Our SMC Clubhouse bus is quite the hit downtown taking people to the house in the daytime, and to the parties at night.

As a resident and beneficiary I’d like to thank all our sponsors and everyone who has visited to be part of our panels or part of the greater Social Media Club discussion.

The real value to having the house was as a gathering place for those who work on or support Social Media Club. I’ve met great people from SMC chapters all over the country and some from Europe, and am proud of the enthusiasm and creativity from each of them. We enabled them to share their ideas, network and engage with each other in person, and they can then take their conversations online as our new site goes live. If you are from one of the SMC chapters, write in the comments and tell us what you got out of our SXSW experiment.

As a board member of Social Media Club, and of the original team behind the group, we always envisioned being able to bring together professionals form important discussions. This is part of what we are chartered to do – “2. Share lessons among practitioners.” At the Social Media Clubhouse, we’ll have summits on Co-Working, Engagement, and the Synaptic Web.

I hope you’ll follow us via our #smch3 hashtag, our Twitter list (forthcoming) and our site. And, if you’ll be Austin, please get in touch – I’d love to meet or catch up with you.

McGraw adds that he thinks the tablet will be “really terrific” for e-books in the higher education and professional markets

He also stated it would run “a Version of the iPhone OS.” As I predicted. We’ll see how close I was at 1pm EST.

Ultimately, it comes down to sales, so in April when the product hits the shelves, the 3 flavor ‘teams’ will get their friends to vote for their favorite, which becomes part of the line with a launch on Labor Day in 2010. The fans will design the launch campaign as well.
While this won’t be the first Social Media Community Designed beverage (that honor seems to go to Vitamin Water Connect), Dew’s effort did more to involve more fans, and had voting or fan participation at every stage, up until the launch.

This campaign has so many good marketing elements to it, so here are some lessons for your future marketing. (There are probably more elements I’m missing.)
Brand Loyalty: Showing fans you care and asking them to tell you the next product generates interest – especially among your most rabid fans.
Social Sharing: Use of Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and 12 Seconds.TV and more got fans voting and promoting the entire effort.
Word of Mouth: The name contest required votes and followers on Twitter (see http://twitter.com/509Cyclone for an example). Many of these accounts got 500 or more followers in just a few days. These people had to make a little effort to vote, and share with their friends. And the accounts interacted back with their fans.
User Generated Content: The 12 Seconds TV effort generated a number of very clever spots watched by hundreds or thousands of people.
PR: I’m writing about a soda I don’t even drink (since I’m decaffeinated.) They have a good story to tell the press.

Ultimately, though, we’ll see how many sales rack up with the 3 test flavors, and whether “everyone gets a trophy” (they release all 3) or whether they keep one for launch on Labor Day.  I’m Interested in knowing how this ends. What else can we learn from efforts like this?

*Disclaimer: I was invited to the reception by Porter Novelli and Pepsico friends, but received no compensation for this blog post (other than a few hors d’oeuvres and some Mountain Dew samples at the reception.)

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• Dew Does The Crowd (wired.com)

Increas­ingly I think the dig­i­tal divide is less about access to tech­nol­ogy and more about the dif­fer­ence between those who know how and those who don’t know how,” he said. He’s con­vinced that what’s most impor­tant is not access to the Inter­net — we have more than a bil­lion peo­ple on the Inter­net now and there are 4 bil­lion phones out there — but access to knowl­edge and lit­era­cies for the dig­i­tal age. “The abil­ity to know has sud­denly become the abil­ity to search and the abil­ity to sift” and dis­cern.

The video is great – take the 6 minutes to watch it. Thanks JD and Howard.

On the 27th of the first month, Steve Jobs will come down from the mountain forge of the gods, and bestow upon the waiting masses his tablet(s). Thus sayeth the prophets.

But what will the Apple Tablet be? Well, I predicted the following in two tweets here and here on January 5th, but let me elaborate.

Prediction: The Tablet will run a different version of OS X than a Macbook or an iPhone.

Why? Steve and co. have a good thing going with the Mac market right now. They don’t want to cannibalize their existing sales.  In fact, to them it’s crucial they don’t.

I also predict, while the code from OS X will be there, there’s going to be a different interface layer. So, developers will be able to modify their existing (updated to clarify: DESKTOP) apps for the tablet, but, they won’t be able to just release them.

Why? Because Apple isn’t going to just release another Netbook. That’s just not their style. Putting a touch screen keyboard or a slide out or even a laser powered desktop touch keyboard on a 10″ screen and calling it an Apple Product is not something that will make Steve smile. In my vision I see lots of Apple Usability folks hidden away in some lab making a set of touch gestures, figure pinch gestures, and slides that are going to let us use our tablets in ways that, like the iPod, we didn’t know we knew how to do but now that we see them, it’s obvious.

Why else? Because of the App Store, stupid. Look how well that worked for the iPhone. If they can create a developer App Store for Tablet apps, that creates a new ecosystem, and another cash cow.

But wait, you say you still love your (Insert iPhone App here)? No problem. Because the tablet is going to emulate an iPod Touch in a window, right on the tablet screen. Therefore, you’ll be able to do all that iPhone/Touch cool stuff on your tablet too, giving Apple and their Developer community another market for apps. Will they let you use your tablet as a phone too? My money is on no – but with built in 3G, perhaps Skype will be a good partner and let Apple beat back the Google monster. It all depends on the carrier they partnered with. I’m hoping they didn’t do an exclusive AT&T deal again.

Emulation is key because the tablet isn’t going to run the processor the iPhone does. Specs? Well, having seen a Netbook with an Atom 270 processor and 1.5 GB of Ram running OS X in a very speedy, quite acceptable way, I’m predicting this tablet will be built off the latest Intel Atom chip. My rationale for this is simple. It is dead stupid easy to run OS X on a Netbook right now, if you know how to Google search for “Hackintosh.” That’s not a coincidence. If Apple wanted to, they could make it really hard for hackers to do this. But it’s been easy to find hacks, and easy to get updates whenever the OS is updated.

I believe this is a market test they’re running to see how people respond to the smaller screen. And the response, from me is this: “Wow, OSX runs really well on a Lenovo S10-e, but a lot of the Mac interface isn’t designed to work on a 10″ screen.” They need new interface elements, new design, and a few speed improvements.

Well, that’s what I predict on Jan 27th. Your comments are welcome.

(Thanks to Tristan Louis and Mark Stahlman for thinking this through a little with me. But if I’m wrong, the blame is my own. For goodness sake, don’t trade on my info – none of this is sourced.)

UPDATE: Tristan has his own prediction.

UPDATE: Of course, Doc Searls predicted this in 1997 (via Dave Winer’s old blog).

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Allegedly, he didn’t, according to the Christian Broadcasting Network website:
Statement Regarding Pat Robertson’s Comments on Haiti

If you watch the entire video segment, Dr. Robertson’s compassion for the people of Haiti is clear. He called for prayer for them. His humanitarian arm has been working to help thousands of people in Haiti over the last year, and they are currently launching a major relief and recovery effort to help the victims of this disaster.

Pat, it’s 2010. If you’re going to say “if you watch the entire video segment,” then you should put up the video segment. You own the program, right? It’s your network. Put up the video. 

It didn’t take me long to find the actual video. Here’s a link to a clip. http://www.breitbart.tv/they-have-been-cursed-pat-robertson-says-haiti-swore-a-pact-to-the-devil/

If you’re going to try to change people’s opinion and tell them to watch the clip, put up the clip. The only reason not to put up the clip would be if it were “damning evidence.”

Oh, and if you are looking for a way to help, my friend and non-profit consultant Tom Watson, who I trust completely on this issue, says “I trust @globalgiving to get $$ to Haiti quickly and effectively – please give now! http://bit.ly/5ScGkB .” Global Giving is quite transparent about how they work, so you will know how your money is used.

Even relative smartphone newcomers are expounding upon the trend that Apple and Android spawned, as evidenced by the ELSE Intuition, an Access Linux-based device being hawked in an unused conference room off the show floor.

Into Mobile has more complete coverage, including an embeded video, below. What is most striking to me here is the “intuition” OS that tries to anticipate what you want. The phone speed dial is made up of the people you call the most. The Calendar drop down shows today’s free busy if you want. And, it is designed to be run mostly on your thumb – so that you can hold the phone and operate it with one hand, without being awkward.

None of these things are ‘revolutionary’ but they do speak to people paying attention to the way customers actually use their devices. And hopefully points towards ways the devices pay attention to the way we use them.

ELSE First Linux Smartphone Demo from CES 2010

Whoa. They want a LOT of information about my company, just to register their software.Name and address is mandatory – everything from size of business and number of employees is mandatory. Not even WINDOWS made me give this information as mandatory, and people complain about it all the time (and yes, I’m an MSFT stockholder in my retirement accounts).

I frankly don’t want to give them that information, as they’re just going to use it to market to me, and frankly, if I want their extra services such as Payroll, I’ll click the button and ask for it.

I go to the Amazon.com Reviews for Quickbooks 2010 and wow, I’m not the only person who thinks this is the case. Reviewer “R. Pink Floyd” said “Intuit has their head up their bank account” and “my biggest problem with it is that the entire program just seems highly focused on sucking money out of the customer.” P. Rudy “Adventure Traveler” asks ” Does Intuit Work Day and Night to dream up new ways for customers to hate it?” and “They must. Decent accounting program that everyone knows about, yet each year, they work harder and harder to get more of your money and to piss you off.  Intuit has one plus — I will NEVER complain about Microsoft. Could you image using Windows where there was a pop up every 15 mintues to sell you an add on service?”Stephen J. Fotos “Stephen” says “Quickbooks is a marketing machine, more than a functional program.”

So I’m wondering how I can skip this registration process. And then I read the End User License Agreement {emphasis is mine}:

Intuit Legal Statement

You hereby grant Intuit permission to use information about your business and usage experience to enable us to provide the Intuit Services to you, including updating and maintaining your data, addressing errors or service interruptions, and to enhance the types of data and services Intuit may provide to you in the future. You also grant Intuit permission to combine your business data, if any, with that of others in a way that does not identify you or any individual personally to improve services and to compare business practices with other company standards. We may use your data to create, market or promote new Intuit offerings to you and others.

So, in order to have the privilege of paying to use their program, I have to bend over and let them send me marketing information. And, I have to deal with pop-ups every time I log in. The program has a 60 day money back guarantee. I’d immediately try Freshbooks but it doesn’t seem to have a full Bills and Expenses system – I could be wrong – let me know.

How does this tie into VRM? Well, my understanding from speaking to Doc Searls many times, including in this interview at Supernova, is that VRM is the way I give my data to companies I want to have it, so they can sell me more services I want, and not the other way around.

Frankly, this entire experience with the new Quickbooks just makes me feel icky. And that’s not what you want your customers to feel like.

I’ve Tweeted Intuit http://twitter.com/howardgr/status/6836077895 and asked “Hey @Intuit, how do I opt out of giving you all my registration data for Quickbooks 2010. You are asking for too much private biz info.” I’ll publish any replies I get here.

UPDATE: Scott Gregory of Better Bottom Line Blog Tweeted me about his post on Quickbooks 2010 Registration Hassles. Thanks for letting me know others are having problem with this, Scott.