Verizon Wireless is certainly attacking the iPhone head-on with its new Droid ads.  Check out one of the commercials below.  There is no doubt what the message of this ad is.

Of course, it’s just Day 1, so the verdict is still out, but smartphone consumers have been waiting anxiously for Verizon Wireless, considered to have the best network in the United States, to catch up to AT&T and the iPhone.  Can the Droid on the best network compete with the coolest phone on a substandard network?

Keep in mind, Verizon Wireless had the opportunity to be the “it” wireless carrier.  The company was given the chance to pick up the exclusive iPhone deal with Apple, but the company passed.  The result?  AT&T stole some market share and Verizon Wireless hasn’t been able to recoup those customers yet.  Without its superior network and the continued hold on the business marketplace by RIM’s Blackberry, Verizon Wireless would really be in trouble.

Fortunately, Verizon Wireless realized that the clock was ticking.  The Storm might not have delivered (although rumors of a new version of the Storm leave some consumers hopeful of improvement), but the Droid just might.  Let’s face it.  There seems to be a battle to take over the world in terms of brand dominance.  For the tech-related world, Google and Apple are leading the pack but in very different ways.  Now, they’re poised to battle somewhat directly.  Who will win?  This should be fun to watch!

And that brings me to my question — what smartphone would you get?  The Droid on Verizon Wireless’ network or the iPhone on AT&T’s network?

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I recently had occasion to look at a job description for an IT contract position.  I could recognize a lot of the words, but the way they were put together gave me almost no clue what the company really needs someone to do.  So I called a friend who’s pretty far up the IT food chain and read it to him, just in case I was being dim.  Neither of our secret decoder rings was up to the task, however, so we could only speculate about what the job might really be—or who could do it well.

This description came from a big company and went through a reputable recruiting agency.  In this case, of course, part of the problem relates to the process itself, since in many cases outside recruiters cannot talk to the hiring manager in order to clarify the description and requirements.  So if the hiring manager—or whoever wrote the description—is not very good at describing jobs, an HR intermediary may not know the difference, and the mystery document will just get propagated out to the recruiter(s) and passed on to the prospects.

Internal processes can be just as problematic–and when a confusing or inadequate job description makes it onto the Careers site or the job boards, job-seekers are at a considerable disadvantage, since they have nothing else to go by.  In these days, when applications are many and keywords often rule, applicants have to figure out how to highlight their qualifications; and that’s tricky when the requirements are not clear.

In the description that prompted this post, I found several common problems, such as:

• Requirements that just say “Understanding of X”.  (The spectrum of interpretations that can be applied to “understanding” is broad indeed!  Define the word?  Know X when you see it?  Eat, sleep and breath X?)
• Requirements that seem to be repeating other requirements in different words.    (Is there a subtle-but-important distinction?  Or just two different authors?  Perhaps a careless revision?)
• Requirements that use names in a vague way, and/or acronyms.  (Is the requirement referring to ” X the product” or “X the methodology”?  Is that unfamiliar acronym a variant, a typo, an internal reference, or just something that hasn’t made it to Wikipedia yet?)

I could go on.  But the net result is that candidates for this position will not have a good idea of what’s involved in the job until/unless they get as far as an interview.  Therefore they won’t be able to make an informed decision about applying or not.  They won’t be able to tailor their resumes appropriately.  Et cetera.

And the manager(s) will spend unnecessary time looking for the “right” person, who might not even be found.  A lot of misfire hires result from failure to define and describe a job effectively.

People can learn to write better job descriptions, and they should.  But in the end, there are two really basic practices that will make a huge difference:

• Use simple sentences.
• Use simple words.

Just following those “simple” rules will eliminate ambiguity most of the time.  And don’t take my word for it.  Get some good advice from HRDailyAdvisor.  (Yes, they’re selling something, but the advice is good anyway.)

(Want your own “decoder ring”?  Get it from the Exploratorium.)

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How heroic, then, of Derek Skaletsky to spend an hour taking us through the Traackr system – before breakfast.

And what an interesting hour it was for us. Traackr – in case you haven’t had the opportunity of a demo yet – launched their Authority List product at DemoFall09.

We all know that people are talking about you and your products online, or at least about your market and their issues with your competitors – or even just complaining about the problem that your product or service is intended to resolve.

Listening to what they’re saying is highly recommended. You can find out what they like/don’t like about you or your products, and about those of your competitors. You can maybe even uncover what the real problem is that they’re trying to solve – and how you can improve your product to meet that need. It’s like having a full-time focus group.

But who are your target audience listening to?

We all also know that some people have more powerful voices than others. These come in a variety of guises: some people are broadcasters, with a wide reach; others are conversationalists, who spark discussion; some are expert commentators on a topic, and seen as authorities in their area; others are connectors, who put topics and people together in an interesting way. Some are just plain mavericks, who touch on a topic briefly and move on to the next. And the different outlets people find to share their views have an effect too – some people have a strong video voice and impact but don’t use the written word; others talk a lot on one network about your topic, but very little on another.

And even the smallest voice can have a big impact online – if it whispers into the right ear.

This is the idea at the heart of the Traackr system.

The origins of the Authority List lie in a tool that was available a few years ago to help people assess their own influence on the internet. I’m sure you know the kind of thing; we’ve almost all played with tools like that to see how we’re perceived. (What, no-one’s even done an ego-search on Google? Not sure I believe you there.)

Then someone had a inspired idea: turn the thing around so that it could identify the people with influence, and sell that information to those who need to know.

That’s you. The business that needs to know what is being said out there, so that they can then connect with those people, and maybe influence them in turn.

Gaining the ear of the king

This isn’t a new idea: if the customer is king, finding the right online influencers is like dealing with the royal favourites and courtiers, who potentially have influence over the king.

There’s been much debate about how objective online influencers can be when presented with goodies and freebies, so consider carefully your approach to the influencers, and bear in mind that courting the courtiers has always been a complex and sometimes dangerous affair in the cross-currents of a royal court.

But Traackr looks like a good implementation of a solution to make finding the right influencers possible – even easy.

You, the client, set up a project, agree how many influencers you want to identify, and work with the Traackr team to identify relevant keywords. (Not always as easy as it sounds).

The Traackr search engine then finds people who discuss these topics online – and then tracks those individuals across all their other outlets.

This, I think, is the really exciting bit: pulling together all the places where that person has an online presence to provide a unified view on that individual.

When complete, the information is available via an online dashboard. You can see a list of influencers, and a breakdown of type (activist, reporter and expert) and location. Each influencer has a profile page, detailing their latest posts, which social outlets they use, the extent of their network and their score (reach, resonance, and relevance). It’s up to you to make the connection, but you can note on the profile how well the contacts have gone, and what your next steps might be – the beginnings of a relationship management system.

Traackr doesn’t assess the sentiment of their discussions about you/your products, but at this point you know who the key relevant influencers are, and since you’ll need to tailor your contact approach to each influencer, you’ll want to check them out individually yourself anyway. And you do need to know the bad as well as the good news…

Questions?

Can you track the effect of your contact/s with the influencers? That’s the point of Traackr’s Performance Report, which tracks the changes in coverage from those people from week to week.

Can you change your keywords? Once the report is generated, you get an interface to the Traackr system which lets you run a live search on keywords before setting up a new campaign, to be sure that you’re picking valuable keywords.

Are the influencers self-selected? Only by dint of their own efforts to become influential – the influencers haven’t volunteered to be included. All the material on their profile is publicly available, just not all pulled together in one place like this. As I said: this is the most exciting element of this tool, and Traackr does have plans to provide access to these pages for the influencers, so that they can make use of it too.

Wouldn’t it be helpful to have some idea of sentiment? I think it would, and this isn’t provided by the Authority List. I think you’d like it all: who the key influencers are, whether they are generally positive, negative or neutral about yoiur keywords, and how this view changes over time – and even what triggers the change. Your contact with them, some independent event, a contact with a competitor, a discussion with another key influencer…?

Couldn’t you do this yourself? Well, yes of course you could, though it would be timeconsuming. And the Traackr team have found that their system has identified powerful influencers in places it wouldn’t necessarily occur to you to look. You just need a bit of imagination to work out how to approach these unexpected influencers in ways they’d appreciate…

Thanks Derek!

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First, some contradictory thoughts: Avoid the overuse of color, and, consider the use of color to help highlight information. By this I mean that good visual design for charts often means first stripping away meaningless color that junks up the chart. Once visual clarity has been achieved, the judicious use of color to draw attention to information that might otherwise not get noticed can be helpful.

I’ve set out the share price chart from the EADS site. It’s quite nicely done in that it has a clean, white background with a faint grid to help the viewer orient themselves as to price and date. Below that, the volume chart uses color to illustrate the volumes on days when the share price rose (green) versus days when the share price fell (red).

Note also that the page allows for a number of viewer options, including choice of time periods or customized dates, comparisons to indexes, competitors and major customers, scale and moving averages. To top it off, they even provide for downloading of historical quotes, all in one neat and efficient package. To me this is a very well designed page. Everything is where you can see it, eliminating the need to go through menus and click through pages.

Another chart that utilizes an element I like is the Cadbury share price chart. (In this case it is emphatically not their use of color, although I am purposely steering clear of the color issue here as I learned earlier that criticizing Cadbury’s use of the color purple is a hot button with certain U.K. readers.) Cadbury builds into their chart an interactive feature that pops up the date, price and volume as you scroll over the chart. Given that the graph draws a vertical and horizontal axis as you scroll, Cadbury could even eliminate the grid on the stock chart, faint though it is. Now if they would just add in a feature that also popped up major corporate announcements had been made, it would be close to perfect.

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In an unprecedented move the International Centre for Investment Disputes (ICSID) at the World Bank has allowed non-disputing parties (NDPs) to give evidence at a tribunal and ordered the parties in dispute to reveal their evidence and conclusions to the NDPs.

This implies that while the ICSID may feel itself competent to rule on purely business grounds it needs additional input to ascertain the “softer” issues in the case: in this case, the human rights of South Africa’s long oppressed black majority.

Mining Companies Must Allow Disadvantaged Ownership

In 2004 the Mineral and Petroleum Development Rights Act came into force in South Africa.  This had a number of objectives, including:

• ensuring ecological development
• protecting communities effected by mining
• promoting equitable access to South African mineral resources
• eradicating all forms of discrimination and redressing the results of previous racial discrimination

In order to implement these objectives the South African government introduced a Mining Charter which was subsequently endorsed by the majority of investors in the sector.

This charter obliges companies holding mining concessions to divest 15% of their equity to “historically disadvantaged South Africans” by 2009 and 26% by 2014.

If a company wishes mining rights obtained pre-2004 to be renewed under the act, it needs to sign up to the charter.

Europeans Fight Against Ownership Dispersal

There were, of course, dissenters to this new world order.  A collection of European investors clubbed together and brought the action Piero Foresti, Laura de Carli and others vs the Republic of South Africa to the ICSID.

So far so good.  It is well within South Africa’s remit to modify the terms of its mining concessions and well within the rights of investors to challenge when they believe the changes to be disproportionate or unfair.

However, in this case the ICSID has set an interesting precedent.  For the first time ever it has invited and accepted petitions from non-disputing parties (NDPs) to participate in the tribunal, something both sides in the dispute resisted.

In total, five NGOs have been allowed to submit evidence: the International Commission of Jurists, the Centre for Applied Legal Studies, the Centre for International Environmental Law, the International Centre for the Legal Protection of Human Rights and the Legal Resources Centre.

In order that the NDPs can participate effectively the ICSID has ordered the parties to disclose their evidence and findings to the NDPs and has committed to discussing the NPDs’ evidence in their final judgement.

The subsequent timetable changes mean the NDPs’ submissions must be filed with the tribunal by December 21st 2009 with a final hearing scheduled for 12-23rd April 2010.

World Bank Allows Expert Human Rights Opinion

I may be being more optimistic than realistic, but I see in this a tacit acknowledgement that disputes in the future will acknowledge the ramifications for people and planet as well as the traditional financial implications.

It’s not quite a revolution, but it’s important for two reasons.

Firstly this is the World Bank and, like it or not, its influence is huge.  If it starts to develop an ethical tinge it will have a dramatic effect upon corporations and governments alike.

Secondly, this is South Africa.  As the final fortress of European apartheid it’s tried to redress the balance as fairly as possible, and whatever is decided here will be taken as a blueprint across Africa and in other countries and continents.

What do you think?  Does this mark a real sea change in attitude, or is it nothing more than a brief blip because of the sensitivity of land ownership in South Africa?

^{Photo Credit: Miner, Who Has Just Finished His Shift at Virginia-Pocahontas Coal Company Mine #4, near Richlands, Virginia 04/1974 by The U.S. National Archives from Flickr under Creative Commons Attribution License.}

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