Buttonwood Technology Group, L.L.C.

Here’s an interesting article on productivity which suggests that your Blackberry is not making you more efficient.

The money quote:

“In addition, a lot of the supposed BlackBerry benefit is destroyed by four factors. First, working on a BlackBerry is less efficient than working on a computer (it takes more time to get the same stuff done), so some of your benefit (time waiting in line) is wasted in lower productivity. Second, checking your email constantly causes you to respond to emails and deal with issues that you could have simply ignored had you waited until you got home or to your hotel (since questions or issues posed in email often resolve themselves if you simply wait a few hours). Third, having a BlackBerry causes you to spend more time on email than you need to, because you can. But people lobby their companies to pay for their BlackBerrys because they want them, and companies often agree because they think they’re getting a more efficient workforce. Fourth, the quality of work you do on a BlackBerry is lower than on a computer. For example, with a computer, you can answer a question by finding a specific data source and actually finding the answer; with a BlackBerry, you are more likely to give an unhelpful answer like “try looking at source X,” which you may have misidentified, and which is less helpful to the person asking the question.”

Of course we’re all about efficiency since what we do all day is try and make things more efficient for our customers here at Buttonwood so I’m thinking of ditching my Blackberry!

A fascinating FT article on how Chinese web use of different from western habits.  Read here

It suggests the following:

1. Chinese tend to “roam the web like a huge playground,” whereas Americans and Europeans use it more as a giant library.

2. Chinese users are more likely to use the web for entertainment and less for business, relative to Europeans.

3. Chinese users are younger and less educated.

4. Chinese users don’t like to type (“Typing is a pain in Chinese”) and thus they use the mouse much more for navigation.

5. “Most portals have reacted by filling their pages with hundreds of colourful links competing for attention — creating a cluttered and disorderly view to the western eye but making life easier for Chinese users.”

(Thanks to Marginal Revolution for the article summary)

Speckyboy.com is a great place to look at for design ideas.

Some are free and some cost money but there are a ton of good concepts and some wonderful inspiration for those who like that kind of thing.

I hated school….school taught me that the definition of being wrong was not following rules. School taught me that you can’t do anything new – just do what someone else has already done. The better you could imitate the existing idea the more frequently you would be rewarded. Of course I only wanted to do something new…and so I was frequently punished!

I have a suspicion that our industry attracts a lot of people who like to create and who don’t like rules.  This fellow has some interesting insights into education and creativity that I hope you will all enjoy!

A fascinating article in the month’s WIRED magazine.  Read it here.

The future is small and fast…

Today, micro-factories make everything from cars to bike components to bespoke furniture in any design you can imagine. The collective potential of a million garage tinkerers is about to be unleashed on the global markets, as ideas go straight into production, no financing or tooling required. “Three guys with laptops” used to describe a Web startup. Now it describes a hardware company, too.

Some interesting trends from ROI Magazine.

Design or Incompetence, Part Two http://bit.ly/4o35OY

So..for the first time in a while we didn’t get a booth in Vegas (see previous post)

I was feeling a little at a loss about what I was going to do all day but somewhat incredibly I was actually busier than past years. I met with more people and worked on bigger more interesting deals that ever before. Here’s what I did…

I sent out an email to a bunch of people I wanted to talk to about 3 weeks before the show. Most of them replied and I set up a bunch of meetings. It was pretty casual for the most part, the coffee shop, a restaurant, a bar, some party that we were both going to…but the reality is that I had uninterrupted conversations with the people I wanted to talk to.

I often feel that standing in a trade show booth is one of the most boring and soul destroying activities on the planet. Most of the time one of three things happens…1) you stare at your booth mates wondering if anyone is going to stop and visit the booth 2) people visit who have no intention of remembering what we told them (the “just scan me” crowd) or 3) people come and try and sell you their stuff. Occasionally you have a good conversation with someone but I’d say from past experience you get around 5 of those per day. 5 good chats in a day is not terrible but the big question is how do you increase that number and get rid of all the other nonsense.

So I decided to do it differently this year and it worked better…but I still think we haven’t found the right solutions and that there has to be a better way to do trade shows.

The traditional trade show format make sense if your going to have a huge booth and a large staff managing the booth. That way you can actually get EVERYONE who comes to the show to stop by the booth and engage with your company. When you are smaller you don’t really have the resources (we’re talking 100K+ to do it right) to connect with thousands of people.

There has to be a better model for the smaller company to engage people at a trade show. Maybe something like setting appointments in some sort of meeting room on the floor. That way each person who comes to the “booth” would be somewhat qualified in advance, committed to listening to the sales pitch and feel like they got something out of the experience. If anyone has more thoughts on this topic I’d love to hear them…we’re definitely looking for better ways to get our message across without acting like the human version of SPAM.

We decided to give exhibiting in Vegas a miss this year…Here are the three reasons why.

1) We’re Lost in the Chaos

There are over 1,200 exhibitors on two floor in Vegas.  While the idea of 13,000 potential customers is attractive, the reality is that most people have time to visit somewhere around 75 exhibitors.  Since everyone stops by the big guys and their friends that eliminates around 50 or so…which leave us fighting for traffic with 1,150 other exhibitors to be one of the remaining 25 booths they visit.  Statistically speaking we have about a 2% chance of you visiting our booth which translates into about 250 new visitors. The reality from past years would suggest these numbers are high.

2) We Get A Poor Return on Our Investment

With our 250 projected visitors we start to look at the ROI.  For us to go to Vegas costs around $10,000.  Between booth space, pre-show marketing, collateral, hotels and other stuff it all adds up quick.  So for our projected 250 new leads we will spend around $10,000…which gives us a cost of $40 per lead.  The reality is most of those leads are unqualified so the true cost is closer to something between $80 and $100 per lead.  This a VERY expensive was to generate unqualified interest in our product.  Email marketing for example is closer to $50 per lead and those leads are from qualified distributors who are interested in learning more about and evaluating our product.

3) Exiled to Siberia

PPAI puts all the business service companies way up in the back of the second floor exhibit hall. By the time a distributors makes it back to see us they have already used up a lot of their ability to take in information.  Most of the interactions we engage in are with tired people who are looking forward to the end of their day.  When we try to have a conversation about eCommerce and Internet strategy they look at us with a kind smile and eyes that say “I agree this is important but I’m just not going to understand it right now.”

I wanted to explain why we’re not exhibiting in a public and honest format – I hope our reasons make sense and that no one feels slighted or unimportant because we’re not on the floor this year.  I’ll be in Vegas and I have a ton of fun and exciting meetings with suppliers and distributors who really want to learn more about Buttonwood.  If you want to meet up in person for any reason shoot me an email and we’ll try and figure something out.

Good luck and have fun!