Unconference Experts

See what Mike Morris learned during his expert one-on-ones.
MassTLC Unconference - Duh...it's about Customer Development

It didn't turn out exactly as I had planned or hoped (the story doesn't end there though...read on). I think I had this vision that my idea (http://openprompt.com) would be validated and well received. That's not exactly what happened. There were two experts in particular who made an impression on me and have had an immediate impact on the way I'm going to continue building OpenPrompt (OpenPrompt the company/brand, not just the software).

via mikeymo.squarespace.com

100+ experts volunteered to have three private sessions with sponsored entrepreneurs.

That's a lot of meetings.. surely something valuable was learned.. share it here and broadcast your thanks to the experts.

Drive a Ferrari at MassTLC

Wonder what it was like?

With Josh (Babson MBA 2008) behind the wheel and Chris (Olin College 2012) riding shotgun, we decided to drive all the way from the World Trade Center in the Boston seaport to Babson/Olin to show it off to our friends. Along the way, we realized more and more that the Ferrari ride was actually a lot like entrepreneurship. Maybe this is just a cheap excuse to relive the excitement of tooling down the Mass Pike at 95 MPH, but maybe it’s to show Bill Warner that we actually held an unConference session in the car. Josh and Chris present:
10 Ways Driving Someone Else’s Ferrari Is Like Being An Entrepreneur

via ohmanwords.tumblr.com

Three winners were picked. Two drive for an hour. The third takes the Ferrari home for the night.



More details here

MassTLCHV1 | Opening/Agenda Session

Opening/Agenda Session
Bill Warner, Tom Hopcroft, Antonio Rodriguez

From the Windows via @chrismyles4

Principles of Open Space

• Whoever comes are the right people.
• Whatever happens is the only thing that could have.
• Whenever it starts is the right time
• Whenever it is over it is over

Law of Two Feet - Responsibility & Motion

If you are not learning or contributing it is your responsibility to respectfully find some place that you are.

Passion & Responsibility - Be Prepared to be Surprised

MassTLCD1 | Broadband Disruption

From @brough




News/Links

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Ad Hoc Fixed Wireless Networks--Should Carriers Be Afraid? | NetworkWorld.com Community

A 'Freemium' approach to radically improving broadband Internet in America," was the topic of a session at last week's popular MassTLC (Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council) Innovation 2010 unConference in Boston. Driven by curiosity, Rebecca attended the session led by Brough Turner, founder of a newly minted startup called netBlazr (no relation to the Telebit NetBlazer of yore). NetBlazr is a wireless ISP with a grand vision to bootstrap a wireless alternative to today's ISP lineup of telcos, cable companies, and line-of-site wireless providers. Using inexpensive Wi-Fi technology NetBlazr plans to rely on business customers to build ubiquitous, cooperative networks in densely populated urban areas.

via networkworld.com

MassTLCJ1 | Execution Tips

From @iandsmith

MassTLCH1 | The Future of Telemedicine

From Raphael Cariou. Twitter: @realityfrontier

What helps in building up a telemedecine solution?

· A sales team needs to employ the services of a medical doctor as doctors are trusting doctors.
· The solution provider needs to get involved as closely as possible to medical trials.

What are the key contributing factors for the adoption of a telemedecine solution?

· Facilitate the relationship between doctor and patients.

· Move data collected remotely where it belongs.

What are the barriers to adoption?

· Cost of entry for following up with some categories of patients such as diabetics, obese, etc.

· Cost of putting a solution together as it involves the participation of medical practitioners and technology providers. Seen from the medical team standpoint, it often costs less to work with college students.

· Reticence of medical professionals to adopting new technology as it is perceived as getting in the way of caring for patients.

How to get into the telepresence market?

· Understanding the re-imbursement mechanism is a key factor as it drives the incentive for medical practices.

· A solution provider would have to build a model of a medical practice cash flow that would account for the new technology cost.

· Identifying the right buyer is critical and may require some consolidation. An individual doctor may not buy in.

· Understanding the end-to-end care scenario is also critical. The reason why a black box is useful for home healthcare is that nurses are working on a prospective pay where additional visits are not paid for.

What are the key metrics?

· Improving the quality of care

· Reducing the cost of care

What are examples of technology that best fits telemedecine?

· SMS is preferred as there are not that many Smartphones in use.

· It does not need to be real-time for some fields, such as dermatology.

· Any technology that helps in submitting measures for bonuses in the field of evidence-based medicine.

· Help in collecting enough data to define a norm for a particular scenario, and in identifying when there is a variation from the norm.

· Note: HIE is orchestrating the anonymous collection of data.

What is evidence-based medicine measured on?

· Primarily focused on processes rather than medical data

· Currently more used to compare performances of medical practices

· There is no mechanism currently that would be close to a consumer report

MassTLCG1 |The Idea SuperCollider

The Idea SuperCollider - Where MindMapping Meets Social Networking
B.Zimmer/ E. Peters

Brainstorming has evolved into powerful mindmapping tools that allow real time collaboration over the net. Really useful stuff, but we think it is only the beginning

For many of us, the process of bouncing ideas back and forth is an important part of our social interaction. This idea bouncing has been around for centuries. 17th century coffee houses were the catalyst for ideas as well as a social meeting ground. I suspect examples go back to antiquity.

It is still important today, we are constantly collecting ideas facts and stitching them up later into different conclusions In fact, the unConference is a good example of a similar activity.

In a more modern example, an English mathematician (Timothy Gowers) posted a challenge to the readers of his blog to develop an more elegant proof of a theorem. The process took 6 weeks and was the result of many people building on each others comments until ideas gelled into a solution. A collaborative effort

This was done with nothing more than a stream of comments to a blog.

We have realized social mindmapping is not constrained by the bounds of brainstorming or blogs, it needs some of the properties of both along withcollective intelligence and other techniques.

So we have decided to build a social application to support collaborating on ideas and we have named it the Idea Supercollider. Our goal is to augment the creative process supporting discussions, capturing results and providing a forum for continued work across geographies and timezones.

We will start with something simple, and make it available. We will augment it over time to incorporating what we learn.

We are here today to enlist your help develop our ideas. We have put a lot of thought into the design, but we don’t want to start with that, we want to hear from you. Tell us;

How you might use it?
What does it need to do?
What should it integrate with?

MassTLCO1 | Does your product provide VALUE?

Everybody has a Value Problem

(photo by La Capoise Galerie)

At the MTLC Innovation Unconference last week, I proposed the topic: "Does your product provide VALUE? (and how to find out)." This was a variation of sessions I've done in the past. Once again I was impressed at the level of interest. About a dozen individuals sought out a distant conference room during the first session at the World Trade Center to discuss this topic. As before, the hour quickly flew by -- we could have easily spent another hour or two. I felt badly that I didn't really deliver on my promise of sharing some best practices (see below). 

via blog.leveragepoint.com

MassTLCB2 | Creating Impactful UX

Creating Impactful UX
Richard Banfield

Via @freshtilledsoil .. Some Design/UX slides from a recent Business Bootcamp

Fresh Tilled Soil presentation also available via Google Docs

MassTLCL2 | 42 Ways to Generate Buzz

42 Ways to Generate Buzz
Scott Kirsner, Adam Zand, Doug Banks, and Meg O’Leary
Curated by Chris Myles)


by Dan Bricklin, on Flickr (More Session Photos)

Blog posts related to the session

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Generating buzz for your venture: 43 bits of free advice from entrepreneurs, PR peeps, and journos by Scott Kirsner

Understanding how to generate buzz is a crucial entrepreneurial skill — especially for ventures that haven’t raised jillions of dollars to spend on advertising or giant trade show booths. At last week’s MassTLC Innovation Unconference, a group of PR pros, journalists, social media experts, and entrepreneurs got together to collaboratively create this list of 43 ways to generate buzz in both traditional media and social media. It’s not a definitive list by any standard, and I don’t agree with 100 percent of it, but it collects a number of perspectives about how to get free ink for your company.

via boston.com

How-to generate buzz for your product/service by Joe Baz

Marketing “buzz” was definitely on people’s minds – about 60-70 participants attended this session, which was roughly triple the average session size. The session was facilitated by Scott Kirsner, Boston Globe columnist, Adam Zand, PR consultant, Doug Banks, MassHighTech publisher, and Meg O’Leary, InkHouse PR’s principal.  They did a spectacular job of not only providing tips on 95% of their list, but keeping the audience engaged and encouraging participation.

From Left to Right: Scott Kirsner, Adam Zand, Meg O’Leary and Doug Banks. Photo Credit: Dan Bricklin

Here are my top five of the 42 tips, prioritized in order of importance:

via abovethefolddesign.com

InkLings@InkHouse: MassTLCL2 - 42 Ways to Get Buzz for your Venture

Meg O'Leary from InkHouse participated in the MassTLCL2 unconference on Innovation today on a panel offering 42 ways to get buzz with Scott Kirsner, Adam Zand and Doug Banks. And here they are:

via inkhousepr.blogspot.com

Original Session Notes

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From @dibonafide



From @joebaz

1. Know the Target!
2. Know what an exclusive means - be careful
3. Triage your press target vis a vis objective
4. News should be "new"
5. Make personal
6. Know your story first
7. ID a trend
8. What are you like (probably not unique)
9. Share competitor information early (customer ignorance doesn't count)
10. Hone key messages
11. Learn to write + talk
12. Provide options to journalists
13. Be human - not a corporation
14. Be careful on twitter + facebook - some people don't like solicitations
15. Don't spam a big list
16. Follow hash tags
17. Create supporting content - Youtube, B.roll demo
18. Contact info should be real (not forms)
19. Get all media - print, online video, TV, radio
20. Know deadlines
21. News is new:
product launch (not 2.3);
novelty (user features);
funding + M&A;
executive appts;
customer/user
22. ROI is a good thing
23. Enable your fans + customers to talk, on your behalf
24. Find influential twitter folks
25. Be an expert and resource
26. You often are never off the record, but can get accord
27. Have a great product - UX is key - fix customer issues and problems all the time
28. Remember media relations is just press release or
29. Control is ...
30. Take a stand: "ecommerce is dying"
31. Envision the headline
32. Share #s (even if private); percentages don't really help without context
33. User service partners (Angels, Banks, VCs, Academics)
34. Take good photos
35. Rookie mistake -> Be careful how it rolls out
36. Editorial calendar
37. What is a wire for you?
Costs $
Business wire
PR news wire -> PRWeb.com (doesn't reach journalists)
Market wire -> Get on google + SEO
Free:
RSS + PitchEngine.com (Very good wire!)
38. Inside look; Access - Walk in my shoes
39. Take your lumps - don't take it personally
40. It's a dialogue, not monologue
41. Timing - plug into trends (like #7) - Calendar
42. Be Fun!
43. BONUS: Tell the TRUTH!

Questions from the audience

1. What wires do the panelists read? Kirsner doesn't read wires. Instead, he gets news through his network. Doug (Mass High Tech) reads a variety of New England wires.
2. What about launching a product at a big event? It's too difficult to launch a new product at a big event, like SXSW. First, generate your own buzz and build a customer base, then go to big events and launch your event.

Archived Tweets

MassTLCW2 | Social Media Marketing: How to Build Influence and get more leads

Social Media Marketing: How to Build Influence and get more leads
Rebecca Yiong

The session notes are in the comments below. Does anyone have any photos or additional notes? Submit it Here (or use session extras link below).

Attendees:

chrispointon
Phil Fremont-Smith

MassTLCB3 | SaaS Startup Challenges and Monetization

Joe just did a great summary on the Above the Fold blog

SaaS Challenges and Monetization | Official Blog for Above the Fold

The session was facilitated by Curt Raffi, Marketing Director at Metanga, who did a spectacular job moderating the discussion, including getting all the participants involved. This session was my favorite because a) the challenges were truly challenging, and b) the quality of contributions was high.

As in my last post, I want to share my favorite 2 of the 9 challenges and offer additional thoughts on each of them:

via abovethefolddesign.com

Original Session Notes

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From @joebaz

1. SaaS Companies at the table:
* Farnaz Bakhtari of TrainingPal - personal training SaaS company
* Erik Jackson of Class VI (http://www.c6sw.com/) - financial modeling tools for SMBs
* Mark MacLeod of Tungle.me, FreshBooks (www.freshbooks.com), Shopify (www.shopify.com)
* Mike Beckerle of Oco (www.oco-inc.com) - manufacturing/supply chain management
* Dries Buytaert of Mollom.com and DrupalGardens.com
* ??? Apptegic - real-time business insight for APIs
* ??? of NoteFlight (www.noteflight.com.com) - music
* ??? Cambridge Cloud Partners (www.cambridgecloudpartners.com) - accessing salesforce.com on your mobile device
* ??? of Cervello (www.mycervello.com) - BI solutions
* ??? of MailGeni.com - workflow solution
2. Issues facing SaaS:
* Awareness/Marketing
* Scaling
* Onboarding Customer Service
* Pricing/Upsell
* Engagement/Mindshare
* Professional Service Dilemma
* Security - Federation/Privacy
* Data Ownership
3. Awareness
* Segmentation - Be niche in your initial target and grow your segmentation piece by piece
* Viral - Get customers talking
* Love them
* KissInsights.com - measure feedback in real-time
* Referral programs
4. Onboarding
* Fee from HubSpot $250 - gets more serious users
* No follow up kills new companies
* Game mechanics
* UX - usability testing/paper prototyping - vet the idea with your customers: 1st impressions count
* Feedback
* easy = mindshare
* Relationship
5. Customer Service
* Walk in my shoes - everybody serves on the customer service team for a period of time.
* Community
* "6-9 FTE support reps/1000 paying subscribers" Mark
6. Pricing
* Premium service
* "Are we losing the opportunity to get them to buy premium? and how often do you contact your customer base?"
* Email with a reason
* Two types of SaaS services:
* Saves me time
* Or makes me money
* Value
7. Other
* "In every sprint, we improve our customer support efficiency" Dries
* Nov 5th - SaaS pricing models

Unconference Photos

Photos submitted through the Virtual Unconference system are automatically tagged and added to our Flickr account so they will automatically appear in each virtual session's photos (if available).

We also have a flickr group where existing flickr users can share photos so they can be tagged by other members, while still retaining links to original owners photos.

Here's what we have gathered so far.. Check out the curated sessions or our general categories for more organized/topic specific photos ..