can do SOA, and that SOA doesn't mean prepackaged integrations and suites have no place.

CRM 2007 was on display and, though I wasn't able to catch any of the demos, I must say it looks very good. The SAP GUI is gone, replaced with a clean (even sparse) and manageable look. Everything is configurable to the user's preferences, subject to what the organization is willing to allow. They used an old concept that I thought had been discredited--CRM is innovation layered on top of ERP--but it makes sense in the SOA concept. Ironically, SAP is trying to get rid of three-letter acronyms as a way of describing a technology, but rather use it to describe a function within the overall enterprise.

Nobody would talk specifics about Business Objects, which ain't surprising. SAP says the new acquisition will bring in some new capabilities in user-centric, unstructured and ad-hoc applications, whatever that means. Looks like we'll have to wait for the movie.

Modern identity

Reading through Metafilter while playing around on Facebook and shopping at various e-commerce sites put me in mind of a fundamental problem with the evolution of CRM. It's currently impossible to have a complete view of the customer, or even to know who you're having that fabled two-way conversation with.

We aren't one person online, but a multitude of profiles. It's possible to link these fragmented identities, but the result isn't complete, consistent, or easy to maintain. Basically, businesses are faced with a world full of unmedicated sufferers of multiple personality disorder. Maybe we could start a public awareness campaign with Sally Field as spokesperson, and call it Sybil 2.0?

(Note: this is a reference to Ms. Field's famous role, not a suggestion that she's any more mentally damaged than the typical person—a dubious distinction, but one that needs to be made. We like her; we really, really like her.)

Some people and companies (IBM is a good example of the latter) have taken inspiration from Second Life and are playing with the idea of persistent avatars. IBM is actually working with Linden Lab (SL's developer) to make the idea more than a novelty, and this article touches on the concept as well. Rather than a profile on every site, and with every business, we craft an online representation of self and use it everywhere. As long as there are boundaries (and at the moment Facebook is having some boundary issues—boo!), and suitable controls, this is an ideal solution.

I know none of this is particularly new. But that's part of the problem, isn't it? An idea with great merit is creeping forward when it should be supercruising. We've barely got XYZ 2.0 in a workable form, and already somebody's slapping a 3.0 tag on this. Is it really such a big deal for some propeller-head to create a site/service (opt-in only, of course) that takes our disparate identities and applies some code magic to make them work as one? If I could do it, I'd have done it already and be blogging about how nice it is to be filthy rich.

Speaking of rich, I took Meaghan and her sister Emily to Artisanal last night for dinner. Actually, it worked out more like they took me, but semantics can get boring. Cheese makes me happier than Wallace, and the other food didn't suck either. Here's hoping my avatar can maintain its shape better than I can.