PGreenblog

So Much to Hear, So Little Time: Me, Brent, Jeremiah, and Sugar

Three things for you today.

First

A reminder. I have a webinar on Mobile CRM - the fourth and final in a series with SugarCRM that I've thoroughly enjoyed. The format is different. Few slides and a conversation between me and Martin Schneider, Sugar's Analyst Relations honcho.

Click here for the registration link.

Next....

Jeremiah Owyang, a Senior Analyst at Forrester Group and a social networking expert and rock star with a blog that's read by about 10 zillion did a podcast at Marketing Voices on the value of social networks to marketers. Its abso-friggin'-lutely solid as a rock with its focus to what has to be done by enterprises seriously considering social initiatives as part of their customer strategies. I would thoroughly recommend listening to it, since the CRM community is rather insular when it comes to acting on the changes it needs to make sometimes. This one makes you realize the importance of social networks for the enterprise in an era where the customer wants to be engaged, not managed.

Check it out and listen CLOSELY!

If

your browser doesn't support JavaScript, you can hear this at http://www.podtech.net/home/5308/forresters-jeremiah-owyang-the-best-and-worst-of-social-marketing

Finally...and of course most importantly

Brent Leary and I did a number on Cuil, the now totally maligned search engine on his popular broadcast, Technology for Business Sake. This was the predecessor for our much anticipated series (at least much anticipated by Brent and me) CRM Playaz, scheduled to debut someday either this year or early next year. That's why its anticipated. We kicked Cuil's butt around the table a little bit and had some fun with the clear issues that the engine had. Here's five minutes or so - consider it a preview for what you might hear on CRM Playaz. Way cool (not...oh you know).

Technorati : Brent Leary, CRM at the Speed of Light, cuil, social networks

Experience on the Edge #5

Just an FYI. My podcast, Experience on the Edge, episode 5 is now up for listening. Go to MyCRMCareer and register and listen to it here or subscribe from iTunes. Check it out. Some cool stuff and a couple of announcements. I'll leave you in suspense......

Technorati : Experience on the Edge, podcast, social media

Technology For Business Sake...Listen for Your Own Sake

Hey I did a really cool thing yesterday. Did a co-host stint with Brent Leary, my good bud and CRM guru in his own right on his show Technology for Business' Sake, an Atlanta-based radio show that has international reach due to its syndication via podcast and RSS feed and great content. Brent has had interviews with an incredible number of luminaries in CRM and the Web 2.0 world. This week it's Stephen Wildstrom, the Technology and You column writer for Business Week - a very, very good writer and industry veteran.

Here's the link to hear Brent and me kibbitzing and Stephen Wildstrom and Brent doing a very intelligent interview.

I'd be listening to this every week if I were you. Very, very cool.

Technorati : Business Week, CRM at the Speed of Light, Technology for Business' Sake, podcast, small business

Salesforce + Google = And Only God Can Make A Tree

The rumors are flying everywhere about a Google and salesforce.com's pending nuptials. They are going to merge, salesforce is going to be acquired by Google, they are partnering, they are having sex in multiple locations (don't have the link to that)- in public. They are pursued by paparazzi, they are harassed as they eat at Indigo Landing, they are....I can't say THAT!! In fact, the rumor will be put to bed on June 5 at a luncheon with Marc Benioff in SF that I'm invited to, desperately want to attend and can't because we have the CustomerThink formerly known as CRMGuru retreat on June 4-5-6 in Santa Clara - an annual event I look forward to every year. But, my prediction is straight up. Salesforce.com and Google announce a partnership that is aimed squarely at seizing the platform space from Microsoft - though they may not put it that way, given Google's dissembling propensity to say that they aren't competing with Microsoft. Something like Seinfeld's "and there's nothing wrong with that." If you want to read the straight scoop, check out Denis Pombriant's blog and his "annus mirabilis entry. As always, the best take on it all.

But the war is over platform dominance and the victor's spoils are dominance in the realm of what is more or less a composite applications platform. Most of the serious vendors have figured this out and are in pitched battles that are galactic in scope to win that one.

Huh? What's Platform Dominance?

The reason is that big bucks come to those whose platform rules. That means that whatever applications, services, and user interfaces you want, you can get it - on the platform you chose. All of a sudden it is not an SFA application, it is whatever you want it to be. It is not a social networking site, it is whatever you want it to be. It is not an enterprise application, it is whatever you want it to be. It is not a personal productivity suite or a search engine or a.... it is whatever you want it to be.

That means a BIG market, and LOTS of reach, and OODLES of dollars and TONS of customers (in the obese US market TONS means 10 customers - Ha Ha. Yuk. Yuk.).

Think about it, salesforce, SAP and Microsoft have long pushed the platform as a strategy. Companies like Above All have always been smart, out in the forefront of the composite applications space. Last week at Software 2007, Steve Ballmer took the world's leading personal productivity suite (guess....) and magically transformed it into the Microsoft Office platform. Office became as the front end for Office Business Applications e.g. ERP as the back end. In fact, this platform play too was described as a platform for composite applications which I've written extensively on.

These are wise attempts because he who rules the platform, rules the technology world. And the dollars associated with it.

Which made some of the other announcements of the last two or three days more important but less melodramatic than the Googleforce (or salesoogle, which I like better) buzz.

First, salesforce.com announced SOA as a Service.

Second Facebook announced the release of a "social utility" platform that has enormous possibilities and makes me finally understand why they turned down a billion dollars.

SOA As A Service

When I first heard the term, I thought, hmmm, service oriented architecture as a service. Now what does that mean? I had no idea how you offered a web-services based, business-rules directed architecture as an on demand offering. But...

Well, the more I read, the more I observed and the more I thought about it, I realized that what salesforce.com is actually offering is a composite applications toolkit using Apex, their programming language - meaning that Apex and APIs and other pieces will allow you to link the business rules and the data you have to multiple applications - either new or legacy.

Whatever it is, it is an important step for salesforce and another proof that the war ain't over. I'll do more down the road on this once I see what it actually can do. Right now, see the strategy, the big pitcher, the large kahuna and you'll see how SOA as a service fits into the Grand Schema of Thingsa.

Facebook Platform

Facebook's platform is essentially a set of tools to build services inside the Facebook "social utility" (for some reason, Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, doesn't like being called a "social network." Don't know why....). That could be pretty much anything. That means that they could build a restaurant recommendation engine and peer review site that would link to the outside restaurants or they could build a. ummm, uhhh, how about, oooohhh, lesseee, mmmmm....here's what they have so far:

Not exactly a sterling collection of enteprise-strength apps, but I guess its a start. The important thing here is that while this is a nascent platform, it is a transition toward a similar direction that we see Google, salesforce.com, SAP, Microsoft, Rearden Commerce, Above All, and a dozen other companies moving in - a drive for platform-dominance and agnostic services/applications provision on that platform. Sometimes the business value isn't apparent to the customer but it sure is a revenue generator to the platform provider.

Another baby industry trend brought to you by PGreenblog.

See ya.

Much more later...NetSuite Goes Mobile....

Technorati : Facebook, Google, composite applications, platform, salesforce.com

As He Would Say, Chris Carfi is Right On!

Background Music

(I'm writing this while listening to the Cirque de Soleil's mashups of the Beatles called "Love" and I gotta tell you, this is incredibly done for us old boomers who love the Beatles and are in awe of Cirque de Soleil. Listen to it on the DVD-Audio if you can. If you can't, tough luck, bunky. But the CD will do too, I guess).

I Love Carfi, Right to A T(ea)

Chris Carfi, my bud, my colleague, managing principle of social network software company Cerado (see his kickass application Haystack at this location and read about the new features in his blog "The Social Customer") (GOD! This music really is amazing!), did a review of 2006 and CRM from the standpoint of the social customer for CRM Guru and his blog that I have to say is, in his particular style, "right on." He makes the absolutely on the money point that 2006 was the year the cracks widened and for some companies "portions of the fortifications began to crumble and crash to the ground, casting away long held beliefs and practices as they fell."

He breaks down sales, marketing, and customer service, our CRM 1.0 silos and shows how CRM 2.0 - the social customer's dominance began to impact each section. In a bulleted nutshell, here are his fundamental points:

• In the sales world, customers are now documenting their experiences with products and services in photos, words and videos (and occasionally music) online and everywhere. In other words, they know the product better than the sales people. In addition we've seen the rise of the corporate customer called the "bizsumer" - individuals making individual buying decisions to get things done in their silos or groups so they don't have to deal with bureaucracy (something, by the way, that the federal government and its ubiquitous credit card users, have been doing for many years for the same reason). This seems be be focused on either application tools for project management, collaboration, etc. or on demand services of the same time. These are micro-buying decisions that fall below the radar but amount to potentially billions of dollars. PG: I totally agree with this and would take it a little further. The bizsumer, the micro-purchaser, is also a prosumer who is dramatically affected by the purchasing decisions they make as consumers outside their company. So when they purchase below the radar screen and even when they are blipping away, they are thinking not just utility, but style. How else do you explain the success of the RIM Blackberry Pearl, the industrial grade Blackberry that has the style of Giorgio Armani and the flash that took RIM's stock price up 30% because of the advance buzz?


• In the marketing world, Mr. C. points out that not only those forward thinking little guys but the corporate giants like GM, IBM, Sun are using podcasts, blogs, and ,I would venture to say, even wikis on occasion. But what that means is that these have to be used with "unassailable ethics and transparency." When done right it's answering questions in the public square - company reps online answering questions directly - making themselves accessible. PG: I once again concur, Mr. Chris, and would add that marketers may have made the most strides but they are also the most resistant to change. There are big dollar decisions being made by some of the majors on how to put themselves in the marketplace. Marketing using the new tools and in a new way is a delicate but necessary effort. Unfortunately, because marketing is based on mindshare and driving toward marketshare but isn't always tangibly identifiable or measurable in the results except through the measures that have been historically used - e.g. response rates to campaigns - a new set of the measurements, necessary to bolster the marketing changes - isn't really on the table yet. We don't have a way to quantify the experiences of the customers. The first attempt to do this is Net Promoter Score that Fred Reichheld put forth in his book - The Ultimate Question. But that's a start only and a simple one at that. There's a lot more to go and I'm not sure how to do it. The only thing I know is that despite the massive strides that were made this year, I'm going to be looking to folks like Jim Barnes, author of Build Your Customer Strategy, to help figure out how to measure the results from a marketing standpoint. Otherwise, the American Customer Satisfaction Index will retain a credibility it doesn't deserve in the slightest.


• Finally, CC speaks to the world of customer service and indicates a trend which is small but important. Apparently Stowe Boyd and Greg Narain of Blue Whale Labs are loving "beacons." A post in a public place (a blog, or user community, etc.) that would draw the attention of the service provider to an issue with the company's products. So the company is drawn like a moth to the flame to the site that's citing before the readers are incited to attack. So there is no support ticket etc, but there is a resolution to the problem - though apparently due to the fear of social exposure, not the good graces of the company's kindness. PG: Great idea. We see the power of this when we remember the 2005 Dell Hell that I'm sure Dell isn't too fond of. Dell is just starting to recover from the attack on its service by The BuzzMachine blog that, if you were to google "Dell Hell" one day later saw 1.2 million references. Thing is, though, this trend to draw the service department to the complainant's neighborhood is not all that prevalent. At least not that way. Lots of people use blogs to complain. But the complaints aren't a "support tagging" strategy, but instead a place to get upset and vent. One Vente Malocchioto, please with an extra shot of Evil Eye. The progress in the areas of customer service have been more on the handling of service level agreements and have been operational in nature. The customer experience still suffers at the usual suspects (telcos, etc.) because the staff isn't trained often nor doesn't care. (Ask Brent Leary about Bell South). So the changes here are not all that substantial in the last year, but at least things are getting interesting.

Technorati : CRM 2.0, CRM at the Speed of Light, culture, customer ecosystem, customer experience, customer relationship management, podcasts, social networking, user created content

Blogging & Podcasts and Warm Woolen Mittens

Okay, this is cheating. For this week just ending and next week, I'm writing a guest blog for TechTarget (separate from my regular SearchCRM Board of Advisors "gig") for their Expert Answer Center. I'm the CRM expert. This is the entry that I'm using for them tonight too, but I'm tired and want to take the easy way out and if you don't see it there, there are some useful things that are worth looking into. I'm admitting culpability with myself in producing this entry for two different blogs. Never did it before, probably won't do it again. but I'll let you know, if I do.

I don't imagine that you don't know that much of my own work is in this list. What kind of "thought leader" would I be if I didn't recommend my thinking? Huh? D-OH!!

CRM 21^st Century style books

1. CRM at the Speed of Light, 3^rd Edition - by Paul Greenberg - Hey, its my book and its been in 8 languages and 3 editions so I must be saying something interesting….


2. The Experience Economy - by Joe Pine II and James Gilmore - This was the book that wrote the book on the customer experience and personalizing it through mass customization


3. The CRM Handbook - by Jill Dyche - Aside from Jill being a great person, this book is, bar none, the best handbook for understanding what goes into a project within a CRM program and framework.


4. The Future of Competition - by C.K. Prahalad & Venkat Ramaswamy - a cogent, incredibly smart, book on how customers require co-creation of value and what it takes for a business to do it.


5. The Long Tail - Chris Anderson - one of the most controversial yet influential books on an influential idea - the long tail - that there are zillions of businesses that are at the tail end of the long tail that are small and fulfill particular needs for particular people and if the right model is developed - these little niche businesses could be enormously profitable e.g. the idea of dock and download.

Important Blogs

1. PGreenblog - mine, so of course, I want you to go to it.


2. Brent's Blog- Brent Leary's significant insights into SMB and minority CRM and some of the cool gadgets out there.


3. Beagle Research- The blog of the best "big idea" guy and cool company finder in the CRM biz. (see below)


4. CRMChump - I love the name of this blog and the kid who does it does an excellent job of newsgathering on CRM


5. The Social Customer- Chris Carfi gets the 21^st century customer and sure knows how to reach them


6. Springwise - not really a blog but they need to be here. They cover long tail markets through the use of the 16,000 eyes (roughly) attached to the 8000 springspotters who are looking at the niche ideas that are out there and they identify on their trendwatching site- the big, new, trendy, trends. Spectacularly smart and gets the creative juices flowing.

Podcasts to Listen To

1. Route 56- Also mine - Edgy, and cool CRM production.


2. Knowledge@Wharton Podcast - This one actually has useful and interesting interviews with forward-thinking business thought leaders.


3. Business Week Innovation Trends- It's exactly what it says it is. Interesting innovation trends from mainstream smart thinkers.

Training You Need to Get

1. BPT Partners- I'm a co-owner of this company and frankly, without bragging, we have easily the best CRM training in the business because we focus all of it around the central idea that customer value rules. Endorsed by Rutgers University CRM Research Center, The CRM Association, Greater China CRM, CRMGuru, etc.
   

Analysts You Need to Pay Attention to - NOW

1. Denis Pombriant- Beagle Research Group


2. Michael Maoz- Gartner Group - Smartest CRM analyst - blunt and insightful


3. Charlene Li - Forrester Group - Gets the idea of social computing, brilliantly. Awesome blog.

Companies with Disruptive Potential

1. Salesforce.com- AppExchange in combination with Sendia acquisition means mobile platform that's here to stay


2. SAP - This is more like the "singin' in the rain" dancing elephant than an 800 lb. gorilla. They have a real message for the enterprise that is just so 5 minutes from now.


3. Rearden Commerce- the first and only fully realized service oriented architecture coupled with over 200 services delivered on that platform that establishes productive connectivity between personal and business life - better than any company out there anywhere.


4. Communispace - facilitated user communities for business. They do it best.


5. The entire country of Singapore- Since August 2005, the entire country is mandated to improve the customer experience for all visitors and citizens and any one else touching its shores through their National Service Excellence Initiative - and they are serious about it. This is about the smartest thing a nation can do when it comes to its citizens and its visitors. I LOVE this idea. Here's an example.

That about wraps up this episode of....oh, damn, I'm thinking Route 56 podcasting while ending for this week. Have a great weekend. No need for warm woolen mittens, that's fur shure.

 
  Technorati : CRM, CRM 2.0, SAP, Web 2.0, blogs, books, customer experience, podcasts, rearden commerce, salesforce.com, training

Route 56 Gave Me Kicks, Too....

Its finally here and let me tell ya, it wasn't easy. Route 56 now exists. The first podcast is up and ready, though it has some rough spots and things I could already see improving on. But, damn, I LIKE it. I like radio-on-demand. Hell, I like radio period so this podcasting is a lot of fun though I now appreciate a little what radio technicians and broadcasters have to go through. More on that in a minute. First, here's the info.

The Basic Shtuff

I have a blog (another one) that will be devoted to just the podcast and its episodes so that you can see what each is about and how I'm covering and access or subscribe to the podcast directly from the site or just listen to a particular broadcast right there. The site is called Route 56. Duh. How smart am I? Just click on the picture below and it'll take you there. I'll put up a subscribe button on this site soon. Just not today. Too much of a podcast correction day for me so I'm tired of it for today.

The Podcast "Experience"

I learned a lot doing this thing. I must have "taped" (digitally of course) each segment about 50 times and then checked the sound quality, spent a million hours on handling the editing technically and the composition of the podcast so, for example, the music faded out and I came in at the right moment, which was moving around a lot of .WAV files. Then I spent about $1500.00 on podcasting equipment so that the sound quality was really good for the final .MP3 and for the most part, I think that it is, though there are some obvious glitches here and there technically. Nothing dramatically bad though.

I've already learned a few things that I would be happy to pass on to anyone who really cares at all or who wants to podcast themselves.

The Hardest Thing EVER Is Talking - Never Thought I'd Say THAT

The most important lesson I learned is that speaking at conferences, training and all the normal conversations I have don't hold a candle in difficulty when it comes to be a comfortable natural smooth radio type host. Let's just say that I have far too many "umms" and I'm not chanting mantras when I do. However, in time, I expect that it'll  be a lot smoother but its a whole new ballgame here. I mean, I get rated #1 speaker at most every conference I speak at, people love my public style and I'm at ease in front of crowds of dozens to thousands. I can do webinars comfortably with crowds I can't see. But this - I mean - this is HARD. God knows, I need to know what I can do to improve and I'm sure that if you love me out there, you'll give me the tough love I need. I'm from New York. I can take it. Let me know what you think of the podcast and where I did right and wrong and left out things and included dreck (that's Yiddish for crap) that I shouldn't have. What can I do for you, readers? Tell me and I'll make the podcast rock.

Though, secretly (lean closer so I can whisper) I think its really cool and I think its got a lot of good stuff.,/p>

Okay, you can lean away now.

Where It Stands

I'm in the midst of submitting it to ITunes, podcast alley and a myriad of other sites but they take a few days, so for right now, the Route 56 blog is where you can get it and subscribe.

Once Again

The info you need for Route 56:

1. Click on the Route 56 logo above.
2. That should take you there and then just take a look at the page and I think its pretty intuitive.
3. Listen to the podcast
4. Drop me a line at [email protected] or on the Route 56 blog or here

Whew. I'm done. I'm going outside. Its too nice to stay indoors.

Being Random is Just So Much Fun...Whenever Its Fun...Or....Whenever Its Funny....Whenever

Amazing But True.....

I was trolling around getting my podcast ready (watch later today for the announcement) and I found several things that were interest to those of us who have an itinerant's relationship to the web and especially to Web 2.0.  As an aside, I  like Live Web best, better than Web 2.0 or Business Web - sorry Marc Benioff - I still like you anyway. For some reason Live Web seems more...live, I guess. Just a thought for those of you who love names and acronyms. Personally, I love metaphors, metaphorically of course. In any case, here's a few things that are worth knowing about.

• This weekend in San Luis Obisbo California, there is going to be a festival devoted to all things jazz entitled "The Art of Jazz." What makes this memorable isn't a festival devoted to jazz. God knows, there's enough of them out there. But that this one is hosted by a Morgan Stanley SVP named Bill Wesnousky, who is also the curator of the Morgan Stanley supported (it seems to be that anyway) "Excellent Experiences Gallery." The idea is a total experience that will be an offering that will lead to alliances and relationships. There will be an art gallery devoted to jazz-related art and music (jazz in case you haven't figured it out yet) will be played constantly in the gallery in the background so that you can hear the paintings, sculptures and photos. What makes this even more appealing is that Bill Wesnousky (heretofore know as "Wez" to make it easier on me) got the idea for the Excellent Experiences Gallery from reading Pine and Gilmore's "The Experience Economy."   Way cool, cat.


• My editor at McGraw-Hill and good bud, Roger Stewart sent me a relevant piece from C/Net called "Web 2.0 Meets the Enterprise" which shows that the new business models and live collaboration are seeping into the pores of rusty old corporate America and that some of the new technologies are being evolved by some of the old timers like IBM.  For example IBM recently laid out one of its projects called QEDWiki, which let's, as the article so quaintly calls them, "people"  "assemble web applications using wikis, really simple syndication (RSS) and simple Web scripting." Wow, grass roots, proletarian, blue collar thinking coming from IBM. Now called Big Blue Collar. The article goes on to say that the traditional enterprise model could be very much shaken by this turn of events and turn of screws by Live Web. I'd definitely be reading this one if I were you, I mean if I were "people."


• On the other side of the coin, I read an article called "Turning a Transaction into a Relationship - Creating the Memorable Experience" on Hospitality.Net that was a horrible experience unto itself. It was one of those articles that used initial caps to describe things like Brand Loyalty, or Front Desk, or Self Awareness,  Retail Marketing Expert, Relationship Building. And it used those initial caps to push every cliche imaginable. "Branded Moments of Truth" was one of the better ones.
  
  Did you ever read those 14th and 15th century morality plays that did that initial caps thing for its allegorical characters? For example, the most famous of these morality plays was "Everyman" and here is a description of the play, "Everyman....portrays a complacent Everyman who is informed by Death of his approaching end. The play shows the hero's progression from despair and fear of death to a "Christian resignation that is the prelude to redemption." First, Everyman is deserted by his false friends: his casual companions, his kin, and his wealth. He falls back on his Good Deeds, his Strength, his Beauty, his Intelligence, and his Knowledge. These assist him in making his Book of Accounts, but at the end, when he must go to the grave, all desert him save his Good Deeds alone.  Here's an actual line from the play itself "Here shall you see how Fellowship and Jollity, Both Strength, Pleasure, and Beauty..." Now go back and compare the red outlined words from Everyman with the blue words from the article. Does "Branded Moment of Truth" or "Front Desk" strike you as a worthy allegorical figure? I thought not. Amazing how doing the consultant thing with English can create a bad experience with an article on the idea of Remarkable Experiences. I would say that Good Deeds, Beauty and Knowledge trump Branded Moments of Truth, Self Awareness and Front Desk any day, wouldn't you?


• Finally, I just wanted to let you know that Route 56, my first pdocast is finished and I'm wrestling with the syndication and the RSS feed and how to post them etc. Watch for an announcement tonight See ya.

FINALLY! A Podcast Name for the Pod(Cast) People

We have a WINNAH!!! After my plaintive plea for participation from some readers for the name of the podcast, I did get some emails - about 10 of them and many of those had some good and occasionally a little obscure suggestions. But the winnah and champion is actually the first of the suggestions from none other than Graham Hill, someone I have previously mentioned as a boy-genius (well not a boy really but younger than me, anyway) who came up with the name to replace the dead-in-the-waters "You Are What You Eat". The winner and new champion is (TAKE IT AWAY SPIDEY):

ROUTE 56

So, at the end of next week, be prepared. Because my first Route 56 podcast will be put up on ITunes and anywhere else I need to and a second blog for just the podcast descriptions and feed, will be created on Typepad. Route 56 will be every two weeks until I'm comfortable and then weekly after that.

Graham gets a $100 gift certificate for Amazon.com. And I get to do a podcast.

Finally.

Hey Guys, Don't Disappoint Me

I'm disappointed in you all. Yes. You. You might remember (or not) that, on April 1, I announced a contest for getting me a new podcast name because the one I had, You Are What You Eat (YAWYE) wasn't catching on among the cognoscenti. In fact, it didn't catch on with any potential listeners whatever. So I said, "you give me a name to use and I'll give you a $100.00 Amazon gift certificate for the winning entry." I thought, hey, THAT ought to get the blog readers going. They're a creative lot. They like to read or buy electronics or kitchen appliances or whatever else you get on Amazon." I even ended the section with a plaintive cry that looked like this: HELP!!! But did I get that help I so desperately need? NOOOOOOOOOOOOO. I got one response from a brilliant guy I know and frankly, the name he gave was really good. AND, if I don't hear any more from you guys by Thursday of next week, I'm going to use the name he gave for the podcast.

Its just that (Sniff. Honk. Sniff) I had faith in your creativity, your interest...in...this....blog. I BELIEVED in you. I did. I really did. I thought, after all, I work my fingers to the BONE writing for you all and now, all I ask is one little favor, one stinking little thing and I get zilch in return. It KILLS me. That is just so SAD.(I WON'T cry. No. I WON'T!)

Maybe, just maybe, I've overestimated your talents, your creativity. Maybe $100 is nothing to you, but giving it means something to me. Maybe, maybe maybe maybe (I'm gonna HOLD-IT-BACK, There is no crying in blogging).

Okay, okay. So its a blatant sympathy grab.

Seriously, I do need a new name for the podcast and I want to get it going so I would truly appreciate it if a few of you came up with names that I could consider. I'm out of town at the American Automobile Association national HQ on Wednesday (they are VERY CRM focused it seems) and will be back late Wednesday night and I'd like to "tape" the podcast next weekend so if you could come up with a few names by Wednesday night, I'd shorely 'preciate it, cowboys and cowgals. I have one really good one, but don't let that discourage you. A couple hundred of you answered the poll on the podcast. If 10% of you who did give me a name, I'll be eternally grateful - but only one will win.

Go for it.