Radiant Core: sales tag

Brockville Ad & Sales Club January Speaker: Doing Business on the Web

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Although some people find it hard to believe, I really enjoy getting up in front of a room full of people and giving a talk and last night was no exception! I was honoured to be invited by Brockville's Ad & Sales Club to visit their lovely city and present on the topic of Doing Business on the Web, something we try to know a thing or two about. My thanks go out to Anisa Sherwood (a great Brockville Mortgage Broker from Assured Mortgages) who tirelessly organized the talk, President Robert Tavares from Freedom 55 Financial for a great introduction, and to all of the members of the Club who I had the chance to chat with! A special thanks to the crew who took me out for a drink at The Brock Pub, including Kathy MacDonald (from Brockville real estate agents the Keary Team), Taira Kirkland (a very talented and highly knowledgeable Brockville web designer), and Dave Holmes (from high end server vendor Testworx), who brought along his lovely wife Stephanie.

I think the talk went well despite yesterday's incredible wind actually knocking out power to the venue (they were worried the projector might strain their backup generator and it sure did and the power died as I wrapped up :). The crowd's tech knowledge spanned everything from very casual web use to bloggers and SEO-fanatics, so I started off with a quick review of the basics (e.g.: Web 1.0's one way street vs. Web 2.0's participatory conversation), and then jumped into blogging, social media, search, ecom, and collaboration. We covered a lot in an hour and some people were starting to get a bit of the Information Overload glaze in their eyes, so I wrapped up with an encouragement to take advantage of the wealth of free software and opportunity and get out there and experiment. I'm on the train on the way back to Toronto now, but will post the slides to SlideShare from a more reliable net connection for anyone interested.

Google OpenSocial: A Coup By Any Other Name

Thu, 01 Nov 2007 03:00:00 GMT

The web is abuzz (as the web usually is), and this time it's Google's forthcoming OpenSocial (URL live on Thursday) which has us all fluttering. The search giant is releasing an Application Programming Interface (API), which basically means that web developers will be able to add social networking features to their sites, which will be shared across the various networks (e.g.: friend information from one can be used to populate friends in another, saving you from re-creating the same network every time your friends decide to move on to a new offering). The API will be clustered around three sets of functions:

Profile Information (user data)
Friends Information (social graph)
Activities (things that happen, News Feed type stuff)

Looks like OpenSocial won't have its own markup language (Facebook, for example, requires the use of FBML), which means developers will have one fewer thing to learn. The platform is launching with a bunch of partners in place, including Orkut (owned by Google), Salesforce, LinkedIn, Ning, Hi5, Plaxo, Friendster (apparently they still exist), Viadeo and Oracle (not well known for social networking, but they've got an impressive sounding internal app). They've also worked with some of the bigger Facebook developers to get them on the new platform, including Flixster, iLike, RockYou and Slide.

This is interesting, if for no other reason than that Google has managed to perform a buzzword bingo coup and cram two of the hottest words of 2007 into a single name. Sometimes it feels like the sky is raining social from giant buckets, and you'll be seeing a lot more about open in the coming months as the open source world continues its mainstream push. We're big believers in (and supporters of) openness and I'm glad to see some of the walls around the garden come down. The is brilliant in a lot of ways (particularly in their ability to scale and to solve the security issues which typically ruin similar efforts), but your data is very much locked into their site. We'll have a better idea of how OpenSocial will change that when the API is actually released later (and particularly about whether a layer could be developed which allows developers to build Facebook apps on it), and will report back.

The Importance of Recruiting

Fri, 23 Mar 2007 10:15:00 GMT

When we started Radiant Core, our biggest challenge was sales. We had no name or reputation to build on and so we had to chase down every sale and prove ourselves. Now that we're the fat cats feasting on a smorgesboard, our challenge has changed to managing the growth of our company in a 'responsible' fashion.

The biggest surprise I've had, as a member of the so-called Senior Management Team (Hi Mom! Look at me! I'm a Senior Manager!), has been the difficulty of attracting top quality team members. In a post from this morning, Austin Hill addresses exactly that point:

The number one job of any leader is talent development. Recruiting, retaining, equipping and developing the talent in your team is the not only the most critical part of creating a successful company it is also the hardest.

He also performs his own stunts, driving down the San Mateo freeway while video blogging. The man is an animal!

I think the point he makes in the video is essential to this conversation: hiring should always be a two way conversation. We are always more attracted to candidates who interview us and who inidicate that they are assessing Radiant Core as much as we are assessing them - it shows that they undersand the value that they bring to the organization. Don't be afraid to ask tough questions in interviews!

Brief aside: I actually worked for Austin years ago, as a summer intern in the Toronto offices of Total.net. I never met him then, but it was a formative experience and definitely set me on the path I'm still on today. So, no credit to Austin for mentoring me, but it was a pleasure to finally meet him recently when he popped into the Radiant Core offices to say hi. He's one of the few Canadian Internet Rock Stars (present company excluded, of course), so return the favour and pop by his blog!