In the event of a technical demonstration meltdown, a failed smile and scramble to correct a presentation, or a smooth transition to printed material and verbal description, will tell you just how confident a sales person is in his product and organization.  It is a top-down mindset.  

HR Demo Show organizer John Sumser believes the way a vendor handles that sort of adversity can tell you a great deal about that company’s culture.

Next week’s HR Demo Show and Talent Management Technology Showcase at the Palazzo/Venetian Hotel & Resort in Las Vegas, NV, December 8-9, 2010, will be the largest collection of HR Technology Vendor Demo’s ever assembled in one place.  I will be there covering the event with an all-star team of HR Bloggers, including Geoff Webb, Sarah White, Jennifer McClure, and Kevin W. Grossman.

Having been in technical sales, in one form or another, most of my life; and currently working for an HR technology company that puts culture first, I have seen many a demo go awry and know how corporate culture can affect the result.  I have trained sales people for many years and always look forward to critiquing how vendors market their wares, and the level of aplomb that accompanies the inevitable, occasional, technical train wreck.

We’ll be previewing the 2010 HR Demo Show this Wednesday night during the #TNL chat on Twitter from 8-10pm CT.  Join me there for the conversation and a special visit from Social Media strategist, Jason Falls.  And join me in Las Vegas next week to get a close up look at some of the best HR Technology on the market today. 

I’ll be most interested in how the train wrecks are handled.

Thanksgiving is a great time let those in your network know how much you appreciate them.  If you are a job seeker, you might thank your network for keeping you in mind for any job opportunities that fit your profile.  And remind them of what you do and of what you seek.

Peggy McKee (@salesrecruiter) was a speaker at the TalentNet Live conference in August of this year.  While there, she recorded videos with a few of us on various career topics.  Below is one she and I did about building a focused network for career gain and job opportunities. 

Hope you find this helpful.  Happy Thanksgiving!

Focused Networking - How to Land the Job You Have Been Searching For

My friend, Etienne Besson (aka @HappyEmployee), posted a synopsis and his thoughts on Facebook’s announcement of it’s new messaging system.  This great post needs no additions by me.  But I wanted to share it with my readers.

Facebook Announcement: Messages Between The Lines

by Etienne  Besson on 16 November 2010
Last night I watched the live stream of Facebook presenting their new messaging system. I still don’t know what it does exactly, but I found the various sub-messages very interesting.

Like our customers, we’re just regular people

Of course, it would have been a bit weird to see Mark Zuckerberg (CEO) and Andrew Bosworth (Director of Engineering) with ties. But the fact that both were wearing t-shirts and occasionally paused to look for the right words certainly supported the “we’re you’re buddies” image.
And frankly, I prefer hearing enthusiastic people talk about something they created rather than suits selling their revolutionary product that will facilitate a paradigm shift by leveraging yadda yadda yawn.

We’re here to serve you

Before the presentation really started, Zuckerberg explained that they initially wanted to have the announcement in Palo Alto (where Facebook has its offices). But then they realized that there was this big conference (what a coincidence…) and decided to travel to San Francisco to make it more convenient for everybody.
They even brought chairs from the Facebook cafeteria.

We have lifes

Social networks only for anti-social loners? No way, even the executives at Facebook have lifes. Zuckerberg talked about spending Thanksgiving with his girlfriend (they have been together for several years) and their families.
Later on, Andrew Bosworth also jokingly mentioned that he already had friends before Facebook.

We talk and listen to our customers

Zuckerberg said that he had the idea for the new messaging system after talking to high school girls at one of the thanksgiving dinners. They told him that email was too slow and that they preferred IM and Facebook.
I thought it was quite funny when he said that most of the time he finds out about his new Facebook messages through email (like me), while the young ladies were on Facebook anyway.

We only want to satisfy existing needs

It was very interesting how Zuckerberg and Bosworth positioned the new service as something that is closer to a real life conversation and therefore much more natural than the outdated and inconvenient email services.
Although they obviously think that it will change the way we will communicate online, they mentioned several times that if they do a good job, then people will start using it. What modesty.
They also stressed that although they would make a Facebook email address available to their users, it was purely optional.

No Gmail Killer

Our customers come first

Although many of their employees identify with their email address, they will switch internally to @fb.com in order to make the @facebook.com addresses available to their customers.

We’re not Google’s enemy

Before the announcement there were many articles mentioning Facebook’s “Gmail Killer”. During the Q&A part Zuckerberg seized the opportunity to say that this wasn’t true. He even proclaimed on two occasions that “Gmail is a really good product”.
Of course he didn’t mention that Facebook is already a serious competitor to Google in terms of search traffic and online advertising.

What I really thought

Zuckerberg and Bosworth are not the guys next door who grab a clean t-shirt, jump on stage and spontaneously talk about their newest product. They’re managing a hugely successful company and they’re very good at it.
I think they also chose the right approach. In the past they weren’t very respectful of their users privacy and repeatedly tested the limits in ways that backfired. This time it’s all about being nice and helping you stay in touch with your friends and family (I should have counted how many times they used the word “Mom”) and having control over your communication channels.
I still don’t know how their “modern messaging system” works, but I understood that it offers “seamless integration” and helps map out the social graph”.

Video: Andrew Bosworth explains what it’s about

Here’s a video explaining the ideas behind Facebook’s new messaging system.
And if you missed the official announcement, here’s your chance to hear about the cousin who only uses SMS and the grandmother with her box of love letters.

I need an invite

Do I want to check out Facebook’s new messaging sytem including my own @facebook.com email address? Of course! It’s a shiny new toy and it might be great.
Will it be useful for me? I don’t know, but I can’t wait to find out.
Now if only I could get hold of an invite…

I have met the top leaders from some of the country’s biggest restaurant brands here at the People Report Best Practices Conference in Addison, TX.  It is day three of conference activities that will culminate tonight with a fun celebration that includes entertainment by one of my favorite local bands, Emerald City.  For me, this is also the end of my first three weeks as a new People Report and Black Box Intelligence (PRBBI) team member during which we have released a major product update, and sped through the subsequent scramble to put finishing touches on this conference.  Crazy and wonderful at the same time.
This year’s Best Practices Conference has been amazing.  I’m not exaggerating when I say that PRBBI puts on one of the best conference experiences I have seen.  I am, right now, sitting next to HR blogger pal, Mike VanDervort, who whole-heartedly agrees. 
Aside from amazing networking, speakers, and the incredible experience of packing meal boxes for the hungry all yesterday morning, at the North Texas Food Bank, with 150 other volunteers from this conference, I have learned about some innovative ways that businesses are using my favorite social media tools to engage with customers.  Tools like Twitter and Foursquare are getting interesting for things like tracking influencers.
According to Paul Barron, Chief Digital Brand Officer for Genghis Grill, and Founder of branding firm, DigitalCoCo, we are now looking at the value of social tools in terms of the social graph that they are creating.  Social Graph is a term that Facebook started using a few years ago to describe their mapping of everyone and how they are related.  It is now possible to easily track who the key influencers are in your niche on places like Twitter and Foursquare too.   You can also track their likes and dislikes,  And if you can track the influencers, you can engage with them and their networks.
Genghis Grill, for instance, discovered that social media users who like Genghis Grill’s brand, or similar brands, also are really into music.  So they created http://www.genghisgrilltv.com/, where they are promoting the Genghis Live Music Tour, that allows users to vote for local bands to play events at some top Genghis locations, and a final event with a lucky winner at South by Southwest in Austin, TX.
They are also innovating with mayorship contests for Foursquare users, as well as tracking check-ins in some very inventive ways.  There are some other really cool things that Paul is doing about which he swore us to secrecy.  But, suffice to say, they are utilizing the powerful user data that can be derived from these social platforms to create very intimate customer relationships.
There is so much passion and compassion in this room today as we wrap up the 15th annual People Report Best Practices Conference.  The theme for this year is People, Profits, Planet.  The executives here are walking the talk.  They care about their people, their customers, and the environment.  I’m just happy to be here with them.
My new contact information, in case you don’t have it yet, is:
Craig Fisher
Vice President Business Development
People Report | Black Box Intelligence
Cell: 214.394.0909 Office: 972.733.6822