We all know the feeling when we’ve been “nurtured”. We sign up for a webinar. 1 minute later you get a contact from a sales person. After the webinar you get follow up emails on additional offers and additional whitepapers on the subject you were interested in. What you don’t realize is all of the pre-thought, strategy, and setup that goes into that orchestrated series of events. Let me tell you, it’s not for the faint at heart. After countless hours with a full-time consultant building our strategy and integrating automation systems it all comes down to a diagram. To be able to visualize all of the steps and how they will work together you need a campaign diagram, so says our vendor Silverpop. I’ve built plenty of information architecture diagrams in my career, but never anything like this. Apparently these are notoriously complex exercises, since Silverpop themselves had a contest last year to find the most convoluted marketing campaign diagram.

My Piece of Convolutedness

Here’s my rookie effort at a campaign diagram (page 1 only). This was at its very worst. I have since revised the diagram many times to simplify and better communicate how we will be setting up all of the assets in our different systems. Nonetheless, you have to go this far if you want to pre-plan an automated campaign. This has been an awesome learning experience. I’m very much looking forward to the campaign launch and finding out how effective each little block in the diagram will or will not be. Stay tuned.

OptiJob’s Doug Kerken Sold Me then Followed Me on Twitter

I went through an extensive vendor evaluation at the end of 2008 to choose an SEO/career site portal provider. I received quotes from a variety of providers at my request, and by the recommendation of our recruitment ad agency. One provider was Optijob, and the salesperson was Doug Kerken. Long story short, Doug won the business based on an excellent product, a fair price, and an extremely flexible attitude to customize the product to meet Hudson’s career site needs.

Somewhere during the sales cycle Doug (@DKerken) connected with me on Twitter. Not LinkedIn (til later), not Facebook…Twitter. By doing so, Doug opened up a whole different line of communication. First off, Doug and I have never met in person. Yet, by following his personal Twitter account where he mixes business and pleasure tweets, I get to know him much better. Yes, Doug is a sales guy through and through. He is cool to chat with on phone calls, and he makes a lot of promises about the product, that some other poor schlep has to implement because Doug promised it. BUT, Doug is also keeping me very positive about his company. He’s keeping the relationship warm, and he doesn’t need to take me out to lunch bother me with “just catching up” calls to do it. He simply reacts to a tweet of mine every once in a while and that’s enough to keep him top of mind.

Positive Customer Service and Accountability

If we have a service issue with OptiJob I can reach out to him on Twitter, both of us knowing that a public slam would be bad for the company’s reputation. This keeps him accountable to service our account. Better yet though, I know that Doug is monitoring my Twitter stream and anticipating our needs. That’s good consultative selling, and he didn’t have to do a thing.

What’s the Moral of This Story?

The lesson for all salespeople is not to think of social media in terms of will it get me a lead this afternoon. Think of it as another way to interact with and listen to customers and prospects on a personal and professional level. For every salesperson I hear from who says they don’t have time to understand social media, I only need to point them to people like Doug who build successful, positive business relationships through the channel. Next time you decide to spend another 2 hour lunch with one prospect, think of how much more scalable you are by keeping 20 prospects interested through Twitter. I’m just sayin…

My head is spinning at everything I learned before, during and after the conference. Here’s my top 5.

1. Chris Brogan is the real deal. He has obviously honed his craft in a couple short years. He is an entertaining and humble speaker who spoke passionately of the need for brands (and more impoortantly the people behind them) to engage in conversation not target marketing. Does anybody want to feel targeted? I’m now subscribed to his blog and probably anything else he creates.
   Blurry iPhone shot with me, Chris and my signed copy of Trust Agents.
2. Jeffrey Hayzlett really believes in Social Media marketing for Kodak. From his complete support of Jenny Cisney’s efforts as Kodak Chief Blogger/Social Media Manager, to his team’s published thought leadership within the Kodak Social Media Guidelines, to crowdsourcing product names via twitter, Jeff is passionate about Social Media to drive marketing at Kodak. We also found out a few other things Jeff is passionate about too like hunting, and Diet Mountain Dew.
3. Eric Majchrzak at Freed Maxick & Battaglia CPAs is making it happen with Social Media and SEO. He actually has a Twitter account for a CPA firm, and a forthcoming billboard that will post the tweet stream.
   
   He is also showing impressive ROI from his efforts by being able to attribute revenue to his website and increasing it steadily year over year.
4. Niki Black knows the ins and outs of the legal implications of Social Media on companies. Social media guidelines are a must. She provided some good resources on how to craft a good policy. When her presentation becomes available I’ll post here.
5. When you go to conferences and sit next to smart people like Matt Ray, you pick up extremely useful information. For instance, my iPhone battery was running low from all the in-conference tweeting I was doing on #SM2day. He suggested I turn off 3G to conserve battery. I didn’t know you could do that. I also hadn’t yet heard the news that I could tweet to LinkedIn. These are minor things, but it shows what hanging out with like-minded people will teach you.

I’m looking forward to the presentations from the conference being available online because there was some really useful content from ALL of the presenters.

Grandpa passed away last year, 10 years after I made my last batch with him. I rescued his ketchup-making equipment from his basement then, and it sat idle until last weekend. The following is a video of our first ketchup odyssey on our own. Enjoy…

1. Tie your shoes by yourself
2. Learn to ride your bike

As June turned to July (the coldest on record), we were still waiting for some kind of progress on both fronts. Tying shoes was always put off for something easier, like wearing Crocs or going barefoot. When they had to wear sneakers it was straight to the velcro. As for biking, it was like feeding the children ipecac syrup. One teaspoon of bike ride suggestion induced 20 minutes of whiny, complaint-barf.

As we turned the corner into August something happened. It was as if the kids realized their time to be little kids was getting shorter and shorter. Some kind of magic desire welled up inside of them to accomplish their goals. One day, Tricia simply told the children to sit down and tie their shoes. It wasn’t like we hadn’t shown them how to do it many times before. This time was different. Mason nailed the knot on the second try. Not to be outdone, Anna furrowed her brow and set out to tie both of her shoes. Within 5 minutes she had done just that!

Excited, they both untied and tied their shoes 3 more times that morning. With a little coaxing and the promise of a Seabreeze trip if they accomplished their other summer goal, they went directly outside and patiently tried biking with me for the first time. This time it was Anna who took the lead. 20 months younger and gifted with a natural sense of balance, Anna let me run behind her…and run…and run until I was able to let go.

Look mom, I’m riding!

Mason just wasn’t going to have his sister doing better than him. So, with a little extra motivation, Mason got his first assisted start that night too!

Mason on his own for the first time!

They say that you never forget how to ride a bike. Well, Mason wanted to make sure of it. The very next night as I setup to assist Anna with her starting, I turned around to see Mason riding down the street on his own.

To the Persistent Come the Rewards
Tricia and I were absolutely thrilled to see the kids accomplish what they had set out to do for the summer. Coming in just under the wire, we took them to Seabreeze for the last Friday of summer. It was a BEAUTIFUL, sunny and warm September day. For the first time, Mason was above the 48″ height limit necessary to ride the adult rides.

With his newfound biking confidence, Mason attacked rides that he cried bloody murder over just a year ago. I took him on the Bear Trax (kiddie coaster) to which he scoffed that it was too easy.

Mason had a blast. He insisted on sitting in the front by himself

In fact, 3 years ago they were so scared on the kiddie coaster that they vowed they would never ride it again.

Mason and Anna ride Bear Trax in 2006. Anna still won’t go on it

So, I proceeded to take him on the Log Flume and then to the vaunted Jack Rabbit. He was a bit scared on that, but didn’t quit and cry like he once would have…

So now, here we are. It’s the end of summer, and the kids are going back to school. Time for some new goals and new learning. They are growing up in the blink of an eye. 2nd and 1st grade wow!

Family Videos from Mini-DV to DVD
I bought our first video camera in 2001, right before Mason was born. Since then we have captured 25 tapes worth of firsts including the birth and first few years of his sister, Anna. While Mini-DV at the time was the only way to do any digital editing whatsoever, I found that a combination of slow computers and way too much footage just kept me from editing the tapes. We never watched any of the content, because it involved getting out the camera, rewinding the tapes, then doing the old fast forward fun just to get to a little content to show the kids. What was supposedly “Digital” was no easier to use than hooking up a reel to reel film from 40 years ago to project on the wall.

Getting all of the Mini-DV tapes into something digital took a TON of consideration. I briefly checked into having someone do it for me. Wow, was that expensive! The Do-It-Yourselfer in me just couldn’t swallow the thousands it would take to accomplish what I knew I already have the equipment to do, given enough time. I set out to digitize all of the tapes using Firewire into my PC or my ancient Mac. When I plugged in the Firewire cable like I had done many times before, nothing was found. What a disadvantage! Now I would have to find another way. Luckily I had a TV card in my Gateway Media Center PC that also has video input. The only problem is that Windows Movie Maker didn’t recognize the capture card. So, I found a program that would - Roxio Creator 2009.

I went a tape at a time, typically overnight, playing it all the way through to capture the content into the PC. If the computer or Roxio didn’t crash in the process I would have a .mpg file in the morning. In theory, I could have filled up my 1TB external hard drive with all of these files to access any time in the future, or to do all of my editing at once. I have been bitten by a failed MyBook before so I decided to go directly to DVD’s with the content as I went. After a restart, I could open Roxio MyDVD, and import the .mpg of the tape. Next, I would use the Edit Chapters feature to automatically find breaks in the content to set as chapter points, a process that played the entire tape through AGAIN!. Barring any crashes, I then could title the chapters and make a few edits to the simple DVD theme I was using. After all of this work, I could then burn a DVD. This process failed a few times giving me beautiful DVD coasters. I learned to burn a disc image to the hard drive first, which could often take over an hour to encode. The last step would be to burn the disc image to a DVD.

From tape to somewhat edited DVD took no less than 3 hours per tape, and sometimes could take 8 hours if I had to redo more than one failed process. If you do the math, this project took me more than a month of every spare moment of computer time that I had. Do I wish I had all of the files still digitally on a hard drive? Only a little. Ultimately you only watch family movies once in a while. It is actually easier to go find a DVD in a cupboard than it is to worry about managing gigantic 7G files on a hard drive. Do I worry about burning DVDs just as Blue Rays are becoming more prominent in the market? Yes, but all the source content is standard definition anyway, and I’m sure something will be around to play DVD’s for years to come. Now that I’m caught up, I’m hoping we’ll invest in a direct to digital video camera of some kind in the very near future.

Onward to Photos
After all that video work, you’d think I’d be tired of all this archiving. Instead it has only increased my desire to have everything digital. I cringe at all of the photo albums in our basement. Even more fun is looking at photos from our parents and grandparents which are all in boxes and albums scattered everywhere. Again this is something that I know we can pay to have taken care of, but the cost and potential danger of losing photos with a vendor is prohibitive. Instead, I have scoured the internet to find an invaluable tool for scanning old family photos. There is a discontinued Epson scanner (the 3590 Photo) that supports the best family photo archiving companion on the planet, an automatic photo feeder.

I went on Craigslist and found the scanner for about $80, then bought the feeder new from Epson for around $150. We have had this for about 2 weeks now and have been tearing through stacks of family photos 20 at a time. You just load up the machine and walk away. Brilliant! I don’t know why this stuff is discontinued, but I highly recommend it. My goal is to load a good amount of my extended family’s photographic history onto my external hard drive backed up to DVD. This little distraction has taken me from my blogging habit for a bit, but the way I see it, I’m just managing another asset in my digital life.

Then, I was sent this compelling video of Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat, Pray, Love as she spoke at the TED conference on the topic of creativity and divine inspiration. In her speech she suggests that you just show up for the job you were meant to do, and that amazing creative power will pass through you when you invite it to show up for its job too. She referenced the bullfight chant “olé” to acknowledge the inspiration’s presence.

It is so true that just showing up for anything, be it your job, your marriage, or anything you are involved in is 80% of the effort. The rest is waiting on that mystical inspiration. So with that, I’ll start today by saying olé!

I’m excited about the prospects of what a “real” intranet can mean for our firm. It can be such a challenge for leaders to wrangle together a cohesive vision from far-flung offices and disparate work processes. Email just isn’t up to the task, and forget about the dreaded weekly conference calls. To create a truly productive and cohesive professional services firm for the long term, I believe your intranet must be robust, comprehensive, and adaptable to the constant change in the business. How else can you retain knowledge in a business with 40% employee turnover? Yet, when you search online for any evidence of staffing firm intranets, there is little to no information. I found a synopsis of Australian Job Board Seek’s Intranet redesign, but I have yet to come across a true staffing service provider’s (If you happen to see any coverage, please do forward me the link).

Is the lack of information an indicator of the staffing industry’s sentiment toward their intranets? Or, is it that everyone believes they have some super-secret formula for success that they are just unwilling to share? I would wager that staffing firms are currently focused on survival rather than productivity, but there are those who will use their intranet to position themselves for long-term success.

Raising the Walls
We started by laying down the plastic floor onto the very solid base we had already constructed out of stone. Then came the wall raising. Each wall section requires the strength and weight of a full-grown human to get to clip into the floor. When I say strength, I mean herculeanstrength. Every muscle in my upper body (my gluteus ribimus, or whatever) was pulled. This is, in fact reassuring because you don’t want your building separating from the floor in the future.

There were a couple of key things we learned at this stage that weren’t in the directions.

1. When putting up the first few walls, make sure to brace them with a 2×4 or something. We were doing this on a breezy day, and a few gusts came up and blew the house down.
2. You really need access to the outside of the walls to easily get them into the base. Since we had our shed up against the house we couldn’t get at the outside of the back walls. That made it much more challenging.

Tricia uses the force to install one of the sidewalls

Installing the Trusses and Roof
The next step was to install the trusses and roof. This was actually pretty straightforward by reading the directions. This building has a complex roof line, but all of the pieces went together with little trouble. The biggest issue was the carpal tunnel we got from screwing in hundreds of screws.

The trusses and roof installation signal the end is in sight

How Far Away From the House?
Once we got some of the roof on, I had an Aha! moment. I had planned the shed to butt up to the back of the house. I figured I’d save some yard space, and would not allow a haven for any critters to get behind it. When I saw my plan come to life though, I immediately realized the error of my ways. First, having it that close to the house left just enough of a gap to allow a mouse to make a comfy home. My second vision was that of ice and snow falling off the garage roof and piling up on top of the shed. Then it would probably dam up between the shed and the house causing my siding to buckle. Of course this could have been prevented if the directions would have advised against putting the structure too close to your house.

So, we stalled the project a little bit to add an additional 24″ of stone base in front of the shed. Then, we were able to pull it away from the house leaving an alleyway of stone between the house and the shed. This will allow a good amount of space for snow to go and actually give us a place to store some extra junk that will inevitably spill over from the shed.

An extra 2 feet of stone base allowed us to move the shed away from the house

Parking the Tractor
The rest of the shed construction was straightforward by following the directions. The trickiest part of the final stages is to get the doors installed and aligned. You end up using shims to raise and lower 2 corners of the shed to get the doors aligned. The latch that the doors comes with is not the best either. I had to grind off a little of the metal on the latch to get it to work without sticking. After all that, it was finally time for the moment of truth; the inaugural parking of the tractor…

She thinks my tractor’s sexy!

Pulling into the doghouse. Should I put a kegerator in here too?

We’re Not in Kansas Anymore
When my neighbor stopped over to look at our handiwork he decided to burst our bubble with a story. You see, back in the day, his old metal shed was lifted up and tossed across the neighborhood by a wind storm. He said he even had it anchored down, and suggested I do the same. The shed instructions do tell you to anchor the floor down. Think about it, though. If I put some anchors through the plastic floor into the ground, will that do anything more than having an 800 pound tractor sitting on it? In my opinion, nope. What I really needed to figure out was how to get the top of the building anchored to the ground. What I came up with was pretty simple, and I think (fingers crossed) going to do the trick in the heaviest of winds.

I bought ratchet straps at Harbor Freight.

I pulled the plug from 2 of the roof truss channels in the end walls of the shed, and hooked one end of the ratchet strap there. Then, I put a heavy hook into my landscape timber, and ratcheted the sidewalls down.

It makes me feel better to have the shed securely anchored to the ground

I cut the plugs a little bit to accommodate the ratchet strap hook, and then reinstalled them. I really didn’t want a hole in the side of the building.

A couple of cuts in the plastic plug allows the ratchet strap hook to fit underneath it

We are very pleased with the shed’s look and functionality so far. We’ll give it some time before we pass our final judgement.

Craftsman YS 4500 Yard Tractor, I bought to ‘manicure the grounds’

Knowing that I won’t be able to store it and my 2 cars in the garage, I decided to build a shed. I have been eyeballing the Lifetime LTM 60005 shed at my local BJ’s since last year. I liked that it was a center-entry shed that I could butt up against the back of my garage.

BJ’s carries these in stock right now for $999

Scoping out the Site
I wanted to make sure that this shed was going to suit my needs. It needed to fit my tractor, a snow blower, a push mower, all of their gas cans, as well as all of my yard tools. So, I did a quick scale drawing of my garage and the potential shed in Visio. I measured all of my lawn equipment and did scale representations of them as well. Then I could move around all of the pieces and move potential sheds in relation to my garage without breaking my back, or buying something that would ultimately be too small.

Visio drawing of shed in relationship to my garage (click for expanded view)

I did shop around a bit more just to be sure that this shed was ‘the right one’. Even through the mocking of my friend Andy who called my shed choice the “Tupperware Shed”, I just couldn’t pass it up. It’s sturdy, looks good with my house, and is a heck of a lot cheaper than the wood and shingle structures that professionals build on site. Be prepared if you do buy something like this at your local warehouse club, it weighs a ton! It took 3 grown men to shove the two 8′ boxes into the back of my SUV. And once I got it home it took 3 of us to remove it from the truck and put it in my garage.

Here’s the before photo of where the shed will go

Preparing a Level Surface
There are many ways to create a level surface to build a shed on. You can have a cement pad poured, but this would require me to call professionals or do a ton of back-breaking forming, mixing, and troweling. You can build a wooden platform, like building a deck on the ground. My issue with this approach is complexity, cost, and another potential haven for critters. I decided to choose the easiest DIY operation - stone. I started by going to my local Mr 2nd and buying ‘drainage stone’. It was $3.33 per bag and I needed about 45 bags for an 8′ x 10′ pad that’s about 4″ deep. Well, I poured it all on the ground and leveled it out only to find that the edges kept spilling outward. Yes, you need a barrier to stop the stone from going everywhere.

The solution for me was to buy some 4×4 pressure treated lumber and make a simple frame on the ground to contain the stone. I squared up the timbers, then used 6″ galvanized spikes to tie them together. After I leveled the frame by packing dirt underneath the low spots, I then drove 18″ long by 1/2″ diameter steel rebar through the timbers into the ground to anchor them.

Drill holes for the rebar with 5/8″ spade drill bit

Pound in the rebar with a maul. It goes in quite easily

After providing a good frame for my stone, I then took a 12 ‘ 4×4 with my trusty assistant and screeded the stone until it was level. This is done by laying the long board onto the wooden frame at either end and shifting the board back and forth to move the stone underneath it. After this was complete, I tested the plastic floor on the new platform. Everything felt pretty solid, although there’s a little bit of squish underfoot. I’m going to go buy a few bags of pea gravel to put on top of my coarse drainage stone. When I work in the pea gravel, it should make the surface just a little more solid.

With the site prepared, we will move on to building the shed. We have already spent about 6 hours putting together many of the pieces that will be used in the shed’s construction, like the trusses, gables, door hardware, and skylights. When we do start building the walls and roof, this pre-work should make the actual building go much faster. I’ll be sure to take some pictures and tell you how it goes.