HSG Consulting - Personalized Solutions for Business Growing Pains

Just finished the 1,000 page novel by Ken Follett, World Without End. Set in mid-to late-1300’s England, it traces the lives of 5 individuals from childhood to old age. Facing adversity, apathy, hunger, torture, abuse, and worst of all, the bubonic plague, Ken Follett brings the past to life in a very realistic format.

Through the key characters, Ken shows us that no matter how difficult, we must deal with our problems, face our fears, and above all, remain true to ourselves. While tied up maybe a little too neatly, the story does present a view of the everlasting nature of life. The ending is more of a life goes on routine than a denouement. While half of Europe’s population is devastated by the Plague, those that were immune or recovered from the ravages of the virus were the strong ones that carried on. The title is taken from a Catholic psalm: ‘Glory be to the Father, And to the Son, And to the Holy Ghost. As it was in the beginning, Is now, And ever shall me, World without end.’ And indeed, the story ends with exactly the feeling that the world is everlasting, despite the effects of people and disease.

We see the beginning of the Renaissance in the 40 years of the novel – Caris (a woman who wants to be a physician but becomes a nun to escape an indictment of witchery) ushers in a new form of medicine that relies not on understanding the humors of the body and bloodletting but on observation, deductive reasoning and rational thought. Her lover and finally husband, Merthin, brings glimmers of new architectural understanding to England’s small communities with innovative uses of cranes, octagonal topped structures, cofferdams around bridges, and again the use of deductive reasoning to understand the nature of buildings and their strength.

A great historical read, one that brings the past to life and feels all the more contemporary despite the passage of nearly 700 years.

A nifty map viewer located at: http://muti.co.za/static/newsmap.html displays news on the region of the map selected. Find news from around the world by point and click. Of particular note is that the map opens to Africa! Nice to have a different world view than the usual European/American center of the universe thing!

The world gets smaller every day.

Some sketchy notes I took on the Website conversions session given by Ross Johnson

1. Website goals – most sell something

• Anytime you’re creating a website you’re creating a domain name
  • Your website’s calling card
  • Should be able to remember it after saying it 2 to 3 times
  • Simple, unique, easy to remember
  • Dot com is preferred if possible

• Your site goal should include something unique
• Print advertising – use unique url
• Facebook has a way to see tell you how many people go to your site
• Direct traffic is a good way to see if your domain name is good or not
• PPC – Google adwords to drive traffic
• Creating something unique, funny that will cause the viral spread of your website and get traffic to your site
• Offline promotions -
  • Public relations – Press Releases. Even locally is good for this
  • Radio
  • Direct mailing – do some sort of tracking to see if is working

2. Design

• Everyone has different tastes. If targeting sites for specific demographic pick a look that works for them. Pictures of people in that age/demographic group
• Test your website – Flash testing – 2-3 seconds flashed on screen, ask people what they remembered from site
• Copy – content on site (see talk from Ross earlier)
  • Headline that sums up entire page
  • Supportive copy
  • Bullets are better!
  • Language semantics – target market concerns for the terms/words you use
  • Call to Action – tell your users exactly what you want them to do!

• Don’t use tables for full usability – screen readers don’t work with tables
• Images or flash content should have alternate text
• Download LYNX browser – this is a text only browser so you can see how your site renders
• Firefox plug-in- Fangs(spelling?) – to have it render your site as a screen reader would see it.
• Each page should have main goal – and an actionable outcome that is obvious. Narrow user decision down to Yes or No -
• Design for the top 300 pixels – above the fold
• Don’t code to the larger screens out there – most people have multiple screens open at one time anyway and won’t see your content

3. Usability testing of your site

• Simple, watch them as they work

4. Fills customer’s need

• Price mentioned on site allows to pre-qualify customers on the cost

5. Track your site

• • Google.com/analytics – free service for your site
    Where people are coming from, what pages they go to, what page they come in and what page they leave
  • • Tells you where your traffic is
  • Feedburner – for Blogs – how many people are subscribed to your RSS feed

6. Linking to other sites

• Open in separate window or new tab
• Lose people when does not open in new window

Notes I took on Social Networking 101 session given by Derek Mehraban
1. Get on twitter -

• CNN breaking news on Twitter
• businesses use this for customers – deals
• plug-in to integrate twitter into your blog
• very searchable – optimized
• use your profile space for keywords you want to be found for
• Twitter groups just announced

2. Facebook – use facebook to invite all your friends to venues

• Can make profile private so only friends can see

3. Privacy questions

• Blocking on twitter
• Pounce has the ability to segment friends. Would like to see this on Twitter
• Twitters marked as private are not searchable and won’t feed into facebook

4. What are you using Twitter for?

• Increasing personal connections for business growth

5. Has anyone used video in their blogs?

• Some posted on their wall in Facebook a link
• Some are using it for file sharing

6. Video blog – with link to facebook (same with Flickr)

• Viral connections among social networking tools: Put on your own blog, facebook link to blog, then facebook goes to twitter – extends your posts to a broader group

7. Social Network sites:

• Mash
• Pounce – some customization (4 templates to chose from)
• CollectiveX – part facebook – part forum – portal with social media. Good for clubs
• A Small World – social network for very rich
• Delicious – social networking bookmarking. Tagging bookmarks – find out what other people are tagging

8. Question on what is Social Network 3.0?

• integration between sites is needed. Everything is spread out – how to collect all that?
• Gateway – netvibes to pull in social networking sites into one interface (w/ login)
• ?Opened (? What was that? Did anyone catch this tool?) – one login to integrate with everything
• Web 3.0 – not tied down to browser. Mobile device based

9. Yahoo mash – create a profile for friend – circle of trust with friends that can edit your profile. New trend for students. Kind of like a public referral board. Invitation only though

Notes from the Search Optimization Session at 1pm
Ross Johnson – speaker

Why using search vs Yellow book or asking a friend?
Easy way to find answer to question ← key!

1. Must provide relevant results – search engine goals

• How to make yours the most relevant?
  • No way to trick your way to the top by cloaking, hidden words
  • Development of content – what content is on the site
  • Links – how many times your site is linked to from other sites
• Find ways to find high-quality links so your site is more relevant and carries more authority
• Content:
  • Create article – link baiting. Something that people will link to. Even controversial content is useful.
  • Link bait strategy:
    • Who do you want to link to you? Research your market.
      • What things are they already looking at?
      • Something new and original

• • Know the medium
    • Web is 3-5 seconds.
    • Headlines and pictures scan

• • Every section should have catchy headline
    • Copy should be scannable (quickly read)
    • Anything you write for web, cut in half, then cut in half again

• • Know where to distribute the article to
    • Research the market – forums, community, link to article in signature
    • Digg.com <- post here in different sections . OK to post your own stuff here
    • Netscape service has niche communities as well <- post article link there
    • Facebook groups <- create one, link your article there
    • Get involved in these communities – put link to site in signature in forum. Write helpful posts and responses.

• Not all strategies will work – keep trying. Patience is key to get yourself up on the relevance list
• Each page of your website should be targeted to different keywords
  • White paper
  • How-to on particular topic
  • Podcast
  • Take a tool you’ve built (ie: mortgage calculator)
  • Contest
  • Interviews – interview someone & have their blog point to your site
  • Guest blogger -
  • Free service – background, music, tool for myspace, etc.
• Search engine differences -
  • Google developed link relevance. Yahoo/MSN have adopted this as well
• On-page factors
  • Text readable by search engines. No flash or images (or alternate text for images), no Javascript because this is client-side. PHP works because it is server side. Search-engine bots aren’t designed to handle Javascript now.
  • Any text that is important for ranking is readable without graphics or flash
  • Meta-keywords – search engines ignore these! Don’t bother with these
  • Page title: huge on-page factor for ranking – keywords should be in title! The closer to the start the better. Keywords first then company name
  • Search engines view site by going through links and builds references through that. Javascript or flash is bad for search engines.
  • Have site map to avoid this.
  • Duplicate content is checked for by search engines – and ranked lower.
  • RSS Feeds – help or no? Google likes fresh content. Can be good for people to subscribe and link to it – but not inherent to raise your ranking
  • Popurl – delicious for bookmarks – list of other peoples content
  • Godaddy traffic blaster – redirects traffic through their site – doesn’t help with your own traffic
  • Wordpress SEO
  • Blogs to stay current with this
    • SEOMOZ.org
    • SEOBOOK.com
• No-No’s
  • Hiding keywords or text. Don’t make text same as background, search engines are onto this.
  • Displaying different pages for people versus search engines
• Publish press releases
  • Companies can publish this online – some free work for SEO only
  • PRWEB.com, PRLEEP.com, PR.com – will distribute all over and let you have a link back to your site

• Tools on site design in Google
  • What keywords you do use
  • Google.com/adwords <- search for related terms
  • Inventory.overture.com <- search for related terms

The Next 2 Days of Your Project will either contribute to its success or its failure.

Your team’s first impression of the project is critical to a common understanding of what is being accomplished.

Over two thirds of all projects either fail or are seriously challenged, according to the 2006 Chaos Report from the Standish Group. Not surprisingly, according to Forrester research the cost of these failed projects for one year is $30 million dollars. The beginning of your project offers you the opportunity to apply the top three success factors and put your project in the one third success category:

1. Users Directly Involved
2. Executive Management Support
3. Clear Business Objectives

Learn how by clicking on the link below.
(more…)

Having just seen the 1954 movie ‘Magnificient Obsession’ with Rock Hudson and Jane Wyman, my husband and I had a chance to be so tested the other night. We were out on our usual long neighborhood walk enjoying the weather and scenery when we noticed a car pass us twice, and stop at a cross street just ahead of us. As we approached the man inside the car asked ‘What does it take to get arrested for drunken driving around here?’.

Being somewhat taken aback by the unusual question, we did stop and try to answer the best we could. We found that he was indeed quite drunk – had been for the previous four days after being dry for eight years. He seemed truly at his wits end – certainly to stop complete strangers and seek help. He claimed to not have a place to live, and to be quite tired and frustrated. Luckily a nearby resident also appeared and let us use her phone to call the county sheriff. This just seemed like the best thing to do given the circumstances. Certainy he should not be out driving – I could see a drunken driver accident in the offing if he were to continue on the roads as night fell.

Upon the rather bright and official arrival of the sheriff, we shared our story with the officer of our rather long chat with ‘Dan’ (we waited for over 40 minutes for the police to arrive).  Dan seemed to have a troubled life from age 16 onwards, and was completely despondent after a family visit that seemed to go poorly. Something had certainly driven him back to drinking. Some references to violence and past mental conditions had us wary of what might occur next and anxious for the help of the police. Despite his mood and condition, his sense of humor did come through in some playful exchanges over his car keys.

As I woke up this morning in my warm, clean bed, I could not help but think what had happened to Dan last night. Did he get his desire of being arrested for drunken driving? Where did he sleep last night? I can only hope that we helped in some way to provide even 40 minutes of conversation that perhaps strained relationships with his family could not give.

My passion is to help companies get organized with their projects and get their work done. Companies looking to adopt an Agile methodology hold a particular interest for me since I’m quite fond of doing more of what works and less of what doesn’t and producing deliverables quickly and iteratively.
If any of this sounds interesting to you, it would be great to talk with you about your business and what results we can make together!

If you have ever been interested to delve into the inner-workings of project management or to consider how trust plays a role in full-functioning teams then you may be interested to attend the February 19, 2007 Huron Valley PMI Chapter meeting. I am presenting on the ‘Absence of Trust, the First Dysfunction’. This is taken from Patrick Lencioni’s book, The 5 Dysfunctions of a Team, and focuses on trust as the first and underlying dysfunction. We will explore how the absence of trust may affect the other dysfunctions; Fear of Conflict, Lack of Commitment, Avoidance of Accountability, and Inattention to Results, and brainstorm on ways to address trust within a workgroup. The chapter’s website is: http://www.pmi-hvc.org/Lists/Events/AllItems.aspx . You can pre-register or simply register at the door. There is a $15 fee for this meeting which includes scintillating discussion and light hors d’oeuvres.

Hope to see you there.

Do You Need a Project Manager?

The Maslow needs hierarchy’s and the 12 Elements of Great Managing by Wanger & Harter share a very common theme. Maslow’s basic tenent of the successive satisfying of a person’s basic needs will lead to self-actualization is exemplified in the 12 Elements of Great Managing. The elements start with the basic, ‘I know what is expected of me at work’, which lines up with the Physiological basic needs of sleep, food, and surviving. These elements march upwards to the ‘This year I have had opportunities to learn and grow at work’ which corresponds with the self-actualization need that can only be attained once the previous basic needs have been met.

To me, the interrelated themes of these two management theories is evidence of a much stronger connection.