Next week 9 companies are taking the stage, er i-stage, to showcase their aspiring visions of future gadgetry.  This is the third year for I-Stage, and I’m pleased as punch to participate as a judge (along with ReadWriteWeb’s Richard MacManus, TechCocktail’s Frank Gruber, and Best Buy’s Rick Rommel).  This is not my first experience with the event, as I was supporting Boxee at the inaugural event two years ago.  That experience plus my time at CES and my numerous times at the Under the Radar events has me putting up this post, with some final words of wisdom (?) to this year’s finalists.  This list is not in any particular order.

1. Practice! You have a week to go, if you are spending any less than an hour a day, you are not devoting enough time to the demo.  If you think Steve Jobs “wings it,” try holding a MacBook on the tips of your fingers and keeping it perfectly level for more than a second.  This Friday I’d spend as much as half of your day rehearsing, then keep it light over the weekend – think about how marathoners practice.
2. Practice in front of an audience and/or camera.  Every rehearsal should either have a live audience (peers, friends, employees, strangers, spouses, pets, whatever) or be in front of some form of video camera (we use Flips at our office).  You’ll never take it seriously if you don’t feel there’s some form of audience, and it’ll help you find areas to improve.  BTW, I’d think it goes without saying, but watch the videos after you are done!
3. Lock things down. You should be playing with your “Real” demo right now, and avoid changing your codebase as much as possible.  Further, if you feel you must continue to tweak, keep backup builds/demos ready so you can revert to stable versions.  And bring those with you, just in case.
4. Be very redundant.  Need an HDMI cable? Bring two (or three).  Have a local server?  Have a second laptop with an identical build.  You might be able to run out to Radio Shack the morning of, but you really don’t want to.  This goes for mid-presentation as well – if you had planned to do something, and it just isn’t working out, be ready to swap out with a secondary version instead at a moment’s notice.  You should probably practice that too.
5. Make sure we understand your… (whichever are applicable, odds are most of them)
   1. Vision
   2. Product
   3. Target Market
   4. Pricing
   5. Distribution
   6. Differentiation
   7. Technology
   8. Strategy
   9. Plan
   10. Benefits
6. Emphasize benefits. As an example, the technology behind SMS is uninteresting, whereas the benefit of being able to send short text-based messages to your contacts is huge.  Focus on the way your technology & features benefit your target users, not the technology & features themselves.
7. Prune your pitch.  You only get 3 minutes, which is NOT much time!  Your pitch should be fine-tuned, with literally every word mattering.  Don’t show esoterics, don’t show fluff, and don’t try to wow us with “me-too” elements of your features (“look, it even tweets!”).
8. Show off. Show us what makes you special, different, distinct.  Show the steak and make it sizzle.  Show the amazing features and the corresponding benefits.  Show the vision.  There’s a huge difference between “fluff” and “sizzle” – find it, and show us!
9. Plan on reliable stuff. Power is reliable.  Computers are pretty reliable.  WiFi can be unreliable.  Cell networks are unreliable.  Prototypes are unreliable.  Beta software is unreliable.  Real-time is very unreliable.  Waiting for Internet results for anything is highly unreliable.  You should not have anything unreliable in your demo – as I said before, with only 3 minutes you don’t have much wiggle room if you are depending on a real-time Internet lookup of something over a 3G network with geo-tuned services.
10. Entertain us.  Now that your demo is all set, you’ve practiced, it’s reliable, your pitch is solid, etc, it’s time to add a little charm.  Make a joke.  Do something interactive with the audience.  Show some color.  Do something that takes your pitch beyond “just a demo”.  At the very least, smile and make eye contact!
11. Avoid cliches. Please, no references to jetpacks, flying cars, or laser guns.  Seriously.  And nothing about lists that go to eleven.

Good luck inventors and entrepreneurs!  We’ll see you next week.

ps – one more tip: pack layers, its cold in San Francisco.

Another week, another set of nonsense about how PR people are bad, don’t know anything about new media, etc etc etc.  I’ve seen this so much I was about to shut the lid of my laptop and ignore, but instead felt I should say something.  In summary:

I’ll make it quite simple to understand: this industry is simply too vast to generalize.  There are PR firms and individuals who understand influence, social media, and bloggers.  There are firms who don’t.  There are those who know how to leverage all the changing media to benefit their clients.  And there are those who don’t.

…

Maybe we can stop with the generalizations while we let the good continue to separate from the bad

read the rest here…

Inspired by the NY Times, Scobleizer, and TechCrunch.

From my post on the Stage Two blog:

Jeremiah Owyang, of Forrester, put out a couple of good blog posts last week analyzing the general distrust of corporate blogs (which, I guess, includes this one).  Here’s a nice chart of the study:

What’s surprising to me is how much people are surprised by this news…

Read the rest of the article…

I’ve put together a couple of posts over on the Stage Two blog about the “community manager” role within an organization as well as on building relationships with influencers. Excerpts are here:

Who’s Best for Community Management?

First off, being a community manager is not for everyone. When I used to run the SlingCommunity, I used to tell people the right way to do it was to live with a combination of thick- and thin-skinnedness. I had to remain thinskinned enough where I took every piece of negative feedback openly and honestly. It’s never about user error or someone “not getting it”, it’s about doing it better and better until they do “get it,” regardless of how right I was (or wasn’t). That said, it’s also key to be thickskinned enough where not everything is taken personally, it’s important not to get mired down in negativity… (read on)

Not Everyone Can Build Relationships

I’ve read post after post from bloggers and entrepreneurs on how the best way to market your company is by being the uber-evangelist and making relationships with all the key influencers. It’s great in theory, and for the very lucky few who can pull it off, I say mazel tov. The unfortunate reality with this kind of advice is it just doesn’t apply to most entrepreneurs or CEOs, and is over-the-top idealistic… (read on)

So I was walking around Downtown Chicago last weekend, the very same weekend Apple pushed 1 million iPhone 3G units out the door, and saw a police officer stroll by on his government issued Segway, which got me thinking. What if the on-top-of-the-world tech giant invented, marketed, and sold the Segway today. Would Apple be able to push the 50,000 to 100,000 units out the door that Segway Inc. expected to sell in its first year of sales? I think the answer is 100% yes. Well, maybe 90%.

-Design Design Design
Apple has a knack for taking products to their limit of how good they can look. When Steve Jobs got a first look at the Segway back in 2003, he said, “Its shape is not innovative, it’s not elegant, it doesn’t feel anthropomorphic.” (For those of us that needed to look up that word: anthropomorphic adj. – resembling or made to resemble a human form.) If Jobs and his designers were to design the Segway, it would, for sure, be better in those three areas. Of course there would be a snazzy placement of a light up Apple logo, causing all the Apple lovers to eat it right up.

Also, the most important design & production point, Apple would be able to get enough of a mass production discount to keep the cost of the device down. They would shoot to have these priced at $2,999.00 (or as low as $77.00 a month). Crossing that $3,000.00 price point, for the base unit, is too scary for consumers.

-Bandwagon
With the popularity of Apple now, and the way people are eagerly handing over their credit cards for anything with an Apple logo on it, they would easily be able to push 100,000 units out the door in a year. I know some of you are saying, “Hey don’t push that overzealous bandwagon theory into this argument, everyone that buys an Apple product knows exactly what they are buying!!!” Well let me present to you this sample dialogue told to me by my co-worker that was waiting in line for his iPhone 3G.

20 something woman waiting in line, gets approached by what is assumed to be her mother.

Mother: What are you waiting in line for?
Daughter: Oh this new Apple phone. It’s cool, its got a touch screen, plays MP3, it’s really cool.
Mother: Really?! Maybe I want one of those too!
Daughter: Yeah, you should get one! Wait with me!

Woman and her Mother wait in line. An Apple associate comes by to answer questions.

Mother: What’s the deal with this phone?
Apple Associate: Ma’am the Apple iPhone is the most advanced cell phone on the market now, it has fully integrated PUSH email, calendar, and contacts. Along with real web browsing, an app store, and now integrated GPS.
Daughter: Oh really?! GPS, I had no idea it could do ANY of that!
*(Words are approximated, but idea is the same – Thanks Dave)

This was probably a common occurrence within the lines and lines of people waiting for the iPhone.

There are some of you saying, there are plenty of Apple products that Apple sells that don’t reach the numbers you are talking about. You are correct, but with the iPhone-like hype the Segway got when it was originally announced, Apple would be able to quickly turn that hype into sales. They have built up a well enough rapport with consumers, that as long as there is a line to get it, a cool factor, and an Apple logo on the side of it, people will shell out the cash/credit for it.

-Marketing is King
Apple is a marketing juggernaut and would have to assert its dollars in this area in order to make this product sell. They would saturate the movie and television market, making it look like everyone in our society uses a Segway on a daily basis. With the right ad campaign, they would be able to make everyone in the world think they were morons for wanting to walk anywhere. Commercials, billboards, and subway cars would all be screaming at us, “Soon there will be 2 kinds of people. Those who walk, and those who walk different.” Other ads will be telling us to purchase this new transportation device because, “It just goes”.

With the skyrocketing fuel prices, and the big push for “Being Green”, electric powered transportation is the “new black”. (Ironically, all of Apple’s successful gadgets come in black!) Apple would need to leverage this in their marketing and let people know, “Not only is this the coolest gadget IN the world, it’s the coolest gadget FOR the world.” A perfect example of this is the Honda Civic Hybrid. The Civic was already one of the coolest cars for teens and 20-somethings. But make it “Green”, and you got yourself a car that you have to get on a waiting list to buy.

Whether you agree with me or not, it seems like something just might be a brewing on this front, since on July 7th, the former CTO of Segway, Doug Fields, left to join Apple (JT: maybe this new hire has to do with the unknown “future product transition”).

Hopefully Fields can get this project on a roll. I know I speak for most when I say that we are just so tired of walking everywhere, and we don’t want to look like the biggest nerds ever, on a non-anthropomorphic Segway.

Short post, just wanted to draw attention to the fact that we’ve put up a “how to pitch us” page.  Why, you may ask?  Well, first of all, we get a lot of pitches, and frankly, many of them have nothing to do with what we blog about.  Enterprise pitches.  TV shows.  Viraga (and viarga and even v i a g a r a).  You get the drift.  So I wanted to help add some focus.

Secondly, I believe it’s the “right thing” for bloggers to do.  I put up a post on my marketing blog implying as such.  It’s not really fair for me to just say “here’s my email” if I don’t tell you what I want to know about.

Lastly, if you’re noticing I wrote “We” above, well, there’s a few new folks joining the team to help write more reviews.  I’ve become a little too entrenched into too many different people/organizations to be able to effectively write reviews much anymore.  Either I know the person/company behind the device or the PR firm (or both), and I feel way too conflicted way too often.  So expect to see some fresh blood showing up in the next few days!

Intro: Mike Arrington was able to get Comcast support via Twitter, I thought I’d do the same (although I am Canadian, I’m no Arrington and I’m not using Twitter).  I’m a subscriber to the NHL Center Ice package, offered via Comcast through iNDEMAND.  The regular season is over (Go Habs!), and now things got messy.

In the program guide, there’s no more information for the Center Ice package at all.  No listings, just baseball.  I googled, found a few scattered suggestions and possible answers.  I then proceeded to try Comcast’s support chat, the agent was polite and tried his/her best, but found nothing.  Eventually told me to call my regional office.  Which I did.

Local agent looked through a variety of things, and sooner or later started surfing the Web looking for more.  Nothing.  Found the Center Ice info page, which is missing all information about the playoffs.  Well, not all the info, just has a page showing where they would be, and nicely refers to them as the 2007 playoffs.

I called iNDEMAND.  The most help I got from them was that (a) there was a confirmed game on Versus, which I already knew, and (b) the channels to find Center Ice were numbers 461-470, which I already knew.  This information came just slightly after I managed to convince them that I was actually a paying subscriber.   Bottom line is at 4pm on Thursday I’m going to have to have my Slingbox ready so I can quickly find the right game and set it to record on my DVR.

First I blame iNDEMAND for not having the right information.  It’s not really Comcast’s fault since their vendor doesn’t have the data.  That said, Comcast shouldn’t do business with vendors who do not have the information needed to support their customers.  If Comcast made it an absolute requirement, I guarantee the iNDEMAND folks would have the answer already, but as it is, there’s little-to-no incentive for them.

As an aside, it’s like when I called Sony for support on my Vaio and they blamed Microsoft and NVIDIA.  They might be right, but nobody exactly forced Sony to use NVIDIA chips.  Then again, the laptop is on its way back from Ed Bott’s place, where he says it’s lightning fast!! Windows may just be re-entering my life (it still does have better keyboard shortcuts)…

Back to the topic at hand – customer service.  Service is as important as any marketing or promotion activity.  With the combination of blogs, Twitters, and Google, it’s impossible for a company’s bad habits to remain in the dark any longer.  Fundamentally I believe if you sell a product, you must support it to the fullest extend possible.  No passing the buck.  Setting the right standards for your organization isn’t hard to do, and in the long term can have a huge payoff.

I posted last night on my marketing blog about how I feel marketeers will need to deal with the conference overlap situation.  As I’ve watched the news unfold, the following is clear:

• DEMO’s schedule was announced first, so Shipley is pointing the finger at Arrington/Calacanis
• TC50′s announcement triggered the onslaught of conversation, which led to Arrington claiming that DEMO should die.
• Shipley has responded, questioning professionalism and more
• Arrington and Calacanis both respond pointing fingers back at Shipley

Prediction one: it will get worse from here from both organizing groups

Prediction two: people will take sides, which will further antagonize the situation

Here’s the ultimate reality: It doesn’t matter whose “fault” this is, and there’s no point in trying to determine who was trying to screw the other one over. This is a LOSE-LOSE proposition.  NOBODY benefits.  Startup entrepreneurs will not get nearly the impact from attending EITHER conference this way.  Bloggers, press, and media will not get to see half the companies they’d like to see.  The first week of September will be just noise, no signal.

My recommendation is the groups GET ON THE PHONE with each other, and find a solution.  I doubt this will happen, as it’s probably too late to deal with the financial consequences, and there’s probably so much bad blood already that nobody will get off their perches.

In some industries competition is a very good and healthy thing.  PCs are probably going to get better because of the recent success of the Mac.  This is good.  When it comes to conferences that have similar offerings to a limited marketplace, this type of competition is plainly unhealthy.

Chris, Mike, Jason – you are intelligent, respected thought leaders in our community.  Please go take the steps needed to help the industry make smart decisions about what to do this September.