I would like to point you to a favorite article on the topic of Facebook vs. LinkedIn, but after browsing a couple pages of Google results I’m here writing because there was a disappointing amount of industry-centric commentary. We’ve got A-List bloggers scorning one or both systems (hardly a “use case” or fair comparison for the average business person); pundits debating which network will succeed, and scenarios describing the use of these systems in getting (and unintentionally losing) jobs, etc.

While all of that analysis has its place, what do Facebook and LinkedIn offer to the average business person? Here’s my “elevator pitch” answer…

LinkedIn
If you’ve got a business card or a resume, you need to be on LinkedIn. It’s a tool for sharing professional recommendations, which means you belong here if you’re working on growing your business or your professional network. Period.

Facebook
If you want to get back in touch with your buddies from college and high school, join FaceBook. That’s what it was designed for, and what it still does best.

For a little more detail on both LinkedIn and Facebook, read on: Read More

Pure Visibility has undertaken the strategic planning process described in Verne Harnish’s book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What you must do to increase the value of your growing firm. All of us here have read a fair number of management books, attended seminars on process, and the like. Heck, some of us have even taught seminars and workshops on process. But, we knew it was time to take a higher-level view, and Catherine Juon, our fearless Co-Founder, discovered the Rockefeller Habits book and inspired us to take it to heart.

She arranged that we each got our very own copy. In late winter (prior to our second quarter), we followed it and the supporting materials on Verne’s leadership and executive development website to conduct the critical first step – the One Page Strategic Plan.

In a 2-day strategy offsite, we constructed the following:

• Pure Visibility’s 5 Core Values
• Our Purpose, Big Hairy Audacious Goal, and 5 actions we can take in the next quarter to live these on a daily basis
• 3-5 year targets, our brand promise, and key thrusts/capabilities (our priorities for the next 3-5 years)
• 1 year goals
• Our quarterly goals (financials, critical #s, and “rocks”)
• Our quarterly theme, goal, and celebration/reward, and
• Individual accountabilities towards these goals

Yes, it sounds like a lot in 2 days. The participants were exhausted by the end, but it was a powerful process, not least because it bonded our team together and refreshed what brought us together in the first place. An especially powerful component was deciding what we were going to postpone – what we weren’t doing this quarter.

We recently had our second quarterly planning meeting, where we revisited what we’d accomplished, and then brainstormed this quarter’s priorities. Especially fascinating was that some of the tabled items from the previous quarter were now “ripe for the picking” in that we had the space to address them this quarter. Other tabled items stayed tabled until next time or never.

One of Verne’s key messages is in the first few pages of the book:

Anyone with children will recognize the fundamentals I’ve summarized as:

1. Have a handful of rules
2. Repeat yourself a lot
3. Act consistently with those rules (which is why you better have only a few rules).

p. xxi, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What you must do to increase the value of your growing firm.

Here’s to simplicity and focus, renewed and revisited. Go Team!

I am frequently asked by early stage entrepreneurs what software we use, so here’s a quick list of the five online applications I can’t live without.

1. Salesforce.com. I started using salesforce back in the demo days when you could get a 3 user license that did everything for $50/month. Ah, those were the days… These days, it’s amazing we don’t scare off new employees with the mantra “it’s in salesforce” as the answer to seemingly every question. Seriously though, salesforce is where I spend my day. Every person who fills out a contact form on this website winds up in there automagically, and every person I’m supposed to call or have ever called is in there. (It’s a founders job to sell, after all.) Essentially, Salesforce.com functions as a much needed extension of my brain as our sales pipeline grows, and it’s pretty darn handy for sharing customer contact info within the company.




2. Basecamp. Yes, salesforce has project management stuff you can tack on, but lets just say it wasn’t a huge hit when we tried it. Not that basecamp is absolutely perfect either, but you know they’re doing something right when you turn it on and people start adding data without any arm twisting. Basecamp also shares something in common with one of my favorite things about salesforce: the “wish for it and it will come” feature. I suppose it helps that we aren’t shy about sharing what features we need , but we’ve happily seen things appear over time such as cross-project search and posting via email that make our lives SO much simpler.




3. Socialtext. I wasn’t exactly sure we needed a wiki as yet-another-place-to-store-data. But once again, it’s hard to argue with a technology that is easily adopted by the organization and has taken on a life of its own. In a way, it’s like a giant shared filing cabinet for everything about anything internal. (Whereas basecamp shares project-specific data, and salesforce captures the sales process. So it’s not as complicated to have 3 systems as it might sound.)




4. blist. I’m adding this to the list a bit early, as it’s still got a ways to go to get through all the bugs. However, I would will it out of beta, if I could. It’s not uncommon to need to compare a list of stuff and figure out which entries match criteria a, b, and c. Blist does this with “lenses” over an online spreadsheet with simple and/or choices; no programming lingo (ie SQL) required. I honestly haven’t seen anything similar, but let me know if you have!




5. twitter. I have been known to say we’re in the business of creating serendipity, and I think that’s what I love most about Twitter. This micro-blogging tool encourages you to share what you’re experiencing or thinking in 140 character bursts. And because people can follow either your persona OR create feeds on any word of interest, you wind up serendipitously meeting people with similar interests. People who often become instant friends, pitching in and answering questions or cheerleading when you have a breakthrough moment at 2 am. Twitter is a truly social network that I’m grateful for as an entrepreneur.

   So that’s my top five web applications – what are yours?

Ann Arbor and Ypsilanti are more than Michigan Football, although that is one thing that makes living here exciting. We’re more than the University of Michigan and Eastern Michigan University. We have a great community of wonderful and innovative tech companies here such as:

• Accuri Cytometers – a powerful, compact yet inexpensive flow cytometer
• Adaptive Materials – portable solid oxide fuel cells – clean, long lasting portable power

(just to do the A’s)

and wonderful resources, such as Ann Arbor SPARK working to ignite innovation through supporting and growing the community of businesses through talent retention, business acceleration, and business retention, expansion and relocation. We recently listed some of our favorite groups and organizations supporting technology and entrepreneurship. All this activity goes to show that the midwest is a hotbed of creativity, entrepreneurship, and innovation.

Add another great event to the list! Ann Arbor is hosting its very own Startup Weekend June 20-22, 2008.

The weekend will bring together idea people and worker bees, marketing wonks and financial types, designers and developers, business folk and gear heads, web junkies and pragmatic project managers to build a set of new companies. The intense, 54-hour event starts Friday evening, goes all day Saturday and Sunday. The goal of the weekend is to enhance the local community of entrepreneurs, foster some new collaborative endeavors, and get some startups up and started.

Startup weekend is a national movement, with start-up weekend events in cities all around the US. Ann Arbor was picked from a list of cities based on local interest, in a web poll. Some international cities are currently up for votes. The last three startup weekends happened in Boulder, CO, Memphis, TN, and Portland, ME.

Startup Weekend provides a facilitator, Ann Arbor commercial and residential real estate management company McKinley donated the space, and the hard work and ideas will be contributed and fostered by the participants.

Hear ye, hear ye. Inviting all entrepreneurs, entrepreneur wannabes, and those contemplating entrepreneurship to learn more about the logistics, the location, and the yummy goodness happening at Ann Arbor’s Startup Weekend. Get your tickets from the Ann Arbor Startup Weekend website!

In a conversation with an out-of-stater earlier this week, I was asked what’s going on in the Michigan technology community, and what were the groups to connect with?

I rattled off a few, and started Googling for a list, figuring this had to be documented already. But I didn’t spot anything immediately. So here’s my first stab at a list of technology organizations in Michigan (particularly southeast Michigan), and please add comments with additional resources. I look forward to hearing about your favorite technology networking groups!

Networking “Groups” for Technology Entrepreneurs

• Digital Edge – Connecting Michigan’s Digital Entrepreneurs With a World of Resources (with some emphasis on those seeking capital)
• Michigan Innovators – A video blog of Michigan companies in the Global Innovation Economy, with real-world events in the making
• SPARK – Promotes the economic development of innovation-based businesses in the Ann Arbor region by offering programs, great resources, and more
• MSBTDC – Michigan Small Business & Technology Development Center – Although not limited to technology, they have been a huge resource for us, so this list wouldn’t be complete without them!
• New Enterprise Forum – Also not exclusively focused on technology, but a place where you’ll find technology companies making their pitch for investment

Networking “Groups” for Technologists (and friends)

• A2B3 – Possibly THE networking event for job seekers and posters in technology in Ann Arbor, even though (or perhaps because) it’s one of the most informal
• Open Coffee Networking Group a group organized by SPARK for entrepreneurs to network in an informal environment (over coffee once a month in a morning), again not limited to technology, but given Ann Arbor’s environment, it includes several technology types

Niche Technology-ish Groups You Might Find PV’ers and Friends at:

• Southeast Michigan Ruby Users Group – a gathering of local Ruby enthusiasts
• Ann Arbor Drupal Users Group – a monthly meeting for the proficient and just curious about Drupal, an open source content management system
• Web Analytics Wednesday (looks like there’s not a current event scheduled, but should be soon)
• Michigan Usability Professionals Association chapter meetings – a group of user experience design, usability, and information architecture folks, meets almost monthly. Current officers include PV’s very own User Experiologist Mike Beasley and our Director of Happiness, Dunrie Greiling
• Agile Groupies – an informal networking group for those practicing and those interested in agile methods
• Refresh-Detroit – monthly forum for web professionals promoting standards, usability, and accessibility in the Ann Arbor/SE Michigan area

Annual Technology-ish Events

• Annual Collaboration for Entrepreneurship – an annual event celebrating and promoting innovative technology commercialization and development opportunities in Michigan
• Internet User Experience – an annual conference highlighting methods to improve website user experience, 5th annual event will occur winter 2009
• Startup Weekend – coming to Ann Arbor in June, 2008
• ArbCamp – an unconference social media event (our writeup of the last one) – next time and location TBD
• Agile Coach Camp an unconference on agile development, May 30-June 1, 2008

I just got teased today by the astute Bud Gibson of Michigan Innovators that there aren’t any obvious links to find Linda and I on Twitter from the Pure Visibility website. So here they are:

Catherine Juon: http://www.twitter.com/cjuon
Linda Girard: http://www.twitter.com/lgirard
And of course Bud’s group on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/innovators

And since the next logical question is “Why do you use Twitter?”, here goes…

Twitter, like LinkedIn (see my earlier post about Getting LinkedIn), has required effort + patience before anything interesting happened. People tend to give up when nothing happens right away. But you know what? This online stuff isn’t any different from real-world networking.

Have you ever gone to a group/association/networking event full of people you didn’t know and come home from the first one with a million dollar project? (If you have, I’d like to talk to you – email me at cjuon @ purevisibility.com)

Spending time with Twitter is much like going to a networking event.

• There are some people I know there (those are the ones I connected with first),
• some friends I invited to catch up with me there (like Catherine Buerkle in Germany – it has been a great way to feel like we’re not an ocean apart)
• and lots of new friends that I’ve made there because they know someone in one of the first two categories,
• and lots of new friends that found me because I said something that happened to resonate in some way – like talking about Detroit, or Michigan, or the Red Cross or Search Engine Optimization, etc.

And THIS is what I would argue makes Twitter cool. It’s not just that its 140 character limit creates short and digestible messages (tho that REALLY helps). It’s that it adds a whole new dimension to networking. Beyond the traditional way of finding someone through somebody who knows someone (such as in traditional networking or online communities like LinkedIn), you can randomly find people who share an interest in a common topic though tools that allow you to effectively “follow” words (vs. just people).

And for whatever reason, Twitter seems to be a community full of people that are open to this sort of serendipitous networking. People who generally enjoy reading each others stuff, and who seem to enjoy the role of being good samaritans. I could write a book full of examples, but here are a few:

• When my used but well-loved convertible got totaled while sitting in front of the house, I twittered my state of bummed-outedness and got immediate responses from people I barely know to cheer me up. (How cool is that?)
• When a Twitter friend was diagnosed with cancer, the world seemed to swell up around her and offer help in a way that has already been really well documented – just search for Frozen Pea Fund (long story, but you’ll find out why it’s so named eventually).
• When we were looking for websites designed in the Midwest for Create magazine and Twittered out a call for submissions, we got immediate answers… The list goes on.

And the best thing about Twitter is that I can network with my friends there without having to skip dinner with my family, and my friends are always there even if I’m stuck in an airport waiting for a flight. It’s networking when you have time for networking, instead of every third Wednesday night at 6 pm at yet-another-hotel.

Of course, I do both. But now that the kids are older and need help with homework after school it’s nice to have alternatives. Thanks, Twitter!

And now, a word from the Twitterati – why do you use Twitter?

I envision a sequel to Keith Ferrazzi’s “Never Eat Alone” entitled “Never Have Coffee Alone”. It would talk about how good it is to meet new people; and to be forced to explain what you do over and over so you get better at it. And to everyone that has humored me through this process, I offer a heartfelt “thank you”. YOU are part of our success!

At today’s coffee I was asked, “What makes you so successful?”

I was speechless. Successful? I have a lot more things to check off on my list before I feel like we can claim to be “successful”. So I blushed and mumbled something, but my coffee companion pressed on. “Ok then, tell me about your co-founder, and I’ll figure it out from there.” THAT was easy.

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