Series of Tubes

IT Expo: At least the steak was good ...

People have referred jokingly to Florida as God's Waiting Room. I was just there, and I'm not convinced that the office visit we're waiting on is upstairs.

Miami was a humid, foggy swamp for my day's sojourn at IT Expo, but it's not the weather that had me down. It was my hotel room. It wasn't even the hotel room itself; it was the fact it was provided to me by another hotel, one that doesn't care what I think of it.

I had booked a room for one night at the Newport Beachside Hotel and Resort, a lovely little spot with parakeets and very nice ceiling fans in the lobby. Quite lovely, really; I felt as though I was in luxury's palm from the moment I arrived. Of course, it wasn't to last. They told me, upon my arrival, that "unforeseen difficulties" meant I couldn't have the room I booked, or indeed any room at the place whatsoever. The concierge was nice enough to provide a letter of introduction (and $10 car fare) to the Ramada Marco Polo, further down the road. I was already rather far from the Miami Beach Convention Center and the new hotel would be even farther, but I saw no point in arguing. After all, the guy said they had no room, and the Ramada was "very nice, just like this place" in his words.

Note to travelers: "very nice" means in hotel-speak just what it means in dating, dining, or any other human endeavor where you don't know what you're getting ahead of time. It means "I am lying to you; the (person, place, thing) sucks, but once you're gone it's no longer my problem."

The Ramada was to  Miami Beach resort hotels what boy bands are to modern music. While it qualified as such a place—it was in Miami Beach, within a reasonable distance of the ocean, and had rooms to stay in—it felt more like a retirement home. I always thought the elderly who lived in Miami owned homes there, but it seems I've been wrong all these years; they hang out in crappy hotels and play bridge. Yes, there was a bridge tournament being played in the basement when I arrived. The elevators had old-person smell.

(Please note that I have nothing against the elderly, and in fact I managed a few nice conversations while I was confined to this little corner of purgatory. It's just creepy when I go on a business trip and see, in great profusion, what time and gravity have in store for me.)

The hallways smelled less like old people, but only because they smelled more like an old dog that had been left outside in the rain. The room was clean, technically, but it felt old, used, second-hand. Kind of like me, actually. The air conditioner was largely non-functional (in Florida, yet) and thrummed like a farm tractor on idle. There was not enough light. There wasn't even a desk. The wireless Internet barely had enough signal to get me connected—and I couldn't without calling tech support. That was complicated by the fact that my phone couldn't call outside the building until I had it fixed. No room service. A view of the pool. Plumbing fixtures that were only minimally attached.

Now, everybody's had bad hotel experiences, myself included, so this wasn't actually the low point of my life or anything. And I know that not all accommodations are created equal (Ramada Inns being somewhat lower down in the rankings), so I can't say I resented what they provided me per se; if I'd booked the Ramada, I'd have expected less than the best. But I booked the Newport, and they smiled and apologized and sent me to the ass end of hotelry. I will not be angry with Ramada; I will save my ire for the Newport, because their backup option absolutely sucked and I have no way to set things right except by writing them this poison pen blog post.

That said, the food at the Ramada was surprisingly good, though I admit I only had one meal there. The menu was fairly limited, and the restaurant was more like a tremendous Elk Lodge with tables, but I had a perfectly-cooked 12-oz. sirloin strip, juicy, tender, lightly seasoned with cumin (possibly chili powder with an excess of cumin) and very well trimmed. It was better than some I've had at honest-to-goodness steak houses. The vegetable (broccoli, since they'd run out of mixed veg) was steamed perfectly and very tasty. That dinner surprised me so much that I regretted not being able to get my free breakfast the next morning. Alas.

IT Expo, or what I saw of it
My reason for being in Florida was to moderate a panel discussion at the aforementioned conference. I can't say for sure why I was chosen, since my topic—"Leveraging VoIP in the Contact Center"—is not one with which I have a lot of experience. Fortunately, I didn't have to have much beyond my normal level of business technology competence, as my panel was a gifted bunch. We had never laid eyes on one another until 10 minutes before the session (which was at 8 a.m., incidentally, further proof that the coordinators didn't know who they were dealing with), but the discussion went off smoothly. Thanks to panelists Brian Spraetz of NICE Systems, Rachel Wentink of Interactive Intelligence, and especially to Srinivas Mantripragada of RedShift Networks, whose slide deck got things off on the right foot and also ate up a good 15 minutes.

The big question seemed to be data security. While voice conversations have never been truly secure, what with the old-school Phone Phreaks and anybody who can get hold of a technician's butt set, they're even worse now that voice is just another kind of data. In the end, the consensus seemed to be that the war between hackers and security vendors will remain more or less at parity, and the most important places to tighten up gaps are in business processes and social exploits. Most security breaches are inside jobs, or are perpetrated by people who know how to take advantage of another person's natural inclination to be helpful.

I think I'm done venting for the moment, and I thank you for humoring me. My next post will probably back to the usual CRM goodness; I'm trying to work out a message on that topic that fits my outlook and isn't just repeating what other, smarter people have said before me, and you fine folks will be the first witnesses. My previous post was the start of that; now that this gripe-fest is out of the way, perhaps I can get back on track.

Customer Experience

The title of this post is one that most of you should be familiar with, as it's been one of the driving forces in CRM for quite some time now. Customer Experience is one of those things everybody wants to provide, whether online or off. Great. But some businesses are going to have an advantage where that is concerned. Defrost Walt Disney's head and he'd tell you.

Last night, Meaghan and I were down in Union Square (the New York one, natch) and decided to stop into Max Brenner, a restaurant whose main devotion is to chocolate. We'd been meaning to for some time, but we were right there. It was an experience that no Web site can match.

From the outside, Max Brenner looks like any of a hundred establishments fashioned after an Irish pub. From the inside, it's Wonkaland for grownups. There are covered vats of chocolate mixing in the entry hall, with pipes and pressure valves mocked up to give the appearance that chocolate is the place's circulatory system. Food is on display, enticing you to make your choices. Each diner receives three menus: alcohol, much of it chocolate-themed; food, including some chocolate things; and a booklet of other drink and dessert choices, with the obligatory drool-inspiring shots on every left-hand page. If you're not grinning like a happy child by the time you've browsed through them, you can't possibly be human.

And then there's the smell. There is a subtle aroma of fine chocolate in the air when you walk in and sit down (service was prompt, by the way, despite a very busy night). Subtlety ceases as soon as anybody nearby orders anything warm and chocolate-endowed, and you get punched in the face with full-on chocolate bouquet that will leave you giddy. We went in there for actual food, but when the couple next to us received their orders—a molten chocolate cake and something involving a waffle—I seriously considered having my sandwich wrapped before it was even served, the better to contemplate my impending cocoa suicide.

Show me a Web site that can incite this kind of ardor, and I'll show you the next trillionaire. Now of course there's no fair comparison of a restaurant to an e-commerce site, but that's the sort of feeling businesses should be aiming for, the "Oh boy!" reaction that makes you feel you're getting a treat, like you're getting special handling. At the very least, it should be a pleasure to go into the store or sign onto the site, with some positive memory to take home with you and the desire to return.

And now the fine drinkables

There are so many wonderful concoctions out there, I couldn't possibly hope to sample them all and keep my liver flexible. Not that I drink to excess, mind you—at least, not when it isn't clearly a good idea. Or when I have to cope with certain family matters. Or when I feel like it. You get the picture. I haven't done all that much sampling lately, but I'll mention some of the better ones.

Lindeman's Cassis. Yes, I drink lambics. No, they're not just for girls. I was at Petit Abeille (a wonderful little Belgian place down in Chelsea) with Meaghan for brunch last weekend, and it seemed like just the thing to go with a waffle. Lively, well carbonated, very tart without being sour. The ale, not the waffle. It was a great complement to the sweet waffle (loaded with vanilla ice cream and a banana—brunch is just another way of saying "dessert for breakfast").

Macallan 18. You can't go wrong with a Macallan single malt, neat. I've had this before; it's one of my favorites, especially when somebody else is buying (which they were). A little smoky, a little more sweet, a lot earthy, smooth as anything. Sipping this wonderful chestnut-brown spirit at the bar of Del Frisco's Double Eagle and hobnobbing with the folks from NetSuite made for a nice Monday evening last week.

DuMOL 2004 Russian River Valley Syrah. I'm partial to syrah/shiraz, since they blend fruity and spicy in a way that makes me not mind that I'm not drinking ales or spirits. Actually, I've had a number of really good wines, usually on the advice of the lovely and talented Mei Li. This was one of her picks, and she was kind enough to send me home with a bottle for Meaghan and me to share.

Singha. One of my rules is to always try to drink the national beer when eating foreign food. Last night was a Thai night, and Singha is a very nice lager from Thailand. Light, crisp, a good balance to the strong basil, ginger, and peanut flavors I was taking in. American large-brewery lagers are swill (except for me), and even good microbrew lagers don't make me as happy as a nice micro ale. But given the choice between one of my other favorites and this when eating Thai food, it's this.

There. And I barely mentioned businessy stuff this time.