Rob Hyodo

It’s mid-week of my second week at work and I just returned from exhibiting at a trade show with the company. I understand attendance was thin, due to various cuts, but we had very promising results. This was definitely a situation where quality of our meetings definitely mattered more than quantity.

It was great to watch people’s reactions to what we can do. It was great to hear their suggestions, which I noted and will be considered for features to be added.

I always learn a lot about our own products/services from attending trade shows and watching my colleagues do their pitch. Different people pitch the same product in different ways and I’ll have my own pitch soon.

I became more familiar about the industry, our partners, competitors and various players in the ecosystem. This was a great experience for me and I’m glad I came on board in time for the trade show. It’s really helped me paint a picture of what’s going on and where we fit.

I’m starting my second week at my new job and already I’m on the frontline of demoing our product to potential buyers. Luckily, my colleague was there to actually do all the demoing and I was there to learn; to see how the product is pitched and to learn more about the product, the industry and the ecosystem itself.

Day one went well. Already, I’ve learned a lot more about the system than I knew my first week on the job. The tradeshow, TechEd 2009, was a lot less hectic than other shows I’ve exhibited at (NAB, CES).

Also, I got to meet one of the sales guys from our partner company, Momindum. To see their product demoed was very cool and I’m glad we’re working together! So we (Winnov) handle the capture side of things, and Momindum handles content management. Very cool and impressive!!

Going back to some of my roots now. As Product Training Specialist, video compression knowledge will be part of my aresenal. I have a good background in compression, particularly for Windows Media (VC-1). I was part of a team that launched a HUGE project under tight deadlines and a bunch of us had a crash-course in it!

I developed an interest in it and began compressing things at home for fun. lol I enjoyed learning about the tools available for video compression. There are so many thigns to consider when compressing video for quality that it’s as much an art as it is a science.

I’m digging into my old notes and resources since I’m a bit rusty in this area, but I have a lot of contacts that can coach me on this. My speciality is in VC-1 but I know I’ll need to really beef up what I know about H.264.

So!,… here… we… GO!

WHEW! What a first day at work!

Started with the paperwork thing and got right to it! No real orientation or tour of the facilities…

They’re a busy (and efficient) group of people and I was trained on the latest version of their flagship product, Cbox, which has not yet been released. It was cool to get to fiddle with something of which many customers have an older version.

There’s always room for improvement, so I’m going to try my hardest to keep a fresh, un-jaded view of the system so I can provide suggestions on anything I think needs improvement. I took a bunch of notes and stared a spreadsheet to categorize what I was learning, not only about the company and its products, but of the ecosystem of the industry.

At the end of the day, I felt like I’d been taught a thousand things, but only retained ten… Exhausted now, but feel I’m on the right path to becoming an effective product training specialist.

Today I learned that my official title at Winnov will be… Product Training Specialist. I’ll be customer-facing and will provide some level of support for our customers as well as create training materials for our products. Part of my job will be to listen to what our customers have to say and take to heart their needs and wishes so we can continue to be cutting-edge and produce the most useful and intuitive products available.

I’m starting in just over a week and am looking forward to the challenges that lie ahead. I knew early on that my work will be cut out for me and I feel I’ll be able to ramp up quickly since I’m familiar with aspects of the technologies used in ther products.

Product Training Specialist it is! Wish me luck!

I visited my new place of employment today and spoke with the controller and technical engineer and communicated my capabilites and interests to them as well as learned more about their roles within the company and the company’s direction.

The more I learn about Winnov and what they have to offer, the more amped I get! This is good.

Olivier Garbe, Founder and CEO of Winnov, gave me an overview of where Winnov is today and where he’d like to take it. We had a great conversation and I wish to be successful in helping to bring the company to where we all want it to go. We have a very competitive offering today and are forward-thinking to stay ahead of the curve.

I have given it all week and have made my decision to work for Winnov!

Winnov specializes in rich-media capture for education and training. They develop their own software which is really cool. The media they capture is immediately available after a recording in various experiences including web and mobile devices.

My buddy there texted me to ask if I’d made a decision. After weighing all options througout the week, and especially last night, I took one last breath and let him know I accepted.

March 16, 2009 is the start date I tentatiely specified, though I’ve a lot do before then. I’m amped about having a job. My mom called it a “miracle” that I was able to get a job in this economy. Now that I have a job, I will look into getting a new mobile phone to replace my Cingular 3125 which I’ve had for ver two years now…

I went to lunch today with a friend from a company that would like to hire me. I’m currently sorting through a few employment possibilities, but this was the most promising. Here’s why:

1. I know them and they trust me. Well, at least I was told they do! In my case, trust = less micro-managing = higher productivity.
2. They offered me a position a few years ago, but I could not join them due to circumstances at the time.
3. They’re nearby. Proximity is important for my sanity! At only 10 miles, the commute won’t be too bad.
4. As a former partner, I’m familiar with their company. We’ve shared booth space at a few trade shows since our technologies were in line with one another. This will help reduce the ramp-up time.
5. Their technology is cutting edge, so I am told. Their competition is envious!
6. This recession may be beneficial due to the cost-cutting nature of their flagship product.
7. I think I can have fun with my role there! I’d love to have James Bernard’s job, but I would be doing something along the same lines as what James does!

There are still a number of things on my mind that I need to consider, but I’m giving myself a week to make a decision. This one looks promising, but I won’t say who it is, so as not to jinx anything (Though, I may have given it away in an earlier tweet! No big deal…)!

Perhaps not the first Twitter fight, but the first top be so widely publicised. Yesterday, communications site MediaStyle posted National Post reporter has total Twitter melt down showcasing a Twitter “fight” between a tech reporter and a marketing consultant.

Who was in the right or who instigated the fight is irrelevant in my point. The point is that something as public and real-time as Twitter, with the right ingredients, has the potential to be seen quickly by millions. By “ingredients” I mean drama, professionals acting unprofessionally and a handful of people that will retweet.

Conditions were right yesterday and the Twitter exchange spread quickly. It’s like someone yelling, “fight!” and we all rushed to watch.

“Professionals acting unprofessionally?” - We all have our days. I’m not here to judge anyone. I’m merely saying that one participant kept her cool, while the other flew off the handle a bit. The one that kept her cool seemed to come out on top by far and received much support. The other,… I don’t know, but I wouldn’t want to be him right now. I’m embarrassed for him and his company.

Tip: In Twitterland, don’t tweet something you wouldn’t shout out to millions.

Updates:

• National Post sends An Apology
• Lessons Learned from a Twitter Meltdown from one of the participants herself

Smashing Magazine posted a nice article in their “How-To” section about some corporate website facts. I can’t begin to tell you how much of a reality check this article is. How many of these 10 truths can you relate to? Here’s the list and my personal experiences associated with each.

1. You Need A Separate Web Division: With limited resources at my company, I was the web division and  was part of the marketing team. You have to make do with resources you have, but I think having a separate web division would have helped greatly in any company I’ve ever worked for.

2. Managing Your Website Is A Full-Time Job: Yes! As part of the marketing team, I could only devote a part of my day to website management. Time devoted to this was sporadic, too, as certain times called for huge design overhauls. Other times called for attention to other marketing details, taking time away from website management.

3. Periodic Redesign Is Not Enough: True. We launched the website one year and a year later, we completely redesigned it; and it was only the homepage that got the treatment at that.  This is related to the first two points, but not being able to spend 100% of my time on design and implementation on the site let to slow, periodic redesigns.

4. Your Website Cannot Appeal To Everyone: One of the first corporate websites I worked on was very guilty of this. We didn’t want to exclude anyone. In my last job, we got a little better at this, but I could have done a better job at really honing in on a few key groups; music labels, movie studios, online retailers.

5. You Are Wasting Money On Social Networking: Social networking tools weren’t as abundant as they are today until I got to my last job. Still, the way the company was run felt like I couldn’t say anything without buttloads of approval, so I shied away from these tools. Any company I go into today as a web marketer would need to allow for social networking on a more personal level.

6. Your Website Is Not All About You: Agreed. At my last company, we had a pretty good handle on not allowing personal preferences get in the way too much. My original concepts were a little watered down the first time around, but the homepage redesign went rather unscathed.

7. You’re Not Getting Value From Your Web Team: I was lucky in my last design to have more freedom with the design than ever before. Not that I had complete control, but my suggestions were heard. It became more up to me. Earlier designs were a nightmare to get off the ground. See next…

8. Design By Committee Brings Death: OMG, how true is this!? If you’re a web designer, I’m certain you’ve been to a committee meeting discussing your mockups. Everyone gets to put in their two cents, slowly killing the original design. At the end, your boss says, “Ok, you have everyon’es feedback. Now make it happen!” Some ideas are great, but you get ten ideas and it’s likely more than a few won’t work well together.

9. A CMS Is Not A Silver Bullet: Agreed. A CMS should be a means, not an end, to your overall web strategy. Going in, I like to look at the limitations of a CMS and ensure that a particular CMS I use will fulfill what I need to accomplish.

10. You Have Too Much Content: I was once told to, “Get everything on there. That way, anyone wanting to know anything about us will have the inforamation they’re looking for.” Ugh, this can make a site read like a whitepaper; dry, overly technical and just plain boring. Website content should tap into the emotions of people, stating the most important points as concisely as possible. When it comes to corporate websites, I believe less is more.