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Jul 26

Reflections on Universal Health Care from Someone Whose Sister Just Died of Cancer

July 26, 2009 • View Comments • Politics and Current Events

After battling a brutal leukemia relapse for six months, my sister passed away this passed May. I like Lance Armstrong, but the reality is that cancer doesn’t always lead to a bunch of Tour de France wins for people.

I did my best to keep my chin up and to stay optimistic. Deep down, I am still incredibly angry and actually debated leaving this country to go somewhere with universal healthcare and a conscience about the environment. Here’s why.

When we think of cancer, we think of Lance Armstrong on the bike. We don’t think about a severely swollen 41 year old single mom with blisters with the diameter of a softball, who can’t get out of her bed for six months. My sister’s blood platelet count was so low, she bit her lip softly and it started to bleed. When a nurse went to brush her teeth with a small sponge, her gums bled. Anti-fungal drugs made her hallucinate about bugs and gave her dreams that Obama was going to get shot. Her skin was jaundiced and her eyes were yellow. She sometimes would cough up stuff that was so black, it was hard to conceive it coming from a human body. In the months before her death, she had both a tracheotomy and was on oxygen. She was restrained to the bed and at several points, I had to prevent her from disconnecting her oxygen and killing herself because the drugs did crazy things to her head. I felt like I was facilitating torture against my own sister. There was absolutely no dignity to the way she died and I was happy she finally passed because she wasn’t suffering anymore.

So frequently, I would be in her in room and I’d want to take a picture of her. I wanted to send that picture to Monsanto and all of the other companies creating sketchy products, as well as to big pharma that seems more driven to treat cancer than to cure it. I wanted to send it to the politicians who permit healthcare to be a business. What happened to Deb has happened to millions of people and could just as easily happen to them. I refrained because I wanted to maintain Deb’s dignity.

My sister didn’t just die of cancer. She died of a lack of hope. Even if she had been cured, there’s no way any employer would want to deal with her health care costs. Doctors would have thrown every drug her way, and each of these drugs would have some weird side effect. Her life would be inundated with paperwork. For every Lance Armstrong, there are millions more who suffer in fear of a relapse and the absolutely barbaric treatment associated with cancer.

I asked my sister before she died, and she did support universal health care. She believed people should not have to worry about whether their treatment would be covered or not because they should just focus on getting better. I’m not faulting Lance Armstrong by any stretch, but we don’t all have big companies like Nike backing us up when we get sick.

My endorsement of universal health care comes with a huge caveat though. I want Americans, non-profits associated with cancer, and politicians to seriously look at the carcinogenic effects of the American lifestyle. Right now we are consuming foods that have been sprayed with Roundup, which is known to cause severe health effects and avoided in many parts of the world. We eat chickens and turkeys that are given hormones to make them so big they can’t even walk. We drink milk from cows that are given hormones to produce more milk. What do you think happens to these hormones and chemicals? You are what you eat–remember?

I am tired of politicians protecting companies that poison us and Americans who turn a blind eye to all of this. Ask the people of Aniston, Mississippi about the devastating effects of pollution on their community and ask them how the legal system left them astray. These people were hit hard by Monsanto’s pollution, but what are the effects of a little pollution to everyone over the course of a lifetime? The Native Americans understood the connection between the land, air, and water they surrounded themselves with and their own personal well-being. We are turning a blind eye to the horrible things companies are doing to our food and to our land and we are paying the price.

Cancer isn’t a business. It is something that is killing us and destroying our quality of life. IT’S NOT JUST HEREDITARY, PEOPLE. There are second world countries who have longer life expectancies than ours. We spend more per person on health care and yet people in Andorra and 43 other nations live longer than we do. We are poisoning ourselves as a nation, and to avoid a tax burden to us all through universal health care, we really need to take back our land and our food from the corporations that control it first.

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Jul 20

The API is the Software Marketer’s Best Friend

July 20, 2009 • View Comments • Online Marketing

I’m always amazed by how many non-techies at software companies discount an API. I worked at one company where the Marketing Director saw it more of a novelty we could show off to our customers than something we could leverage to our advantage.

What is an API, Michelle?
If you aren’t a techie, an API is an application programming interface. Essentially, depending on the level of integration, you can push and pull data from one software application to another one. For example, if you use a Twitter client, you are taking advantage of the Twitter API. The data is moving to and from your Twitter client to Twitter’s servers because it “plugs in” to Twitter.

Why Does This Matter to Marketers?
Being able to plug into an application means you can add to its functionality and it can add to yours. So if you have a customer relationship management system like Salesforce for managing contacts and you want to integrate with an email marketer (like Interspire’s new easy-to-white-label Agency Edition which charges as little as $7 per registered user…hint hint), your developers can build an integration that will push and pull data from one to the other.

As a marketer, you are opening your audience to that other product and you are opening yourself up to their clients. This concept is often called “reciprocal marketing“. It costs you a developer’s time, the time and money it takes to send a newsletter, as well as a possible press release.

Why Does This Totally Rock for the Customer?
Having an API means you can keep your software’s interface clean and easy to use. It can focus on what it is supposed to do well. Then, you can integrate with products that make up for what you lack. The more you integrate with, the more flexible solution you can offer your customer.

A big pet peeve of mine in software is called “feature creep”, which is indeed as frightening as it sounds. Rather than integrating with other products, a software company will add on and add on until it is damned near impossible to figure out. It’s expensive and will leave your customer feeling stupid and frustrated because they can’t make your software do what it supposed to do. Your customer isn’t necessarily stupid–your software architect might just be a big jerk for not taking the user experience into account.

To me, software developers that build rather than integrate are like those dads who refuse to hire people to work on their houses. They are crappy at plumbing and crappy at landscaping and crappy electricians, but dammit! They did it themselves. So what if house visitors have to poke the doorbell six times and yell “rosebud” just to tell you they are at the door?

If you are in software marketing or business development, get familiar with products your customers could use and then consider an integration. It’s a lot cheaper than other forms of marketing and can offer tremendous value to customers.

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Jul 19

How to Drive More Traffic to Your Site and Actually Make Less Money

July 19, 2009 • View Comments • Online Marketing

“I don’t know the key to success, but the key to failure is trying to please everybody.”
–BILL COSBY

Some people make an entire living driving and tracking traffic to a website. They make tweaks to the design or try different AdWords campaigns. The word that often seems to appeal to those looking for marketing is “more”.

More isn’t always good. Sometimes it is just more. It can also destroy your business if you aren’t careful.

Think of your website like you’d think of a store. Say you sell soccer equipment. At first, you sell to soccer aficionados. You build a following of soccer fans who frequently come to your store and recommend you to their friends. You then start to get greedy and start selling tennis, football, and baseball equipment. At first, your strategy works and you do indeed have more traffic. But you only have so many staff and so much room, so the soccer players go away. The tennis, football, and baseball players then realize that they can go to other, more specialized stores and get what they want. You are now left with no soccer players and without other sport fans as well.

Even if you sell commodities, “more” can actually hurt you if it’s done irresponsibly. You have to appeal to too many people at the same time, which will scatter your energy and prevent you from doing a good job. A marketing campaign should build a community of customers who believe in who you are and what you are doing. You can then spend less time simply churning and burning customers and more time actually making them happy.

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Jul 05

How to Make the Most Out of Sacrificing Your Health for Your Startup

July 5, 2009 • View Comments • Social Media and Society

Apparently Jeremiah Owyang, Mark Cuban, and Jason Cohen have all sacrificed their health for the sake of their business. I too understand this. At one point, I was doing so much working and blogging, I checked in to a doctor to see if there was any medical reason behind my exhaustion. Turns out I was just working too hard and had to cut back. And I had to learn to say no. It happens.

I understand that in a competitive landscape and in a recession, you have to dig deep and make sacrifices. Here are a few health tips that are easy to execute and will help you stay positive and focused:

1.) Exercise helps you sleep better, and sleep helps you concentrate. There is no point in working harder when you can simply work smarter. If you aren’t getting enough sleep, you could be missing a lot of opportunities to be more effective. I’ve found 20 minutes of swimming to be the most efficient way to get a workout without the injuries you get by running. If you can’t make it to the pool or gym, start by taking the stairs at your office or walking somewhere whenever possible.

For thousands of years, your ancestors probably worked very hard physically to survive. Or they conserved their energy because they had no food to eat. Do you think your body can evolve to be a pile of cheeseburger-eating mush in front of your computer? No. Thousands of generations before us have not evolved to do this and you haven’t either.

2.) Avoid heavy amounts of caffeine. A cup of coffee in the morning stimulates brain activity and actually can be good for your blood pressure. Any athlete will tell you though–caffeine dehydrates you and gives you energy in spikes. Eventually, you’ll come down again and will need more. For a steady stream of energy, try eating dark chocolate, and by dark, I mean 70% or more. Dark chocolate was actually consumed by the Aztecs before battle to give them energy and suppress their appetites.

3.) Take time to stretch. I hate my laptop computer because it makes me hunch over. This hunched position prevents your lungs from breathing at full capacity, which means you have less energy. To reverse the effects of this, try a yoga tabletop position, the wheel, or a handstand against a wall. Any position that essential stretches your pectorals and engages the muscles between your shoulder blades will help.

4.) Skip the soda in lieu of water. Honestly, soda is disgusting. It’s water, high fructose corn syrup, a little bit of flavor and caffeine. And if it’s diet, it’s full of a chemical which is banned by most of the world. Hmm. If you aren’t a water drinker, try drinking iced tea or see if you can find things sweetened with Stevia, which is 1.) an acquired taste just like all diet drinks are, but 2.) is 100% natural and has been used for centuries.

Our ancestors couldn’t get a hold of sugar and fat, so your taste buds are rewarded to encourage its consumption. Guess what? You don’t work as hard as your ancestors did, and fat and sugar aren’t as rare for you. Avoiding overconsumption will mean you won’t “bonk”, i.e. crash, sometime in your day.

5.) Get your veggies and whole grains. Meat. It’s everywhere in Texas. Lions eat meat, and guess what? They are one of the laziest animals on Earth. After it eats, a lion’s energy is directed to its stomach so the huge chunks of fresh can actually be digested. They lounge or sleep all day. As lovely as lounging is, you can’t effectively work that way.

Being fresh can mean you are better in a time of opportunity or crisis. It can mean the inspirational ideas come with less work. You will have the stamina to get through the times when stuff just sucks. You are not some superevolved species of a human being that can look like the Simpsons comic book guy and still be effective (and why would you want to be)? Put 40 hours of awesome work into your day instead of 60 hours of coffee-inspired, YouTube plagued drivel. Take the extra 20 hours and clean your house, see a movie, or just chill.

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Jul 02

How the Newspapers Can Stay Alive: Hire @Scobleizer

July 2, 2009 • View Comments • Social Media and Society

This is Newspapers Compared to New Media

I don’t know how Scoble does it. He follows over 103,000 people on Twitter and somehow manages to filter everything out to actually break news. I know he’s a big fan of using FriendFeed to filter through it all, but come on! How does FriendFeed help you break the news of a Chinese earthquake from a bunch of random people in China?!?! How would you pick up on that before CNN does if you have to sort through 103,000 other people’s tweets about ice cream and the crappy service they got at TJ Maxx?

Scoble is not just some person trying to be internet famous. I did think that at first. The guy is just completely obsessed with tools that help you obtain, filter, and then broadcast information. It’s not about being famous for him–he’s working on the small project of knowing everything everywhere all the time. Maybe military scientists will implant a MacBook Pro with wifi into his head which will push him to become an XMen character or something. But I digress.

So reporters obviously dropped the ball when reports of election fraud in Iran broke on Twitter well before they were covered on CNN (see #cnnfail). Scoble and Mark Hopkins were on it pretty quickly and were pumping out some really good stuff as things unfolded. Why couldn’t the reporters do this? Why are newspapers not empowering their journalists with this information and these tools? Do they not see information as their big competitive advantage over all the other noise we see in day to day life?

The flaw with newspapers is not that they aren’t free. On the contrary, I can go to any newspaper’s website and find all the info I need for nothing. The problem is that they just aren’t as relevant as they used to be. Journalists rarely have long-term specialties and are often ill equipped in today’s modern world. Why can’t newspapers upgrade to be Scobleistic organizations of people thriving on breaking information, tracking information, etc? Forget being threatened by new media–why do they not have the same intellectual curiosity to use it just by their very nature? Isn’t that their job?

In newspapers’ defense, this is usually a decision made by the top. I have met journalists who are very much into using the latest and greatest tools to get the job done. But why aren’t the higher-ups giving their people iPhone 3Gs and computers with Aircards? Don’t they want to deliver the freshest and most accurate news possible?

So if you run a newspaper, hire Robert Scoble as a consultant to teach you how to actually report news in a modern world. Or go away. If your news is that good, you could even (gasp) charge for it. Just don’t tell Chris Anderson that.

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Jul 01

Dear Seth Godin, Malcolm Gladwell & Chris Anderson: You are All Right about “Free”. Now Shut Up.

July 1, 2009 • View Comments • Marketing and Labor, Open Source

“In the digital realm you can try to keep Free at bay with laws and locks, but eventually the force of economic gravity will win.”
–CHRIS ANDERSON

Are you kidding me? “Free” with a capital F? What are you, Effing Jesus?

Chris Anderson seriously needs to slow down. I saw him at South by Southwest and felt his “content should be free” shtick was more of a marketing ploy to push his book than genuine advice to help people build a business model. It was very disappointing, and at this point, I’m not sure his free book is worth the time it takes to read.

Well, Malcolm Gladwell wrote this New Yorker article stating that when you give something for free, people assume it has no value. He pointed to YouTube, which has yet to make money for Google. Okay.

THEN Seth Godin jumped on the Free (note the capital F so as to not offend Chris Anderson) bandwagon and went on an ad hominem attack stating that Anderson’s Wired is making money with free, while the New Yorker, who Gladwell writes for, is not. Apparently, free gets people’s attention in an A.D.D. world.

Guess what? You are all right. Now shut up.

Chris Anderson. You need to appreciate that not all people want their content to be the same as everyone else’s. When things are free for everyone, we do not have that choice. The Wall Street Journal will ALWAYS be able to charge people for content, so long as that content provides their readers with a competitive advantage for their jobs. If money is an exclusive barrier that makes subscribers part of a club others can’t afford, they’ll pay for it. People like the exclusivity that money affords them. Just ask the people who actually venture to TED. If it makes me money, saves me more time, or makes me happier than what I can get for free, charge me money. Apple does it and it works just splendidly for them.

Malcolm Gladwell. You need to acknowledge that the web crashes barriers. Web hosting is DISGUSTINGLY CHEAP unlike print. The best thing the New Yorker could do to preserve itself is to kill its presses, go web-based, and hire bloggers who fit their style. As soon as you launch a paid subscription, someone else will come up with a cheaper or free subscription with something similar, and it can be just as good and paid for by ads. Maybe they’ll even go user generated and just hire some editor who is brilliant but lives in his mom’s basement. Seth is right. You need to learn to leverage the web better.

Seth Godin. “In a world of free, everyone can play.” True, but not everyone can win, or even stay afloat. Free IS a relatively cheap way to get attention, but not always able to keep that attention. People want content to do certain things for them. If the free stuff doesn’t do it, they’ll pay for something else.

Oh, and don’t tell me that free is the future and then blog using TypePad instead of the superior AND free WordPress. Seriously. Software is code, and code is content too.

Free content can suck. Proprietary content can suck. Just don’t suck at delivering the content that your current and potential readers want and you are okay. I feel like I’m watching a bunch of kids throw sand in each other’s faces in the playground.

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