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Posts Tagged ‘Genius’

RIP: All Your Databases Are Belong to Matt

June 18th, 2010 |

The technology world lost a special person yesterday, friend Matthew S. Theobald. Matt was an amazing and brilliant person, developing and designing a means to index the data of the world through the Internet. I wrote about Internous after meeting Matt after a local Smaller Indiana event last year.

Matt had a vision and tirelessly pursued it. The last time I saw him, he was nervously having a smoke out on the circle. I recognized him and we wound up talking about his vision, his family, Indianapolis and shared some crazy stories. We laughed a lot. A few hours later, I drove him home and had to explain to my kids why I was 4 hours late. Matt was that kind of guy – he just pulled you in and you couldn’t help but feel like you had an old friend across the table from you.

I’m going to miss hearing Matt’s smokey voice, cough and laugh at our next Smaller Indiana event. I know he struggled at times, he was alone in his genius and didn’t have the underlying support to help push his vision. I also know that his vision will become a reality, though, and I told him that each time we spoke. It may not be the Internet Search Environment Number that comes to fruition, but a system like it for organizing data across the Internet will be a reality some day.

Matt left me a couple messages on Facebook to get together and go out to lunch with him. I was too busy, though, and we never managed to get together. On Monday I’ll make the time to say goodbye to my friend.

Matt’s funeral is Monday 6/21, 12PM, Crown Hill Cemetery North Entrance. (Graveside ceremony plot 223)

This post was written by Douglas Karr

Douglas Karr is the founder of The Marketing Technology Blog. Doug is President and CEO of DK New Media, an online marketing company specializing in social media, blogging and search engine optimization. Their clients include Webtrends, ChaCha and many more.

Did you know Douglas Karr's book is coming out in August? You can pre-order Corporate Blogging for Dummies now on Amazon. Check out our new site, Corporate Blogging Tips, to find out what events that we'll be speaking at.

Got an event? Let us know that as well - we're looking forward to going on tour later this year.

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Posted in News |

Tags: Brilliant Person, Cough, Crown Hill Cemetery, Facebook, Friend Matt, Friend Matthew, Fruition, Genius, Internet Search, Karr, Marketing Company, Marketing Technology, North Entrance, Old Friend, Search Engine Optimization, Search Environment, Smokey Voice, Special Person, Technology World, Theobald |

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You Are Not Your User

November 20th, 2009 |

Author: Masters of Business Online

If you are an expert in your business, you know more than almost anyone about what you do and about the details of your product. Your product, by the way, can be a service, a website, or a tangible good. Whatever constitutes your product, you can likely see your expertise and genius in every part of it. The problem is … your customers can’t.

Customers need to complete a task with your product so they can move on to other tasks they need to complete. All your customers see in your product is a tool to help them accomplish a goal.

In order to make a successful product, you need to understand who uses the product and why they are using it. You also have to accept that the product is not being created primarily for you.

How to you find out what your customers want?

Ask them … no seriously, it is that easy.
Watch customers use your product. Record any problems they have and what type of information they expect to see in your product.
Test out new features, functionally, and design. Customers love giving feedback, and they will have a better user experience in the future because they feel like they helped make the new product better.

Learning what your customers want does not have to be fancy, expensive, or time consuming.

Remember, you are the expert, but your customers aren’t.

Give them what you think they need, and they will go somewhere else.

Give them what they actually need, and they will love you for it.

This post was written by Travis Smith

Travis was born and raised in a far off land called Nebraska, and after attending college in Missouri, he completed his MBA and Masters of Social Psychology at Ball State University. Travis has been many things, including a cameraman, tutor, disc jockey, underwriting salesman, barista, a nomadic tourist, librarian, sandwich artist, office manager, researcher, research subject, HR lackey, and project manager, all of which have prepared him for the role of User Experience Analyst. At Tuitive, he is in charge of user research, user testing, user modeling, requirements gathering, and keeping the human in human centered design.

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Tags: Attending College, Ball State University, Design Customers, Disc Jockey, Genius, Giving Feedback, Lackey, Librarian, Many Things, Masters, Mba, New Features, Product Test, Research Subject, Researcher, Sandwich Artist, Social Psychology, Travis Smith, Tutor, User Experience |

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Baked In Has Great Ideas Baked In

October 8th, 2009 |

Author: Masters of Business Online

Advertising genius Alex Bogusky and his Crispin Porter + Bogusky colleague and creative thought leader John Windsor have a new book out called, “Baked In: Creating Products That Market Themselves.” I’ve read it and highly recommend it.

The point of the book is to deliver a series of recipes to enable you to bake great marketing into your product by making great products. It’s a fantastic (and quick) read for the brand manager, ad agency types, C-level folks and even the communications world newbie wanting to get a jump start on some great ideas for their careers.

As with anything Bogusky does, the book has some unique quirks that I loved. The most notable is the constant use of the @bakedin Twitter handle and reminder that the book is just the beginning of the conversations around baking in greatness. Each of the book’s 28 recipes is represented by a hashtag, too, so if you were to Tweet something to @bakedin and tagged it with “#DNA,” for instance, you would be letting Alex and John (both on Twitter and surprisingly engaging, by the way) or others involved with the book know you want to chat about mining the history of your brand for ideas.

This is a genius way of not just engaging an audience around the book, but adding to the potential ability for the buzz to “go viral” as people Tweet and ask, since their followers will see the references and perhaps become curious enough to see what @bakedin is all about.

The long and short of it is that there are about five people in the advertising and marketing world we should intentionally soak up knowledge from. Alex and John are two of them. Buy the book. You’ll at least get some great ideas out of it.