Inside Chris’s Head

You might get the impression from the books that I have been reading that I am working on a “do it yourself MBA by mail” course. The truth is not far from that.

As the chief technologist at a community marketing agency and in my previous endeavors I have lived through many of the triumphs and pitfalls chronicled in numerous business and marketing books.

• I learned, among other things, the value of a “sincere tie” at Watson’s IBM.
• I searched for excellence at Hewlett-Packard back during the days of the HP Way.
• My first startup (Momenta) died trying to cross Geoffrey Moore’s Chasm.
• I learned to start a project with a t-shirt design at Apple as instructed by Kawasaki.
• I bet on the value of internet community with the author’s of Net Gain (dedicated in part to the 3 founders of my current company).

I have built and launched products, hired and managed teams. I have debated the 5 P’s of marketing as they apply to my business, but it turns out I had never actually read about them. I became increasingly aware of my ignorance. Those of you who know me know that I am uncomfortable with ignorance.

And so the process of re-educating, re-making and re-branding my self continues.

Popularity: 30% [?]

Today is the last day in My Oovoo Day, which might more accurately been named My Oovoo Couple of Weeks. What is Oovoo? Does the post office deliver mail on My Oovoo Day?

Oovoo is a new video chatting application that is available for Mac and Windows. It allows up to 6 people to have a video chat at the same time in a display that has been compared (by people like me who watched too much TV in their formative years) to the opening credits of Brady Bunch or the grid for Hollywood Squares.

My Oovoo Day was a cleaver marketing strategy to get promotional buzz for the software. The organizers of My Oovoo Day gathered a number of popular bloggers and podcasters and arranged for them to hold a series of chats. You could then sign up for one of up to 5 slots for each chat. As expected the bloggers and podcasters promoted the day. I signed up to chat with John Wall of Marketing Over Coffee, CC Chapman from Managing the Grey (and Accident Hash) and Mitch Joel from Six Pixels of Separation. Because of problems with the My Oovoo Day event, I was only able to get into the chat with John Wall (the email confirmation apparently got eaten by my spam filter and you could neither cancel a registration nor register again to chat with the same person) but these were independent of the Oovoo software.

The event itself was interesting. I had not chatted with John before. The software was still pretty green. I was using a Mac and had to do an update to a new version on the day of the even before anyone could hear me. I crashed at least once so this still seems like Beta software. The audio worked well. The video did not keep up but that seemed to depend on the bandwidth of each user.

Bottom line, Oovoo is worth looking at for a small group video chat. The idea of doing an event like My Ooovoo Day is also worth looking at as a model of how to promote a new product, but… it would be better to wait until the product was a little more ready for prime time.

Popularity: 36% [?]

One of the things about having season tickets for a theatre company is that you end up attending performances that you would otherwise have skipped. The latest play at San Jose Rep, called “Tranced” would have been such a play for me.

Nationally recognized psychologist and playwright, Robert Clyman, takes you on an electrifying ride. Philip is a highly respected psychiatrist famous for using a form of hypnosis called “trancing” to help his patients uncover suppressed memories. When he trances Azmera, an African grad student, he unexpectedly learns of a secret that could have profound consequences for thousands in an African village. Enlisting the aid of an ambitious reporter with connections to the Director of African Affairs, Philip is pulled into a suspenseful vortex of moral deliberation, truth and the powerful art of persuasion.

I was not that excited when I read this description, but playwright Robert Clyman’s characters enchanted me from the very first lines of dialog. The plot took a number of unexpected turns but by that point I wanted to follow these characters to find out where the story would end. I would recommend “Tranced” for both for Clyman’s writing and the fine performances of the San Jose Rep cast.

Popularity: 25% [?]

I just returned from the one man show “This Wonderful Life” at the San Jose Rep. The play is an adaptation of Frank Capra’s classic movie with one actor playing all the parts.

The award-winning playwright Steve Murray has created a visually stunning stage adaptation of the perennially popular holiday film, It’s a Wonderful Life. This one-man tour de force delivers a witty and moving story that is sure to capture your heart and captivate your spirit. There’s the family man George Bailey; evil and miserly Mr. Potter; Clarence, the dotty angel in waiting; devoted Mary, and Zuzu with her petals. But we can’t forget the image of a man standing alone on a bridge on Christmas Eve…the story of how he got there, and how he found his way back home. This Wonderful Life reminds us of the power of perspective, friendship and family…the perfect holiday gifts.

The San Jose Rep’s version featured Dan Hiatt in the role of… well… everyone. It takes a fine performance to captivate an audience for 75 minutes. Granted it helps a lot when half of the scenes are replaying in the imagination of the audience for this familiar story. But, Hiatt did a wonderful job of bringing the story to life first in a 30 second version of the movie and then in the longer 75 minute version. The staging was also creatively envisioned and executed, bravo.

Popularity: 10% [?]