For my webinars, I actually use both VoIP and teleconf concurrently. Regular users of VoIP can use it if they want, and everyone else is sent to the teleconf. This seems to be the best of both worlds, and allows for a backup if phone lines die, too. Even though I use VoIP to communicate with my global clients, I have discovered that there are many that just don't know how to get it working. And some connections are inexplicably impossible. (Ottawa always fails while Tasmania rarely does.) Great summary of the problems from real experience, Ken.

I wonder if you can parlay this into more than $295 of marketing value. It might actually pay for folks to develop award systems that they are likely to win. Odd thinking this.

You can almost hear the conversation going on in the background about how they can't afford to give out freebies when things are going so bad. But then they waste all that money on putting together an ineffective campaign that actually turned you off of them even more. They would have been better off using your advice, but to only a subset of their list. Which makes me wonder about my own marketing campaigns. I always learn something here, Susan.

As someone who has been forced to work out of the house for a variety of employers over the last 20 years, I can tell you that what we really need is an office to go to.

The problems is mixing up different levels of innovation. "Innovation" is like "Leadership": it's meaningless out of context because what it means in one domain and level is not what it means in another. As shown by your illustration, innovation within bell curves is easy and manageable. Great until the Big Innovation comes and shows you that market reality doesn't look like a bell curve.

This is odd, since we knew in the mid-1990s that (then) elders were more likely to be online than mid-life people a generation down. They were resistant to exposing themselves to trouble online but not to using the technology. Back then, they seemed to divide into heavy users (most) and frightened non-users (small minority). The guess then was that seniors had more time to learn a new technology than did baby-boomers in their 40s and 50s. That and the fact that with increasing mortality in their friends, being able to connect across distances was very attractive. I think that similar research had been done back in the late 1980s, too. (I did research for a thanatologist for awhile.)

They laser burn artwork onto iPods. I'm sure someone could personalize your Blackberry in a similar way. It's fun to recall that people were bewildered by technology back in the day, too. When the full stop / period and wordspacing was invented, older readers couldn't stand it because it allowed people to read too quickly rather than slowly consume the information and ponder it. I do know that the research showed that word processing increased the time it took to write a letter by a factor of 2 or more. Sometimes technology lets us do more and therefore slows us down.

Great recommendation. But also a real time-waster if you start playing with stuff. For example: http://img.skitch.com/20081126-rsp3qdb18eb57qukxcm7ppusqr.jpg Fear trumps faith. However, it's interesting that faith, hope and love rank in that order: http://img.skitch.com/20081126-bu5m7qd2dftd68crnjhtinqdxu.jpg

Francis Fukuyama wrote a book on trust (conveniently titled "Trust") that may be of interest. It's about nations and development, but it has a lot to say about marketing and how the greater culture will limit what you can do. Trust, as the latest credit collapse showed, is the basis of all society. BTW, in Chicago we'd pick up the phone and take it to the coffee counter. Even near the Chicago Mercantile Exchange it's not safe to leave things.

My experience is quite different. I have to leave my car, which means gathering all my "stealables" into my pockets or glove compartment, walk into the store, wait in line, then get my receipt. It never takes less than 5 minutes and often 10. Of course, I drive a lot in some extremely high-crime areas (such as Gary, Indiana) and having to go into the store increases my risk of getting mugged or carjacked. If I didn't have to have the receipt for tax purposes I wouldn't bother. It has never failed to leave a bad taste in my mouth. Come to think of it, I never returned.