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I did my first official TV interview today (I think). It was internet TV from New York… or was it Canada? Anyway, internet-tv still counts. As you can see, there are worse things than being interviewed in our Lotus Eliseabout cool gadgets by a sassy tv-show host. I hope the message - that there are much more interesting Bluetooth applications for cars than one may think - got across.
Right after this interview, the funniest thing happened. I drove to the end of the avenue to make a (legal) U-turn, right where the Guardia Urbana police station is. A cop pulled me over, and I instinctively checked my safety belt (check!), headset (forbidden in Spain!!) and ‘I Hate Pigs’ t-shirt (left at home). To my surprise, officer Antonio asked me if he could have his picture taken behind the steering wheel. While his fellow traffic officers huddled around the car, the policeman slipped into the driver’s seat to have the snapshot taken. When I got back into the car, they asked the obvious questions about break horsepower, engine and top speed. However , when I was about to leave he and some of his colleagues blocked the complete road. ‘You show us now how fast the car accelerate!’
For a moment there, I expected the old candid camera trick. And the moment after that, I was sure this was a local trick to confiscate cool cars. But then I just hit the pedal and with the roar of a million smoker’s coughs, I bulleted away down the street. I guess I love my job.

I am now in Barcelona for The Mobile World Congress (MWC), where I hope to see some pretty neat stuff, phones and their peripherals mostly. It’ll be nicely advanced and technologically nifty. But getting in is more of a ‘ape-uses-bone-for-a-tool-and-wahey!’ type thing.
This morning, I spent one and a half hour to get access passes for me and my fellow visitor/exhibitor/ blogger/non-approved-but-finally-confirmed-MWC-registrant Danny.We received more than a dozen e-mails from the GSM Association, and as I write, they are still dripping into my inbox. Even though I showed up at the registration desk with a mail saying it was the final confirmation of my registration, a kind lady told me that our passes were ‘pending’. Just after driving 1250 kilometers. Something else would soon be pending too, from the ceiling by its little hairs, if GSMA would not provide our passes quickly.

I’ll spare you the details but in the end, Danny got a press pass and I only got a visitor pass. Why not? Because my blog hadn’t been updated regularly. The lady admitted she didn’t really know a lot about ‘those blog things’, so she called in professional help… a jovial British guy who decided I did not qualify. I pointed at my tanned face (3 weeks holiday in December) and my blog post about not being able to go to CES in January, but that was to no avail. No press pass for me!

I object! My colleague Heliade flew out to Vegas - Vegas, Baby! Vegas! - for CES… and I don’t get to go! What the…!? I wanna go too, I want to complain too about the flight and the jetlag and the long walks through endless halls and the traffic jams and the crappy food and the lousy parties and the ugly people. Awww man!!!

(image courtesy of tomneil04)

now playing: Karma to Burn - Twenty

Hot diggity! I did it… booked myself a holiday three weeks ago and here I am sitting at Schiphol airport, waiting for China Airlines (I have prepared myself for both a sweet and a sour experience) to take me to Laos, Vietnam and Cambodia. It it is possible, and if I feel like it, I will be posting pretty pictures and colourful tales of diarrhea on my travelog. Thankee.

now playing: Dead Kennedys - Holiday in Cambodia

I have to think about this one first before I write something… but I thought I’d share it already. It’s a shoestore near my place in Molenbeek, which consists of a rich mix of minorities, but predominantly Arabic.

Ah well…

A few months ago, a Congolese student living in Brussels filed a complaint against the comic strip ‘Tintin in the Congo’ (1931) on the basis that it is a racist publication and an insult towards the Congolese people. Is his opinion correct? Yes. Is his action the right one? Hell no. Striving to have a book banned and removed from shelves 75 years after it appeared, is putting your hands over your eyes and saying I’m not here!.

The reason why I bring this up now is because I recently discovered a wonderful publication in a comic book store: ‘Little Nemo in Slumberland’ by Winsor McCay, an American pioneer of the 9th art who published in the early decades of the 20th century. It not only contains the stunningly beautiful stories of Little Nemo, but also the Tales of the Jungle Imps, short parables about how roguish tricks by pygmy-like creatures gave animals discerning characteristics like a trunk or a tail. The back cover of the book runs this disclaimer:

It says it all; intellectual honesty, historical context, standards… it is food for thought, this is great learning material - even for kids (although I did not like Tintin as a kid, I prefered Spike and Suzy, the Red Knight and Jommeke) …and racists may chuckle when they read the stories, it will in no way serve their purpose. Comic strips like these are just way too smart and timeless for that.

Maybe pregnant / or on drugs / on welfare
on top of the world / the honor roll / parole
reruns / in the Dodgers / backs of milk cartons,
on stakes in the middle of corn fields /
on covers of future history books
on old lady’s mantles / walkin’ on water / nailed on crosses
(RV, Faith No More, 1992)

Well, none of the above, I can tell you. But blogging definitely went on the backburner for the last couple of months. Not specifically for a lack of inspiration but mostly because September-October is a very hectic period in companies’ communications programs. So, where have I been then?… Unplugging of course!

One of the things I did, was to explain/visualise a testing event for engineers behind closed doors… The Bluetooth SIG UnPlugFest. Three times per year, the Bluetooth SIG organizes an UnPlugFest, where engineers of member companies (Intel, Motorola, Sony Ericsson, Parrot,…) come to test their products and prototypes against each other. This time, it took place in a hotel in Brussels, ideal for us to do something around it. Yes, it was pretty geeky, with a sea of blinking leds, naked motherboards, oscilloscopes and whole nest of powerplugs. But the idea behind the event and the enthusiasm of the participants was great to capture.

Because they test prototypes, confidentiality is a very big issue for everyone at the UnPlugFest. Marketing or sales people are not allowed, it is the territory of the engineers. So it took a little bit of lobbying and subtle explanation to get access to the event. Naturally, I had nothing to gain by disclosing anything about future products present there. And even if I wanted to, being the complete opposite of an engineer (an ungineer), I saw nothing that even resembled a cool Bluetooth product (most of the stuff is tested on laptop platforms anyway).

So, what did I do? See for yourself in this 5 minute testimonial video. It’s not spectacular, but it does show how much trouble these engineers go through to make their products work with each other. That’s pretty impressive if you know that the companies they work for are direct competitors. Kudos to these guys, because they make us swear less and less at our phones, headsets, car kits and each other.

I read a blog post on an interesting topic: e-mail signatures and people’s tendencies to play around with these.
Let me put my e-mail signature to the test and see how it stands against Mr. Wagner’s theses.

Here is my current signature (slightly reduced font)…

And the statements…
1. Important people don’t bother with e-mail sigs.

Yeah. So? I am unimportant and I am proud. Leaving my signature out will not make me any more important, nor give people the impression that I am. People who think they are so important that they consciously leave out their signature in order to avoid unsolicited correspondence are probably not that important. The really important people have personnel to handle all their e-mail, so they wouldn’t bother with the whole situation at all. I have never e-mailed a person that important. I have e-mailed people who don’t bother with e-mail sigs. I tend to perceive them as two different categories.

2. The longer your e-mail signature, the lower down the food chain you are.

Agreed, some people have looong signatures, but these are often company policy. And people who enjoy adding lengthy film quotes, all their community avatars, chat nicknames and ecologically correct messaging are probably happy people, with a frivolous touch maybe, who are not bothered by their position in the food chain.

3. Marketing people have company slogans in their e-mail.

Like I do. That’s either harmless tribal behaviour or company policy. It’s what marketing people do: not just the slogan, but the whole e-mail will probably be dedicated to convincing the addressee that there’s something good about the company or the product they represent. Marketing people who don’t have company slogans in their e-mail are either cynical or forgetful.

4. Some people include sign-offs like “Cheers!” and “Thanks!” and “Best!”; others don’t bother.

Some men wear ‘m on the left, others on the right. Does Wagner want to point out that there is a lack of common courtesy in e-mails? I do not have a sign-off in my e-mail sig, but that is not because I don’t bother. It is because I want to customize according to the type of e-mail that I send. Formal messages get a ‘Best Regards’, informal ones get a ‘Cheers’, quick and dirty e-mails get nothing, otherwise they wouldn’t be quick and dirty.

5. Some people’s signatures are way too long.

Like I said in 3., that hardly ever seems to be their fault. I do however choose to put all my information on a minimum number of lines, separating the bits by a bullet or a vertical dash. That way, I don’t have to scroll my finger off when I need to read an early entry of a long e-mail thread. Signatures often take up more than half of the space in a thread. I want my e-mail client to autmatically hide all but one of the same signatures in an e-mail. My Outlook does not do that right now and I must admit that I don’t know where to tweak that setting :-).

Best regards,

D.

(More on this here)

What do you do when the e-mail server, the fixed line and the internet connection is down at work? Unless you have some off-line writing to do (like this morning), you can clean up your desk and cupboards or you can stare helplessly at a blank screen.
Or, you gather your stuff and you head to a place where you can get on-line again. In my case, the pub! Not to hang at the counter swigging beers, but to do the necessary minimum of e-mail correspondence.
You could’ve gone home and log in there as well, I hear you think… Why yes, technically that is correct. But: the neighbour’s kids are in the midst of their summer holiday and they are enthusiastically building a Harry Potter Pokemon Pirate’s nest in the yard, just below my window… they don’t do that in silence, I can tell you (and rightfully so). Besides, my other neighbour has decided it’s time to renovate that outside brick wall again, not to speak about the 16 Polish construction workers that are singing jolly songs while finishing a three-story apartment opposite our backyard.

While here, in the Roskam, there is nothing but the quiet rustle of the bartender behind the counter, a sporadic remark of the only other guest at the bar and some Westcoast cool jazz through the speakers. And an excellent free wi-fi connection. I am thinking of making this my office. They make a better cappuccino anyway…

Setting up a blog and keeping the content up-to-date is already a laborious task, but after that, there is an even bigger hurdle to take: how to generate traffic to the blog. In this respect, patience is a virtue and a must: a blog needs to earn its audience slowly but surely, and with the right approach a snowball effect can be reached over time.

A combination of the following tactics will certainly enhance the visibility of your blog:
Strong content
Readers will return to a blog if they have read a post that raised a sense of anticipation, provoked their thoughts or appealed to them in an educative or entertaining way. This is not an absolute science, but if it happens more than once, chances are big that a reader will bookmark that blog or add it to an RSS feed reader.
Search engines
Search engines from Google, Technorati, MSN or Yahoo! play an important role in helping potential readers to find a blog. There are plenty of technical tricks to achieve SEO (Search Engine Optimization) but most of these are meant to superficially increase the ‘weight’ of a blog when it gets tracked by a searchbot that crawls the web. Besides, these websites upgrade their algorithms constantly which makes their engines smarter every time, so some tactics may have lost their impact by the time they get implemented. The most basic step is entering blog details into the search engine directory.
Cross-referencing and linking
Creating a community of likeminded bloggers can instantly attract an already existing pool of readers: this can happen by posting comments on other blogs, by posting a story about an article from another blog or by adding affiliated blogs to the links section, the so-called blogroll. To do this properly, you have to do the necessary amount of reconnaissance: look around for what is already out there that is relevant to your business biotope.
You can also Digg a post: bloggers can submit one or more of their stories. Visitors will be able to read your post and if they like it, they digg it. The higher a number of diggs, the more the story will be promoted and consequently, the more visitors a blog will get.
Ranking websites
Submitting a blog to a ranking website such as Technorati, gives bloggers an indication of how popular their blog is. It keeps a ranking system, but also informs about which other websites are linking to a certain blog.

To put it very simply, a blog is nothing more than a handy tool to manage web content in a very easy and accessible way. A blog holds up a mirror to the author, reflecting the variety of opinions an audience can have with regards to the blogger’s product, company and/or philosophy. If you want to make a blog part of the communications toolset, the following rules of thumb can be helpful.

1. A blog needs a long-term strategy
Not the blogger, but the readers need to be convinced of the value in a story. And there is nothing more pitiful on the internet than a defunct blog, or a blogger who struggles to get some decent content posted once every few weeks or even months. Drawing up a calendar and preparing specific posts in advance will help to ensure continuity. Daily inspiration, careful assessment of the news value, proper writing skills and the grapevine will do the rest.

2. Support your blog
A blog needs a bit of maintenance, especially when the flow of comments gets going. Spammers have found the blogosphere as well (splogs), so having sufficient resources to not only update and maintain content, but also to keep the look and format fresh, is a smart investment.

3. Sit back and relax…
If a blogger has done his preparation and followed the two previous suggestions, a blog will become quite an organic phenomenon, doing a lot of work on itself, like a 24/7 generator of attention.

4. …Get your feet off that desk and sit back up!
You honestly didn’t think it was going to be that easy, right? Blogs need constant attention, maintenance and continuous rethinking of its goals.

Setting out on a blogging adventure means that one needs to be aware of what is around. It is impossible to read everything or to participate in every web 2.0 initiative, but a blogger who has not prepared his battlefield – knowing both friend and foe - or frowns when he hears words like Myspace, del.i.cio.us, Digg, Second Life, YouTube or Flickr, has been blogging with his eyes closed.
Your audience is out there, making use of all these interactive solutions, including literally tons of blogs. You can reach out to them too with a blog of your own, but use it wisely.