Doug Battenhausen

Doug Battenhausen thinks all our advances in cell-phone cameras and photo-sharing technology haven’t made our pictures better, but rather more sterile. We all know how to get the perfect selfie now, with just the right filter — but to him, that’s boring.

What Battenhausen is interested in, and has been collecting since 2010 on his blog “Internet History,” are photos that are beautifully amateurish and capture strange moments.

To find these types of photos, Battenhausen mines the forgotten reaches of the internet, particularly defunct photo accounts on sites like the (now deleted) Webshots, Flickr, or Photobucket.

“If there’s one rule I try to keep to all the time,” Battenhausen says. “It’s that I try to find pictures that have been abandoned. If you’re still actively using your photosharing website, I don’t want to encroach on that. Through ‘Internet history,’ I think I’m giving a second life to orphans.”

But Battenhausen doesn’t just take any old photo. He has a remarkable eye for finding ones that can evoke some emotion. He describes them as sometimes funny, sometimes bad, but usually photos that give him a feeling of “comforting sadness.”

The photos on his site, which were once featured in an exhibit at the Rhode Island School of Design, are both bizarre and everyday at the time. Perhaps the best word to describe them is wistful.

See the photos below, which have a meditative quality when you scroll through them:

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Ellen Rubin’s first startup, built in the height of the dot-com era, failed miserably. Then she hit success after success after success — without writing a line of code herself.

The three-time startup founder has a liberal arts degree and an MBA from Harvard. Her only computer science education was an intro class as an undergrad.

It hasn’t stopped her from becoming a serial entrepreneur — and one of few women CEOs — in an area of enterprise computing that is highly technical.

“I’m not misled about what I’m actually good at. I’m the market, the product, the customers. I’m not the engineering vision or how to build the engineering team,” Rubin told Business Insider. “In a less heavily technical area, if you’re building something that’s more webby or appy, it’s easier to blur that line because the technical skills you need aren’t so specific and deep.”

Rubin, though, has gone deep into the layers of data warehouses, cloud storage and enterprise software — not just built another photo-sharing app.

After her failed dotcom venture in Israel, Rubin joined data warehouse startup Netezza as employee number one, serving as VP of marketing. The company went public in 2007 before eventually being sold to IBM in 2010 for a whopping $1.8 billion — more than Facebook paid for Instagram.

After it had gone public, Rubin got the entrepreneurial itch again to found a new company.

“I wanted to go build something. I knew what I needed was a technical cofounder. That’s always been a thing for me to have that person who is the other half of the team,” Rubin said.

Her next startup the she cofounded, CloudSwitch, was quickly acquired in 2011 by Verizon for a large, albeit undisclosed, sum. Now she’s cofounded her third startup, ClearSky Data, and is deep in the weeds of enterprise storage and infrastructure — a subject matter the liberal arts major is now highly specialized in. 

“Nobody is more surprised than my family,” Rubin said of the path she took to get here.

Now that Rubin has done it several times and successfully, here’s her advice on how to find the right person to be the technical other half of a startup:

1. Work your network, whether it’s big or small. To get to the point where she had multiple startups under her belt, Rubin had to work whatever connections she had. Her experience with other startups led to introductions from those CEOs to venture capitalists to other people in the industry. “People know people that are interested in that thing,” Rubin said. “And then they’ll introduce to three more people.” 
2. Know what you want to work on, but don’t make it narrow. “Basically what I did was said ‘Here’s the areas of the types of customer and types of issues that I’m interested in.’ I wanted to meet people who are interested in those same problems, but would be able to come up with a technical idea to solve those problems. It wasn’t so narrow,” Rubin said. A cofounder should be equally interested and passionate about issues and want to be part of a solution.
3. Be willing to take some time, but set aside a period you can afford. “I had breakfast, lunch, and dinner and coffee and drinks. It’s a lot of sitting in a room together and saying ‘What do you think about this? Where do you think this is going?’” Rubin said. Some people will get frustrated with how iterative it is, so it’s better to pick a timeline you can afford to spend looking for your cofounder.
4. Don’t be formulaic. Checking off items on a list won’t cut it because you don’t always know who is going to consider starting something, Rubin said. “Some of it is just, you sit down with each other and say, ‘Would you be able to spend the next five to 10 years working on something really hard together?’ It’s not a short-term thing,” Rubin said.
5. It’s like speed dating, but with a different outcome. There may be lots of open-ended coffee meetings, but finding a match isn’t like going on a date. Instead, you’re going forward with starting a company and always looking for signs on when to pull the plug on the person or on the product you’re developing. “That process, which is like what you’d be doing starting a company, shows you what it’s like. You’re on the road, you’re under pressure to make things happen, and you’re not wasting time because your time is important in all of this,” Rubin said.

The other thing Rubin would caution: a cofounder doesn’t mean you’ve found a product or a market fit.

Rubin and her ClearSky Data cofounder Lazarus Veriakides first started working on something else, taking it on the road and showing customers, but both realized they weren’t truly in love with the product or ready to devote 10 years of their life to it. So they killed it.

“That was hard. That was a really good test of how it works together,” Rubin said.”Laz kinda went and sat in a room by himself and came back with what became ClearSky Data.” While the process of finding a technical cofounder may mean a longer path to get there, the company they cofounded has now raised $12 million in a Series A and emerged from stealth last month.

“Customers want to talk technology but even more they want to talk about what kind of problems they’re having,
 Rubin said. “You don’t need an engineering degree to understand some of that stuff.”

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Marissa Meyer’s news that she’s having twins is both a good and a bad thing for ambitious women.

Pro: She’s definitely a role model for women who want to have it all. Con: Her decision to take a short maternity leave and work throughout it is viewed as a dangerous precedent.

We recently spoke to a CEO who made a similar decision, and she gave us a thoughtful reason wy.

In 2013, Christy Wyatt was appointed CEO of Good Technology. She had been a senior manager at Apple and Motorola, so CEO was a fantastic career move for her. On Friday, she had a big moment: she guided Good to a $425 million cash acquisition by Blackberry.

A few months after she started the job, she and her husband decided to adopt a baby. When the adoption agency called and offered the couple a baby boy, the professional timing couldn’t have been worse. Good Technology had filed for an IPO, and the infant was due the same week.

The couple debated becoming parents at that moment and decided to go with what life was throwing at them.

Then the IPO was postponed.

“Business life is always going to be crazy, you have no way to plan it. We put on an IPO, we took off an IPO or slowed it down. We picked up the pencils again and now we’re selling the company. You just can’t push your private life out around business,” she said.

“Both of these are life-changing events but you make your personal decisions first. And thank heaven I did because I have a beautiful baby boy,” she said.

Wyatt made one big concession to her business life. She took a scant 10 days off on maternity leave and then headed to the office with baby and nanny in tow, working out childcare arrangements with her husband, too.

But she realizes her situation isn’t the norm for most women. 

“I hadn’t just given birth because we had adopted him, so he was literally here in my office at 10 days old and beyond. And everybody knew him as a baby in the hallways,” she said. 

“And that’s not what you expect – definitely not what I expect – of women in the workplace,” she said. 

For Wyatt, at a turning point for both her business and her personal life, her 10-day maternity leave was her best solution to be both a great mom and a great CEO.

“It was a wonderful way for me to have both at the same time,” she said.

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Don’t worry, we are all guilty of this to some degree. The problem is that many of us rely on sheer willpower to get us through the hard times, we think if we just try harder we can succeed. Although that can be the case, why not use every tool we have in our toolbox?

Our brains regulate our everyday activities, movements and thoughts but we tend to overlook how it can be utilized when it comes to goals. Today I want to share three ways you can use your brain to set and achieve goals.  

Step One: Create micro-goals

As kids (and even adults) we’re constantly encouraged to dream big and set audacious goals. There’s nothing wrong with that, but setting long-term goals without chunking them into smaller, bite-sized goals can make these huge goals seem more intimidating and harder to achieve.

In order to reduce the cognitive load of setting out for such a huge goal, break it down into micro-goals so you can achieve “small wins.”

Micro-goals are small, achievable goals that you can set to start propelling yourself towards success.

Let’s suppose you’re a bit socially awkward and you want to work on improving your social skills. A micro-goal that you could set for yourself would be to make eye contact and smile at five people on your commute home. Compare this to your long-term goal which may be to strike up a ten minute conversation with a stranger. By breaking down your larger goal into a smaller and more achievable one, you’re setting yourself up for success.

When you achieve these micro-goals you’ll feel a sense of achievement and happiness, here’s why.

When you achieve something your brain is releasing dopamine, a brain chemical that is commonly known as the “reward” chemical. By setting yourself up to win more frequently, you’re triggering more dopamine releases making you feel happy and more confident. By creating this positive feedback loop in your brain you will feel more motivated to achieve more small wins and eventually your ultimate goal.

How to set micro-goals

When setting micro-goals for yourself, make sure they are specific. Making them specific helps reduce the cognitive load of having to decide what you’re going to have to do next. Our willpower is limited so the more it’s used up, the harder it is to do something. Micro-goals should be:

• Specific: Get specific as to the frequency or quantity of what your goals are.
• Achievable: Make your goals achievable and bite-sized. Keep your long-term goal in mind but trying to achieve such a large goal without the bite-sized ones can make it seem intimidating and harder to achieve than they have to be.
• Given a deadline: By giving yourself a timeline you’ll be able to easily measure if you achieved your goal or not. You will also feel a sense of urgency to get you motivated.
• Rewarded by the action: When you’re working towards something you can’t always control what the outcome will be, but you can control whether or not you do something. For example, if you smile at five people and one out of those five don’t smile back…who cares? You achieved your goal which was the action of smiling. You’re rewarding the action, not someone else’s reaction which is out of your control. You can reward yourself with a favorite food, an hour of guilt-free TV or Web surfing.

Step 2: Write it down to prime your brain

Writing may seem like a lost art these days, but it can work wonders. “Writing things down has been shown to increase retention by 30 percent.” Writing down your goals, why you want to achieve them and what your future could look like will help you prime your brain for success. Here’s why.

The act of physically writing something down activates your RAS system in your brain which is responsible for filtering out unnecessary information to help you focus on the stuff that’s important.

Have you ever considered buying a new car and then start seeing those cars everywhere! No, everyone and their Mom did not buy that car overnight, it’s actually your RAS in action. You primed your brain to focus on that type of car because you deemed it important and your brain is helping you out by filtering out unnecessary information and focusing on the more important stuff.

How to prime your brain

Using this same principle, writing down your goals will help your RAS system focus on them. Here are some questions to ponder:

• What would your life look like if you achieved your goal?
• What happens if you don’t achieve your goal or make a change?
• What’s one small thing you can do now to get there?

When you’re writing down these answers make sure you get specific and deeply imagine the answers. By creating imagery around your answers you’re priming your RAS and focusing your attention towards the goals you want to achieve.

Step 3: Use habits to your advantage

How much thinking do you do in the mornings as soon as you wake up and brush your teeth? Probably not much, it’s automatic right? That’s because it’s a habit. Habits regulate our everyday lives and they’re literally ingrained in our brains.

Habits live in the part of the brain called the basal ganglia which is located near the brain stem. It’s a very old, primitive part of the brain responsible for habits and habit creation. It’s so powerful that people who suffer brain damage and experience memory loss will still retain their old habits as long as the basal ganglia was not damaged.

So what are habits?

According to Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit, the habit loop consists of the cue, routine and reward. The cue is what triggers you to do something, routine is what you do and the reward is the feeling you get from doing the routine. For example, when you brush your teeth you do it first time in the morning (cue), you put toothpaste on your brush and start brushing (routine) and when you’re done you feel that minty, tingling sensation (reward).

How to use habits to your advantage

You can use the power of habit to make certain behaviors automatic. Let’s suppose you want to exercise more, here’s what a habit loop could look like:

• Cue: Put your shoes by your front door before you leave for work. As soon as you get home you see them and remember it’s time to run
• Routine: The running part! You can set a micro-goal to simply run for ten minutes to make it achievable, rather than an intimidating goal of running ten miles
• Reward: The dopamine release from exercise. If that’s not strong enough, you can also bribe yourself with a reward of a beer or an hour of TV

Transforming your habits is a great way to hack your brain for success. The most effective way to change your habits is to focus on changing the “routine.” The cues will always be there, so you can use those same cues (i.e. time of day, environment, preceding event, etc) to trigger a new routine. So rather than plopping on the couch as soon as you get home from work, you’re changing the routine to going for a run as soon as you walk in the door.

Conclusion Free eBook

When you’re working towards crushing your goals you want every tool available…so use your head! Understanding your brain and ways to use it to your advantage will give you an edge when it comes to being the best person you can be.

This is a guest post by communication coach Katrina Razavi, she helps people who struggle with social anxiety and social confidence become socially attractive and live their best lives. Visit her site and get the free eBook: 5 Easy Ways to Avoid Awkward Conversations

Read Next: 7 goal-setting strategies to help you achieve great things on social media

Image credit: Shutterstock

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Up to this point, the whole VR field has been treated with a fair amount of skepticism, with many remembering the early ‘90s when clunky forms of VR systems were presented as the next stage in gaming before being quickly discarded in favor of faster versions of the standard consoles. While different developers have continued to work on VR related projects, they gained little notice until Facebook joined the party with their 2014 purchase of Oculus for a price tag of $2 billion and 23.1 shares of Facebook stock.

The intrigue surrounding Oculus and it Rift console is its promise of adding a new dimension to the world of gaming. So why has the social media and advertising giant Facebook taken such a keen interest in VR and what does this say about the future of the technology in consumer culture? Ultimately, is this the right move, or is Facebook making a similar mistake to Google’s Glass?

Getting to know the new kid on the block

In full disclosure, I am probably the furthest thing from a gamer. I can count on both my hands the number of times that they have ever held a controller in them. So in looking to judge the potential future of the Oculus Rift, I spoke with Yossi Preminger, who is considered one of Israel’s top VR UX consultants. He invited me over to try out his Rift and explained why this round of exploration into VR is different from the last.

“The feeling of real immersion in the virtual world is really such a key element of why the Rift is so groundbreaking” says Preminger. ”In the previous generation, users were simply looking at a 3D screen. Now the technology makes it possible to offer a much more comprehensive experience.”

Preminger started me off with a simple scenario where I was sitting in front of a desk. I was unable to shake the fact that I knew that none of it was real, feeling disappointed that I failed at picking up the pencil in front of me. However it was when he put me on a roller coaster and I felt my stomach clench up as the car plummeted into its descent that I began to understand the true impact that the system was having on me. Suddenly being given a 360-degree view of my surroundings was unsettling yet amazing.

Preminger explains that Oculus “first gained attention in 2012 at the Electronic Entertainment Expo when John Carmack of Doom fame used an early version of the Rift to show off Doom 3 at the convention. Soon after wowing the crowd with the prototype, Rift designer Palmer Luckey launched his campaign on Kickstarter, raising nearly $2.5 million. Expecting to receive orders for 100 or so units, the first designer kit (DK1) model pre-sold some 9,500 units.”

Break out power

While the excitement within parts of the gaming community over the next generation of VR tech has been palpable, it is unclear right now if it will branch out into the mainstream. Preminger notes that it is unlikely to become massively popular in the very near term, answering that, “It’s complicated. It will take a while for it to break out. Even if they make one or two million units, it will remain a niche sector in comparison with other consumer devices. But within the next two years, it will become a lot more accessible to the public.”

Like most consumer devices, VR is going through its growing pains. “It’s still at the early adopters stage. At a current cost of $400, it’s not that expensive,” Preminger notes. While some VR is gearing towards mobile use by 2016, such as Oculus’s Gear VR for Samsung smartphones, most VR applications, and the better ones, still require heavy computing power. He asserts that, “Right now it takes some serious computing power to handle the programs … so long as people have to remain connected to their computers or TVs, it will remain limited.”

He adds, “The big jump is dependent on Google. A mobile OS like Android is not at a level that can run smoothly enough to jump between games and other applications.” Ultimately, he believes that, “We are likely to see mobile VR in 2017 after they have fixed these issues.”

Google has already started laying the groundwork for their entrance into VR with their Cardboard initiative and are encouraging developers to start creating content.

Why is Facebook so interested in it?

Virtual reality is hardly the first topic to come to mind when thinking about the social media giant. That said, future thinking and seeking out new platforms for their services are definitely part of their DNA.

“This is really a new communication platform,” Zuckerberg said in a post after the acquisition, “By feeling truly present, you can share unbounded spaces and experiences with the people in your life. Imagine sharing not just moments with your friends online, but entire experiences and adventures.”

“It was a brilliant yet obvious move by Zuckerberg,” says Preminger. “Virtual reality is an incredible way to interact socially with others. Facebook’s business is communication and this tech can help their users share even richer content with each other.”

Like Google, Facebook has recognized the potential of the technology not as it is now, but in future models that will be far less bulky and widespread among users.

Are these just rose colored glasses?

Not everyone has jumped on the Oculus bandwagon. Ranging from the practical to the skeptical, a number of issues could get in the way of VR becoming the new hot medium.

One of the highest profile critics of Oculus has been James Cameron, who last October called it “a yawn”. Cameron has stated that he has not seen any potential for a new kind of interaction for movie goers that would justify excitement over the VR platform, and that there has not been any real movement in producing content for this format.

Andrew Whalen comes at VR with the opposite critique, saying that the experience of watching movies could be too interactive. By giving the viewers too much control, he says that directors would lose their narrative tools to focus the audience’s attention on key aspects essential to the storytelling.

Even harsher, video game designer Denny Unger believes that there are health risks to using the device. Specifically, he is concerned that a user could have a heart attack during the immersive life-like experience. Some scenes in a game could be too sudden, shocking, or scary, causing an unhealthy person to collapse. This is a serious threat that as VR technology becomes more seamless, developers and their lawyers will have to consider.

From a feminist perspective, Dana Boyd has made the claim as it has been designed, VR technology is sexist since it is set for a male brain. She cites studies where many more women than men have become nauseous when using VR systems, likely due to differences in depth perception. While this theory still needs more testing, making sure that Rift and other devices are equally attuned for both men and women alike is crucial. As more female gamers join the crowd, meeting their needs should be an industry standard.

Perhaps one of the most significant obstacles to the widespread adoption of the Rift is that it requires a heavy duty PC to get that smooth game flow. This level of computing power does not come cheap, and can be cumbersome for users looking to bring their system with them to a friend’s house. Becoming a self contained unit will be an essential part of VR gaming in growing up. As noted above, the move to improving mobile OS will play a big role in making this type of platform more accessible to the masses.

Taking the next steps

The final VR product is not yet fully ready. Companies like Oculus have models and are ready on the technical side, and are expected to start sales in Q1 of 2016.

The DK2 model has been in circulation for the developer community, and the consumer version is expected to ship in Q1 of 2016. The new model will likely cost somewhere between $300 to $400 and come with a number of improvements that make it lighter and more responsive. It will include an XBox controller and headphones. Users can also buy Touch handsets, a new intuitive concept that adds a level of fluidity and control unique to the Rift experience.

Not to be left out as the only ones in the game, HTC’s Vive and Sony’s Project Morpheus have come up against Oculus as competing devices. iFinity is working on VR with a very wide field of view as a part of their smart cities projects. Other groups that are experimenting with Open Source Virtual Reality, or OSVR, include companies like Sixense and Razor, both of whom are pushing for more open source VR development. Since Samsung is partnering with Oculus, they are unlikely to be in direct competition at this point.

It is also worth mentioning that since 1993, there has been constant use of VR in the business world. Its use has been focused in sectors like the military, higher education, and medical. In manufacturing, it can play a key role in the planning process when drawing designs, especially in auto and aero design where using virtual mock ups can save time and money.

Concerning potential general interest users, Preminger notes that the VR platform can appeal to everyone. It’s important to state that it’s a medium. It has a wide range of uses and allows for all kinds of interaction that previously were not available.

Where does it go from here?

New technologies deserve a healthy dose of pessimism and even potentially good ideas can end in poor execution.

After a 20-year break from the consumer market, it looks like VR is ready to start its comeback. This will be an uphill battle and is unlikely to catch on quickly, but once it does, it can be expected to change societal interactions and the way we experience the world around us.

Read Next: Oculus buying ‘virtual hands’ tech is cool but we still don’t know how many people really want VR

Image credit: Shutterstock

This post first appeared on Geektime. 

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Venture capitalists invested US$48.3 billion into US startups last year, the highest amount since the dot-com bubble burst back in 2001. Investment increased 62 per cent year-on-year. But what is evident in the US is also visible in Africa, to an even greater extent.

The Venture Finance for Africa Report – released by online funding platform VC4Africa – reported total investment in African startups last year increased by more than 100 percent to almost US$27 million. It might not sound revolutionary, but given these figures are just a drop in the ocean as they account for only startups listed on the VC4Africa platform, they are an indication of a greater trend.

In reality, probably closer to US$500 million was invested in African startups last year, notably large funding rounds for e-commerce entities such as Konga, Takealot and Jumia. There has been no slowdown in 2015, with a variety of impressive funding rounds being announced.

Show me the VC money

Kenya-based solar startup M-KOPA raised US$12.45 million, Nigerian hotel booking platform Hotels.ng US$1.2 million, and South African e-logistics startup Parcelninja US$1.7 million. There have been many more, and also a couple of sizeable exits in the form of Kenya’s Weza Tele and South Africa’s WooThemes.

For Bunmi Akinyemiju, chief executive officer (CEO) of Nigeria’s Venture Garden Group, the increase in funding is solely down to the numbers related to Africa right now, notably growth in GDP and middle classes, and demographics.

“Africa has been recently described as the next economic frontier with the necessary supporting variables to match,” he said.

“The key commercial hubs on the continent like Nigeria, South Africa and Kenya not only boast significantly huge populations, but they also boast an emergent, young middle class with spending power; when you throw into this the increasing technological sophistication and consumer brand awareness, you get a demographic that is is every investor’s delight.”

Akinyemiju said VCs can assist this process by supporting and encouraging the growth of startups willing to go after this “vast potential,” especially when compared to other markets.

“Comparing this growth to the seeming slowdown and saturation of growth in more matured markets or even the BRIC countries is also responsible for VC chasing the new frontier.”

Investments are coming from a variety of sources, with even mobile operators such as Millicom, Safaricom and Orange playing a part with the launch of investment funds. Private equity firms in the US and Europe are also looking increasingly to Africa, with large funds recently announced by the likes of Helios Investment Partners and Abraaj.

Individual angels remain thin on the ground across most African countries, but are beginning to materialise. This is especially the case in South Africa. Investment networks and clubs are also in vogue, such as the African Business Angels Network (ABAN), made up regional networks from countries such as Nigeria, Cameroon Egypt and Ghana.

One of these angel investors, Vinny Lingham, founder of Gyft, says the attraction comes from the fact Africa represents the “final frontier for humans on earth.”

A land of opportunity

“Nowhere else do you have more than one billion people who are so underprivileged and under-catered to. There is a huge business opportunity here,” said Lingham, who has invested in a number of South African startups.

The VC4Africa report found investors are primarily attracted to startups in e-commerce, clean technology, e-health and financial services, with Kenya, South Africa, Nigeria, and Uganda key destinations.

Akinyemiju agrees with these primary areas of interest, but said there are many more opportunities out there as investors wake up to the potential of putting money into the continent’s startups.

“Almost every growth-sector that takes advantage of large populations and growing middle class is attractive in this region,” he said.

He added that investors were not looking for anything different in startups in Africa as anywhere else in the world – good teams, large addressable markets, competitive landscapes and unique advantages are key. Lingham agrees, saying vital factors are “well-priced valuations and strong management teams who are “all-in” on their business and will work night and day to make it a success”.

There is one key difference, however, according to Akinyemiju.

“In Africa, due to the early stage nature, there is a lot of focus on early profitability,” he said.

“Questions that investors usually ask include ‘does the startup have customers already?’ Investors are harsher on startups in this environment, largely because the risks are higher and there are very few entrepreneur-turn-investors – who truly get early-stage venture deals the way Silicon Valley venture capital would play.”

Risky business

For Lingham, the risks are higher because of a shortage of business-friendly policies, high levels of crime, and unstable currencies.

Akinyemiju says investments on the continent are often hamstrung by bureaucratic bottlenecks, meddlesome government policies, and a lack of infrastructure. Yet he is optimistic that the positive developments seen over the last couple of years will continue.

“There have been some successes nonetheless, and irrespective of the hurdles. So I’m not sure those are the key mechanisms to encourage investment. I think the big one is, create some successes! Create an interesting exit. The rest is easy.

“’Amazon buys Konga’, ‘Visa buys Interswitch’ – a headline like that will activate a large movement of foreign capital right away. This will instantly open things up in an interesting way.”

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My thoughts are highly influenced by the best book I’ve ever read on change management, Point B by Peter Bregman. If you haven’t read it, get it immediately. Everyone has to manage change, whether it be introducing agile marketing to an organization or introducing a new technology or service to a customer.

1. Make the Case

Why is the change being made? What’s in it for the participants in the change? You have to answer these questions first, and I try to do so by appealing to the heart, not the brain. I do this by telling stories, and weaving those stories into a narrative. If you’re unsure about the difference between a story and a narrative, see this post about story and narrative. The narrative, or the promise, of agile marketing is to increase the predictability, transparency, velocity, and adaptability of the marketing function. It leads to marketing that is done in a rapid, iterative, experimental, don’t-be-afraid-to-fail fashion that complements agile development.

Involve the participants in making the case for agile marketing. Someone told me a long time ago, “People support what they help create.” I think that’s true. If the participants in the change are making the case, and they’re involved early on, their level of engagement will be much higher. No one likes change foisted upon them. But change where they have some control, and that meets their needs . . . that’s much more likely to succeed.

I involve people by asking questions. Here are a few of mine, but make sure that you add your own:

• What do you love about marketing? What do you find frustrating?
• What’s working here (at this organization)? What’s not working?
• Does management understand what marketing does? Why or why not? Does sales understand marketing? Again, why or why not?
• What’s your experience with the pace of change of marketing? Is it pretty much the same as it was 10 years ago, or has it changed? How has it changed? What about the next 10 years? Do you think the pace of change will slow down or speed up? What are you doing to prepare for it?
• Do you have enough resources (everyone in marketing always answers no)? Would something that helped you get more done with the same resources be helpful here?

The answers to these questions lead to the reasons for change. Write them down. Refer back to them.

2. Sponsorship

Introducing “agile” into a marketing organization requires sponsorship, not just from the most senior levels of marketing, but from sales and general management, too. If they’re not committed to it, don’t do it. I once taught a class on Agile Marketing to a group, and the VP of Marketing sat in the back of the room, working on email, occasionally stepping out to attend meetings or perhaps do something else. She never participated in any of the exercises, and the only questions she asked were skeptical. Not surprisingly, agile marketing failed at that organization. I never understood why she spent the money in the first place to bring me in.

The sponsorship has to be the right kind. It can’t simply be a top-down dictum. It has to be the kind of sponsorship that is going to allow the team to make some of the critical decisions and find their own way. It has to hold them accountable, but also realize that there are going to be bumps along the way, and even some failures. If you’re not experiencing a few failures, you’re not taking enough risks. Good managers know this.

3. Build Competency

Learn the language of agile marketing. Understand the difference between a sprint and a scrum. Learn how to write user stories. Assign story points, and start measuring your velocity. By all means, take a class or read a book, but the best way to build competency is by doing. Realize that you won’t get it all right during that first Sprint. That’s OK. If you get it half right and improve from there, you’ll be fine.

Don’t practice “Scrumbut.” This is where you say, “We practice Scrum, but . . .” and you list most of the things that are at the heart of Scrum, and you really aren’t practicing it at all. Give the process a chance before you start modifying it for your own needs. Then, if you really have something that works better for you, by all means implement it. But build some competency first.

4. Persistence and Grit

Teams that succeed in agile marketing, just like teams that succeed in anything, have persistence and grit. It can easily take six months to a year before you start seeing all the benefits of agile marketing. The desire to change may be strong at first, but it will eventually get lost in the daily grind. People who persist due so by making small daily changes (like the daily scrum) and by showing perseverance. If you make a commitment and follow through on it, you are much more likely to succeed in making a change.

What’s your experience? For those of you who have successfully or unsuccessfully introduced agile marketing to your organization, what worked and what didn’t? I’d love to hear your stories.

Jim Ewel is an entrepreneur and a turnaround CEO. He has been blogging about agile marketing since 2011, and along with John Cass, organized SprintZero, which put together the Agile Marketing Manifesto. Jim spent 12 years at Microsoft in sales and marketing and the last 14 years as the CEO of three companies: GoAhead Software (sold to Oracle), Adometry (sold to Google), and InDemand Interpreting. You can learn more about Agile Marketing at his blog, www.agilemarketing.net.

Article source: VB http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/05/how-to-get-started-with-agile-marketing/

That said, HTC will remain on the FTSE TWSE Taiwan Mid-Cap 100 Index.

As to the significance of the Top 50 index, it comprises the most highly-capitalised blue chip stocks and represents nearly 70 percent of the Taiwanese market, according to FTSE Group. By comparison, the Mid-Cap 100 index only represents about 20 percent of the market.

The news comes just days after the troubled Taiwanese smartphone maker — already in the midst of a major business realignment program, which will see it slash 15 percent of its workforce — reported its lowest monthly revenue in eight years for the month ending August.

HTC’s listing on the exchange is expected to be replaced by Eclat Textile, an elastic functional fabric product provider that has seen its shares jump as much as 55 percent so far this year, the reports said.

While local media attributed the announcement to TWSE, the exchange doesn’t appear to have put up a release on its website, suggesting the announcement may have come over local broadcast media or some other means.

The news will certainly come as a blow to HTC, which on Monday said that 600 factory jobs are to be axed at its Taipei and Taoyuan locations. Meanwhile, if rumours are true that the company is also planning to sell a Shanghai unit — which it has to date denied — then it’s possible we’ll see more cuts there, too.

Above: HTC’s stock performance over the past year. Source: Google Finance

A leaner HTC is currently trying to focus on its core product lines: high-end smartphones, connected devices and wearables, and a move into virtual reality with its Vive headset (which was recently delayed).

The VR push just saw the company’s cofounder, Peter Chou, announce plans at the end of August to join the board of a Hong Kong-based visual effects studio.

HTC’s stock has fallen more than 95 percent since its peak in April 2011, with one report from Bloomberg last month summing up just how dire the company’s situation has become:

A 60 percent plunge in HTC’s stock this year pushed its market value to below its cash on hand. That means investors were effectively saying the smartphone maker’s brand, factories and buildings were worthless.

In that report, Bloomberg cited Birdy Lu, an analyst with Deutsche Bank AG, as saying, “We think these [cost-cutting] efforts are not enough to turn HTC around in the next two years. HTC has little chance to compete with iPhone and Samsung given limited resources, and might continue to lose shares to Chinese brands in mid/low-end segment.”

We’ve written before about how Chinese smartphone makers like Xiaomi are squeezing other players out of the market.

TWSE has a combined market capitalization of about $715 billion as of Friday. By comparison, the New York Stock Exchange had a combined market capitalization of $27 trillion as of July.

We’ve reached out to HTC for comment, and will update you if we hear back.

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Article source: VB http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/06/htc-is-being-removed-from-a-major-index-on-taiwans-stock-exchange-effective-sept-21/

Let’s start with the facts: As part of iOS 9, which will launch September 9, Apple will allow users to download ad blocking extensions for its browser, Safari. These extensions will have nothing to do with in-app ads and will only work on mobile web. That is a very important point, for the following reasons:

The mobile web is not where your audience is

Old-fashioned advertising had marketers following a very clear mantra: Be everywhere. But when mobile took over, this point of view became as relevant as a brick cell phone, and marketers adopted a new goal instead: Follow your audience.

Mobile marketers who feel stressed by the notion of mobile web ad-blocking must have missed the memo, because their audience is not on mobile web. Their audience is on mobile apps and has been for a while. To be exact 90 percent of today’s mobile activity is on mobile apps, according to a recent Flurry report, leaving only a small window of opportunity for mobile web ads.

Blocking ads on Safari is probably not going to stop marketers from reaching their audience on mobile. If anything, this could be a serious money saver for advertisers that have been investing in the wrong platforms all along.

The mobile web is not where the industry is

Looking at the latest numbers from eMarketer, it is clear that ad spend on mobile apps is taking over big-time. This 1:3 ratio means that mobile marketers will not have to move too much in order to make the necessary shift to in-app advertising.

There are really no surprises here. Even before Apple declared its intention to block ads on Safari, analysts predicted that app ad spending would continue to grow at a rapid pace. The new feature on iOS 9 will only allow them to say “we told you so” a lot sooner.

More apps will join the party

The main victims in this story are publishers. Apple is about to block their mobile-web ads, leaving them no choice other than to switch to apps, which is what they should be doing anyway. Mobile marketers, this ad-blocking festival is not a problem, it’s an opportunity. We can expect to see more publishers develop apps, creating an even bigger mobile media playground for advertisers to work with. This should help balance out any rise in advertising costs that might follow the drop in ad inventory.

And it’s not like publishers are out of options. In addition to developing their own apps (which most have chosen to do regardless), publishers can use other apps to monetize their content. We have witnessed a shift in mobile publishing over the past year, with mobile titans presenting a more serious approach to news apps: Snapchat has been investing in its Discover platform, Facebook is testing a standalone news app, and Apple will replace Newsstand with a new, shiny platform for publishers. Not bad at all.

Problems with in-app ad links are only a short-term concern

As an earlier VentureBeat story pointed out, in-app ads won’t be completely unaffected by the iOS upgrade. In addition to ad-blocking extensions, Apple will be introducing App Transport Security, which will affect the links leading to mobile ads. Now, while mobile marketers must be familiar with this change, they should also keep in mind that it is just another technical move in the perpetual game of ping-pong between different forces in our field. It is only a matter of (short) time before ad networks update their technology in order to deal these restrictions.

The main message here is not that Apple is against the mobile web, or ads in general, but rather that mobile should be used a certain way. The sooner we realize that smartphones are not in fact a smaller version of desktops, the better our mobile experience will be, both as users and as marketers.

Gilad Bechar is the founder and CEO of Moburst, a global mobile marketing agency. Gilad serves as a mentor to rising startups at Microsoft Accelerator, The Technion, Tel-Aviv University, Unit 8200, and for strategic Moburst clients and is the Academic Director of the Mobile Marketing and New-Media course at Tel-Aviv University.

Article source: VB http://venturebeat.com/2015/09/06/relax-apple-is-not-going-to-kill-mobile-advertising/

With the bio “Embrace the future of gaming,” the account’s emergence less than a week before the Apple TV launch feels like more than mere coincidence. 

It’s long been rumored that Apple is going to release a TV-specific version of the App Store with its refreshed hardware. Right now, it’s possible to play games on the Apple TV, but it requires mirroring them from your iPhone or iPad onto the big screen, which can result in an experience that’s laggy or otherwise un-optimized.

A dedicated TV App Store would allow game developers to tailor their apps specifically to the new device. Tech Insider reporter Alex Heath called the possibility of an influx of third-party gaming apps built to work perfectly with the Apple TV the “most exciting part” of the upcoming launch.

The timely launch of Apple’s new Twitter account certainly indicates that the company might see the “future of gaming” as taking place in your living room.

Article source: SAI http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/typepad/alleyinsider/silicon_alley_insider/~3/U_lQSat6_Vw/apple-app-store-games-twitter-account-2015-9