One Face in a Billion

This Nike advertisment, which features the Chinese track star Liu Xiang, appeared in yesterday’s China Daily newspaper.  According to CNC, Nike quickly changed its ad campaign after Xiang pulled out of the 110-meter hurdles in Beijing on Monday and disappointed millions of fans expecting him to defend his Olympic title on home territory.

The ad stated, “Love the glory. Love the pain. Love sport even when it breaks your heart. Just do it.”

Track and field runs in my family.  Both of my parents were professional runners and my younger brother was a nationally-ranked collegiate decathlete and captain of the track team at Rice University.  Although it’s hard to tell from my pudgy, I admire the great talent and legacy behind this sport.  Almost as equally do I now admire Nike for it’s ability to honor an athlete that brought tears to his fans eyes due to injury not gold medals.  As a marketer, I’m even more impressed by the quick turnaround time of this print piece.

At National Instruments, we often talk about the power of our internal agency model aka our marketing machine.  By doing everything from media relations to corporate design in-house, we are able to react quickly to changes in the market, the world we live in, or even product release dates (oh yes, sometimes products slip ).  I’m glad to see a major media player like Nike acting nimbly to the real-world in a classy way.  They could have created a YouTube video or over-produced a 30sec TV spot; but instead, much like Xiang stands out among the millions of Chinese citizens, this print piece is above most others.

Selfish Plug - Vote for Me!!

I’m reaching out to my loyal blog readers for some help. I’ve submitted a proposal for the 2009 SXSW Interactive Conference titled, “Nerd Network: Building an Online Community for Developers.” Here is the summary:

Although often laggards in interactive marketing, B2B tech companies are successfully tapping into the groundswell to improve products, reduce support costs, and energize brand evangelists. This panel of technical community managers will examine techniques for launching a developer community, share social marketing strategies, discuss benefits of user-generated technical content, and relay metrics.

I’ve secured some AWESOME community managers, including Pauline Ores from IBM, Jim Cahill from Emerson, and Susan Zellmann-Rohrer at EMC. Additionally, I have compiled a list of the ten questions we promise to answer in this session, including:

1. How do you sell your community project internally and get past legal at a large, tech company?

2. What are the goals, strategies and metrics surrounding a successful B2B online community?

3. What marketing tactics work best for launching, promoting and recruiting members into a B2B community?

4. What are the differences between marketing to nerds and geeks?

5. Who “owns” technical communities (marketing, support, product, Web, IT) and what is the team structure?

6. How do you reward participation in a technical community (i.e. access to product roadmaps, escalated support, discounts, merchandise)?

7. Which social sites (Twitter, Facebook, YouTube) and technologies (wiki, blogs, RSS) resonate best with a technical audience?

8. What’s it like doing social media strategy for “the man?”

9. How do you integrate online and offline community strategy?

10. What is the next big thing in B2B communities?

In conclusion, I ask that you PLEASE vote for my session!!

Pick me (for nerds everywhere!)

What’s the Size of Your Digital Footprint?

Overview

Currently, research company IDC estimates that the digital universe is 281 billion GB in size and continuing to grow beyond the current storage capacity due to the advancements in things like RFID, sensor networks, and Internet in emerging countries. To put this into perspective, CNN reported in this video that there is enough digital information to fill more than 17 billion iPhones.

Related to this data is the idea of your digital footprint, or online data trail. This includes everything from the number of emails you send, to the videos you post on YouTube and the photos you showcase on Flickr.  One thing that I don’t think is being addressed enough is the idea of digital footprint as “reputation.”  It’s important to evaluate your cred in this digital arena as well as the amount of content that you creating. For example, it’s not only the number of times you post a message on the micro-blogging service Twitter but also the number of followers you have.

As the LabVIEW Community Manager at National Instruments, I put together a few simple resources for LabVIEW developers to calculate their digital footprint and “rep” in the online community.  The first one leverages the digital footprint calculator created by EMC while the second one is adapted from the Social Technographics Ladder in the book Groundswell, written by two Forrester analysts.  I’m going to use it as a call to action after my NIWeek 2008 presentation on the Top 10 Web Geek Trends.   I would love to get feedback from other community managers on this approach.

Resource 1: Determine the size of your digital footprint

Download the digital footprint calculator created by information management company EMC to determine how fast your area in the digital space is growing based on the amount of content you create and share online.

Resource 2: Determine your level on the LabVIEW Community Ladder

Now, take the next Steps to get active in the digital universe

Increase your digital footprint size by testing out one of the items above. Share your experience with the rest of the LabVIEW Community by commenting on this document.

Are Boys Better Than Girls in Math?

As a kid, I was never good at math. Yet, now I find myself working for high-tech company National Instruments surrounded by enginerds.  I wish I knew then what I know now - Girls can be good at math.

This week, researchers at the University of Wisconsin and UC Berkeley reported in the journal Science that boys are not better than girls in math and science.  This conclusion challenges the argument that female students perform lower than men in science and math; therefore, there is a shortage of women in technical careers.

According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, “The researchers examined extensive performance assessments of more than 7 million students, carried out by 10 states as required by the No Child Left Behind legislation. They found that, in standardized tests, the differences between the average math scores of boys and girls in grades 2-11 were statistically insignificant.”  This is much different than studies performed 15 years ago that showed high school girls were falling 50 points behind boys on the math section of the SAT.

ABC World News had a great segment on this topic and showed female students in New Jersey using LEGO MINDSTORMS NXT Powered by NI LabVIEW in the classroom to learn about robotics.  I’m so proud to work for a company, like NI, which helps improve the world from kindergarten to rocket science. (Yes, I’ve drank the kool-aid).

This past April, I had the opportunity to attend the FIRST Robotics competition in Atlanta.  For those of you unfamiliar with FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), it’s an organization founded by inventor Dean Kamen (yes, the Segway guy) to inspire young people’s interest and participation in science and technology.  National Instruments annouced at the eventthat we would be supplying the new controller as well as the software used to program these robots in the 2009 competition.

Here is a quote from one of my heros at NI, VP of Academic Relations Ray Almgren, “We must inspire today’s students to become tomorrow’s engineers and scientists. FIRST offers industry and academia alike the opportunity to get students of all ages excited about math, science and technology.  Through the collaboration of FIRST, LEGO and National Instruments, we are providing students with the latest technology that real-world scientists and engineers are using in their applications and that helps students grow and nurture their passion for learning.”  Gives me chills.

Anyway, one of the highlights of the trip was watching an all girls team compete with my engineering friend Emilie Kopp (@iemilie on Twitter).  We both got teary eyed as we watched these cute girls dressed in all pink destroy the competition.

While I might not be able to get in a time machine, travel back to 5th grade, and change my attitude about math, I’m at least happy I get to experience moments like this and know that my work is helping changing the future.

Click HERE to watch the ABC News Video.

Lewis Black asks…

“What is the Root of all Evil - Ultimate Fighting or Bloggers?” on his new Comedy Central show.

While there were myriad of bad puns like “violence vs. viral,” Patton Oswalt made some valid anti-blogging points. Specifically, he bashed Twitter and claimed that blogs are making us a “rough-draft culture.” As a public relations major and American literature fanatic, I tend to agree.  If you log into my WordPress account, you will see at least a half-dozen drafts of blog entries that I refuse to hit the Publish button on until I can read while wearing my editor hat.  While I’m not claiming to be an online Pulitzer Prize winner, I think there are few bloggers that offer quality content and quality writing.

I also often wonder if text messaging is even more damaging than blogging to the English language.  When I get messages from my younger cousins, I have to use Google to decipher their meanings.  Who knew that g2cu = glad to see you or that hohil = head over heels in love?

Watch this video of the show and let me know your thoughts.

P.S. Excuse any typos. This was a first draft.