The Latest in e-Commerce Tools, Tech and Techniques from Pros in Seattle

We showed up at an e-Commerce Meetup in Seattle last night and learned a lot.  The group is called Seattle Profit Pirates Mastermind Group - Ecommerce & Amazon Entrepreneurs and was meeting at a coffee shop on Capitol Hill.  We got a lot of tool and tech recommendations and met some thought leaders in the field.  Here are some details for all you e-Commerce and digital marketing people out there.

Terapeak shows you what to sell online.  MerchantWords helps you find more buyers.  Google Adwords is a classic and key tool.  Many people use Facebook to create ads and funnels.  Text / SMS is another technique for capturing emails.  Shopify was considered to be the best e-Commerce tool.  James who runs Wooly Clothing and was telling us about Amazon's practice of  Brand and Category Gating.  Benjamin, who runs the group, was asking about Liquidation services.  He said he's tried FoxBox.  I mentioned Alternativeto.net as a method of finding technologies in a category to support a business process or function. 

We didn't talk about but I was reminded of Mautic, HubSpot and my buddy with Conversion Wizards.  Benjamin says it's important to consider Cost Per Email as a metric.  He also mentioned that MailChimp has an advanced, for pay, feature that provides additional metadata for email addresses to extend marketing.

James was asking about managing multiple channels and Benjamin swore by Skubana, a multi-channel inventory management system, which is $1,000/mo.  He says it's well worth it if you have the volume. 

Flexport, a freight forwarding method, and Keepa, an Amazon price tracker, were also mentioned as useful tools. 

Thanks to all attendees.  Great event and lots to learn.  A whole new domain and area to explore.

AppsJack TECH DRIVERS Debate Highlights - November 2017

We had a motley crew of 16 awesome people at the kickoff of AppsJack Season 2, where our topic is causality and business dependency networks (BDNs). 



We were led on Tuesday evening by management consultant David Slight who is basically awesome. David came very well prepared with handouts for the guests and a meetup host sign-up sheet.  David led us in topic 1 of 12: TECH DRIVERS. 

The dialog went far and wide and was fascinating.   The discussion touched on:

• The 3rd Industrial Revolution wiki
• 5G mobile networks wiki
• Humans are Under Rated video
• GM says it is leaving the automotive industry - Richard Webb statement, needs source
• Bonini's Paradox - contribution by newcomer Lucas Parker - "explains the difficulty in constructing models or simulations that fully capture the workings of complex systems (such as the human brain)."  wiki
• "Things don't just happen, they happen for a reason."  ~ David Slight quote.
• Drivers are things we can't change.
• Richard spoke about the technology having been ready and done for five years but regulation and its impacts are the things holding its implementation back.

The main lessons that I took away as a facilitator and leader of this group were A) we need to tell people to create a small team of at least one other person so they are engaged and can break out if needed (and not just be quiet or disengaged in the discussion).  Having small groups is one thing that makes us identify as part of the big group.

Join us for our next gathering in a couple of weeks when we'll take the HUMAN side of the DRIVERS debate.  Details and RSVP here.

AppsJack Group to Change World in 2018

It was a nice Fall day and the biggest and best turnout to date happened for the AppsJack group last night at Big Fish Grill in Kirkland.

Alan Andersen, Andrew Sengul, Berry Zimmerman, Christian Harris, Dominic Wong, Dr. Tom Louwers, Ele Munjeli, Eric Veal, Jean Bishop, Jehan Bharucha, Kifaya Dawud, Mark Mueller-Eberstein, Megan Gaiser, Thomas Mercer, Mike Dodd, Reba Haas, David Slight, Sriram Sabesan, Steve Kubacki, Susan Stringer, Richard Webb

 Here was our agenda for the evening:

• Retrospective and feedback
• Success stories and new relationships from the group
• Best parts
• Worst parts
• Things to change
• Competition - what takes you away from it?
• Purpose and identity - who are we and why are we here, what's our name?
• Schedule and frequency, meeting types and formats, size of meetings
• 2018 Topics
• Ongoing relationship to APQC?
• Organizers / board
• Expansion, scope, milestones, organization
• Fees
• Partnerships, sponsorship, affiliations
• Podcast
• Subgroups and committees
• Technology, tools and online presence
• Venues, Seattle

Here are the main action items and to do's from the meeting:

• Plan in detail
• Change name
• Remove cap of # attendees
• Postpone start by one hour
• Change topics from APQC to BDN + Robots + Humans in 2018
• Get owners/hosts/leads for each 2018 meeting 
• Look into online tech that would help
• Book reviews
• Pre-reading and recommendations
• More detailed profiles for each member - stickers or badges based on the APQC model
• Patreon platform for contributions
• E2B as sponsor?
• Consider and help each other develop what "product" each of us is creating
• Opportunities to share stories and successes annually - a gala
• Leverage what is unique and beneficial about Seattle over other tech hubs like Silicon Valley - be unique, different and stand out.  We are practical and not Hollywood.  We are loggers and fishermen.

And here are detailed notes, outcomes and decisions from the meeting.  Join us at a gathering soon!

• Retrospective and feedback
• Lots of good feedback here.  People were here for:
• "High level thinking"
• Diversity of opinions and perspectives (learning)
• Academic, experienced and educated tone
• Consistent high quality
• Stimulation
• Idea sharing
• Cross-domain thinking and experiences, feedback and ideas
• Random networking
• Stories and experiences are illuminating
• Successes people have had
• Steve and Andrew met through the group and are collaborating
• Christian has met a ton of new people through it
• Thomas met Bruce Follansbee who has opened many doors
• Purpose and identity - who are we and why are we here, what's our name?
• Brainstorm on names, taglines and descriptions
• Descriptions and Taglines
• Thought provoking
• "It's all connected"
• Making Meaning and Money
• Names
• Think tank
• "Talk Tank"
• "Food for Thought"
• Talk, Inc.
• Rethinking business
• Humanist Technology
• Making Business Human
• Saving Business
• Business Humanity²
• Human Tank
• Business Reconnected
• Business & People Reconnected
• H2H: Human to Human
• Unf*ck Business
• Human-Centered Business
• Business Renaissance: Unf*cking Business - This was the most popular (or at least the funniest).  We will continue to think about the best name.
• Schedule and frequency, meeting types and formats, size of meetings
• 4th Tuesdays will continue
• 5 PM official start preferred but people welcome to show up earlier
• No limit on number of guests
• "Owners" / organizers for each meeting - sign up sheet
• 2018 Topics and themes
• Ele: "The automation apocalypse"
• AI vs. Automation
• Robot-Human Interface
• Steve offered this three-pronged approach:
• Economics
• Business
• Praxix / Products (concrete)
• Zodiac signs - Andrew Sengul
• The BDN model with David Slight: Drivers, Objectives, Benefits, Changes, Capabilities, Enablers and then switch between the tech/robot perspective and the human perspective.  
• Ongoing relationship to APQC?
• Nothing will be overt.  Could come up again here and there but it's over for now.  RIP APQC!
• Organizers / board
• Not needed.  Tap individuals as needed.  Build small, focused teams as needed.  Keep organic.
• Expansion, scope, milestones, organization
• Happy to keep it as an Eastside only event for now.
• Eric will talk to Michael Dodd and the Product Camp people about expansion of a group in Seattle.
• Fees
• Keep it free / optional.
• Can charge through meetup.  Runs the risk of turning people away; traction is preferred to profit.
• Some guests are willing to contribute capital.
• Partnerships, sponsorship, affiliations
• Keep this standalone for now to maximize flexibility.
• Podcast
• Yes, the podcast is good.  Keep it tied to the meetup on the same schedule.  Add 1:1 podcasting capability through Janis' Machala or Josh Golden's contacts.
• Subgroups and committees
• No need for this right now.  Will form as necessary.
• Technology subgroup: Ele, Andrew, Eric
• Technology, tools and online presence
• No agreement here.
• An online discussion forum could be good.
• Will talk with Andrew and Ele to decide on a direction.
• Venues, Seattle
• Big Fish Grill fine for now.
• Reba and Berry may have some functional options if we want to switch it up.

AppsJack Capable Communities Podcast Season 1 Completes - Check It Out

We started out with this idea and framework and made it work.  Congrats and thank you to all involved.

It's amazing!  We just finished year one of the AppsJack Podcast: Capable Communities.  How awesome does this feel.  We had this idea a couple of years ago so it's amazing to see it come to frution and be so fun.  

Huge thanks to producer Christian Harris for all of his time and grace, Steve Kubacki for awesome support and content, Ele Munjeli for being so great, Richard Webb and David Slight for their amazing contributions.  We've truly built an amazing community and I am so proud.  

The Season 1 guests are listed below in alphabetical order.  We recorded 30 episodes with 30 guests and published over 16 hours of content, covering each of APQC's 12 areas of business processes.  We ate a lot of breakfasts and brunch, drank a lot of coffee and beer.

Tech Staffing CEO Aftab Farooqi

Leadership Coach Alan Andersen

Lean Agile Fellow Alan Sebring

Smartsheet Developer Andrea Cremese

Developer Andrew Sengul

Executive Andy Scott

Podcast Producer and Real Estate Mogul Christian Harris

Creative Data Genius Dave De Noia

Finance Expert and Restaurateur Dave Niederkrome

Security Expert and All-Around Brain Don Alvarez

The Inspirational and Motivated Ele Munjeli

IT Champ James Murray

Entrepreneur and Sales Professional James Tuff

CEO Joe O'Konek

Startup Attorney and Podcaster Joe Wallin

Patent Attorney Jonathan Olson

Security Expert Josh Barrow

Front-End Developer Josh Bosworth

International Marketing Wiz Kifaya Dawud

Tech Consulting Business Developer Lee Carter

Startup Wonk Leo Lam

Crypto Currency Consultant Mark Mueller-Eberstein

Author and Speaker on Focus and Clarity Michael Cavitt

Author and Conflict Management Specialist Rachel Alexandria

Lean PM and Business Continuity Expert Ralph Kliem

Business Attorney Reuben Ortega

Architect Richard Webb

CEO and Member of the Board Scott Davis

Clinical Psychologist and Very Creative Steve Kubacki

Stay tuned for what will happen in Season 2!

APQC Acquire, Construct and Manage ASSETS and Mega Project Management Meetup Summary

The business group met at its usual place and had a good turnout. The topic was Acquire, Construct and Manage Assets and I wanted us to explore 'mega projects'.  It was summertime and I hadn't promoted the event much but we had some old faces show up and some new blood as well.  In the house for the first time was Sri, a friend of Richard Webb's, and an incredibly sharp and talented management consultant.  Our topic for the evening was 'Mega Project Management Techniques' and it was within the context of APQC PCF's Acquire, Construct and Manage Assets category.  For fun, Richard and I sat on opposing ends of the large table so we could battle.

We had a $150 + tip minimum we had to meet so attendees were encouraged to eat and drink to their heart's content.  I enjoyed two IPAs and even sprung for the Filet Mignon (medium rare, of course), which was served with broccolini and I got fries and there was a slight truffle flavor happening somewhere on the plate, which was good.  Overall the meal was quite good, although the filet did not compare to the quality available at Jak's.

And so our discussion of ASSETS began and Richard, as is somewhat typical, took the lead and shared what he knew and thought about the topic.  Also in attendance were yours truly (Eric Veal), Bruce Follansbee, Thomas Mercer, James Murray (thanks for showing up, James!), Alan Andersen, Steve Kubacki.  Richard's friend Sri arrived toward the end as we were closing up shop.

Thomas offered that assets were rent producing.  We were working on a definition of asset that we could all get behind and I was also preparing for the recording in early September of the AppsJack Capable Communities Podcast on the Asset Management topic.  We wondered if assets were investments and thought they may need to have a positive ROI.  I suggested that assets created passive income.

We discussed the modes of acquiring assets: with cash, by making them, and by financing them through other means.  Richard talked about two main classes of assets: Cost of Doing Business Assets (like printers, for example) and Intellectual Property assets.  We wanted to keep drilling down on the definition of assets and more fully understand their properties and methods. So we did: we wondered if assets had a property of technical debt and we spent quite a bit of time considering if technical debt was an essential property of an asset (since assets, like anything, are probably not perfect).

The conversation shifted from technical debt (bad design and things requiring rework, really anything imperfect) to the role of the architect as the key person who creates and hands over assets.  Richard, who has been an IT architect for years had many things to say about the topic.  Richard shared some stories with us including a multi-million dollar project where he and the team dropped off a very large stack of documents off to the client about how to make a data center.  He described the pile of paper being feet-tall and the 'thud factor' of dropping off all that intellectual property to the client.  Richard pointed out another distinction in that 'only humans create IP'.  He described assets as an object with a unique ID, that they are "sellable" and containerized.  Assets have clear scope and their boundaries (what they are and are not) are well defined.  Richard wondered if there could be an Operating Expense asset and we discussed the new billing models with the cloud where people are renting services.  We also spoke about the cloud as a utility and some issues relating to the regulation of the cloud providers by providing some sort of efficiency index.

Examples of Goldman Sachs' position in the market came up for the second time in as many weeks.  On the last podcast episode, guest Mark Mueller-Eberstein made some guesses about how Goldman could enter into the crypto-currency space. Studying more about Goldman could be a good thing as for innovation.

James pointed out that business brokers use the formula EBITDA x Risk to get the business value.  So risk (in our case technical debt, for example) is a fundamental aspect of reducing the value of a firm.  Getting to a reasonable risk quotient is a trick.

We debated issues of "boutique services" and wondered how one-to-one services like Alexa and Google Home would be regulated in the future.  Richard shared about three key properties of modern software services, a subclass of asset: UX, Adoption, and Consumption.  The consumption part is what is metered in modern systems such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS).

Bruce cited the book Fumbling the Future about Xerox's fall from its central role in office automation.  The group also had a long and detailed conversation about practices at Boeing.  Someone in the group stated that, "Boeing doesn't make ariplanes, it moves money."

Join us soon for podcasts on the Managing Assets topic and join us at the meetup in September when we will discuss Risk, Compliance, Remediation and Resiliency.

Managing Information Technology Meetup - Kirkland, WA - 6/20/2017 - Recap Notes and Podcast Prep

In attendance were: Richard Schurman (Attorney), Mark Mitchell (CFO), Eric Veal (Technologist), Richard Webb (Technologist), Dominic Wong (Management Exec), Steve Kubacki (Psychologist and Inventor), Kifaya Dawud (Marketer)

RW talked about “Business Stacks”.

RW talked about how good the Amazon TPM (Technical Program Manager) role is:

They own the architecture, PM role and tech

They have clear scope

They are organized to work together

They are measured objectively and fairly: difference between TPM doing poorly themselves (as a leader/worker) and the thing they are producing failing

Example TPM role: there is a person who is responsible for running “events” for Amazon (like father’s day).  Mark: Walmart did this as well with stores in Texas with stuff like Cinco de Mayo.

Amazon TPM rollup structure:

TPM

Regional TPM

Top TPM – meets with Bezos

Same role with widening scope that aggregates

Communication flows up and down this TPM chain

Tools for organizing management:

- Mark: adaQuest has a way to communicate strategy throughout the org

- Also ManageHub - Eric and Mark to further look into ManageHub for organizational uses for process improvement with Doug Hall

CRM Systems

Are they important?  Eric says they are central but there is an issue of adoption and data capture, data quality and people playing games with their data like hiding it strategically.

Examples of modern integration frameworks: Zapier, IFTTT, etc. for integration vs. old tools and people that integrated systems.  "We don't do it like we used to.  It's all as a service now." - EV

RW coined that these types of integration utilities are “(Hardware and Printer) Drivers at a different level”.  Totally agree, very interesting.

Drivers are hard to write because they break if either end changes, which prevent scale.

RW had some funny commentary about SOAP and REST and why one didn't work and other did: "SOAP didn’t work because programmers are dirty.  REST worked because programmers are lazy."  Microservices architecture becoming a big deal.

Eric had a recent VR experience with HTC Valve simulating “in the office” where he made coffee, 3D printed things and ate a donut.  Very amazing stuff.  Changes your mind and belief of what's possible.

Current “dialogs” and programs are too linear in their current form and are too project/product-oriented (developers need to finish and can't guild the lily, just want the basics to get done). 

Eric's vision of the world of the web now (as different from APQC + Process Triggers 10+ years ago):  There are "Listeners" (the people gathering the data with instrumentation and telemetry) + they provide or sell WebHooks to others who + People that write services that hand off of the events.

EV had a question, “Can we teach computers how to HARD SELL and effectively CLOSE a person on a big transaction while the person knows it is happening?”

We seemed to agree that we could and that it was actively happening now.

RS said that it depended on how the information is presented and when.

Richard gave examples of Blue Apron knowing if he read an email from them or not (by tracking a pixel).

Mark said that Google know if you walked into Nordstrom (location services on).  This is clearly very powerful for very many marketing-related things.

Companies every day are designing and running campaigns that work against (with/for) people’s weaknesses, predilections and interests.  Insidious from one perspective, genius, smart, intelligent and useful from another.

Excellent sales processes happen all the time in games (in app purchases), etc.

This can get into some edge / unethical realms if there is blackmail, for example. Open issue/question:  What's a person's recourse against these systems?

Richard talked about how Americans respond best to English and Australian accents, so they are used a lot in advertising to us.

We talked about humans training computers (other-learning) vs. computers training themselves (self-learning).  Humans can also train humans and computers can train humans and humans can train themselves.  Lots of vicious loops and cycles here.

We wondered, "What are the limitations of IT today?"

Richard said, "We have to get rid of the I.T. and make it “we” (make it work for us)

Eric and Richard talked about Enterprise Architecture, strategy and a recent HBR article on data strategy which talked about Offensive and Defensive uses for data.

Steve Kubacki showed up and was entertaining as usual.  Steve, “How many project managers does it take to screw in a lightbulb?  It depends on the location of the lightbulb?”  Har-de-har-har but also fairly insightful and true in my opinion; everyone is or should be a PM.

SK when talking about Virtual Reality applications and Andrew Sengul's work with Scenario Tech, "You want people to come forward with their own imagery."

LISP.  Andrew Sengul and Ben Sidelinger are both working on modern applications using the LISP language now.  What's up with that?  List of JavaScript LISP implementations.

We had a discussion about the design/experience of video games being way too open or way too closed/structured and cited examples.

Eric talked about a future computer design where there is immediate feedback between the writing of code and the existence of the application (run time and design time).  "Real time run time."  You heard it here, folks!

SK had many great quotes:

“The Theory of Totality”.  Everything is incomplete.  Goedel. 

SK: Can a corporation have empathy?

SK: “A corporation “has a” sociopath.” (as a property) pretty funny

SK: “We are fundamentally social creatures.  Self-interest is directed by the social interests.”

SK: “Brownian motion” how things aggregate

Eric made the point to Steve at some point about different types of grouping: Aggregation (requires a common interface of the members) vs. Composition groupings (no commonality required, they are simple assembled and joined...but could be very well designed to work together systematically like a car has many parts).

Steve made some great points about how we need to intentionally design and implement systems that decentralize.  Such a great point and such an interesting area.

Someone said that IT Development has been declining over the last 20.  I guess this was something Eric Schmidt of Google has said.

Steve says that we are seeing an increase of democratization within the workplace which sounds like a really good thing to me.

Eric made the point that "ownership" (of the work ie things were fully delegated) was previously delegated to the VPs (for example, the APQC model would probably recommend that someone owns each area and are responsible for throughput and continuous improvement of it) and is now delegated to actual and real units of business (products and projects).  This is the TPM role and how this power has shifted/is shifting from functions and processes to products, which is generally great for innovation, for example.

Steve shared more ideas about how different the culture will be on Mars: it is an un-earth-based culture.  Totally different than anything we have ever known?

Richard Schurman talked about some book tech and mentioned Scrivner, 

Kifaya showed up, too.  Thanks for coming, Kifaya!

Prepping for the Upcoming HR topic

A year ago, the group met and we had the following things to say about HR:

Books. At least three books were mentioned during the meetup.  Bruce sited “The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains” and “The Glass Cage: Automation and Us”, both by Nicholas Carr.  Richard mentioned "Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers" by Alexander Osterwalder.

What is talent? Richard, a highly entertaining and intelligent man, is known for dropping wonderful, unique, newly-coined quotes and one from the meetup this month was, “Talent is like migrating birds.”

We discussed a variety of topics: “Humans and Machines”, “Is the resume dead?  Hiring for cultural fit.”, “Bad HR policies and practices”, “Social Networks and Personal Profiles”.  

Applications of CyrstalKnows, LinkedIn and other tech. We got into specifics about the recent acquisition of LinkedIn by Microsoft and also the potential applications, scope and scale of Crystal Knows (http://crystalknows.com).  Crystal puts people through a simple personality test (DiSC profile) and then provides services to help individuals best connect with and relate to others based upon their assessed types.  Richard also said that CK has algorithms to crawl users’ social medai profiles from Facebook and other sites to determine personality.

  

We talked about the technology of Human Resources Management and specifics about Learning Management Systems and applications like Enterprise Search.

Cultural differences between USA and India. Jehan led us in a discussion where he shared about differences he has noticed between India and USA.  He sees USA kids as “gullible” and the India kids as more street smart.  India has a bigger focus on STEM and he has seen India transform substantially (from “another planet” to what it is now) over the decades.  He sees India as “dog eat dog” and the USA is as “procured”.  Jehan said, “We [in America] live in a virtual world.”

Classifications of workers, millenials. Richard, always entertaining, talked to us about thinking of people as either A) talent or B) task worker.  Others made us think of the world split between products and services. According to Richard, two properties that he sees defining millennials are that they have A) anger issues and B) a plan.  Richard has millennial children.

1099 vs. W2 models. We talked about 1099 and W2 relationships between employers and workers and were blessed to be led by PJ and Mike Lazer, both experts in the industry.  Solid contributions came from Dominic as well.  Some of the reasons that go into picking one or the other are trade secrets, risk management/mitigation (blame and culpability), as well as changes in business models.

The Seattle market and talent pool. The question was asked if Seattle the hottest market in the USA and many agreed that it may be.  Seattle has “the cloud” here (Microsoft Azure and AWS).  We are the platform.  Compare this to the bay area, for example, that has / makes many of the apps that run on the cloud.  Seattle is infrastructure and the rest of the world is the apps / things.  Where will this place Seattle in 5-10 years?

This year we are going to follow the APQC model at least for starters. Here's the cheat sheet on this area. And their L1 topics are:

1. Develop and manage HR planning, policies and strategies
2. Recruit, source and select employees
3. Develop and counsel employees
4. Reward and retain employees
5. Redeploy and retire employees
6. Manage employee information

Two questions come to my mind that I would like to discuss:

• What is the modern practice of recruiting?
• What is the best and worst onboarding experience you have had?
• What challenges does your company currently have with HR?  Retention?

Managing Enterprise Risk, Compliance and Resiliency - Recap of October AppsJack Business Services Share meetup

The AppsJack Share team gathered on Tuesday, October 25th at Big Fish Grill in Kirkland, WA to discuss "Enterprise Risk, Compliance and Resiliency".  The guests were seasoned professionals who shared many interesting ideas about the topic.  Here are some of the biggest ideas and highlights.  Next month's topic is Managing External Relationships.

What is an acceptable level and/or amount of risk?

Risk can be scored and quantified but it is quite hard to measure.

Risk is comparative and/or relative, not absolute.

Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA) can be a handy tool for looking at the dark side of situations and understanding potential impacts.

Risk Priority Number (RPN) is used, commonly in the automotive industry, as a measure of assessed risk and helps identify critical failure modes associated with a design or process. RPN values range from 1 (absolute best) to 1000 (absolute worst).  RPN is somewhat similar to the criticality.

Quite a bit of conversation was had about differences between risk (perceived negative impact) and opportunity (perceived negative impact).  Weighing both of these sides is critical for decision making.  Both live within the context of uncertainty.  Information gathering, research and assessment are  good tools to reduce uncertainty and increase the ability to predict outcomes.

David Slight brought up the point about the cost to mitigate.  Just because a risk could be mitigated, the question is raised "is it worth mitigating?"

Risk reduction is indeed a measurement and tool that is commonly used.

Paul, a first-time attendee and new Seattleite (welcome to the group, Paul), shared about the tool of Potential Problem Analysis.  PPA is a way that can help analysts anticipate problems before they happen and to identify the actions needed to be taken to prevent them from happening, or to minimize the effect.

David said that many people assume that there is a 1:1 relationship between the problem and its solution, which is a fallacy.  And that risk is oftentimes hierarchically decomposed, which presents issues since things are multi-dimensional and multi-faceted (do not fall into simple hierarchies).  NIST (National Institute of Standards and Technology) provides a Risk Management Framework that is common in industry.

Fred said that a lack of a Business Continuity plan is one of the biggest risks that companies face.  Without this plan, they have no plan and are therefore at risk.

There are many types of risk: financial, reputation, technological, infrastructural, contractual, relational, global, service, project, corporate, enterprise, operational.  This page has many of the risk types explained and differentiated.

Controls and compliance are big parts of the risk management process and plan.

Eric shared about extremely significant cultural differences about risk between companies in, say, healthcare, and those in, say, fashion.  Stark differences in language and behavior can be seen between these two cultures.

Jean, who was at the group for the first time and is currently taking a Building your Own Theology class at BCC,  shared about a big difference between the occurrence of the risk and the actual harm that results from it.  The risk event and the following harm or actions are two different areas, each requiring management, caution and care.

There are many situations and scenarios where we as humans choose to "look the other way" from a risk or issue so we maintain focus on our current projects and mission.  We "accept" (by ignoring) the other risk and therefore are at risk to its potential harm.  Risk and strategy are closely related.

We spoke quite a bit about authorization and systems including roles.  The BART system (Boundary, Authority, Role and Task) is a good way to clearly define roles.

We moved onto the topic of resiliency.  We agreed that scalability was related, as is the idea of "foreverness".  A clear plan that is aware of various thresholds, steps and milestones can help with communications about foreverness, a commitment to permanence and resiliency.

Many organizational and management-level issues can crop up in the topic of risk, authority and resiliency.  For example, there are many scenarios when people have a lot of responsibility but no authority.  Legitimate power delegated is a key to organizational success and growth.  (Managing down the chain).

Reba and others commented on individual-level requirements such as "if I found it, then I fix it".  Leadership and care at the individual level are required for organizations to survive and grow optimally.  Tableau has a core cultural value of "We Work as a Team" and that works well but it can also get into a blaming situation where no one (only the team) is accountable.  I felt that a similar cultural value of "I either hand-off well or I win." was a good one.

"I either hand off or we win."

Bruce, an always great contributor at the meetings, shared the phrase "you can't manage a secret".  And Leland, also new to the meeting, shared about the need for positive handoff.

Ultimately culture and individual attitudes, aggregated, play into the ability of an organization to identify and effectively manage risk, be compliant and be resilient.  Next month, we will talk about Managing External Relationships that plays into this topic very well.  Keep your eyes and ears peeled for our podcast on these and other topics coming soon.

We are considering naming the AppsJack Share Podcast "WonkTalk", "Community", "Communities of Purpose", "Practical Organizational Theory", "Building Communities of Purpose".  Do you have a preference in the name?  Plan is to have a podcast about the topic preceding the month's meetup.  The reason for it to be before the meetup is to prepare some, get a high level framework and understanding of the topic, get feedback from our audience on the most interesting areas.

We talked for over two hours.

At the meeting were Eric, Paul, Dominic Wong, David Slight, Fred de Boer, Chris Ingrao, Jean, Reba and Leland, Andrew Sengul.

Managing Financial Resources for Businesses - Will FinTech Make Us Richer? Recap of March 24, 2016 AppsJack Business Share Meetup in Kirkland, WA

Tuesday, March 24, 2016

AppsJack Business Services Share

Big Fish Grill, Kirkland, WA

• Attendees:
• Samuel Rodriguez
• Eric Veal
• David Bleiweiss (first time)
• Bruce Follansbee
• Dominic Wong
• Chad Oda (first time)
• Fred de Boer (first time)
• Andrew Sengul
• TJ Elston

Welcome David, Chad and Fred to the group.  Please greet and welcome them!

No, we do not believe that FinTech will make us richer but there are a collection of tools and practices within this category that are essential for a productive business.  "You get what you measure" and you have to measure well.  So finance is a very key enabling process to businesses but without the proper values, vision, strategy, products, value proposition, sales, delivery and care for customer service, finance won't help you at all.

Main ideas covered:

• Good quote.  From TJ, a line from the movie Aviator about Howard Hughes with Leonardo DiCaprio:
• Mrs. Hepburn: We don't care about money here.
• Howard Hughes: That's because you have it.
• The purpose of finance.  Money is about measuring/weighing/sizing value(s) and not just about money.  Many things can get boiled down to an "apples to apples" model where money is the factor but many guesses need to be made in the model to put a monetary value to certain intangible values.  Finance is a measurement system that seeks to equate all things into a single system and common language to make businesses, transactions and discussions easier and more fluid.
• Balance required and you can't only look at money, profit and greed anymore.  Approaches like Triple Bottom Line, Balanced Scorecard and AQPC look to balance out our measurements by breaking them into a set of categories.  Portfolio management, weighting and balancing matters.
• AppsJack is about the Management of Things (MoT).  New idea: not just the internet of things but the Management of Things.  IoT proliferates irresponsibly and wastefully.  MoT seeks to balance and distribute technologies to places and industries and applications that need it the most.
• Focus first, diversity second.  We agreed that businesses need to find focus, a value proposition, clarity, value, a product and some success first before they can get into the realm of diversification.  Diversity is a good thing but it can be misapplied.
• Cool and new Financial Technologies.  Andrew shared about KDB and David shared about a new system called Aladdin from Blackstone that he uses that produces very amazing models.

Next meetup topic on Tuesday September 27th in Kirkland from 4-7 PM: "Successfully marketing your IoT Idea."  We are seeking people who have ideas for IoT products, or IoT products themselves and we would like to serve as a panel to build a model that helps them best invest in marketing efforts that will have the highest possible ROI for their product/service.

Outline for Managing External Relationships Discussion on November 24th in Bellevue

Here are the various aspects of the Managing External Relationships topic we may cover during our November 24th meeting in Bellevue, WA about this topic:

• Public vs. Private
• Open Innovation (via Phil R.)
• Relationship and communications with:
• Channel Partners
• Collaborators
• Joint Venture Partners
• Gov't 
• Fed
• State
• County
• Local
• Investor 
• Employee 
• "Board"
• Industry
• Community
• From Conversation with John A.
• Provincialism
• Homogeneity and Heterogeneity
• Inclusive and Exclusive
• Open and Closed
• Economic factors like war 
• Threat rigidity hypothesis
• Specific
• Joe: 
• Public Adjusters (in Insurance) and Insurance Brokers.  
• What are the types of agreement documents used to clearly define the expectations of the customers.
• tips on how to work with them in ways that are mutually beneficial

We'll update this page as we learn more from our audience and participants about what they want. Sign up for the meetup via our Meetup.com page.

What are the other issues would you like see as part of the discussion on this topic?

June 2015 AppsJack Human Resources Meetup Held in Bellevue, WA

June 23, 2015
Lake Hills Library, Bellevue, WA

Last night at 7 PM the June AppsJack Business Services meetup was held at the Lake Hills Library in Bellevue, WA.  The event was attended by 12 guests.  Lively and interesting, entertaining, insightful conversations were had.  The topic was Human Capital Management and the subtopics were Recruiting and Retention.  The group focused some of its attention the issues of millennials.

This event represented the sixth curricula in the AppsJack Meetup calendar year.  AppsJack follows the APQC model to provide structure, value, and context to its meetups and to build knowledge and community around key business areas.  This meetup was the first of the AppsJack content areas to be in the realm of “support processes”.  The previous 5 sessions were on the operating processes from APQC.

Some attendees were repeat visitors and sum were brand new, many of whom had found the event via the AppsJack Meetup group page.  The crowd was a great mix of male and female, young and old, and across a variety of different industries and experience levels.  Among the repeat visitors were Eric Veal (host), Jehan, Hsuan-hua, Dave, and Meng.  The newbies to the group included Liat, Elena, Natsune and a handful of others.

What follows is a listing of the various topics and points covered.  Items marked in bold underline should be considered for future AppsJack meetups.  The next AppsJack meetup will be on Information Technology Management, Internet of Things (IoT) on July 28.

1. Employee education and training programs both on- and off-the-job were discussed.  The issue of training people on the job or after hiring vs. hiring the right people and having people be able to ‘hit the ground running’ from the start.
2. The benefits of diversity were covered.
3. The issue of searching organically (through network) vs. systematically was discussed.  There are pros and cons of each and culture is impacted by the choice in methods made.  Searching applies to both the recruiter and the candidate and both may share some practices.
4. Culture and its importance was discussed.  Someone shared that they wanted to find a company with “a culture”.  It was explained that all companies have a culture, whether they like it or not. Properties of culture were discussed:  was it positive or negative, what were its artifacts, rituals and ceremonies, was it strong or weak?  Learning organizations, per se, were not discussed conceptually and could be a point of subsequent conversations.  With respect to the retention, the notion of an employer’s preference to fire or lay off vs. an employee’s choice to leave was not discussed.  Work-life balance is an aspect of company culture within the context of freedoms and demands for the employee.
5. Someone who was a millennial wanted to discuss differences of the millennials.  Who they are, their traits, differences, and value were discussed.  We learned that millennials want to have a cause or purpose, may trust less in big systems and bureaucracies, expect a lot, need to have something in it for them (purpose), and enjoy life out of work with friends from work.  They want fun companies with good cultures.  “Fiefdoms” and barriers were discussed between roles, departments, levels, locations, age groups, etc.  All of this complexity makes up a corporate culture’s richness.  Age differences of all kinds were discussed.  Industrial and worker-class differences were not covered in detail but it was recognized that they existed and practices for white collar and blue collar industries or groups were thought to be different.
6. The role and importance of modern HR Information systems (HRIS) was brought up as a potential topic but was not covered in detail.  The topic of role-based systems: security, communications, and training was discussed in addition to the power of technology to enable new possibilities for people and businesses.  The importance of knowledge management systems was not discussed but is a critical part of a successful and growing, risk-avoiding organization.
7. The purpose and role of the HR department was mentioned.
8. We spoke about practices and differences between using in-house recruiters and staff vs. using outsourced services and agencies.  The issue of contractors vs. full-time employee labor was discussed but not fully explored.
9. The importance of compensation and pay was mentioned briefly by Dave.  He shared that he was having a hard time landing the right talent and believed that the cause was his employer’s low-pay policies.  Benefits, perks, and the value / prestige / reputation of the company was not really discussed other than one attendees interest in finding a company with a [good] culture.  Points were made about cultures within companies being largely dependent on a person’s immediate manager rather than the overall system and culture for the company, the local level remains very critical.
10. Differences between the HR practice of enterprises vs. those of startups (as well as those across industries and worker classes) were mentioned but not fully discussed.
11. HR business models were not discussed but should be further explored.
12. Ethics was not discussed.
13. The notion of requirements—both those for projects and products as well as those for human resources—was discussed in the context of hiring: hard requirements and soft requirements and how job seeking and landing is typically a gray area and not one that is cut and dried.  Wht also comes into play is personal relationships, biases and perceptions.  Younger professionals were encouraged to act confidently, ‘act as if’ and ‘fake it ‘til you make it’.  The ways that people are perceived as candidates and employees quantitative and qualitative methods, verbal, non-verbal and written communications.
14. Some brief discussions were had about creative hiring and interviewing practices.  This topic should be further explored.  The pros and cons of different interviewing and screening methods were discussed.
15. The importance of models such as Wexler’s 4 Faces of Capitalism and personality tests (Myers Briggs, etc.) were noted but not in detail and should be topics for further discussion.  One member shared that Microsoft leaders were selected who fit what he perceived to be extremely narrow and consistent criteria and types.
16. Other resource types such as financial, relational, reputational, and information were not discussed but could be fodder for future discussion.
17. The differences between needs and approaches to the management of individuals, small groups, and larger organizations was not discussed but should be a topic for another time.
18. Microsoft and AT&T were discussed as local employees and some of their practices were covered.  The issue of managed services vs. staff augmentation and the impact that those practices have on corporate culture and environment was discussed.
19. The question ‘what is organization development?’ was not discussed, but should be soon.
20. Labor unions, guilds, and organized labor were not discussed but could serve as a good topic for another session.
21. Conflict management was not discussed.

There is so much depth and richness to the topic of Human Resources Management it is incredible.  At the end of the event, Natsune promoted her event, which is planned for July 15th in the University District area of Seattle.  Also, Liat shared about a meetup event she is hosting as well.  Several members exchanged contact information and made promises to stay connected with one another.

The next AppsJack Meetup event will be held July 28th and will cover Information Technology Management.  The event may be sponsored by Neudesic Consulting and feature Ben Griner, their Director of Management Consulting.

AppsJack’s meetups are fun local community events that help businesses and business service professionals connect over interesting discussions and topics in comfortable environments.  The events are a great way to meet new people, share experience, and identify individuals within the community with whom you feel comfortable sharing your ideas and issues.  Each month is a different topic and the big events are typically planned for the 4th Tuesday of the month.  AppsJack’s vision is to create an organized network of meetups on business and other critical management topics for people, property and planet.  AppsJack is a knowledge management consulting company who has helped businesses such as Siemens, Microsoft and the US Forest Service manage and improve major initiatives that make communications more effective and efficient.  More info can be found at appsjack.com or by contacting Eric Veal, Founder and CEO of AppsJack Corporation.

Eric Veal, MSIS, MBA, PMP is a NW Washington Native who lives in Kirkland, WA with his wife and pets.  Eric has been consulting with companies on business, technology and growth issues since he first worked on his mom and dad’s businesses in 1996.  Eric is originally from Guemes Island, WA and attended Western Washington University and Foster School of Business, respectively, for his undergraduate and graduate degrees.  Eric received his Project Management Professional certificate in 2006 while working at Siemens Healthcare.  At Siemens, Eric was in their leadership development program and worked as a process improvement consultant and intranet architect.  His experiences at Siemens inspired him to start his own company, AppsJack, to pursue his dreams.

Learn who you are: Turn "them" into your recruits, customers, and partners

Sometimes networking feels like there are a lot of "them" but not a lot of us. I'm seeking to build a model that creates more of "us" and turns "them" into our recruits, customers, and partners.

Yesterday I wrote about meetups and talked about the importance of having role clarity.  The different roles I discussed yesterday as being involved in a "business services" meetup are:

1. Entre-ployee
2. B2B Service Provider - be this
3. Business representative - be this
4. Self - be this
5. Non-B2B Business Representative

Today I'd like to add the following roles to the list:

• Employee
• Contractors and consultants - be this
• Job Seeker

The employee is an important role of course.  The entre-ployee is an employee and many business representatives are employees as well, but not necessarily.  Owners are not typically employees but might sometimes be.

Contractors are an interesting breed.  They are B2B service providers but may think of themselves more like employees; it just depends.

Job Seeekers are another interesting dynamic in the crowd.  They are "looking" and might need to find something.  They are similar to the B2B Service Providers in that they are looking.

Together these roles  make up our model and network.  Understanding each of their types and needs helps us navigate in this maze.  Identifying the roles that we do and do not play or desire to play is also a part of this dynamic.  

Setting our objective on being business services professionals we must exemplify business representatives, B2B Service Providers, ourselves, and contractors/consultants.  Really, we are sales people who are confident and not stuck in a system or brought down by our employment.  

The other roles of entre-ployee, employee, job seeker, and non-B2B Business Representative are also important and we may want to see them as our customers, partners, and potential associates.

Vision of AppsJack Business Services Communities

I'm really excited right now: I had a great (first) meeting last night for the AppsJack Business Services Meetups that I'm putting together with a few associates.  I'd like this to be a big deal and feel like it has the potential to be and do just that.  

We met at the Pumphouse Bellevue and had a great time.  We covered many topics and had fun, food, and big beers.  I'm super pumped for what's in front of us and wanted to share with you a few details and thoughts on what this is all about and where we're headed.....

Communications.  We'll be good at outreach and communications

We'll stay in touch with event attendees and our networks through email, phones, F:F, blogs, events, lunches, etc.

Meet.  Meetings will continue and improve

We'll keep holding monthly events/meetings/meetups (I need a name, I guess) and: feature a business, have a featured topic, and perhaps alternate venues. We'll mix it up and keep it interesting but we'll add dynamic elements.  We'll get to know and bring the venue owners into the mix to add to the overall value.  We'll provide free beer or something like that to get people in the door.

Services.  We'll start providing services to help people sell

We'll develop a service that allows people to aggregate experience (projects) from various persons and businesses in their network to make a branded portfolio for a single person that makes them look larger than they may be alone.  

Governance.  We'll track how the network grows

We'll keep track of how people are included and introduced into the network to give credit to good additions and growth.

Identity.  "Repping" will be a core concept of the network

We'll flesh out the "rep and refer" concepts.  People can rep themselves or something else but they can only rep a single thing per event.  People need to be focused and intentional, not wavering.   

Community support and purpose.  It'll be focused while helping recruits, startups and established people

We'll ensure that the community stays focused about ONLY BUSINESS SERVICES.  

• For employees.  We'll help employees who are looking for something else an ability to become owners and partners in other businesses and transition from employee to employer.  We'll help these people looking for something  else select a single project or capability that's been a success for them and mature that into something that is salable and scalable.  We'll transition services into products.  
• For startups and small businesses.  We'll help small businesses and startups grow by capitalizing on and delivering services to leads known by recruits. 
• For graduates.  For people who have "made it" and are just looking to help.

We'll clearly define these terms and roles of recruit, startup, and graduates and make this system sing.  We'll make the risk for recruits low and increase opportunities for startups and recruits. 

Safe and legal.  There will be incentives and a legal framework available

We'll provide a legal structure to support collaboration and operations, repositories for the artifacts as well as incentives and compensation for certain relationships, milestones and acts.

We'll grow the network.

We'd really love for you to participate in this community and give us your thoughts on how it can flourish and grow.  Also, let us know what you think this kind of communicate could do or be FOR YOU and how it can add the most value to people like yourself and those you know.