Michael Myers

So several months ago I posted a product demo of Square. This is one of those ingenious products/services that make you want to find a reason to use it and the first day I could order a card reader, I did. (I registered in April.) That was mid-May and I received my card reader September 1st. (My wife snickered when I received the package; “It took so long to get here I bet it doesn’t work.”

Ha Ha! No way. The issue with getting the card readers out had simply been one of demand. And yes the demand was tremendous as evidenced by very very pissed off fans. Pissed by the fact that they hadn’t received their readers. (It’s important to remember that the card reader is a non-essential part of Square. It just makes the transaction much cooler. You can easily enter the credit card number manually.)

So I get my card reader and unpack it (video above). I plug the bad boy in. My iPhone recognizes the device. I create a $1.00 transaction and select the pay/card option. I then swipe the card and  . . . nada. I try again. Nothing. Zilch. After several swipes I realize, it isn’t me. It simply isn’t working. (An image of my wife laughing hysterically rolled around my mind for several seconds. Cackling at the irony!)

I do the responsible thing and contact customer support. I quickly get a response from someone at Square notifying me that this is a known issue. (Not that that makes it any better. Just means that you’re not the first person to find it.) They then tell me to go here to solve the issue. For those of you that don’t want to follow the link, the solution to the problem is to place a piece of paper between the phone and the card reader to prevent the metal on metal connection. You can also use nail polish (video below). They say put a small piece of paper between the iPhone 4′s antenna and the reader and that should take care of the issue until they come up with a long-term solution.

I did that and it still doesn’t work.

Now . . . I’m not bitter. As a matter of fact I’m quite optimistic. This is what I get for being an early adopter. Especially when the one of the founding members of Twitter is involved. Twitter managed to build a rabid fan base while their service was crashing weekly. This was one of their defining characteristics and sometimes this failure is the secret sauce for brands.

Amazing new social location-based system created by Vail Resorts.

During my Web 2.0 class, I share with my students my belief about progressive disclosure as it relates to their personal brand. The gist is this. You need a LinkedIn account and it should be something your grandmother (or HR) would appreciate, complete with professional photo dependent on your vertical. You may have a Twitter account and this is a combination of professional insights and personal notes. (You may also chose to pump some of your tweets that are laced with personal insights, into LinkedIn by including a ‘#in’. This can be done in your LinkedIn settings.) Facebook however is completely a personal decision. I think of Facebook as my family and friends and an occasional coworker. (Actually coworkers on my FB account need to be removed – not you Mike – as I start to use Facebook for more family related things.)

That’s what I recommend students do.

Now, I also know that business internationally is based more upon relationships. Real relationships and not just “I work with that clown” or “they’re the cheapest so they must be the best!”. 70% of Facebook users are outside of the US. This means that, based on what country you’re doing business in, you may need to ignore my advice. In fact, Facebook may be a very large key to successful business transactions as social media grows in importance. Please don’t misunderstand me. I still believe it’s important to only have real connections on Facebook. It’s just that international business traditions in other countries may dictate the need to have deeper connections with business partners. And Facebook could be the best way to do that.

I’ve been thinking a lot about maps lately. I’ve never thought of myself as a geography nut and only recently have I come to appreciate the connective tissue that maps provide culturally and experientially. Whenever I’ve traveled and been lost (only happened once; no really!) the map was the universal piece between us that allowed me to convey what I needed. When I was in college, I had a map on the wall with pins in all of the places I’d been and pins on the places I’d go someday. Technology rekindled this affinity for the map. It started when I would upload images to Flickr and geo-tag them. (It only got worse with me uploading images (to Flickr) I’ve just shot with my iPhone and geo-tagging them on upload.) The purpose of this behavior originally was to be able to answer my kids question of, “where was this taken?”, when I’m no longer here or senile! It’s currently starting to feel like something else.

Recently, I went to Google’s My Maps and started to enter some personalized geographical information, such as the location of my favorite restaurants, cycling routes, concerts I’ve seen at Red Rocks, favorite snowboarding runs, etc. This again, may prove interesting to my kids and along with that, it’s a great way to share the things that I do with those that I choose. In the end it could be a fairly accurate representation of me. It will show locations (and dates?) of concert’s I’ve been to. It will show places I’ve traveled to. Trips to the zoo with my kids. It could also show where I’ve checked-in using Foursquare or Facebook.

It would be “interesting” to see where I’m mayor, deals at places I frequent, where my friends have checked in or tweeted from. Local news form Fwix or something like Front Porch Forum. Places that have live chat going on. A map of the area I travel (w/ times) and one that I specify I have an affinity for such as Highlands or Boulder. Some of this I covered in my post about hyper-local. What I didn’t add was localizing to the level of me.

A map could become a social object. Something to share with others. Something that would articulate what you were about through personalized images, videos and audio attached. These maps could be tweaked for privacy and shared by bumping your mobile device with another. The maps could also have augmented reality queues so when you were physically near something of interest, an alert would draw your attention to that item, encouraging to hold up your mobile device and view the information through a browser like Layar.

Maps could end up being the lynchpin between mobile and social; tying these two massive shifts in behavior together in one simple interface. We will see . . .

As a youth I was somewhat less than engaged in academia. Specifically high school. Actually, to say that I was “less than engaged” would be like saying nuclear bombs make a loud sound when they explode. My motto was ‘D’ is a passing grade and I worked to insure that I barely got by. As hard as one can, given the goal is to simply not fail. I had many excellent instructors that attempted to “reach me” but it could not be done. That is until the day I walked into Chemistry class. There stood a man so adept at garnering respect and adulation that almost no one could resist the inextricable force that is Mr. Smiley. He knew how to pull the best out of each student and as a consequence, chemistry was the only class in high school I cared about. Actually, in hindsight, I didn’t care at all about chemistry or the class. I cared about the teacher and wanted to succeed because I cared about him. I wanted him to be successful. If I learned something along the way; so be it.

During the course of our year together I was able to establish myself as a complete pain in the ass. I did like the guy and was willing to put in the time but I did NOT say I would go easy on him. Case in point.

Infraction 1

Mr. Smiley: “Tonight, I need you to memorize the first 14 elements on the periodic table.”

Class Response: “Oh man! What the HELL?!?!? You gotta be kidding me?!?!?”

Mr. Smiley: “Hey. Hey . . . Hey. When I was in school, we had to memorize the entire table!”

Michael Myers: “Yes. But when you were in school there were only four known elements. Earth. Fire. Water. Wind.”

Mr. Smiley: “Mr. Myers. Would you be so kind as to move to the directly under the death-ray please?”

Michael Myers: “Sure!”

What is the death-ray you ask? It is in fact a single solitary heat lamp, nestled in the ceiling, near the center of the classroom. As a class, we were never sure what the purpose of the lamp was but it was where kids got to go for punishment. The joke, was of course on the student; in this case me! It was funny to switch seats with the person directly underneath the death-ray. It wasn’t once when you were sitting there. It was only turned on as a form of fun pseudo punishment. I gleefully lept over and and took my place. Mr. Smiley sauntered over, flipped the switch and the light came on. The attention being paid to me was dying down and I was pleased with my new location. That is until it started to get hot. At first I thought it was because of all the laughing I had been actively participating in. But then I realized it was not emanating from within. It was the death-ray. And it was making me hotter and hotter. By the end of class, I was a little toasty and had to go outside to cool down. Still worth every second of discomfort.

Infraction 2

Mr. Smiley: “Man, I just got a Coke out of the vending machine. And it cost me 35 cents!” When I was in school (Mr. Smiley takes this moment to look directly at me to insure that I DON’T go for the obvious) a coke cost 10 cents!

Class response: “Wow. Big deal. Whatever . . .”

Michael Myers: “I thought you were going to say two clams and a rock.”

Mr. Smiley: “Mr. Myers. Can please come up here and put your nose on the chalk board? Put it right in  . . . this circle.”

Again. Not sure he felt this way but, very rewarding.

Fast forward to 3 months ago, I was starting my second quarter of teaching at Daniels and was talking with my wife about how I could see some of the students coming to grips with how augmented reality could be used in business as a differentiator and not simply a curiosity. I believe I said that I could see some of them “flopping around”. (Loosely translated they’d just seen something and were trying to categorize it. Trying to relate it to things they’d seen.) The key term in that sentence was flopping around and this was something Mr. Smiley said repeatedly on occasion to describe the same scenario. I felt compelled to find the man. They myth. The legend. The talking shirt! (more on that later)

When I did finally locate him, he told me he’d written a book entitled, Your Kid’s Too Soft: Welcome to the Old School. We met for coffee and I asked him for a copy of his book. He gladly handed me one but made me pay! (Joke) We talked about the gist of the book and I told him I was now teaching a graduate course so I was now receiving (on some level) what I had given back in the day. I of course offered to read his book and review it on my blog even though education is not the primary focus of this blog, I believe it will be something everyone should here. AND it’s my blog so I can do whatever the hell I want. I also know that you will stop reading at this point due to the length of the post. (Sorry. Needed some context.) So please tune in next post to find out what you can do help your kids prepare for their future. Other than give them everything they ever wanted including a pony and a GI Joe with the Kung Fu grip and then stare at them wondering how they got so spoiled.

Tonight was the last class with our final group presentation. We had a group of students present their pizza delivery business model and it was great combination of tech; online, applications to SOLAR! They utilized most of the technologies we discussed in class it was good to see a traditionally low-tech business model empowered with technology. I also liked the fact that they targeted foodies who have a love for pizza. (An extension of the beer snob.) My Favorite idea that came up during class was to give the delivery drivers iPhones and have them create videos of the people talking about why they loved the pizza/service. This type of in-the-moment, user-generated video is becoming more valuable to businesses as people distrust for advertising continues to grow. I’m curious to see what other types of business models could empower their employees to create video, etc on the fly to be used by marketing.

I owe the class one more summary post around technology due to this and will get it to them as soon as I can.

I had an excellent time teaching this quarter and had some amazing students. I’m moving forward with two student groups with their business models. We’ll either bootstrap or find a private investor. Depends on how much capital they need. I’m also meeting with two other students that have ideas given the technologies we reviewed. I’m excited to hear about these ideas and we’ll see where they go. In early September, I’m meeting with my department head to talk about teaching more classes and I hope that goes well. I really enjoy teaching.