Tag: video

I’m Giving Video Content a Try!

As y’all may recall, last year I was lucky enough to spens some time working with the fine folks at Locally Optimistic to produce and run some AMA content for them – they ended up being more similar to traditional interviews, but folks seemed to enjoy them!

You can find those all here!

These were well received, and generated a TON of insight for folks working in the data and analytics space – but I had a few things I wanted to try doing a little differently:

  • They could be more discoverable: it was tough to know which guests talked about what, they were about an hour long so it was a big bite of content if there was only one thing the viewer was interested in – even with YouTube’s search function it’s likely folks were leaving before the parts they were interested in arrived.
  • They needed a little more social support: I tweeted about each one, but probably different parts and points of the conversation could have warranted its own outreach.
  • The live format, where we’d schedule them and invite members of the community to join, and then post afterward, was a bit tough to schedule, and we never really got the community engagement during the calls that we had hoped for.

So, I’m putting together some videos that hopefully are a step in the right direction – I’ll chat with similar folks, luminaries in the data and analytics space, and then publish the entire conversation, but also smaller chunks (ideally one per topic) which can be posted separately so that folks who are only interested in, say, data career ladders, can easily find and watch only that piece.

I still absolutely have a lot to learn – both about being a data professional as well as producing and sharing video content! – but, I’m giving it a try! I’m also hoping to use this energy to help carry me into blogging more, once more – but that’s a perennial hope, isn’t it?

With no further ado, here is the first full-length conversation, with my friends Stephen and Emilie – I think you’re going to like it!

Full SupConf Video for Use the Data You Have

Hey folks! I’m really happy to share with you the full video of my recent talk at SupConf 2016, where I gave a talk on leveraging your existing data to build value from your support organization – here it is!

I also created a supplementary Page with a three-parter on how to execute the ideas I present in the talk – you can find that at https://s12k.com/supconf/ .

SupConf East is coming soon – as a speaker and an attendee, I cannot recommend it highly enough! You can get updates on the next SupConf event by signing up for the mailing list here.

Danny Meyer Interview

Danny Meyer, New York Restaurateur and  a man for whom I have great respect (his book, Setting the Table, changed the way I think about service), was on Charlie Rose. Here’s the interview:

Danny Meyer on Charlie Rose

If you work in hospitality, this is worth your time. If you want to start at the good stuff, it begins around 6:00. He talks about restaurants, but much of it applies to coffee and coffee houses as well. It’s not exactly hard-hitting journalism, but I enjoyed it. Some thoughts:

~8:10: “A restaurant is like a baseball glove … the people who work in our restaurants, and the people who dine in our restaurants, and the communities that surround our restaurants, are what give the glove its shape. All I do is do the stitching.”
 …  A coffee shop, a cafe, an espresso bar – if it is empty, it isn’t anything yet. Our places of business are defined by their function and their population. It is the employees and the customers that shape a place. You can choose your buildout to exacting specifications, but all you can do is provide a canvas upon which your employees paint. It’s so difficult for me to see these absolutely beautiful spaces with expensive and lovely equipment manned by folks who either don’t care or haven’t been taught to utilize their care into an excellent product. Don’t forget to invest in your staff!

~9:40: “Hospitality is a completely different thing from service. Hospitality is how we make you feel, service is what we do, to deliver the product.”
… I’ve touched on this a little in the past. ‘Service’ has become such a buzzword that we don’t even know what we’re talking about most of the time. This idea of hospitality is really appealing to me; we can be hospitable before we even speak to someone, even before their order is placed. A clean space, a friendly staff, a sensible noise level – these things are hospitality, and they are just as important as the service. I am starting to lean toward the idea that context and hospitality are even more important than the interaction itself. This is something I need to think on, but I would suggest that without a good foundation of context and hospitality, good service is very, very difficult, if not impossible. Anyone who has cared about coffee but worked at a place where the ownership did not care about coffee can commiserate here.

~16:53: “A great burger depends on what kind of mood you’re in.”
… This I really appreciate! It rings true with coffee, and is something we could be better about providing our customers. I know that sometimes even with all of the brewing devices in my kitchen, I still just want to hit a drive-thru on my way out of town. I think that Colin Harmon and 3FE do a great job with this, with the Tasting v. Drinking menus. Even coffee pros just want a hot cup of coffee they don’t have to think about – at least sometimes!

(also, not for nothing, I cracked up when Danny Meyer mentions that he prefers his burgers medium rare, and Charlie Rose murmurs kind of quietly, “Me too.”)

~20:00: “We’re trying to make it a restaurant for its neighbors.”
… I like the idea of a shop being for its community. It’s another, larger layer of this idea of context; does your shop fit? Are you forcing it to fit? Or is it natural, an obvious part of the where-ness of the place?