Live blogging: Project Northstar launch part 2
Alistair Rennie takes the stage to kick off the event. Humorously I can hear tons of Sametime bings and pops in the audience as this is streamed live. IBM thinks there is something much more substantial that just a blog or wiki on the web. IBM felt it was time to have a dialog on social media real-time metrics and engagement.
Editor notes: I will say this is big for a large scale software maker to finally catch on to. This idea has been exploding in the social media space. We cover many of the vendors in how metrics can be handled and what can be measured and engaged with. IBM is utilizing their Websphere Portal brand, coupled with some business partners, to enter the enterprise market
How does social change the way people work? Alistair bring Irving Wladawsky-Berger on stage to talk about social and the tranformational technology it brings. Irving goes on for some time about technology. IBM realized it does not have to invent everything. But merging all the assets together with the reach of the Internet, all the assets can be brought to the world. That introduced eBusiness. Linux was next up in early 2000 and analysts thought they were crazy. Smarter Planet and more are the drive for the Customer Experience.
Irving has still been on for the last 30 minutes discussing social information and how it affects work. He is now reaching into the social media realm or the blogosphere, wikis and more. But only with the right tools that address analytics, handle communication and give you better forecasting information.
We are now moving on in the agenda after 40 minutes with Irving. The next speaker is Mark Hurst (sp?). He speaks often on engaging customers. Mark will be skipping slides and moving into a live experiment. The customer experience line is a very thin place between where you sell the service or product and their consumption. The customers spend time talking to each other, but not to the company selling the product or service.
Mark brings Mitch Cohen and Liz Albert on stage (both from the Lotus world) to participate. Mitch takes the stage for the experiment. Mitch is told to walk through his experience at a live website and talk loud about his experience. Mitch jokes about using a Mac and Mark says they moved all the letters. Mitch is working his way through the Verizon FIOS site. The site was a tough experience as we expected. We are now listening to audience observations.
Mark points out many companies do surveys and frame research instead of actually observing the customer and how they interact with the site/service. It is about finding out how we service our customer better. Irving jumps in to point out he hopes Northstar has the analytics ability to help solve the problem we saw in the demo with Mitch.
Mark is stopped by Alistair and Irving is brought back up as well for Q&A. The first person addresses that companies now expect their own websites are robust enough they do not need to pick up the phone or worry about watching customer experience. Irving says if you are building a market facing system, you should do testing and experimentation with feedback.
*** they took a break before more panels resume***
Jeff Schick, VP of Social Software at Lotus, takes the stage after the break. Jeff brings Forrester, NY Univ and and another to the stage for a preset Q&A. After a lengthy Q&A, the mic was passed.
Larry Bowden, VP for Websphere Portal, takes the stage. With an exceptional experience customers visit more, buy more and recommend more often. More panelists are brought up with Larry. They all gave exmplaes of what they do on their sites to engage customers.
Alistair rejoins the stage to close the event and summarize about the customer experience or reinvent relationships by using analytics. He mentions they have demos that live attendees can see, but nothing for the streaming viewers.
I am honestly confused of what the message was that I was to take away.
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On Thursday, September 16th, 2010 by Chris Miller
