JoshSweeney

Jeff Jarvis and The Link Economy Opened My Eyes

Have you ever noticed how when you buy a new car you suddenly seen them everywhere? Almost as if the act of buying the car opened your eyes to see the masses of other commuters who had that car.

Today I finished Jeff Jarvis’s What Would Google Do in audiobook format? This isn’t a revue of the book, there a plenty on Amazon, but an account on how the book opened my eyes. Like buying the car and seeing them everywhere, I listened to an audiobook and suddenly saw breakdowns in the system.

Jarvis talks about the link economy and the effects of linking data across sites and content. He also explains the profound impact of the link economy and peoples ability to quickly find data and learn from that data. A few short hours after the completion of the book I was researching data for CRMStage.com in relation to the GetSocial Twitter Pro module and realized a breakdown of the link economy.

The breakdown was that many article writers and large technology sites had created news and content mentioning the hard work done by my team but not linking to that work. I don’t want to come across as whining but would like to highlight the fact that many entrepreneurs  and small businesses could be massively impacted in a positive way if credit was given. Credit, being a link.

Take a look at this example:

Inc.com writer John Brandon wrote an article How to Track Customers with CRM Tools which mentions a Twitter addon for SugarCRM, the addon which my team wrote. In this article he mentions the module, Twitter, SugarCRM and Zoho yet links to none.

So I pose these questions:

• How would links from such a popular site change the economy?
• How would links they provide promote business growth past there advertisers?
• How would it effect their business?

If I had not read What Would Google Do? I would not have realized the scale and impact of not having links in articles on these popular sites. The links that these articles are leaving out make it harder for readers to follow the path to knowledge. On a large scale the lack of links are impacting the economy. No links means data is harder to find which impacts purchasing. I am sure with enough time hundreds of other impacts could be brought forth.

In the end I want to thank Jarvis for a great book and for making me see how much of an impact the link has.

Tips to Start Screencating: The Time Commitment

In the last Tips to Start Screencasting post we went over the software and hardware that is required to record a screencast. This time we are going to outline the time commitment.

Preparation:

1. Write a script – Once you have decided on the topic that you will be covering I suggest that you write a script which outlines what you are going to say. You will also want to read through that script to determine about how long it will take. The reason that I find this important is because each time you mess up during the recording it will add to the editing time.  It also gives you an idea on the length of the video which is important depending on where the video is posted, the topic and the audience.

2. Prep the demo – Preparing the environment and doing a soft run through before recording will ensure that everything is in place before you hit the record button. If something is out of place during the recording it will either slow you down or cost you time in editing.

Recording:

Reading a script, clicking and making it all seem like a natural demo without messing up is a difficult task. I have heard of two ways that people go about recording.

1. Record all together – Recording the sound and screen while speaking and clicking is a lot of work and must feel natural to be professional quality. This is very difficult to do but can be done with practice.

2. Record separately – I have spoken to individual that record sound and the screen separately which I have also tried. The problem that I run into with this is keeping everything in sync.

At this time I have not settled on the best approach but continue to research.

Editting: Celia Dyer once told me that your can expect 1 minute of editing for every minute of recording. At first this sounded a little high but after recording and editing a few of my own videos I find this to be an accurate expectation. I have also found that proper preparation up front can save you large amounts of editing time.

One example is with setting the intended length of the video. If you record a video that is 20 minutes long and you need it to be ten then you can expect a significantly higher amount of editing time and the 1 for 1 rule gets blown out of the water.

Publishing:

1. Format – The format of the video will be dictated by where the video is being published. Before you start recording you will want to determine the screen resolution and other playback criteria and change your settings accordingly.

2. Publishing the final -The one item that I always see left out when people talk about the time to produce a screencast is the time it takes to process and publish. Once the video has completed editing it has to processed and converted into the appropriate format. the time for this varies depending on the video length, quality and speed of the system.

After the video is process and formatted it has to be published. You could always just log in to YouTube or TubeMogul and publish in minutes but that doesn’t take into account SEO or searchablility. Taking the time to pick a keyword rich title, description and tags could enhance the traffic for your video.

As always, we hope this is helpful information and would enjoy seeing your screencasts. If you decide to create them after reading this short series then please let us know and provide a link.

Tags: camtasia, screencasting, video

Tips To Start Screencasting: Software and Equipment

Over the past few weeks I have determined that most people really don’t understand the amount of effort that goes into creating a quality screencast. I believe this statement to be accurate for multiple reasons.

1. I have had people ask me to create screencasts in “my spare time” as if it is something that can be quickly executed. This also assumes that I actually have spare time.

2. In discussing the creation of screencasts with the people requesting them of me, I have been told things like “We tried it and it is easy, just hit record and tell the user how to do something.” If it was that easy then they would have recorded their own already and not be asking me to do it.

3. When I decided to start recording screencasts I really didn’t understand all the aspects that made up and went into recording.

Recording a quality screencast takes time, practice, the right equipment and a quiet space with no echo. This isn’t to say that it can’t be done on a budget or in a less than optimal space, because it can, but it does need to me more planned than one might anticipate.

When it comes to software and equipment you want to be cost conscious but not cheap. The things that you can’t do without is recording software, a microphone and, of course, a computer.

Software:
There are plenty of options for recording software and the one thing that I have found to be true is that free will cost you more. Although I had heard of Camtasia and even played with the trial the first thing that I did was download multiple free screencasting software packages to determine if I could get by with them. This was the right thing to do in order to be cost conscious but after much usage and analysis I knew that I was going to have to pay for software.

If anyone came to me now and asked about recording software I would tell them to save days or weeks off of their lives and just go buy some good software to record with. In the end I purchased Camtasia and haven’t looked back.

Equipment:

• Computer – Without getting deep into system specs, it is safe to say that you need a fast computer. Recording and editing video is a resource hog which can quickly decimate netbooks, cheap processors and old hardware. I would recommend no less than 3 GB RAM and a peppy processor. Stay away from Celeron type low budget processing.

• Microphone – Starting out I used a $10 mic which did the job as long as I was in a very quiet room. After letting Loren Norman, an avid screencaster, check our my first works I decided to upgrade. The one thing that he pointed out was the background noises and feedback that happened with a cheap mic. Norman enlightened me to the finer points of having a good microphone and upon his recommendation I went with the Blue Snowball.

Doing the research ahead of time and getting the right software and equipment will make life much less complicated when you start to record your first screencast. Keep a look out for my next post which will outline the time cost to record a screencast.

Tags: camtasia, screencasting, video

Factors for Choosing a CRM

As a SugarCRM consultant ( for SugarCRM partners ) and avid Twitter user I find that there is a common question that all companies ask when looking for a CRM. That question is, what CRM is right for my company?

Being a SugarCRM consultant I would love to tell you that you should pick SugarCRM every time but that is just not the case.  Each CRM on the market has many similarities and differences that should be thoroughly assessed before choosing. Below are a points that need to be taken into consideration before making a decision. They are in no particular order.

Determine your budget:

Analyzing your budget will quickly knock out many vendors. If your company has less than 20 employees and a low CRM budget then you can probably dismiss going with certain solutions.

Look at vendor minimums:

Some vendors have minimums on the number of seats that have to be purchased for certain solutions or product features levels. It is important to cross check the number of seats your are purchasing with the product feature level that your company needs.

On-Site or Off-Site:

Determining if your CRM will be hosted on or off site is a very important factor for both budgeting reasons and in planning for the future. Keep in mind that on-site does not have to actually mean at your physical location, it simply means that you have access to the software and can install it wherever you like.

Certain CRM vendors are Saas only solutions which means that if they don’t have a robust API then you could have trouble doing any integrations or automation in the future.

Some vendors offer both deployment options but their on-demand ( Saas ) option is crippled and doesn’t provide root level access to make changes. For you this means that you need to ask about access permissions and module loading permissions when making an on-site, on-demand decision.

Technical Ability:

Whether or not you have a full time technical resource can be a big factor in choosing a CRM. Having a technical resource to correct issues and implement light or even heavy customizations means that you have the potential to fully leverage your purchase.

If you don’t have a technical resource then looking at a more basic Saas CRM solution may be a better choice. Another opiton is to hire consultants that can provide these services if your budget allows.

Integrations:

Integrations into other systems enable CRM software to automate processes saving precious time and money. However, if you do not have the budget or are not planning an integration for the foreseeable future then your company may be able to pick a less expensive CRM option.

There is myriad of other questions that I ask when helping a customer choose a CRM package that is right for them. The goal is to take all possible factors into account before choosing, do your research, and when possible run pilot programs before going with a solution.

Custom Logo: 99Designs or A Graphic Designer

When you are not a graphic designer, coming up with a logo or logo ideas for a product can be a grueling process. First you start off sketching out ideas on paper which depending on your skills may or may not come close to what you need. If it does then you still need to hire a designer to transfer it to a digital format which will cost an hourly rate.

I have been through the scenario of needing a logo a few times now. Up until this latest time I had always used a graphic designer and paid either an hourly rate or went with their “logo package” of a few logo ideas and a few revisions based on a set fee. In the end this usually ended up costing me more than anticipated for multiple reasons such as:

• I wasn’t 100% sure what I was looking for in a logo.
• The designer didn’t seem to understand what I was looking for
• I just didn’t like the 3-5 ideas that were presented.

Most of these are pretty common reasons for spending more than anticipated for a logo. There are also multiple ways to get around these issues such as:

• Have a very good idea of what you want before hiring a designer.
• Pick a designer that spends time understanding before  starting.
• Provide the designer logos and design themes that you have seen elsewhere that you like.

The fact is that once you have found a designer that you work well with, understands what is appealing to you, and has rates you can live with you will no longer have these issues. But until then, there is 99Designs.com.

99Designs.com is a crowd sourcing site that allows you to request a graphical design of almost anything and have hundreds of people submit ideas.  This is extremely helpful when you are not sure what you are looking for and only have a color scheme or vague idea. It also saves you the time involved with trying to come up with multiple ideas yourself when you may not be graphically enabled.

Here is how it works:

1. Choose what you want designed ( Ex: Logo, Brochure, Site Mockup, etc )
2. Set the price that you will pay to the winner.
3. Set your criteria such as colors, size, fonts, and ideas.
4. Launch the contest

What will happen is that designers will find your contest and start submitting ideas for you to comment and vote on. I recommend staying very involved in this process through the duration of the contest. When commenting and voting you can tell them what you do and don’t like and many designers will tweak their ideas based off of that information.

End the end you could potentially have hundreds of submissions to pick from which means that instead of having to settle on a logo or design you now have multiple quality designs and have to narrow it down to the winner.

Now that you know about 99Designs I have a few recommendations for when you try it out for the first time.

• The amount you give to the winner is not the total cost. As one would guess, 99Designs.com has to get paid also. On my $175 logo 99Deisgns.com charged a fee of $56 for a total of $231. So be aware of this before you start filling out the design brief.

• Get the logo on both a white background and another color background. Most effects on logos can look really good on white backgrounds but when moved to a different color loose their effect or meaning. This will help you visualize what your logo could look like on other mediums.

• Use the tools that 99Designs provides to thank designers for submissions and to provide immediate feedback after posting.

• Once you have a few submissions that you really like and will potentially pick, click the Guarantee button. By clicking this button you guarantee a payout which usually doubles the number of submissions.

At the end of my first use of 99Designs I was out $231 but I had over 175 submissions with about 10 logos that made it a very tough decision to choose. I also had about 50 more on top of that which were professional grade and could have done the job.

Tags: 99designs, custom graphics, graphic design, logos

April Atlanta SugarCRM Meetup

April’s Atlanta SugarCRM Meetup was titled Building SugarCRM Modules for Fun and Profit. Using the slides below I guided attendees through the various decisions that have to made when deciding to build a module to make money versus building modules to give away on SugarForge. I used the recent creation of GetSocial Twitter Pro as an outline for things that module creators could run into.

Overall it was a great Meetup in a new time and location. Although the presentation was intended to be more about building modules than GetSocial Twitter Pro, we ended up discussing various ways to better promote the GetSocial Twitter Pro module.

There was a lot of great feedback and I want to thank all of the attendees for offering your thoughts. I also want to thank SugarCRM for hosting.

Open Source: Contribution Based Upgrades

After being heavily involved in the SugarCRM community and the communities of other open source software over the years, there is one thing that has started to really bother me. In the BitTorrent world we call them leechers. These are the people who take and never seem to give back to the cause.

The problem that I have with this is that people are continuously leveraging others hard work while many times refusing to pay for anything attached to it. After download the platform they get the free modules, then they want consulting and haggle about the rates trying to make a point that the software was free stating “why would I spend so much on consulting when the platform came at such a little cost”. Lets face it, peoples time deserves compensation.

In building WapSnap and GetSocial Twitter Pro I thought long and hard on how to give to the community without rewarding the leechers. This leads to the idea presented in the title, “Contribution Based Upgrades.”

The concept is that the software is open source but to get the upgrade packages you need to contribute. This concept isn’t without it’s hurdles but we will get to that next.

Here is how it works. First off the software creator will require the user to sign up to download ( Even though I hate this concept ). During that process they will be told that they will not receive upgrades without contributions. The software provider will maintain a portal with a forum, documents area, and any other content sections needed to support the software which can take contributions from users. When a user posts any content, they will get points from the system or other community members with minimum and maximum points allowed based on the type of contribution.

The catch is that they must maintain a certain level of contribution averaged over time to have access to the upgrade packages. The level doesn’t have to be high but the fact that they have to contribute in some way is a step in the right direction. Maybe they could even get extra points for external blogs posts, who knows.

Now for the problems.

1. First is that current licensing of open source software will allow one person to download and distribute the upgrade packages without any recourse. Not that you want to go after users but you do need a “leg to stand on” if needed. To fix this you will have to draft your own license agreement.

2. Since the system is points based you will have to make sure that people aren’t gaming the system. This will probably be a constant battle for an active project but as long as your cover the majority of issues it shouldn’t be a huge problem.

3. People posting garbage. If people continuously post garbage to maintain there status the community will usually report it. If not, the moderator can troll for garbage and take it to the curb.

I’m am sure that there are dozens of other issues that could arise but at least the list is started.

In theory, this would greatly enhance the project quality and allow users to give time back to those who so graciously gave to them. I am interested in your thoughts on contribution based upgrades so send them to me or make a comment.

Tags: bittorrent, contributions, open source

Don’t Forget, You are the Candidate and the Interviewer

One thing that has always fascinated me is how many people seem to treat companies and customers as the interviewer and automatically put themselves in the candidate role. A role which means that one party inherently does the most work to please the other when it should actually go both ways. I believe that this stems from the “customer is always right” mantra and that many people believe that they need the company more than the company needs them.

Both of these ideals have their place, especially when someone is hurting for customers or hurting for income. Current economic conditions aside, most people interview for jobs while holding a position at another employer. They are interviewing for reasons based on wants and not necessarily needs. Such as they want more money, flexibility or both. The same goes for companies courting new opportunities. They may have enough work coming in but have to find new business to keep business moving forward and growing. Where businesses get into trouble is when they go after every opportunity without first playing the interviewer.

The fact of the matter is that this process needs to entail a mutual understanding that both parties are providing services or goods that each are in need of. For me this means that I need to do as much due diligence on a lead as they are doing on my product or service.

For example: It is common for a potential client to ask for referrals as which they should. But if I am doing my due diligence then I need to also ask for referrals from other contractors that they have worked with. The potential client asked because they want to know that you have done prior work and that the referred customer was satisfied with the work. As a potential service provider I want referrals to make sure that your company is fair, easy to work with, and pays your bills. When both parties don’t request equal information in certain areas it leads to one party taking on more risk.

The same goes with searching out permanent positions. You sit across the table from someone interviewing that needs a candidate. Many times they will enhance data just like a candidate to make the position more appealing. The real test is when you ask to speak to a random employee that isn’t internally pre-screened to tell you all the right things. These people are more open and can give the most accurate picture of what they deal with daily. If you can’t access these random people you still have the opportunity to ask many questions in order to interview the company just like they are interviewing you.

By becoming the interviewer and not just the candidate you will save time and money. The time you will save will be by not taking potentially unsatisfactory positions or hard to work with customers. Keep this in mind the next time you interview a company for a position or speak with a new lead.

Tags: candidates, interviewing, jobs, leads, referrals

Marketing An Inexpensive SugarCRM Module

SugarCRM is a great platform to extend with custom modules. You can extend it into various areas of work and add functionality that the creators never thought of when SugarCRM was coming into existence. These modules are great for personal and company use but things get a little more complex when you decide to sell one.

This week ALT-Invest completed and released it’s first purchasable module for SugarCRM called GetSocial Twitter Pro. The fact that we weren’t some large corporation trying to drive users to our service and simply offered an inexpensive SugarCRM interface to Twitter meant that we were embarking on a journey that not many have taken.

What do I mean by this? SugarCRM offers the SugarForge for developers that want to post their work for all to use at no cost. We have posted multiple modules here but decided that to provide a robust module that was feature rich, we would need a little bit of compensation. This drove us to look at SugarExchange.

Somewhere between mid development and completion we looked at adding the module to the SugarExchange and found that there is a $2000 annual listing fee. This was just not feasible for a module that cost $25 and connected a free service ( Twitter ) to a community that mostly utilizes the free version of SugarCRM. Later we were told that SugarExchange was for corporate modules which, again, means companies that want to drive users to their software or service by offering a module. This seems like an odd positioning given SugarCRM market but that is for another day.

Now that we knew that the two biggest channels for attracting SugarCRM users weren’t going to work for us we had to get more grass roots than originally planned.

Here is what we have done so far:

Seeing that this is a Twitter module and we are Twitter users we started to leverage….. you guessed it, Twitter. There are many helpful SugarCRM users on Twitter so we started by posting screenshots to the new module which thanks to a few got retweeted. We will continue the Twitter effort over a period of time while trying to keep it from getting to spammy. Since we already posted the screenshots we are likely to follow up with posting the docs and then some more info. I think that three Tweets is enough when it comes to marketing one product on Twitter.

Next we hit up the bloggers. We searched out bloggers that used Twitter and SugarCRM that would be willing to review the module. Our offer to them was a free copy with no stipulations. One thing that we also made sure NOT to do was ask for a good review or anything like that. We simply asked for a review of a 1.0 module. Hopefully they enjoy it enough to give us a fair review that is accurate and provides value to potential customers. If they dislike it then at least we still get honest feedback that we can feed off of for the next release.

The third thing that we have done is created a press release to email out to any CRM sites that we identify to be valuable. We just finished the writing the release and will keep you posted on this process.

Since ALT-Invest is one of the organizers of the Atlanta SugarCRM meetup we will be giving a presentation dubbed: Building SugarCRM Modules for Fun and Profit. This will revue everything that we learned in the process of building a module with the intent to sell. In the presentation we  will mention the GetSocial Twitter Pro module as the case in point but will not go more in depth. Doing this will let people know it exists while still staying true to the focus of the group.

Lastly, we have to count personal and company blog posts such as this.

So far, this is were we stand on marketing our inexpensive SugarCRM module. As we further our efforts and make progress we will let you know so that you can know what to do or what not to do with your next module. If you have any suggestions then please leave comments or catch me on Twitter @JoshSweeney.

SugarCRM: A Short Guide to Installation on Windows

The first thing that most potential users of SugarCRM want to do is try the software out for themselves. The options are to download SugarCRM CE ( Community Edition ) and install it on a system that you have available or to sign up for a Pro (SugarCRM Professional ) trial and wait for the sales people to call. If you are going to need the feature set provided in SugarCRM Pro for your business then you should definately sign up for the trial and play with the same edition that you will be implementing. If your plans are to go with SugarCRM CE then this post will help you get up  and running.

The first step to getting SugarCRM installed on Windows is to fulfill the requirements of running the software. These requirements include a web server such as Apache or IIS, PHP, and various other modules never mentioned in the installation and administration guide. This all sounds really complicated if you have never installed a webserver but there are a few software packages that make it very easy.

When it comes to installing a webserver with the packages required for SugarCRM there are mulitple options.

1. SugarCRM FastStack – The SugarCRM FastStack installs everything that is needed including SugarCRM CE. The only drawback that I see from the FastStack is that it is not widely used for any other types of software installation so if you need help then the only place that you can go to is the SugarCRM forum. This isn’t a big deal except that most of the knowledgable people in the forum don’t use the FastStack on their own machine and may not be as helpful as they could be had you chosen a different installer.

2. Apache2Triad – Apache2Triad is similar to the FastStack except that it is made by a group that is dedicated to giving users of any web based software package a good experience. Another difference is that SugarCRM is not bundled so you will have download it.

3. XAMPP – XAMPP by Apache Friends is what I use on my Windows system simply because it provides an easy to use interface along with a few built in tools that I like to use while working on SugarCRM. Just like the other two packages it is easy to install and provides all of the necessary package for SugarCRM installation.

You are welcome to try any of the packages because they are all provided free of charge. I am going to move forward and tell you how to get SugarCRM installed on XAMPP.

Step 1. Download XAMPP from ApacheFriends.org – This quick tutorial assumes that you download the full version and not XAMPP lite.

Step 2. Download SugarCRM

Step 3. Install XAMPP by double clicking the installer that you downloaded. I recommend keeping all of the defaults and the tutorial will assume that you did.

Step 4. Once you install XAMPP you will need to change to lines in a file called php.ini. Go to the following directory c:\xampp\apache\bin and open php.ini.

Step 5. Find the line that says “memory_limit” change the limit from the default number to read memory_limit = 64M. This will give SugarCRM enough memory so that you don’t get errors during installation.

Step 6. Find the line that says “upload_max_filesize” change the limit from the default to read upload_max_fiilesize = 32M.

The memory that I have alotted in Step 5 and 6 are not the minimums that SugarCRM can run on so keep in mind that they can be set lower if you are installing to an older system.

Step 7. Save the file and restart the server. This can be done by going to Start -> Programs -> Apache Friends and opening the control panel. If both Apache and MySQL both have a green box next to them that says running then click to Stop Apache. Once it Stops, click Start again so that it will pick up your new settings.

Step 8. Unzip all of the files from the SugarCRM zip file and move them to the c:\xampp\htdocs\sugarcrm directory. The sugarcrm directory will not exist so you will have to create it.

Step 9. Once this has been complated you are ready to install SugarCRM. You start the installation by opening your browser and going to http://localhost/sugarcrm

Step 10. Follow the steps that SugarCRM guides you through to install the software. When you are at the database step you will want to set the database server to localhost and use the default XAMPP databases username and password which is username: root with no password.

If all is done correctly then at the end you will have a working version of SugarCRM that you can play with. If you follow this short guide and get hung up on a step then leave a comment and I can add it in for other users so that they too can get SugarCRM up and running quickly.

Tags: installation, SugarCRM, sugarcrm installation