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Objects in Nature and Their Ability to Communicate in Business

by admin on November 2, 2011 in Blog, Business Bounce, Uncategorized with No comments
lizard long tail

Nature Objects and Ability to Communicate

At my 9-to-5 cube-less cubical, I’m putting together a research report on how natural language technology can broaden customer service capabilities on a website, or as the industry would say, “more efficient web self-service”.  The natural language technology behind the scenes is pretty cool.  Get the computer to act more like a human and better customer service can be created.  Beyond that, it’s just pretty insane that computer getting better at detecting emotion and human intent and able to provide services on an individual basis.   My last blog post had a nice video of how natural language technology could be in the next couple years.  See The Future of CX [video]

The upcoming research will be presented in 3 parts (short paper, presentation and video) and so apart from gathering the analytic results and writing the text, I’m also incorporating some visuals that will help illustrate the story.

One of the challenges to using good visuals is using images that can make immediate sense to someone.  For example, a picture of a cute baby typically creates laughter. A black and white picture can signify historical reference on one hand or elegance or cleanliness on the other.  I’ve recently noticed that nature and animals themselves can also help communicate information in an entertaining way.  Although these images may not automatically trigger an understanding for someone, I think people are able to associate physical attributes of nature within the business world, both for fun and internalizing data.

I wanted to show some examples:

Nature showing Pareto Principle

Part of the research will be displaying how most common FAQs of a website only provide support to approximately 20-30% of user questions.  In retrospect, that means that top FAQ lists are unable to support the majority of customers in a quick fashion.  And so this relates to two theoriesPareto’s Principal – also known as the 80-20 rule

iceberg to show Pareto principle

The Pareto principle (also known as the 80-20 rule, the law of the vital few, and the principle of factor sparsity) states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes -Wikipedia

Long tail

lizard long tail

Long Tail - A long tail distortion will arise with the inclusion of some unusually high (or low) values which increase (decrease) the mean, skewing the distribution to the right -Wikipedia

Growth

elephant

Bell curve – Normal Distribution

camel to demonstrate bell curve or normal distribution

Future of customer experience

by admin on October 27, 2011 in Blog, Business Bounce with No comments
robot thinking

I can just see it now that some of my friends are probably going “uhhh Mike, what are you talking about?” So I work for a company that focuses on customer experience.  It sounds like this weird concept to some of my friends, but it’s really simple in that we help companies deliver their services and assistance to their customers in most effective ways.

I particularly focus on online customer experience and have had the opportunity to learn a lot about natural language technology and how this technology can help companies with the customer serving objectives…again, another term that would make my friends ask “Mike really? What are you on over there in Amsterdam?” Natural language technology is actually used to make computers act more like humans.

Maybe you’ve seen the new Siri in action on the iPhone 4S.  Ask Siri “where is the closest bar?” and it will give you a decent response that’s probably even more accurate than a friend’s.  But rather than explaining what natural language is, the company I’m working for, RightNow Technologies (*currently being acquired by Oracle), just made a video about how natural language technology can be used to create some pretty cool customer experiences that are shopping, looking for information and of course finding that perfect gift for an anniversary.  Look for Pamela at 2:52 to see natural language in action.

Anyhow, this video had me thinking that this type of technology is not so far into the distant future.  Who knows who will be serving you in a few years to come.

Pretty cool stuff, hope you enjoy! The Future of CX (Customer Experience) envisioned by RightNow.

Occupy Wall Street Amsterdam

by admin on October 23, 2011 in Blog, Travel Trott with No comments
ows7

I haven’t read much into it, #OWS (Occupy Wall Street), most likely because it hasn’t been in my face.

…until today.

In the city center in front of the Amsterdam stock exchange (AEX Index) building, Beurs van Berlage and across the street from where I first started working when I moved to Amsterdam, I spotted the Wall Street protest. Here’s some photos to share, which for me, kinda gives a little more reason for me to read more into this event.

If you go to the website of Occupy Wall Street http://occupywallst.org/ you’ll find their mantra. A couple things I found very interesting right off the get go:

  • Occupy Wall Street is leaderless resistance movement
  • using the revolutionary Arab Spring tactic to achieve our ends and encourage the use of nonviolence to maximize the safety of all participants.

I’m curious what will become of these protest especially being leaderless.  And secondly, I found it pretty ironic that Western nations are following tactics recently seen in the Middle East….maybe this is a reason why I don’t see so much news media on this topic?  A slant maybe?

Anyway, there’s a pretty active forum and I found this I protest because… post on why people protest.  The responses are all over the place but it’s a good place to start and understand what is becoming of this protest.

Some responses:

I protest to get laid by chicks who don’t shave their underarms

I protest because it is cool and I want my Mac Book Pro paid for by the 1%.

i protest because it is my right as an american to stand up when i see my country being sold and polluted and its people dying in the streets. i am tired of injustice. i am tired of pollution. i am tired of poverty. and i am really tired of war. this is the only way i can see to add my voice to the many saying STOP — i want a better country — and a better world will follow

I protest because I am tired of watching friends and family die because they cannot afford medication or health care. I am sickened by watching the lines at the food bank stretch across the road because people can’t afford food. I am disgusted by watching good people who work and try to pay their bills being thrown out on the street because they cannot pay their mortgage payment. I am fed up with people not caring about other people and worrying about their own material gains to the exclusion of all else. I am frustrated by being blocked at every turn trying to get people to listen that we need social, political and economic reform. I realize that I am only one person, I cannot change the way the world thinks alone, but together, people who feel like me can make a difference. We can force laws to change, we can make others aware of the basic human condition and the ways that we can improve it. I add my voice here because maybe with one more voice, people will listen.

 

Call to action. Thank you for everything Steve

by admin on October 6, 2011 in Blog, Business Bounce, work life with No comments
steve jobs

I never had the chance to meet, to shake hands or to describe the impact his creations had on my life.

The passing of Steve Jobs has left a void, an empty feeling.  But his legacy of empowering billions of people, through devices and conversations, will be forever engraved in my mind.

If the best way to honor someone is through actions, then what can, or should we do?

I say to continue toward empowering the billions and empowering the remaining billions.

Thank you Steve.


Steve Jobs Inspirational Quotes
View more presentations from InsideView

 

my writing drug, rain drops

by admin on August 25, 2011 in Blog, Business Bounce with No comments
focus man

Recently I’ve been working on a new gig at work to write four product summaries. Cool assignment, but funny when thinking about expectations versus how things ran in the past. If I remember correctly, earlier efforts to accomplish the same task took the team 2-3 months. I was given 2 weeks to deliver drafts of all four.

Rain drops, no dubstep

I’ve tried writing to all types of music.  Even found “Concentration Music” on Spotify….which wasn’t so bad. But for some amazing reason, the rain mixed with the dim lights really helped me focus and churn out some paper content.  I was able to finish earlier than anticipated, that I even made a little video to capture the sound….while trying to be a bit of an artsy. I’m definitely no Van Gogh.

note to self: save the dubstep for weekends

Which theme is best? SEO or Style centered?

by admin on July 20, 2011 in Blog with No comments

content is kingContent is king

When you’re just starting to build your own blog, it becomes very exciting to realize that you can change the look and feel relatively easy.  For beginners, including me being in this categories for several years, you simply search for blog templates that look awesome.  Find one with the best looking designs and colors that match your favorites.  Download, upload, done.  You have a new look and you’re excited for 5 minutes until asking yourself, “I wonder if there is something better?”

Curiosity killed the cat

And here is where the dilemma begins.  Shortly after 5 minutes of having a new blog template, you realize that there is a better template, better suiting your needs.  Then you switch.  The next day you realize that the template isn’t everything that you hoped for.  And you continue to change….oops, and in the meantime you lose time to write content.

Well I’ve encountered the same issue, and finally I have decided to call it quits on simply trying to find themes that look the best.  Rather than focusing on which blog template to use based on looks, I’ve decided to use one based on SEO capacity.  I want a website that will help me share my information on the Internet and help me network with similar minded people.

Changing Blog Templates is doable

A few weeks ago, I had my “ahh huh” moment for 2011.  I realized that I need to be a builder or at least feel that I’m building something.  I think this is a large separation between business minded people, who in my case typically sell the products that builders (programmers) make.  Currently I am working to get myself more acquainted with the programming, technical-oriented side of business.

After doing some semi-intensive web design reading over the past few weeks, meaning HTML and CSS, I’ve discovered that I actually have the fundamental knowledge to create some decent looking designs!  At least according to my friends.  But honestly speaking, I never knew that modifying the look and feel of templates was so doable.  There is a slight learning curve to understanding what <div> <class=”x”> .header p{ } mean, but in two weeks I have been able to put together some small little demo sites and be able to adjust some of the design properties.

Choose a template that will help you be discovered

From now on, I’m going to tell my peers that want to blog to focus on tools that will help being discovered as opposed to design.  I assume people want to create a blog to share stories in the first place, and so having templates that are SEO optimized is going to help locate an audience.  It’s so much cooler to share thoughts with an actual audience, so why not try to maximize on this opportunity?

I haven’t learned how to make extremely awesome visual effects, yet, but I’m working on it :) slowly but surely, and with the intention of building.

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