themadpeacock

I know some of you spend more time in Facebook than in your RSS reader or browsing blogs.

I have therefore set up a Facebook page for themadpeacock that will more or less mirror the content of this blog

If you would prefer to read this content in Facebook do a search for themadpeacock and become a fan of the page, you will then see new posts in your Facebook news feed..

If you do switch to reading the blog in Facebook please remember to “like” posts that you like so that your friends see it in their news feeds and I become very very famous.

Over the last few years’ business-as-usual has suffered a mortal blow and I am not talking about social media. Its not dead yet, that will take at least a decade, but the writing is on the wall.

Ask an old retired sales person (you can find them on any golf course) what selling is about and they will tell you its about relationships, people prefer to buy from friends, from people like them, from people they trust. It’s been that way for a very long time.

50 years ago if you started a business you joined the local golf club, the lodge of your choosing and became active in the local church. Built a reputation as a trustworthy person and let others in your community know what services you offer.

Today if you have an interest in racing bikes for example you find those communities online, join in, build a reputation as a trustworthy person and let others in the community know what services you offer. Basically the same.

But there is a small difference, and it’s that small difference that is the mortal blow to business-as-usual. Read the rest of this entry »

Jim Connolly wrote a good post on what your network says about you.

Trust and credibility can either be destroyed or boosted in seconds, depending on the individuals and companies we are aligned with or associate with
via What do your contacts say about you?

I think of my linkedIn list as a list of people I know well enough to introduce as “one of the good ones” to other people. If I have not talked to someone for a long time can I still do that? People do change.

Should social links have a half-life or do we just keep accumulating more and more as we move from project to project, job to job, industry to industry?

Un-friending or un-linking people is a socially awkward thing to do.

What do you think?

In Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync? Seth Godin argues against of the “social media will save you” attitude that is so much the flavor of the day.

If your business model is not keeping pace with your ever changing market a blog or Facebook page won’t change that.

The title of the book encapsulates the message; adding the whipped cream (blog) cherry (Facebook page) and sprinkles (tweets) to an old business model (meatballs) you end up with something worse than good old-fashioned meatballs.

If your business’s performance is trending down, not a dip, a trend; then you need to take a hard look at your complete go-to-market strategy and perhaps question a lot of the “how it’s done” in your company and industry.

If that sounds like where you are, take the time to read this book. Like all Seth’s books it’s a quick and entertaining read that will get you thinking about where you need to start.

Or you could just fire the sales team and hire a new bunch.. that always works.

Objectively assessing the decisions we make and the benefit we get from them forces us to confront our prejudices. Family or work, Mac or Windows, AT&T or A good network.. even Time or Money. Going into these assessments we all have bias’s we consciously recognize and some we don’t.

A pile of books sits on my side table, physical books. Most of them best sellers and all of them recommended by people I trust.

But last night I sat next to this stack of authoritative, consumer endorsed, well-edited wisdom and read a stream of blogs and tweets. I even contributed to the mindless jetsam of tweets by sharing my thoughts on a movie I was watching! WHO CARES! Read the rest of this entry »

Over the last 2 weeks I have had the opportunity to listen to a lot of game developers, publishers and game technologists. Some engaged in casual and social games, others at the AAA end of the market.

Some things I heard were shocking, others expected. After reflecting on the conversations for a week I want to share an observation;

The video game industry is in the eye of a perfect storm.

Like every industry:

• The recession is having a big affect, much bigger than many thought it would and Darwin is on the rampage.
• We are trying to understand social media and how it changes our relationship with the consumer.

More unique to the games industry: Read the rest of this entry »

Architectural visualization, camera control systems, crowdsourcing, photography and location scouting. This research presses almost all my buttons.

Photo tourism is a system for browsing large collections of photographs in 3D. Our approach takes as input large collections of images from either personal photo collections or Internet photo sharing sites like Flickr.
via Photo Tourism