by Gary Mintchell | Jan 11, 2013 | Marketing
I have often referred to Jim Cahill’s blog as the model for a company-oriented social media effort. His perseverence over many years–going on eight, I believe (gosh, we’re all getting old)–has paid off well.
Maryanne Steidinger told me about the Invensys blogs last October and I subscribed and wrote about them. Invensys Operations Management recently enhanced the entire social media experience. One one “Innovate@IOM” page, you are referred to the various ways the company reaches out to the community. Facebook (which I don’t do for business, but that’s just me), Twitter and a page that shows the many blogs of Invensys leaders from software to hardware to training. Check it out.
If anyone else has something new going, let me know. It all helps build a big automation community and educates us.
by Gary Mintchell | Oct 29, 2012 | Automation, Marketing, Operations Management
There is an interesting TED Talk by Shyam Sankar about man-machine cooperation.
Essentially it’s: weaker man + machine + good process > stronger man + machine + poor process
I discovered that several executives at Invensys Operations Management are blogging. Check it out and see if any engage you.
Since I work in media now, I’m interested in what’s happening. Here are interesting thoughts from an IT Conversations podcast about ways to effectively use iPads in media.
by Gary Mintchell | Jul 5, 2012 | Automation, Marketing, Operations Management
I’m on the road again, but this time for family reasons. This means breakfast at the “free” buffet at a Marriott property with a TV news program dominating conversation. Caught the last couple of minutes of an interview with the lead physicist (I presume) from the team at CERN that discovered further evidence of the existence of the Higgs boson. If confirmed, this gives further support to the so-called standard theory explaining the architecture of matter.
The interview went reasonably well, conducted by a woman. It’s CNN. Don’t know any of the people. But then the guy jumps in (maybe at the prodding of the producer?) giggling and babbling like a Valley Girl making light of the whole thing and asking a couple of inane questions. Totally ruined the entire thing just in the interest of driving a good conversation down to the 3rd grade level that they presume their audience can comprehend.
Meanwhile, Phil Windley and Scott Lemon had a great conversation about the Internet of Things and some new work Lemon has done–especially with a Kickstarter project called Wovyn. This is a great area for start-ups and entrepreneurs. Perhaps moving toward the vision expressed to me years ago–“what if–we could put lots of sensors around a plant and gather much more information and then know much more about what was happening in the plant….?”
by Gary Mintchell | Feb 3, 2012 | Marketing
Most of my dozen readers engineers or managers actively involved in manufacturing or production. But a number are marketing people. This post is sort of to explain to the latter the attitudes of the former.
My friend Walt has a “PR Wall of Shame.” Sometimes every editor feels the same. Press releases often try too hard to convince us that something is important. I write another blog on spiritual living where I’ve been discussing simplicity. A good press release could practice some of that. Instead of saying “fastest,” stating the actual speed is much a more powerful message to engineers.
Try these words lifted from a recent press release:
highly experienced
unprecedented customer service
significant investments in resources
unprecedented value
Vice President, Best-in-Class Product
quickly and definitively acted
unique opportunity
unparalleled knowledge
extensive market knowledge and expertise
leveraging vast industry tenacity
They must have fallen in love with the word “unprecedented.” I don’t see that one often. But I love the marketing hype that is now in titles–vice president of best-in-class products. I don’t think I could give out that business card with a straight face.
None of those modifiers add any value to the statements other than to try to get the reader to think that this is really great stuff. This might work if you are writing to the readers of Seventeen magazine. Or E. But not to professionals.
A famous man once said, “Let your yes be yes and your no be no.” I learned this 30 years ago–how to write about technical ideas with simplicity and (hopefully) power. Turned into a career. I bet it could for marketing people, too. 😉
by Gary Mintchell | Aug 16, 2011 | Events, Marketing, Software
Except for NI Week, August is a pretty quiet month. Except for soccer referee assigning, a “hobby” that keeps me up every night. I’ll be glad to see the season start and my assigning work decline.
There are two places you’ll find me in September. First is the ISA Marketing and Sales Summit in St. Louis. (You can chart #hecklegary for a thread on twitter. I tweeted that you should come to the event and heckle me.) This summit is designed to help automation and control marketing people improve their knowledge and skills about the latest thinking in the field. I’ll be helping out a little by giving some ideas on PR and working with editors.
The second conference is the MESA International North American conference in Orlando. My news story about “Cloudy With a Chance of Profits” is on Automation World.
Hope to see you there, too.
by Gary Mintchell | May 18, 2011 | Automation, Marketing
There is a new blog in the production and automation space – The Process Automation Insights Blog. The author is Dave Huffman. He’s with ABB. His first two posts are up and interesting. Hope he can keep it up.
The weather in western Ohio this spring has been wet and cold. Soccer games are never cancelled. Well, almost. So many fields have been closed this spring that I’ve spent many extra hours assigning referees to make up games. Most farmers have only had two days so far to get into the fields. We’re not in the dire straights of those along the major rivers, but it’s not fun here.
I went down to Dayton to a Leadership/Motivation seminar that touted some big-name speakers this morning. Rudy Giuliani was pretty good–but I’ve heard him before. After the hour-long sales pitch for a do-it-yourself stock trading Web site, I was motivated to find a decent place for lunch close to Wright-Patterson Air Force Base then on to a Pannera bread to work for the afternoon. Two hours to catch up on correspondance. <whew>
How do you feel about advertising? Like many of you (except for my marketing readers), I’m ambivalent. Maybe more so. Advertising in Automation World pays my salary, of course. But I hate to be innundated with it. On the other hand, if I’m in the market for something, then professional advertising is welcome.
Google knows that. So, it tries hard to figure out what your interests are and serve you ads that you will appreciate seeing rather than regard as spam. (Sort of the same with AW. We hope you are interested in manufacturing, production and automation–so the ads should be something you are interested in.)
Did you know that one of the key things in the algorithm Google has for awarding winners to its adwords auctions is how good your ad is? In my experience, I’ve seen people with terrible ads blame the media for its bad response. What if the response was proportional to the quality of the ad? Anyway, listen to this podcast presentation of TechNation with Dr. Moira Gunn as she interviews Wired Senior Editor Stephen Levy who wrote “In the Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives.” You’ll learn that and much more about Google.
