Work – Page 16 – Chris Koerner

IT Needs to Market Itself

IT departments, in general, do a terrible job marketing their services, functions and value to the rest of the organization. While there are many business functions that an average IT shop needs to partake in, marketing is the first and most important. I’ve sat on both sides of the Marketing/IT table and have perpetually been frustrated by lackluster communication around what IT does¹ (and is doing).

We’re technologists, the antithesis of the marketing person ,right? A large majority of folks working in corporate IT have more technical backgrounds which, I think, lends itself to the kind of person that either 1) doesn’t value marketing or 2) considers it a ‘soft’ skill set that 3) they often don’t feel comfortable doing.

Maybe I’m wrong, but the past paints IT folks as not being the best people persons. Now that is changing thankfully, in large part to the influx of young startups and entrepreneurs in the tech sector – people who were born into a part of the culture of sharing, collaborating and the Internet.

The “If we build it, they will come.” mentality does not work for any IT initiative. The result is adoption lacks, people don’t see the value to spending the time on ‘yet another thing’ and leadership often doesn’t put their full weight into it.

Marketing needs to be first, if we’re to operate like a business and need to be in the black.² I think it’s tantamount that we invest in clearer communication and a little panache when talking to people about the stuff we’re working on. The value we bring as it were.

I keep hearing about this idea of commercialization of IT services as being something big shops are looking at, and while I’m not sure I buy it, let’s assume it pans out. Well, in order to get people to buy in to the service you offer you have to be able to sell them on the idea that choosing your company is a wise idea. Same thing applies to our customers – our fellow co-workers. I think some people have the idea that “we’re the IT department, we have a captive audience. They have to deal with us.”

As we know, consummerizaiton, cheap cloud solutions and BYO movements prove that wrong. In order for IT to survive as a valued and important part of the business of any organization – regardless of size – it’s important to leverage the marketing of our services to remain relevant.

As Seth Godin puts it, “Successful people have discovered how to be better at self marketing.” the same applies to successful IT organizations.

Sharing to Succeed

The person with the confidence to support others and to share is repaid by getting more in return than his selfish counterpart.

The connection economy multiplies the value of what is contributed to it. It’s based on abundance, not scarcity, and those that opt out, fall behind.

–Seth Godin on the sad irony of selfishness

I think there’s a large group of people in the work force – not you dear reader, but you know who I’m talking about – that feel that keeping information and knowledge close to their chest is the path to success. That sharing, documenting, conversing are all things that chip away at their power and control. As Seth puts it above, the truth could be no farther from the truth.

One of my sage advisors during college told me that the core job of a technologist was to empower people with the technology. To allow them to do more and succeed greater with the use of these tools. In order to do that you have to share what you know – make others successful. Only then will you be successful yourself.

Why the Internet Makes Me Feel Like an Idiot and Why I’m Not

The internet is a great tool to learn and experience quite literally every single human endeavor. You name the topic and there most likely exists – at least – a single Wikipedia entry. With a few YouTube video tutorials, some blog posts starting with “How To…” you can become knowledgeable in a myriad of technical and non-technical professions.

I work on the web every day. My job title is “Web Project Coordinator” and while this implies that I’m focused on the web I find myself both professionally and personally doing so much more.

On some days I shoot and edit video, others have me designing a layout for a site or coding some JavaScript. I even manage a few servers and help edit objective-c for an iPhone app! Not to mention my past IT support role has perpetuated my title as ‘computer guy’ around the office and at home.

I freely admit this is a 1st world problem and there are far greater difficulties facing the universe, but on an individual level I find the feeling of not being proficient in one particular area to be a serious mental drain. Why do I feel like a jack of all trades and a master of none?

Some days I feel like a fraud, that everyone I work with (and for) have been duped by smoke and mirrors. That if they ever found out how little I actually know I’d be branded as a fluke, a huckster. Part of me knows this isn’t true. That I’m smart and well received by those I work with, but man because of the Internet I feel like such a moron. Why is this?

It’s because I read. I read a lot.

I pursue Twitter and Google Reader to find out what’s going on all over the world. I read about Adam Lisagor and his awesome video work or Neven Mrgan and his splendid design chops. Boing Boing fills me with oddities to delight the senses and bizarre people I would love to meet.

Guys like Merlin Mann and Jeffery Zeldman make me feel like a sloth with their intelligent and witty writing. Don’t even get me started on Mike Matas‘ photography or Brent Simmons‘ helpful articles on coding. How about Michael Lopp’s awesome guide to being a better geek?

I digress, but you can see how after daily observances of a plethora of cool things one can start comparing themselves and asking, “Why am I not that successful? Why are these people so awesome?”

But I think I’ve figured it out.

I was ~~having a discussion~~ bitching to my wife on the ride home from work. I was withering in fake pain about how I don’t feel like I’m strong in any particular area and how I worry about my future. My wife, as smart as always, pointed out an obvious fact.

I’m comparing myself to 5 different people – of course I’m not going to be as good in each profession as these folks have chosen. I’ve been trying to stretch myself in so many different ways because I’m excited! I want to do everything I read about because it all sounds so interesting.

I realize now that I can’t try to do what 5 separate people have accomplished. I can dabble here, and try something over here, but at the end of the day I need to relax.

My wife reminded me that what is important is that the people I work with enjoy what I can do for them and that I continue to develop as an individual without the pressure to be as good as everyone on the Internet. I often forget that these folks are great at what they do and that what each one of them does is diverse and specific. People rarely blog about their shortcomings – about topics that they’re not proficient in. They talk about their successes, their passions and what cool things they’re doing.

So anytime I’m down in a funk, that I feel like no one would hire me and that I’m some sort of goober, I just need to remember that even thought the Internet can bring so much information to my fingertips that it does nothing to filter – to remind me that I need to take things in one at a time. Admire these things I see and hear, enjoy them, but ultimately be at peace with who I am and where I’m going.

Walk to Madrid

At work we just wrapped up a 12 week walking program called “Walk to Madrid“. The goal of the program was to encourage employees to take a more active role in their physical health. Departments and individuals formed teams of 5 to 10 people and kept track of how many steps they took each week using the provided pedometers.

Teams would select a captain to keep track of their steps and submit them to HQ every week. The program had both a competitive and collaborative set of goals. The first was each team competing to see who could walk the farthest toward our Madrid Campus and the second was to see how far we as a university could walk toward Madrid.

We also setup bi-weekly awards and milestones along the way to encourage teams to go just a little further.

We set out with the idea of maybe getting 200 people involved with about 20 teams total. We purchased water bottles and pedometers and prepared for people to sign up.

After a few weeks (with only really one simple article in our university-wide newsletter) we had over 900 people say they were interested. It total we had around 95 teams – 75 of which actually completed the entire 3 month program.

Entire departments signed up – causing us to split 30-40 member teams in to more manageable chunks. We even had 3 teams from our Madrid campus sign up!*

My role was helping to manage the data from each team and to update the website weekly with the most current results. I created a Google form for each team that was shared with the team captain. Since teams could be between 5 and 10 members we averaged the progress for each team to even things out.**

Each week I calculated the average into miles and updated a chart that used a Google Spreadsheet as a database. It was quite the undertaking and while I could have automated the entire process I felt that it was necessary to at least glance over the incoming steps.

Let me share some stats with you.

95 teams and over 900 people
~75 of which finished
Average weekly miles per team – 28.9 miles
Total Miles walked to (and past) Madrid – 28,287.13 miles
Total in Steps – 56,574,275.3
As an entire organization we traveled between St. Louis and Madrid 6 times.
The total distance traveled is greater than the circumference of the Earth at the equator.

During the weekly updates I would also check to see which teams were the first to past a given milestone. Each week I would unveil a new milestone ‘badge’ I created. We had planned out over more than 20 milestones between St. Louis and Madrid, but only had the chance to use about half.

The 1st place team got as far as the Atlantic Ocean (off the tip of Delaware). I made more graphics that never got used for milestones out past the coast. Here’s a few of them:

At the end of this crazy experiment we hosted a simple celebration in the recreation center. Around 75 people stopped by and the Vice President of Human Resources spoke a few words.*** We gave out medals to the 2nd, 3rd, 4th and 5th place teams. First place got snazzy little runner-topped trophies and took the “Stanley Cup” trophy back to their office to proudly display – until we crown a new 1st place team!

I made a little slide show that ran in the background of the festivities highlighting some of the awards and milestones reached. You can view a Quicktime version here.

It was quite the success and I got to take part in something that helped people become more aware of their physical health and the reflective nature of walking. I’m looking forward to doing it again next year – bigger and better.

Addendum: As I was writing this I discovered that our student newspaper covered the program. Sweet.

*Three of which made it into the top 5 teams. Those Europeans walk A LOT!
**Which means, potentially, that we walked further than the publicized distance.
***And publicly committed us to doing this again next summer!

Mobile Billikens

Nearly a year ago I hired a bright young man by the name of Will Sutton. Over the course of the following months Will and I made this – the official Saint Louis University iPhone App. (Which you are most welcome to download at iphone.slu.edu)

Will initially started from scratch, learning Objective-C and his way around XCode. Even more impressive was the fact that he really never used a Mac much before.

Like a fish to water he quickly had a rough prototype up and running. It was serviceable, but very, shall we say, rickety.

Then we were alerted to the existence of a great open-source app framework created at West Virgina University by then student Jared Crawford.

Will set about updating the framework with SLU specific data sources. We had to meet with legal, create icons and vet our data sources for reliability. With Jared’s awesome framework we were able to quickly turn around a tight first release of what I’m sure will be a vital asset to any SLU student.

Meanwhile the IT department was preparing to launch a mobile portal for some of the very same services. Like some superhero wonder group we joined forces and released our apps simultaneously. Being web-based their app has a much larger reach, but our app allows us to perform some hardware specific feats.

Our next step is to squash a few 1.0 bugs, update the app for the new Retina display and start adding additional features like dining information and athletic reports.

You can read more about the apps from this nice press release.