Non-Linear Communication (a.k.a. Being Neil Postman’s Bitch)

Everyone has some brush with fame. In my life I’ve been fortunate (or cursed, depending on how you look at it) to have several moments where I have been exposed to either great, popular, or paradigm-shifting people. When I was a freshly-minted Ph.D in the 1990s, I was a rising star in the field of Media Ecology and found myself attracting the attention of none-other than Neil Postman, who was most amused to call me “the poster child of new technology.”

Companies should not rely on Facebook as a long-term strategy

If your company (or you, yourself) has invested a great deal of time and money on a “Facebook strategy,” you are probably not going to like what I have to say. You may find yourself getting defensive, angry, and probably mutter naughty words under your breath aimed in my general direction (or even place them in the comments section). Fine; so be it, but just remember when you fail to get what you expect from devoting your time, energy, money and effort into Facebook as a B2C strategy, well, you were warned.

Early Lessons about Google Buzz

Google’s Buzz has only been released into the wild for three days, but already there are numerous issues surrounding privacy that may wind up severely damaging Google’s reputation. Google’s decision to automatically interconnect everyone and their brother (quite literally) has triggered the Law of Unintended Consequences, prompting concerns about everything from abused spouses wanting to be anonymous to authoritarian governments cracking down on dissenters. Whether Google has jumped the shark on this one in terms of public trust remains to be seen, but we can still learn some lessons immediately.

M-A-M™: Persuading the Audience

Once you have your Message nailed down, you need to take a closer look at how you approach your Audience. It isn’t as simple as “if you build it, they will come” (Field of Dreams has a lot to answer for). In order to correctly approach your audience here are some tests that you can place upon your message to ensure that you are truly connecting with them. Truly.

M-A-M™: Focusing on the Message

So we’ve looked at the overall view of M-A-M™ (Message-Audience-Medium), and discussed about how too many people try to work their way backwards and how that simply doesn’t work. In order to start your way down the funnel, we need to begin with the Message, because it’s from this point that your persuasive marketing strategy (whether it be for yourself, your company, or your product) must flow.

FCoE Killer Sweet Spot: Health Care?

Recently I was talking to some health care people about what it is that I do, and tried to put it into context that they would understand. The more I started to weave the fabric (pun intended) of what FCoE is and what it could mean in health care terms. The more I spoke the more their heads nodded and agreed. It got me thinking: could hospitals and healthcare really be the sweet spot for FCoE adoption?

Re-Examining FCoE and iSCSI Pros and Cons

It should be obvious that I’ve been doing a lot of thinking about FCoE over the past 2 years, despite only blogging about it for a couple of months (hey, I’ve been busy!). But someone brought up something recently that makes me second-guess the role that FCoCEE will play in the marketplace in comparison to, say, iSCSI. In particular, with vendors now offering 1 Million IOPS in their NICs, is there enough of an advantage performance-wise?

Modified FCoE Adoption Curve

So, David Vellante created an excellent FCoE adoption curve posted on Wikibon today. When the conversation about “how quickly” or “how much” is applied to FCoE, whether it be hype, fact, or perception, I believe that David’s curve is an excellent broad based timeline that can be seen as a great metaphor. However, I think there is a major shift in the curve’s shape that should be included. Sadly, that shape is a slight downturn before we hit the full upswing.