Isabel Walcott Draves

Now it's Paypal that doesn't get it!

So when I married I created a joint account with my spouse, and cancelled my old personal bank account.  My spouse signed up for Paypal with the new joint account.  And then my Palpal account stopped working, because my bank account was closed.  BUT when I tried to sign my new bank account to it - I couldn't.  Because the bank account was already associated with some other user's account (my spouse's).

This seems OK - who needs Paypal anyway, you can just pay with a credit card, right?  But when I went to do that, I was told - no, you cannot pay with this credit card, because it is associated with some other paypal user's account (my own).

People complained when I called Google sexist for not thinking through their policy decisions and how they might affect people (mostly women) who are "exceptions" to these policies.  How many women in the world have a joint account with their husband, and just because their husband signed up first for Paypal, they are now prohibited from having their own Paypal account? (Paypal offers a solution - sign up for a Paypal credit card and you don't need a bank account.  But I have a stop on all new credit card signups due to my purse being stolen, and I don't feel like lifting it to get a credit card that I don't need and don't want). And yes - I "get" that if I signed up first, it would be my husband who was out of luck, so really the discrimination is against people with joint accounts, not women.  Blah blah blah... but in my case he was quicker about getting to Paypal with that new account.

I undestand the security reasons why Paypal wouldn't want to let someone sign up for a Paypal account with a bank account already in use by another Paypal customer.  But there are legitimate reasons for joint accounts (mainly marriage but other reasons too).  The banks have obviously recognized this.  Paypal functions essentially as a bank go - between.  So why can't Paypal allow for joint accounts in cases where proof of a joint account or spousal relationship is sent in?

They've just made it impossible for me to buy things from vendors that only use Paypal - unless I completely terminate my Paypal account, freeing up my own credit cards... or if I use my husband's Paypal account - or sign up for their credit card.

Am I right to be annoyed?  (And an advance note to any of you who may suggest that spouses shouldn't have joint accounts - that train has already left the station, let's discuss reality and not some fairyland where nobody has joint accounts.)

How to open a Samsung Galaxy S Vibrant

It took me a while to find the answer to this, so I'll blog it here.  Maybe this is just me not being familiar enough with this kind of thing, but there was no cover to slide, and I couldn't find the right hole to poke!

Holding the phone as if you were looking at the screen, turn it over so you're looking at the back. On the end near you there is a tiny round hole and a long narrow slit where the plastic back battery cover meets the metal frame that holds the screen.   Ignore the tiny hole.  Put your thumbnail in the slit, then force the cover off.  Don't worry, you won't break it.  It comes off pretty easily once you have that leverage.

Here's how I found out how to do it - but ironically, this is not my phone model.

http://www.anandtech.com/show/3957/samsung-fascinate-review-verizons-galaxy-s-smartphone

Mine is a T-Mobile, Android like all Galaxys, but it doesn't say on the device what its proper name is (Vibrant).  Galaxy S apparently also comes in Fascinate and Captivate or something like that, and one has a sliding cover, so it gets confusing.  Hope I am able to help someone here.

Storytelling for Business, Alternative Speaker Training, Giving Better Presentations

Are you good at what you do, but not good at explaining it?  Do you need to speak in front of audiences and want to improve your skills?  Do you sell something that not enough people are buying?  Does your organization need transformation?  This post is for you.

I struggled with what to call this post.  Some presentation trainers don't like to call themselves speaker coaches, and some marketing consultants don't like to talk about marketing, but if you're looking for help with public speaking or sales what else are you going to put as your search term?  I'd like people who are looking for alternatives to traditional speaker training - or even sales training - to find this post.

As anyone who has ever really thought about this topic realizes, when you speak in front of an audience, you don't want to be boring, and one great way to do that is to involve your audience in an engaging way.  The next step after that is no longer "presenter" and "audience" but a "conversation". The idea is that this is can happen in a large group setting as well as, say, if you're out for coffee sharing your passions with a trusted friend.  When you talk about yourself or your ideas, how do you make them as exciting to others as they are to you?

For example Heather Gold, an expert in teaching this subject, calls her workshops "Un-presenting":

Everything I'm doing ... gets covered experientially not abstractly. It's really important -- especially for intellectual kinds of folks -- to learn to go 'inside out'. If I give you analysis and 'insights' first, the learning and experience are diminished.

Heather makes her students learn by doing - the best way to learn.  And she doesn't call herself a speaking coach.  But I am going to ignore alternative terminology for now and share a list of public speaking speaker training, pitching, and storytelling resources with you.  Thanks to the folks on Jerry Michalski's terrific listserv for the input.

Heather Gold - Unpresenting - "Go from talking AT or TO a large group of people to talking WITH them."

Cathy Brooks - Story Navigation - "You will walk out with a well-defined personal “elevator pitch” that serves in business and can be modified for myriad uses/audiences.

Michael Margolis - Get Storied - "Your success depends on your ability to get others to believe and embrace [your] story" and his conference, Reinvention Summit, "a virtual summit on the future of storytelling."

Doug Lipman - Story Dynamics - "Stories can help people trust one another. They can lead to a sense of sharing without coercion."

Steve Denning - Radical Management - "Successful branding, marketing and selling depends on connecting and engaging with clients, which in turn depends on is founded on authentic storytelling."

Doug Stevenson - Storytelling in Business - "Transform your ability to motivate, inspire and connect with audiences, customers or employees."

 ...

If you like to meander, here are some relevant links about storytelling and unpresenting:

International Storytelling Center

Organizational Storytelling in the News

Leader's Guide to Storytelling - Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative

Storytelling Case Study with Madelyn Blair

Seth Kahan interviews John Cotter on Storytelling

Seth Kahan: Every professional has stories to tell

Tom Munnecke from 2002

Andy Goodman on Storytelling and Encore Careers

Tips Beth Kanter learned from Heather Gold's unpresenting workshop

Agile presenting with Heather Gold and John Vlismas

Mindtools Business Storytelling

Creative Keys Storytelling Power

The Orton Foundation's "Heart and Soul" project (using story to strengthen small towns)

Community Expressions - enhancing community connections through storytelling

Josh Schachter's list of storytelling resources, through a digital photography lens

 

 I'm looking forward to hearing your comments and additional links!

 

This o'keefe guy is utterly sick: http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/09/29/okeefe.cnn.prank/index.html

Over the weekend I helped a friend sort out some problems with Microsoft Outlook. She had a newly installed Office 2007 version and whenever she tried to send an attachment her computer immediately froze. You had to control-alt-delete twice and wait minutes for Outlook to shut down before trying again. So I did a little online research and disabled her all Microsoft add-ins, for things like exchange and SharePoint. And then she could send attachments without freezing. So Microsoft's own Outlook add-ins break Outlook. Nice work! But then we noticed that although it could send a word doc just fine, if you tried to send a PDF the recipient got a corrupted file. This happens because Microsoft adds some hidden code to each document you send through Outlook, including your name and email. (And people think Facebook violates privacy!) I guess in doing this hidden code thing they break the PDF. So I taught her how to send attachments through Gmail. Outlook is broken. Is Microsoft broken?

You know what would be SO cool? If you could complain in your public lifestream (twitter, facebook, google buzz, whatever) about a problem you were having with a company, and get an automatic reply telling you how to fix it. So there's a web crawler that looks for references and parses them, and companies subscribe to a feed of their mentions and provide responses for the FAQ, and an automated response gets sent to whoever complained. This would save people so much time. I'll give you a couple of examples: #helpmefixit! the rubber rotor melted on my kitchenaid blender, tell me where to buy a new one! or #helpmefixit! Where can I recycle old computers near 10026? I know this kind of help happens informally from people on Twitter all the time, but I want the companies to see the volume of complaints about certain things so they know which areas to focus on, so this needs to be automated. Anyone working on this?

Got 'em! Some nasty telemarketer has been calling me over and over again from the 201 exchange, but when I try to call back it says the number is not in service. Numbers include 201-564-4171 and 201-796-8854. By pretending to be "Sara Kingston", which is who they were calling for, I found out the guilty culprit: thesuccessnetwork dot com, with info from "Robert Allen's Multiple Streams of Internet Income". Let's make a special place for them in HE double toothpicks. Their customer service number, according to the telemarketer, is 866-406-9817.

The myth that the Tea Party is all about helping the average joe needs serious debunking. Is it really an astroturf campaign to help big business? Can't believe how economically ignorant Rand Paul is -- "If the mines were dangerous people wouldn't take those jobs, so they must be fine!" http://wvgazette.com/ap/ApTopStories/201008030654

Hey LinkedIn, I changed my name. Unlike Google, you let me, and I didn't have to redo my entire profile. Thanks. Now can you please redirect from from my old name http://www.linkedin.com/in/isabelhilborn to my new page http://www.linkedin.com/in/isabeldraves ? That seems pretty simple right? Because now, if you type "isabel draves linked in" into Google, you get the link to the old page, and when you click to it, it says I "could not be found". Engineers - can we get over this hurdle please?

"Lucky Charms. Froot Loops. Cocoa Pebbles. A ConAgra frozen dinner with corn dog and fries. McDonald’s Happy Meals. These foods might make a nutritionist cringe, but all of them have been identified by food companies as healthy choices they can advertise to children under a three-year-old initiative by the food industry to fight childhood obesity. " Need we even read more? http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/24/business/media/24food.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=froot%20loops&st=cse

Checking for conflict of interest when investing

I'm working for a client bringing deal flow and doing due diligence for their angel investments right now.  Earlier this week I went to a VC presentation for entrepreneurs with a Q&A session.  As early stage investors we often have the opportunity to invest via "convertible debt" as opposed to doing a series A which sets a valuation on the company.  As time goes by, if it takes longer and longer to get VC money, your shares get "discounted" off the ultimate VC price, so that you pay, for example, half of what they are paying assuming the share price has about doubled by the time they get their money in.

Now, of course the VCs want the prior investors to have as little power and actual stock as possible, because they're just "getting in the way" once the company is big enough to need and merit VC.  And it's cheaper to do a convertible debt investment from a legal perspective, and you don't need accredited investors (I think although I haven't really checked this out).  So you hear lots of encouragement to "do this round as convertible debt" from VC's (and consequently entrepreneurs who want VC money).

Anyway, a couple weeks ago at a different event I attended, the VC's who were presenting there (and I'm not naming any names here) laughed at the notion that angels would be allowed to keep their discount.  They said they haven't seen anyone keep their discount "in years."  The angels are forced to come in at the same price the VC's do, even though they took a much greater risk and probably worked hard to increase the company's valuation between the time they invested and the time the VC's did.  For that risk and hard work they get the "reward" of being "permitted" to join the VC on the VC round for the same price.  Thanks guys!

I was appalled by this news as this seems like a prime way to screw over your angels and just a license basically for VC's to wield all the power they can.

I did a little research online and found some interesting links (http://www.matr.net/print-29148.html, http://www.startupcompanylawyer.com/category/convertible-note-bridge-financing/ where people who know far more about this than I do explore the topic.

Anyway, back to this week's event.  I asked the VC who was presenting there whether it was his experience that VCs did not allow the discounts, and he said it was about 50/50%.  He said they would remove discounts "because they can", to which I had to force a bitter smile through gritted teeth to remain polite, but at least he was honest.  I mean, honestly.  It reminded me of everything horrible you have ever heard about VC's in your life.  Like taking candy from a baby!

But then he went on to say that the convertible debt, even if it didn't retain a discount, was a good thing for angel investors because it protected then in the event of a cramdown or a bankruptcy.  He was quite satisfied with his response, which is why I referenced conflict of interest in the title of this post.  Angel investors don't want to invest in a company they think might go bankrupt, and they should have the right sense of what things are worth in the market to help come up with a good valuation that won't keep the company from getting funded.  If they make those mistakes it's on them and it's their own money; most likely if the bet was a bad one they'll end up with nothing, bankruptcy notwithstanding.  But if they have a win, they should get their full share. Knowing they're risking it all, why would they care about bankruptcy protection?

In my personal experience, doing a series A with angels wasn't that darn difficult and I think entrepreneurs should give their early supporters their proper upside.  If the company is good the VCs will still invest even if there are already shares out there at a lower price.  They can always cram it down if they want.  Guaranteed returns aren't part of the VC pitch or it wouldn't be called "venture"; it's not the angel's job to help the VC's get those returns.

Interesting, familiar-sounding email from a friend: "i once went to a career counselor, about 30 years ago now, and took a test. he said i could be a highly valued researcher in a place that valued creativity but was not threatened by it, or i could do well in a niche division where i had relatively free reign and was just judged on output and led a small team. or i could run my own shop. "

http://paperlesspost.com looks beautiful - what a good idea! I can't wait to use it. Thanks to http://sugarbushwick.com for turning me on to it.

Changing your Facebook Privacy Settings

As I wrote an email about this topic to a relative recently I thought I would post it on my blog as well.  If you're not someone who lives and breathes social media, you probably need to change your privacy settings.  Here's how.

Go to Facebook and find your own profile.  Under account, hit privacy settings.

At the top it says "basic directory information", some text, and a tiny link that says "view settings".  Click that link.  The first 2 are fine to have be everyone: search for me and send me friend requests. The rest, if you'd like to be more private, could either be friends and networks, friends of friends, or friends only.  "Networks" means, if you say you went to a college, anyone from that college can see it.

When you're done there, click "back to privacy" at the top.

Under "sharing on facebook", click "custom" and find the little blue "customize settings" link.  For each piece of info you have, you can choose who can see it.  I have "friends only" for most of it but i let "friends and networks" see some things and for my website URL, which is how I advertise my services, it is set to "everyone".

Guru.com is broken

I'm researching how to hire high-end consultants online.  And wow, Guru.com is a horrendous tool. 

When you post a job there you are inundated with cut-and-paste applications from distant countries, who have a questionable relation to the problem you posted.  But if you try to apply for a job as a consultant you encounter massive roadblocks - you can't apply for a job unless you have checked off that particular skill set, you must create a separate profile (an re-upload all your info) to add that new skill set, and you have to buy a new membership ($25/mo) for each skill set.  Anyone with options will leave this game fast.

By way of explanation - as a consultant, the different skill set categories for social media marketing strategic consulting might be "business consulting", "marketing and communications", and "websites - web 2.0".  Uploading profile info is a day-long process that must be replicated from scratch for each new category.

So is it any wonder that the majority of people who apply for your gig are desperate people who will work for cheap (they had nothing better to do than drag themselves through the onerous uploading process? 

And is it any wonder that you will have to find your consultant the old fashioned way - through asking a friend?

And is it any wonder that the people posting gigs there offer $250 or less for jobs like "create and manage a social media website for our membership base for one year"?  What sophhisticated social media consultant would want to work for this kind of pay?

I'm looking at a startup in this space, not sure it will be any better in the end.  LinkedIn maybe a good way?  How are others solving this problem?  Anyone with a top shelf management consultant background (who isn't a programmer) making money doing this?

Google is a Sexist Pig!

As some of my faithful readers may have noticed, I got married last year and changed my name.  I've been waiting forever to change my Gmail address and finally bit the bullet today.  It's a ton of work, and so infuriating.

Google doesn't want to cheapen their status and invite spammers by offering unlimited email addresses, a la Hotmail or Yahoo mail.  So if you have a gmail address (and accompanying Google identity) already, it's damn hard to transfer your stuff to another one.  They figure, you should have the same address for life.  They figure, you're a guy.  Or maybe a gal who doesn't change her name at marriage. They wholesale forgot all about all the women who change their name when they get married (crazy stat here).

Let me explain.  Open up a Gmail account if you've been using Yahoo, and you can "fetch" over all your old email no problem.  There it all will appear in your new Gmail account, like magic.  But try doing this from one Gmail account to another?  You're out of luck, this isn't allowed.  But it's fine to just have your old email open in a different window right?  Nope.  You can't be logged in to two different Google accounts at once in the same browser (workaround - use firefox and ie).

If you're an avid Google user, like me, you're sure to have hundreds -- maybe thousands -- of active shared documents in your Google docs, all shared with many other people.  But can you transfer them at one fell swoop to your new identity?  No way.  You must go into your old identity and go through each one and "share" them with your new identity in order to have access.  Have other people given you access to their calendars?  Now you must request that they give access to your new Google identity.

Do you, like me, manage AdWords accounts for multiple clients?  Prepare to go into all of them and transfer ownership to the new you.  Did you have extensive RSS feeds in your Google Reader?  Get ready to make them all from scratch under your new identity or share them from your old identity.  Are you, like me, managing Google Analytics for bunches of clients?  You're out of luck!  Add your new self to each and every one.  Do you have some vanity email addresses (domains you own, school or family emails) that forward to your old Google ID?  You could have them forward and then forward again from your old ID, or you could re-forward each of them to cut out the layers.

Whew how much does that suck?  Google engineers, get a clue!  The world isn't made up exclusively of men!

It's wonderful that Google is so helpful that I want to use them to manage every aspect of my professional life.  It sucks that they can't figure out that there is a valid exception to their rule that you should have one Google ID for life. 

Isabel's Theory for Social Network Value

A long time ago (sometime in 2006 to be exact), I got frustrated that investors and bigco's were applying Metcalfe's Law to social networks (value increases exponentially with addition of nodes).  Exclusivity is important to relationships and social networks are made of people.  So I wrote a brief paper arguing why valuing social networks more highly the bigger they are is incorrect.

I never bothered to speak to anyone to try to publish it or to even take it beyond a first draft.  Because I couldn't figure out a way to create an algorithm or a law, just show a bell curve-like picture indicating that when stuff gets too popular it starts to lose cache, I worried that it wasn't "scientific" enough (I'm no scientist).

But I was reminded of my work on this idea the other night at an Eyebeam benefit when talking with Clay Shirky, a great mind and presenter about Internet trends and author of Here Comes Everybody, about his next topic for study.  I wanted it to be this exclusivity idea.  Because, let's face it, that hip downtown club that the models and rock stars used to go to?  Here Comes Everybody, and those hipsters are GONE faster than you can sneeze at the dust they leave behind.

Let's take a quick example.  Facebook has been getting dumped on by the Internet's coolest hipsters for awhile now.  A quick Google search for "why facebook sucks" brings up over 24 million results.  As one of the top ones from MidwestSportsFans.com (chosen at random) says:

"At one time it was a nice, organized, relatively private and controlled way to keep in touch with friends and family, share photos and events, and – in a much less garish way than MySpace – create your own little personal shrine to yourself on the web. (Narcissism rules!)  It is not that anymore."

In fact, this concept is such a truism that I think the only people who don't see that social networks top out at a certain point when the crowd becomes too huge, are the people who are trying to make money off those networks.  They are always the last to "get it".  I'm not saying they don't make money.  But is MySpace worth what it was a few years ago?  Uh-uh.  Tools like Twitter are good - Clay pointed this out in our conversation - because they don't let people spam or pester you asking to be friends.

My paper (warning - Unedited since 1996 and just my first draft!) is here: Isabel's Theory for Social Network Value.  Please contact me if you'd like me to keynote your next event.

Annoyed with Skype. You can buy credits to make calls to phones, but if you don't use them up Skype keeps your money. Seems wrong to me. They should ask if I want it back or to extend, and if I don't reply they can keep it. Reminds me of Kodak Easyshare deleting all my pics permanently for not buying something in too long. They lost my business forever that day.

really like the John Waters quote from the NY times magazine about the family of a murder victim, whose murderer he wishes to see freed from prison: "They can never be wrong in their arguments, and I would never criticize their viewpoint". Amazing to hear so well spoken, how you could have a different opinion from someone else, and yet fully respect their right to their opinion. Wish we heard more of this.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/30/magazine/30fob-q4-t.html

attempting to use monster.com search to help out a friend and it SUCKS! imagine getting back a whole bunch of results not related to, and not containing, any of the keywords you put in? And standard "and/or" terminology doesn't work?