When selling is teaching

All publishing industries are living tough moments. In part is due to the impact of technology and massive use of it by people. Change is happening at every level and at every process....every day.


Traditional selling and marketing processes are inefficient, specially for new designed content product and services. This is just a small portion of the problem, but an interesting one. 


How do we tell people a new product or service is better than the one they´re already using... and is working fine? How do we change the way they are using information and content? How do we insert technology -more technology- in their life and work?


I believe in one answer: we first teach them.


Presenting and showing new content or information product and services is always fascinating. But much more fascinating is when people starts to buy and use your product and they tell the world about it. And even more fascinating when they start to build guides and recommend it in their blogs, twitters, networks....in their digital world. And, maybe, the best of all is when they become anxious for the next release, the new functionalities, the new contents you are going to present them in a few months.


This occurs because they've learned how to use it, they are excited about the benefits they obtain and, of course, that paying the price is fair.


If we first start teaching how to use a product we will have two good inputs: what issues are not resolved the best possible way and the barriers people have to buy and start using it (price, content, format, hardware, mobility, dependencies and more). We will have the opportunity to solve them and go on. But the best thing is we could transmit the passion that is behind every creation of a new tool, product or service. If we become a "positive engine" to energize the others, the best of your creation is exposed. So imagine having this "power" in every training session of every single product and service you want to sell.
Introducing a new technology is also a part of the teaching process. 


To face this circumstance we need to focus on two realities. The first is: the more simple the technology is, the less time a person will need to adopt it; and the second, the new technology has to solve problems and not to create new ones. If during the selling process, which now has to be the teaching process, the user understands both correct, 90% of the work is done.


I truly believe that, to sell, teaching is much more effective than just exposing the product. I will apply this belief  from now on and tell you my experience in a few months.

Tools of Change for Publishing Conference - TOCCON 2010

I will be presenting four stories about how the rules in publishing have changed and will continue to change. We will give you four real examples, four real stories to show you how studying medicine in Europe is evolving fast. 

Google Wave: teaching online made easy?

I'm one of the persons who received a Google Wave account with eight invitations available in it. I was very interested -and excited- in discovering this new territory in the net. 

It was announced as a new collaborative tool, something between email, twitter and chat. But I didn't have a clear idea in my mind of what was his potential.

Now I've been playing with Google Wave, creating new waves, sharing contents, maps and files, making simple polls, chatting in real time and locating all his secrets.

While chatting with a colleague I realized the potential Google Wave has to teach. I was giving him some information in text format: a short paragraph of a new concept I am working on. He asked me some questions (more text) and then I sent them some images with comments so he could fully understand me idea. He then proposed minor changes and asked some more questions (more text). A YouTube video came to my mind, something from a parallel world that could help me to communicate better my project to him (movie). After the movie I decided to share with him a presentation I made to introduce my thoughts to other colleagues from other countries (PowerPoint). Finally I presented to him different sources (links to different sites), which inspired me to build the concept.

So that’s what we shared: text – questions – images + text – conversation – questions – video – slideshow – links

And another very key issue in that moment was my full control of the message and contents I was using to make him understand an idea. Just adding a test at the end of this path and I would have an online teaching object (and I could share it also with others).

So now, I would like Google Wave to fully deploy its potential (some areas are not ready to use yet) so I can discover more interesting usages for this new tool.

Seth Godin on FAKE networking

Content deconstructed .....and now bundled

Apple is trying to help the music industry to rebuild the concept of ALBUM. The Financial Times reports that Apple is trying to bundle interactive content to stimulate digital album sales.

Of course, changes that allow people to make more choices are always good changes. What shocked me is the direction Apple took now. They´ve created a universe of deconstructed content: iTunes, the universe of songs. Albums, even if available at the store, have disappear from the stats related to downloaded music. Songs (and apps) are being bought by people who create their own playlists (the private version of albums). But albums are not a business today.

Now, a new concept is being put in place: bundling different kinds of multimedia contents to stimulate what the FT article calls Digital Albums. It will be very interesting to see the mix of contents behind this concept and people's reaction to it.

Collecting information and learning

I had a very nice talk with one of my colleagues from Amsterdam. We were talking about how students, and other people, collect information to learn. The issue we were discussing was how medicine students build their papers and learn.

A few years ago, when I was in the Faculty of Law, I bought 4 or 5 really heavy books to read and learn. My teachers at the University told me the information needed to pass the exam was in those books. I didn’t have the internet at that time so no chance to google nor wiki.

A few weeks ago, faculty students ended their annual course and started summer holidays, after passing the final exams. I had a good opportunity to chat with a group of medicine students. I asked them about their books, how big and heavy are they? The answer was: we don’t know, we don’t use very much books now. We use the papers writen by our professors, plus some reference materials, plus google and some internet sources, like xtorrent and rapidshare.

I, then , asked about how did they organise all these informations from the different sources. They answered they all shared a usb flash memory stick and a gMail account to organise their info. They had a group and every person was responsible for creating some lessons. All lessons were then shared via Gmail or the USB stick. But the most interesting thing is that they were collecting information from different books, selecting the small pieces that were important to pass the exams, aggregating papers from the professors and related documents downloaded from differents websites.

A specific comment attracted my attention: they were trying to reduce the lessons to small pieces of information. Each of the lessons was a constructions of small pieces of information, coming from different sources, and aggregated by one of the members. All were working in the same way. The reason for that is they could retain more easily the information if they visualized each lesson with each small guide and a few contents in it.

The system they have created to learn is so different from the one I used 20 years ago…..but, at the same time, I do use the same system when browsing the web for new insigths, new ideas, new projects and new updates on me every day work. I collect small pieces of information, organize them in different “lessons” I have to read, and share them with my network.

If it’s working for them and it’s working for me, why are we still publishing heavy text books?

Color e-paper update - May 2009

An article published in Nature Photonics (read the summary of the article at http://www.nature.com/nphoton/journal/v3/n5/abs/nphoton.2009.68.html) about a week ago informs about two prototypes of color e-paper displays. It is very interesting to see that the techonology they are using comes from the past. In fact, both developments are focused on using pigments in an aqueous solution inside the pixel. Then, by manipulating the voltage on each device the liquid with the pigment draws out from the reservoir into the freee space of the pixel (in the second prototype, there are two pigments in each reservoir but with different charge properties so that the voltage controls which of them is shown in the display). 

The potential of colorized e-ink for the health sciences publishing industry is huge. It opens a vast universe of possibilities and new developments on e-books and, also, new instructional models for education, e-libraries, multiformat services and more other interesting gadgets.

Fujitsu has started to sell his first color e-reader (FLEPia) on march this year, with an 8-inch screen display and up to 260,000 colors in high-definition. Even if it's a very good start for this new market, the re-draw speed is still low and the weight (385g) and specially the price is too high if compared to the Sony e-Reader or the Kindle. 

Update on the Wolfram|Alpha project

There's been great anticipation around Stephen Wolfram's ambitious project to create a comprehensive "computational knowledge engine." The Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University will host a sneak preview of the Wolfram|Alpha system, and a discussion of its underlying technology and implications. Participants will include Wolfram|Alpha founder Stephen Wolfram and Professor of Law Jonathan Zittrain.


Stephen Wolfram discusses Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine...here's the video:

Value added lost

We can develop the best product and services in the world. But, among many other issues, we must be aware of two critical things:

1) Online products and services change fast because of their environment;
2) People who create product and services are not the ones communicating its existence to the market.

The consequences of these two facts are:

1) Flexibility and adaptation are required more than ever;
2) People who create must be involved in the communication of the product and services to the audience.

So, for the first subject, we need people who learn fast, who understand perfectly what they are working with, who can assess the needs of the users and are able to match them in seconds. But if they don’t match, then they should be prepared to offer a solution based on our know how and skills. And latest, they should be capable of giving the correct feedback so we can adapt fast to changes.

And for the second concern, we should involve developers and managers in building, and continuously adapting, the correct messages about our products and services. We should all become story tellers of our products because stories can be, just by themselves, a hundred times more fascinating than a flyer.

Medical images databases

I’m currently working with my team on browsing the images contained inside an ebook in a 3D environment. Tho objective is have a better navigation of the images and access the clinical cases from them. Doctors are used to see lots of images during their daily work, so it is important to navigate medical content databases the same way.

See this video I just made for better understand what we are doing:



Any comments and ideas are always welcome.

2019

Someone imagined the next generation tools.....




Wish I was there !

The era of THE USER

I had a revealing conversation with a relative of mine who is a Doctor. We were talking about Internet, social networks and professional information. Actually, I was interested in knowing how does he use the computer every day.

The answer was very simple: I use my laptop five to ten times per day depending on the number of patients I visit. He literally said:

“In the morning, when I arrive to my office, I read two or three different online newspapers (I wish I could learn how to use RSS),. Then I open my personal and professional email (I use to receive all kinds of jokes from other doctors, lots of spam and some professional newsletters I read in less than five minutes). In this same session I see the weather forecast for the next days and that’s all.

At lunch, I revisit my email (both of them), search some medical information when I want to revise some aspects of certain pathologies, update news (don’t have time to see the news on TV) and, from time to time, visit my Linkedin account.

During the afternoon, to prepare patient’s visits, I use to access an image database created internally with the images and videos we record on every patient. That helps me to remember their clinical dossiers and to see the evolution of the treatment.

After a long day, at home, I have another laptop I use just for fun: email, search information on interesting travels I would like to do and, sometimes, search new gadgets (TV, music, cameras).”

I then asked him about his preferred search engine. And the answer was not the one I expected (Google or Yahoo). He answered he was bored of these search engines because of the big amount of unnecessary information they offer in every search.

He told me he was expecting some smart company to create a single platform where he could “place” all the services he is using: email (both), his own images and videos database, RSS, library, travel agency, newspapers and newsletters (titles would be sufficient) and other stuff that could change from time to time. He wanted this synchronized automatically in his two laptops or, also, available in some private website (so he could access it from other’s computers).

It’s not the first time I listen to this same comment, and my own experience is that I’ve also build a centralized unique website to link all my needs of information, access to networks, banks, service’s accounts, etc.

Unconsciously, what we are doing is staying away from doing more and more searches and, instead of this, building our own system of information. This personal system is generated by our previous searches of information (a lot of them), contacts with others, and of course experience.

All these outcomes drove us to be aware of the different places we need to visit in the internet (our hard drive or network) to feed our desires. So now we tend to navigate directly to these sites instead of starting googling or yahooing.

Google Books is paying

Google would pay $125 million to settle two copyright lawsuits where his book-scanning efforts were compromised by the Association of American Publishers.

The new agreement will allow Google to show a 20% of each scanned bookto the users without paying anything. The full text could also be available for a certain price. This could be a good measure but thinking on technical or scientific books I wonder if this 20% is a big big mistake.

The NYT explains that Google plans to take 37 percent of the revenue, leaving 63 percent for publishers and authors.

New blog on book innovation

I've just opened a new blog called: Book Innovation.

Feel free to post your comments and even send me your posts if you want to publish them in it.

Google Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer

The shiny new internet browser from Google is here. Google Chrome is available for download from here. What are the implications for the two other main browsers, Firefox and Internet Explorer.

I've read some blogs where people are announcing the end of the story for them, and others who are just expecting the final version of this new browser to say their final word.

But, for sure, this presentation takes the Google-Microsoft rivalry to a whole new level and it will also affect the whole internet.

One of the most interesting things in Chrome is the address bar. People in Google resolved one of the most common mistakes in browsing the web: to write a search in this bar instead of the search box. Google has unified the address bar and the seach box creating a new concept now called the Omnibox.

Networking engines

One of the wonderful services/functionalities that is offered by Facebook, Linkedin or other social networks is the one that informs you with this message: John S has updated his profile. Just this simple message posted in your landing page, or in your inbox, is powerful enough to make you visit John S profile.
This occurs because we are naturally curious about many things and, specially, the ones referred to people we know. So curiosity is a human emotion driving us to explore the unknown but also a powerful engine which can be used to drive our attention to a specific site.

Sony eBook Reader PRS-505 (part 2)

After being with the Sony PRS-505 e-book reader for a couple of months and testing it with different contents (books, articles, blogs)., the final conclusions are:

• e-Ink tech is on his first steps;
• Color is a must have for our market (e-Ink is still B&W);
• Lack of interactivity is a big problem;
• Battery in the Sony reader is amazing (10 days in active mode)
• As a simple reader is very good, but don t ask for more. Very simple solutions could be created for this reader, but this is not our interest right now (iPhone solutions are).
• Music player integrated is awful (horrible sound quality)
• A technology to allow reformatting texts is needed (so you are allowed to increase text size).
• iREX should be my next Laboratory Toy.

Downloads saving music industry ?

I've just read a spanish newspaper where an article took my full attention: music industry is being saved by music phone downloads.

It seems that people were downloading music from the internet ..... till now. Phone downloads are today 50% of the total downloads. Believe it or not, music could be in front of their new hero: our phone!

A good reason to change to Mac

A research company has determined that using Mac in a business environment is better than using Windows PCs from two points of view: time and money. That means, changing to Mac is a logical move if we want to increase efficiency and generate internal cost savings.

Nucleus Research has been doing a study in a company with 1700 employees.
Mac and Pcs are both used in this same company and after the analysis, Nucleus reported two important issues:

1) Macs have 33 per cent fewer problems than Windows PCs in a business environment;
2) Mac trouble tickets are closed 30% quicker.

Conclusions are obvious: people using Mac could have 33% more time to be efficient and, if they have problems with their Macs, they can go back to work much quickly than PC users.

That seems to be a very good reason to change to Mac

Sony eBook Reader PRS-505 (part I)

First impression on this ebook reader when unboxing is ....."nice gadget" but let's see what's inside. And what we find there is a very good ebook reader but nothing else: no wifi connection, no color, no interactivity and little problems with PDF reading. Design could be also better....allow Apple do this for you!

It's a very good reader because it has no other ambitions and reading ebooks in the .lrf format is a nice experience. I've been reading some articles and parts of different books for the last two weeks (in very changing light ambiences) and no problems came up with this issue.

But connection or interactivity with the reader are a must-have for the next version. Sony must also allow PDF to be correctly displayed in his screen (zoom is not enough) and,

maybe, think about producing a bigger screen with touch capabilities (and eliminate lots of

useless buttons). IRex is doing quite well with its last product Iliad 2nd Edition but at a much higher price ($599 vs $299).

E-ink technology is in his first development steps so we will have to wait till improvements are available for this readers (faster changes between pages, better transitions, ink colors).

Reader is prepared for leisure but not for professionals: no medical or biology or painting books are possible without colour and other improvements.

On eBook devices

I've been recently looking at those new eBook readers coming from different companies: Amazon, iRex, Sony, Bookeen, Hanlin and others. I was asking myself which one could feed my actual needs.

All of them are based on e-ink technology and, depending on the price (from $200 to $650) they offer more functionalities. For me, two things are the most important: 1) battery life and, 2) the chance to easily upload and storage all content formats (Word, PDF, txt, html, epub, etc.).

After reading different reviews and opinions, I decided to give a try to Sony PRS-505. I will let you know my experience with it in a few weeks.

They know too much

How many web sites have you visited lately? How many forms have you completed with your data?

We use the net intensely and our searches for information include giving our data to a wide variety of companies. People know their data is used just for the purposes described in the Privacy terms and conditions of each web. And, commonly, those provisions are tolerable and adequate if look at them carefully.

The problem starts when you don t remember where your data is stored and want to recover some privacy. Many people I know fill forms from many different projects every week. Even if they are systematic in saving their web surfing history, it s very easy to fail to remember all services in where they are considered customers or users.

But the problem is much more complex.

When a person needs to decrease (or even eliminate) his exposure in the net, he is facing an enormous and extremely intricate problem. He probably can get in touch with the companies to erase his personal data from their registers, and this is not complicate. Where suffering begins is because he also has to contact the big search engines in order to delete the traces they store (without his permission). That is a genuine problem.

Who has ever expressly accepted the use of his data (in the most comprehensive and wide definition of this concept) stored by the search engines?

See also this article from New York Times.

Amazon S3 - Not a real backup service

Backing up your information is not always as safe as we suppose. Amazon offers a service called Simple Storage Service (S3). It is an inexpensive solution for those who have to backup several files and want to use the Internet for this.

In just a few hours, I had my 4 Gb backup uploaded with Jungledisk to S3 and being updated every 15 minutes. I just made one mistake: to encrypt the data with the secret key Amazon provides to you.

I enjoyed this service till I had a little problem with my Mac and then: chaos, I lost all information stored.

Yes, my hard drive was suddenly dead (something related to the main index of it) and all information in it was lost. But I had my S3 backup so, presumably, I had nothing to worry about. Wrong concept fellows!

I reinstalled everything in my computer including Jungledisk to recover all my data back to the disk. The problem was I had lost the secret key given by Amazon and had to generate another one to access my backup files. Since then, accessing those files was impossible due to a different encrypting key (which is absolutely normal). I contacted Amazon S3 support to recover the lost key in order to recover all my files but SURPRISE! they do not backup this information at all so the answer was: We are sorry but all your information is positively gone forever.

I ceased the service immediately and recommend my friends, at least, to save the Key in five different places just in case something happens to their computers, because Amazon does not backup.

What I expect from Leopard

Apple announced a few days ago the official launching of their new OS, Mac OS X Leopard. October 26th is my birthday and the day I expect to try this long time waited operating system.

I'm a Mac user and as many other Mac users, I presume all new features in Leopard are going to surprise me. Many of these new features had been announced last months. And today, the most interesting ones for me are: Time Machine, Finder, Quick Look and Spaces.

Of course there are many improvements in the new OS, and the ones related to appearance are always relevant and fascinating to me (I like a nice interface that shows effects and this kind of things).

But the gizmo I'm expecting the more is an exciting first-class SURPRISE (or surprises!). Yes, that is really the thing that Apple knows well how to do ...... to surprise us with innovative creations, designs or functions. Definitely, this is the record I would like to have when using Leopard for the first time....exactly the same feeling I had when using for the first time my iPhone.

My new spanish iPhone

I recently had the chance to buy an iPhone in NY (since the difference between euro and dollar generates a very nice diskount for europeans).

I was convinced by many features included in this machine: phone, wifi, iPod Touch, Google maps, SMS, sync possibilities with my Macbook Pro and a wide variety of new apps coming from different third companies (not from Apple).

Now, one week after I have activated the phone I must say: IT IS SIMPLY TERRIFIC. It's amazing the way it works, the way things come naturally to you, the way this new iPod works.....and anything that happens with this new gadget.

TECH - Where does information go ?

I use to read The Economist and Fast Company magazines when I'm waiting at the airport or flying. A few days ago I was reading some articles in those jornals and I realized that they are small pieces of text. Nothing compared to the traditional articles we could found, for example, in traditional legal journals. In fact, articles (in the broadest meaning of the word) are changing from full lenght studies of a reality, idea or thought, to a sort of fast and short commentaries compiling as much information as possible.

The same thing happens with articles published in the newspapers: we have an increasing number of texts and they become shorter and shorter.

Make a test: go to a library, read a newspaper from the 60's and count the total number of articles. Now do the same with a recent newspaper and you will obtain a much higher number of works. Where does the information go ?

Do you think we accumulate more thoughts and ideas and the small pieces of text we are receiveing from the publishers are just updates of those things? or, is information changing its structure and presentation to allow us understand a much more complex world?

I really don't know but the increasing number of communications/informations and the increasing number of sources (blogs, podcasts) are making us short-text-readers. What will be the consequences of this fact?

TECH - Sending power with no cables

Are all our cellphones, iPod, mouse, keyboards and other wireless gadgets really wireless when we have to connect them every week ?

The solution has been totally developed and we can -today- send power over radio waves or charge our devices by induction. A new technology is allowing all kind of consumer devices to be powered and charged without wires. This technology was discovered in the 20s but it has been developped for commercial use the last ten years. In fact, Apple is trying to develop a special dock connector for iPod in order to charge them wirelessly.

The company, ECoupled, presented this new technology that includes an intelligent inductive coupled power circuit that dynamically adjusts, allowing the primary circuit to adapt its operation to match the characteristics of the load. The power supply circuit automatically optimizes efficiency by seeking resonance at ultra-high frequencies between the primary and secondary coils for any given load. Energy transfer efficiency is increased over conventional inductive coupling, resulting in power losses as low as 2 percent.

We just have to wait till commercial manufacturers start producing all devices with this new capability.

Mac - Still without radio

Apple iPhone combines three products: a revolutionary mobile phone, a widescreen iPod with touch controls, and a breakthrough Internet communications device. But where is the radio ?

iPod Shuffle, iPod Nano, iPod Video.......none of these Apple products has a radio built in. And now, the newcomer iPhone still doesn't have what millions of users asked Apple for. Why do we -always- have to buy more accesories, more cables, more gadgets in order to listen to the radio with Apple ? One of the reasons given by Apple developpers is they want people to download their podcasts, music or videos from iTunes....so....they want us to pay for the contents....and use the wifi capabilities of iPhone.

Maybe in the second generation iPhone release (2008?) we will have the 3G/HSPDA and radio capabilities. That would be nice !

TECH - Skype and hot spots

A large number of professionals use Skype to make phone calls while they are out of their offices. They connect to the net through open connections available is most parts of every city in the world.

But this kind of 'free' hot spots are becoming more and more difficult to find and, instead of, paying hot spots are presented to us. These access points are expensive: a one hour connection can cost more than 10 euros in many countries in Europe, specially if we need to connect in the airport or train station.

Our friends at Skype have just release Skype Zones Beta. They have created a wide network of Skype-friendly hot spots. You can find more than 700 connection zones in Spain, 7500 in the US, 1400 in Germany or 380 in Australia. All zones are situated in strategic places of each city (airport, business center, trade center, exhibition halls). A list of them -for each country- is available here.

The only problem -nowadays- is that Skype Zones is only available for Windows XP and Windows 2000 (Mac OS X, Linux or Pocket PC are not supported yet). The prices for this service are much more interesting than the expensive hot spot companies: 2,50 euros per two hours connection or 6,50 euros per a whole month. You can activate your Skype Zone Beta from your account in Skype.