Author: Frank Gilbane (Page 38 of 75)

How to Manage Multichannel Content Marketing

November 24, 2014 / Frank Gilbane

Content is certainly the unifying element of a brands’ marketing across physical as well as digital channels. Once you have created your killer content how do you maximize its reach? How do you push out your content beyond your own channels in ways that are manageable? This session includes presentations by two organizations that have built marketing strategies based on the centrality of content and the power of effective distribution.

C4. How to Manage Multichannel Content Marketing

Join us Wednesday, December, 3: 8:30 a.m. – 9:30 a.m. at the Gilbane Conference to learn more.

Moderator:
Tim Bourgeois, Founder & Executive Editor, ChiefDigitalOfficer.net and East Coast Catalyst

Speakers:
Patrick Cassidy, Head of Global Digital Brand Marketing, New Balance, and Pete Strutt, Creative Director, Almighty
The Content-Powered Organization
Keith Guyett, VP of Marketing & Communication, Builder Homesite
Pitch Perfect: How a Content Hub Can Harmonize Your Marketing

Harvard Business Review and WGBH transforming digital engagement

November 20, 2014 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

Engaging customers and online audiences requires the right mix of technology, content, and tools, orchestrated in a way that leverages deep customer knowledge to deliver the right content at the right time in the right fashion. That’s a tall order, yet it is a “do or die” imperative for organizations that use content to make a living. In this session, you’ll learn how to transform and optimize customer digital engagement from presentations by two leading-edge organizations that are paving the way to the future using a blend of customer-centric design, dynamic and targeted content, big data and analytics, agile technologies and processes, and a vision for the future. These presentations will inspire you to kick-start your own digital engagement transformation initiatives!

Update: The new HBR.org site launched a couple of weeks ago. Check it out and meet the HBR.org development team; Daigo Fujiwara, Kevin Davis, Matt Wagner, Fred Lalande, and Ismail Ozyigit will join Kevin Newman at this session.

Join us Tuesday, December, 2: 1:30 p.m. – 2:30 p.m. at the Gilbane Conference to learn more.

P1. Track Keynote: Hear how Harvard Business Review and WGBH have Transformed Digital Engagement

Moderator:
Marc Strohlein, Principal, Agile Business Logic and Principal, Agile Business Logic

Speakers:
Kevin Newman, Director of Technology, Harvard Business Publishing
Rebranding and Rebuilding Harvard Business Review

Cate Twohill, Director, Technical Product Development, WGBH Educational Foundation, and George Corugedo, CTO and Co-founder, RedPoint Global Inc.
Big Data & Customer Engagement Lessons from a U.S. Media Powerhouse

See the complete conference schedule.

Gilbane Advisor 11.12.14 – The CEM Imperative, Customer Experience in the Age of the Empowered Consumer

November 12, 2014 / Frank Gilbane

Gilbane Conference

Use your special subscriber $200 discount

Join us in Boston December 2-4 for our conference and learn how your peers are building next-generation digital experiences for customers and employees. Register today using your special Bluebill priority code: BB200.

I would like my $200 registration discount – code BB200

Sponsored

The CEM Imperative

Customer Experience in the Age of the Empowered Consumer

Engage your colleagues and stakeholders in a conversation about avoiding the dangers of the unmanaged customer experience. Digital Clarity Group outlines the issues in a new blog post and in a report.

Read the post and download the complimentary report

Why Your Brain Loves Good Storytelling

Many business people have already discovered the power of storytelling in a practical sense – they have observed how compelling a well-constructed narrative can be. But recent scientific work is putting a much finer point on just how stories change our attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors. Read more

IDC: marketing technology $20B and growing

Sensible categories.

This forecast includes a wide range of solutions in four broad categories: interaction management, content production and management, data and analytics, and marketing management and administration. Read more

A STEAM engine to create marketing technologists

… science, technology, engineering and math are on one end of the spectrum — while art, design, intuition, and creativity are on the opposite end. Right? Surely there are few who are capable of bridging these two disparate worlds, right? … Increasingly, of course, we know that’s bunk. Read more

Mobile is eating the world

Benedict Evans’ presentation and audio from the WSJD conference and the a16z Tech Summit is a clear, compelling look at the fundamentals that every organization needs to be aware of. Read more

Understanding the Global Mobile Web

This is why the “light web” is a reality for the next billion users. Whether by lighter/more efficient native apps or, as I believe, web apps, the light web is better positioned for the next billion. Interestingly, even Uber has a robust web app. It is possible the powerful cloud and light, thin client computing paradigm is destined for emerging markets. Read more

Google renders CSS & JavaScript

and you should let them…

We recently announced that our indexing system has been rendering web pages more like a typical modern browser, with CSS and JavaScript turned on. Today, we’re updating one of our technical Webmaster Guidelines in light of this announcement. Read more

Crowd @ gigabit

This is another fine mesh we’re getting into

Fun and future …

It’s 2017 and this year’s riot is in San Diego. It involves pandas, profit-driven zoo executives, and a Weight Watchers sponsorship. Doesn’t matter. People are massing in the streets and it’s heading toward a confrontation. Read more

HTML5 is now a W3C Recommendation

November 2, 2014 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

While HTML5 has been in use for a few years, the fact that it wasn’t a full W3C Recommendation (in layman’s terms, an official release of the next version of HTML) provided leeway for browser developer interpretation and understandably hindered more widespread adoption. All standards need to continuously evolve to remain relevant and useful so this is not the end HTML development, but now there is a stable specification that will help normalize browser support and encourage reluctant app developers to invest more fully in HTML5.

From the W3C press release:

“Today we think nothing of watching video and audio natively in the browser, and nothing of running a browser on a phone,” said Tim Berners-Lee, W3C Director. “We expect to be able to share photos, shop, read the news, and look up information anywhere, on any device. Though they remain invisible to most users, HTML5 and the Open Web Platform are driving these growing user expectations.”

HTML5 brings to the Web video and audio tracks without needing plugins; programmatic access to a resolution-dependent bitmap canvas, which is useful for rendering graphs, game graphics, or other visual images on the fly; native support for scalable vector graphics (SVG) and math (MathML); annotations important for East Asian typography (Ruby); features to enable accessibility of rich applications; and much more.

For more details read the full release.

The future of watches

October 1, 2014 / Frank Gilbane

“The future of watches” title is a bit grand for this brief post, but this is somewhat of a companion piece to The future of tablets and the context of both is the evolution of computing devices. In the case of tablets we are still figuring out their role in the ecosystem after many years and over four since the initial iPad, the first breakthrough tablet. It will also take some time, and development, to see where smartwatches fit in, but it is now a much more interesting question.

The Apple watch announcement stumped many commentators who needed extra time to digest it. A reasonable reaction given neither product nor platform are done yet. This makes it a bit difficult for technology, market, or financial analysts to answer questions like what the Apple watch is really for, whether it is a new product category, will it be another breakthrough product for Apple, how it will change the mix of Apple revenue, do I actually need or want one.

Communication has been the killer app for computing at least since the Web and is why smartphones are the current king of the hill. Smartwatches are the most likely next-in-line competition to smartphones, certainly more so than tablets or glasses, before we enter the world of implants, stick-ons, or other fashion accessory choices. Smartwatches with phone functionality could surpass smartphones as the planet’s most popular personal computer: easier to carry around, potentially cheaper.

Apple would not be investing so heavily if they didn’t expect smartwatches to overtake or at least approximate the success of smartphones. They are betting large on the watch becoming a general purpose computer in the same way the iPhone has.

Or, they are reaching even further…

It doesn’t make sense for Apple to invest much in accessories, or niche markets. Even fitness is not interesting enough in itself. However, fitness is a great way to enter into the much larger healthcare opportunity, which in turn provides an environment to learn about new user experience technology and the complex device integration and data sharing necessary for it, and other complicated applications of general purpose computing. The iPhone would also benefit. This path also has the advantage of providing cover.

Also see:

Rich ruminating… Ben Evans: Ways to think about watches.

Working through what the Apple watch is about… Ben Thompson: What I Got Wrong About Apple Watch and Why Now for Apple Watch

Compared to other smartwatches… Rachel Metz: Is This the Smart Watch You’ve Been Looking For?

Review from a watch industry analyst… Ariel Adams: Apple Watch Hands-On: The Wristwatch Just Caught Up To The 21st Century

Web Applications on Mobile: current state and roadmap

August 19, 2014 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

The W3C has published the July 2014 edition of Standards for Web Applications on Mobile, an overview of the various technologies developed in W3C that increase the capabilities of Web applications, and how they apply more specifically to the mobile context.

A deliverable of the HTML5Apps project, this edition of the document includes changes and additions since April 2014, notably a new section covers the emerging field of integrated payments on the Web, following recent work started by W3C in this space. Learn more about the Web and Mobile Interest Group (WebMob).

If you think you have figured out your strategy for mixing and matching support for web and mobile channels, keep in mind that this is not a a one-time project but an ongoing affair. There is always discussion about this at our conference, but this W3C activity is a good way to keep up with details minus the bias and hype. Of course the W3C promotes their standards, but that is not a bad thing.

Gilbane Conference schedule – sneak peek

July 31, 2014 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

The full program will be published in a week or so, but the schedule is available now at http://gilbaneconference.com/2014/Schedule.

Gilbane Conference speaker proposals – update

May 21, 2014 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

Thank you all for the Gilbane Conference speaker proposals. We received a record number again this year. We are now busy evaluating, organizing, and mapping proposals to the topic areas our audience needs to hear the most about.

If you have submitted a proposal you can expect to hear from us over the next 6-7 weeks. With over 300 submissions we’ll have to make some difficult choices and we will be contacting many of you for further discussion.

Miss the deadline?

For all of you who missed the deadline to submit proposals for this year’s conference, our policy is that we always accept proposals – in fact we accept them all year long if you use our submission form – however, proposals received after the deadline for each conference miss the first review by the program committee and some of the early decisions. If we have two good proposals on the same topic the on-time proposal gets preference. Also, decisions are largely made on a rolling basis once the deadline passes, so if you have missed the deadline it is still a good idea to submit as soon as possible.

If there is a particular topic we need more proposals for we will post about it on this blog, so stay tuned.