Derrick Shields Blog

Another minnebar came and went yesterday.  We were happy to sponsor again this year.  It looks like Ben and Luke aren’t having too much trouble getting companies to step up and support the show, which is great.  This time around left me a bit frustrated and I’ll do my best to explain why.

minnebar = Not exactly an “un” conference anymore

Minnebar is simply growing too large to continue to operate as a self-proclaimed (un)conference.  The sheer size and number of attendees made it feel a lot less “un” and a lot more “conference this year - About the only thing that was missing was an exhibit hall.  

My reasoning here is that minnebar being free for attendees with optional community-supporter tickets (or whatever) is cool, but I feel that minnebar will become a victim of its own success and quickly lose credibility if the a.) sessions, b.) topics, and c.) presenters aren’t at least partially vetted going forward.  (I get that this totally goes against the whole community-self-organized concept but sooner or later this simply isn’t an effective method for organizing such a large conference).

Maybe I’m being too critical or perhaps I’m just getting bored with the concept, but it seemed that the conference was sub-par this year.  It was fun, don’t get me wrong, but the sessions and session topics are start tarting to get repetitive. I mean really repetitive.  I mean seriously, how many time can we talk about iPhone dev, Drupal and Social Media?  (Wow, am I sick of the word Social Media…)  Sure, the argument can be made that is what minnebar is all about, but it sure would be nice to see some variety in topics.

MN Tech Startup State of the Union

That brings us to another session that gets repeated in one form or another each year.  This year it was called How Can Minnesota Be Better.  To his credit, Jeff Pesek and Mike Bollinger (of tech.mn) put together a credible panel, and it was a great discussion.

Of course the session inevitably - as it always does - quickly turned to capital, fundraising and west coast vs mid-western startups and access to financing, etc.  But as Paul DeBettignies (aka Minnesota Headhunter) made asked the same question I was thinking: how many times are we going to have this discussion

What’s it going to take to get VC’s actively investing in our community?  Dan Grigsby’s answer was basically that until we’ve got at least one home run, 1-2 triples or at least a handful of doubles of our community, access to capital is going to remain extremely tight.  I agree with him.

Web Developer != Entrepreneur

One eye opening “show of hands” during this session was revealed when Jeff (I think it was Jeff anyway) asked the question, “How many of you are entrepreneurs?” and pretty much 95% of the audience raised their hand.  When the follow-up question “How many of you are on the money side of the equation?” was asked, I think there were about 5 hands in the air in a room of 200-250.

Well, herein lies our problem.  If you don’t want to build a real business; if you haven’t put together a business plan, if you’re not doing real market research, if you haven’t gotten a product to market (or at least a prototype), if you’re not focused on developing financial models and revenue, you’re not an entrepreneur.  

I see a big need here for a new breed of business-oriented sessions at minnebar.  The argument, of course, is that’s not what minnebar is about - It’s about geekdom and coding and all that.  But it’s obvious that isn’t true based on the popularity of the “How can Minnesota Be Better” session, and those that came before it.

Conclusion

Minnebar was fun.  Every company there seemed to be hiring, which is both promising and very exciting.  I’ll continue to support (sponsor) minnebar, but I see room for competition in this space because I definitely think it could be better.  I’ll have to let that marinate for a while.  

iPad + Dock + Epicurious = The perfect kitchen companion

In order to understand what makes it so special, it makes sense to describe what the iPad is not…

Let me start by saying that most people complaining about the iPad just “get” it.  It’s not supposed to do exactly what your laptop does - that’s the point.

Saying that an iPad is worthless because it can’t do XYZ that a laptop can do is like saying a motorcycle is pointless because it doesn’t have 4 wheels.  

Sometimes you just want to hop on a bike and appreciate the ride.  It might not haul the family to the grocery store, but it’s not supposed to.  

People need stop comparing the iPad to laptops and netbooks.  If Apple wanted to create a netbook 10” macbook, they would have (and still might).  

If Apple wanted to take the OS X experience and put it on a touch screen tablet, they could have also done that, and my guess is that they probably will eventually.

Apple saw the opportunity to create something different ― something better, in so many ways.

Let’s examine a list of common iPad gripes…

• iPad doesn’t have a physical keyboard.  Good - It makes the device lighter and more usable for its intended purpose(s).  If you need a physical keyboard, connect one via bluetooth, or plug it into a keyboard dock.
• iPad doesn’t have a camera.  Because it would be so nice and convenient to walk around and take pictures with this thing, right? Joking aside, it’s all but been confirmed that future iterations of the iPad will have a front-facing camera, so just hold tight. 
• iPad doesn’t support Multi-tasking.  More accurately, OS 3.2 doesn’t support Multitasking… and 99% of the time, it doesn’t really need it as you only interact with one app at a time anyway.  Either way multi tasking is probably being announced in OS 4.0 in a couple of days.  
• iPad doesn’t fit in your pocket.  It’s not supposed to. Your smart phone, whcih you carry with you all the time, should fit in your pocket just fine.
• iPad doesn’t support flash. I was on the fence about this one, but after browsing the internet for a while there are a lot of websites that have built an amazing, flash-less experience.  

Of course, there’s also a lot of websites that are simply unable to render content on the iPad because it relies on flash.  Either way, if you want a flash-supported tablet, some kick ass Android-based tablets are right around the corner.  

Now let’s explore what makes the iPad so great…

Extremely Comfortable To Use

Apple hit the nail on the head with the size of the device.  The 9.7” screen is nearly perfect.  Anything larger would be cumbersome; anything smaller you might start wondering what advantages it had over an iPhone.  

A nicely designed tablet should be small and light enough to use primarily with one hand, with occasional gestures from the other hand, and iPad executes this as comfortably and naturally as you could imagine.

Web Browsing = Amazing, Flawless

In Apple’s promo, COO Tim Cook describes the web browsing experience as magical as you “hold the internet in your hands.” It’s hard to really fathom until you’ve tried it, but it’s truly amazing.  

The responsiveness of the touchscreen is so quick and intuitive, its almost as if its anticipating my gestures :) It’s a much more intimate engagement with content, and I find myself staying more focused for longer periods of time.

Amazing Third Party Apps

The iPad has only been available for a few days and there are already dozens of phenomenal apps available.  iPad Dock + Epicurious will be a new standard in my kitchen. Adobe Ideas is probably the best brainstorming / collaboration app I’ve ever used.  The best apps are yet to come.  

RANT: Not all iPad apps are great - in fact, newspaper apps are stupid

Engadget sums it up pretty well:

…while the apps we’ve seen so far are definitely intriguing, we haven’t seen any silver bullets yet — and to be perfectly honest, in several cases we wondered why an app was preferable to an iPad-optimized web site, or even (gasp) a paper subscription…

The iPad isn’t going to save traditional media if this is how its presented.  Seriously, these guys are really missing the point.  An iPad “app” to present newspaper content is a huge step backward.  For the most party they are clunky and unintuitive. They’d be much better off designing elegant sites that navigate and present well in Safari.  

I could be wrong, but my guess is that these apps will not go mainstream and some may view the iPad as a failure because of it.  I think it’s a failure of traditional media outlets to think outside of the box.  

Poorly thought-out newspaper and magazine apps aside, there is still a lot to love and admire about Apple’s latest invention.  I’m reserving my thoughts on the iBookStore until I get a better chance to use it.  I’ve spent some time playing with the Winnie The Poo book that comes with the iPad, and so far I’m underwhelmed, but I’m not a book-person either, so we’ll see.  

Either way, it’s a good time to be a consumer.  Some powerful Android tablets are coming out very soon, and Microsoft may even pull something out of its sleeve with Windows7 Mobile.  Competition is good for everyone - Yay for Capitalism.

In the meantime, I’m anxiously awaiting Apple’s iPhone OS 4.0 announcement Thursday…

My 3yr old son showing me his game collection

So like about 300,000 others on Saturday, a shiny new Apple iPad made it’s way into my hands.  I chose the low end model for use around the home with the expectation that if I liked it enough, I’d grab the 3G version for business/office use + traveling.  

My Unbiased Disclaimer

I am not a typical Apple fanboy by any means; I’ve ditched my iPhone in favor of a more useful, better-equipped, multi-tasking Droid, and I actually prefer Win7 to OS X. The computer I “work” on at home is a Gateway Win7 Touchscreen. And my office machine computer is a 27” iMac - but I’m running Win7 Professional.

First Thoughts

After about 2.5 days of use, all I can say is this thing is friggin’ sweet.  It’s also  crazy fast.  It’s the device that never knew I needed, and I now fully expect it to become my primary conduit to to reading blogs, articles, the internet in general really.

I don’t expect it to replace my work computer, but I definitely won’t be buying a laptop again anytime in the foreseeable future; the iPad is that versatile.  It works great out of the box and allows me to do everything that I would previously do on my laptop, only smarter.

Safari is reason enough alone to buy the iPad.  It’s just simply the most pleasant way to consume internet content, bar none.  The other apps are also great - iPod/Videos app is much better than the iPhone version, and arguably better than the desktop version.  Unfortunately one of the few places where music/video will be used will be about 30,000 feet in the air.  Email/Calendar works fine, but my work routine is so tightly integrated with Google Apps that the until an actual GMail app comes out, I’ll probably stick to using Safari, which does a superb job on the 9.7” screen by the way - you almost really don’t need an “App” at all. 

iPad: ADD Cure?

I’ve got a terrible bad habit of opening more tabs in my browser than I can ever really manage. Constant emails & instant messaging all day long makes it even worse.

But this doesn’t happen on the iPad.  Somehow, the iPad inadvertently sidelined my natural ADD and has caused me to become more focused and engaged when reading articles and interacting with the Web and other apps. This is huge for me.  I don’t get peeled away or distracted by widgets, gadgets, instant messages or task/tab overload. 

Ultimately, iPad is about consuming media

I’ll always have a desktop both at the office and at home where “work” really gets done; everything including web design, development, photo editing, building and running and the bulk of writing emails will be done on a desktop while I’m in “work mode”. 

I rarely ever “work” on my laptop unless I’m traveling. When I really think about it, about the only thing I ever do on my laptop is browse the internet and stay caught up with email.  And because of how well the iPad excels in these areas, it’s actually a lot more than just an alternative or a replacement - it’s an improvement.    

Anyway, I love it and am very happy with the purchase.  More to say about iPad in Part 2 - stay tuned.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the 2010 LeadsCon West conference at the Mirage hotel in Las Vegas, NV.  LeadsCon is the premier national conference dedicated to the Lead Generation industry which with 1800+ attendees is growing at at tremendous pace.

It was a great show and absolutely worth every penny - a special big thanks is in order to Tree.com and AllWebLeads for throwing down and sponsoring the festivities.

At the end of the VIP party outside Tryst, I had a chance to catch up with and thank Jay Weintraub and chat about some different types of sponsorship opportunities we may be able to help with next year (perhaps more on that idea later).  Jay is such genuine, down to earth guy.  I’m really happy to see him experience the growth that LeadsCon has seen over the last couple of years.

I’ll try to quickly overview the events that the WebproLeads team attended.

Keynote

Ex-Googler Douglas Merrill thought that he can apply Google-mentality to a the record industry and fails.  Lesson learned?  Ways in which specific organizational structures that work for some companies may not work for others.  One key takeaway was is to be careful of putting innovation ahead of revenue - if you’re not making money, it doesn’t matter how cutting edge and innovative your company may be.

Industry Leaders Panel

In a nutshell: 2009 was a rough year with many lead buyers pulling their budgets back, but a few verticals performed well, including insurance and debt settlement.  Matt Coffin seemed the most informed and interesting of the panel, and discussed the impact of pending legislation coming out of Washington in which the FTC will over-correct in their efforts to protect consumers best interests.  The results could have a very negative impact on the way leads are generated.  Also, be on the lookout for acquisitions on a smaller scale.

Investors Panel

This was one of the discussions I was really looking forward to as venture capital and private equity in the lead gen space is something I’m always interested in. Unfortunately the discussion started getting way too technical (discussing multiples of public companies and other points irrelevant to the broader session discussion) until Mark Suster (GRP Partners) saved the day by ad-hoc moderating the panel.  He later apologized for this stint, but I think it was totally justitified given how tuned-out the audience seemed to be at this point.

I bumped into Suster later that evening and had chance to say thank you.  If you’re not familiar with Mark’s blog, do yourself a favor and check it out.

Bottom line from an investment perspective is to expect lots of consolidation, mergers, rollups and acquisitions in 2010.  Managing dozens or even hundreds of lead sources is getting to be a headache - lead buyers and advertisers are looking to simplify their lead aggregation sources.

Death of the Short Form? Impact of Google Comparison Ads

An interesting discussion, only because an early-stage Google Comparison Ads (mortgage) lead buyer was on the panel.  His feedback in a nutshell is that quality from Google comparison ads has been fairly good, but with such low quantities it may be too early to tell.  Basically companies on the generation / selling side don’t need to be concerned yet.  Also, Google still needs to address problems with lead transparency.

Launch Spotlight: Tree.com

Tree.com’s CEO Doug Lebda came out and announced the launch of a snazzier Tree.com that seems to be Yahoo! Answers meets Squidoo meets LendingTree.  Essentially, lead buyers are encouraged to claim “profiles” and are worked into the lead gen model when consumers engage themselves and interact with the site.  It’s an interesting concept to be sure, but noticeably absent from this model are lead generators, except for tree.com of course, which seems to be an odd announcement to an audience that is mostly lead-generators.  Either way, it’s an interesting play that the entire industry will be watching closely.

Future of Education Lead Generation

The EDU lead gen space will become increasingly difficult to enter, as schools are become less willing to adopt even more lead aggregation sources.  Transparency will be rewarded with regard to marketing methods, traffic sources and branding.  Additionally, we may see some accreditation standards for advertising put in place.

EDU lead generation may need to move away from a CPL pricing structure toward a sponsorship model based on some pending FTC laws that may make selling a prospective students information illegal.  That legislation is still being written/discussed but it may have a very big impact on the industry.

There will be a continued high-demand for EDU leads in 2010 with a greater focus on quality.  Lead generation companies can help improve quality by sharing additional demographics with the school such as programs searched for, as well as possibly prepping the prospective student for what to expect during the admissions process.

We’re primarily engaged in the Education space and it will be interesting to see how it continues to evolve.

LeadCouncil

(The?) LeadCouncil was unveiled at LeadsCon and I think it’s a great idea.  If the performance marketing industry doesn’t self-regulate, somebody else will.  Enter LeadsCouncil.  From their website:

The LeadsCouncil is an independent association, whose members are companies in the online lead generation space from buyers to sellers, technology solution providers and investment professionals. All members are united in a common goal of promoting best practices and fostering trust regardless of vertical. LeadsCoucil was created by the industry experts and evangelists Jay Weintraub and Dave Wengel whose ongoing mission both through LeadsCon and LeadsCouncil is to increase the size of the market and number of companies who leverage lead generation online.

Hopefully the concept picks gains steam and they are able to assume some authority in this space.  Check out their website for more information at LeadCouncil.com.

Conclusion

There were a few more sessions attended but it’s already a blur by now.  With any good show, the real value is in the conversations, networking and deals that are done in the hallways and happy hours.  LeadsCon continues to raise the bar for itself.

If the growth of the industry and conference attendance is any indication, I wouldn’t be surprised to see another leads or performance marketing based conference pop up in the next few years.  Already looking forward to the NYC show in just 4 short months.

Better Recaps Than This One

• http://www.nickycakes.com/leadscon-2010-wrapup/
• http://www.allwebleads.com/blog/articles/leadscon-2010-recap
• http://blogation.net/2010/02/24/leadscon-quick-hits/

Looking forward, one can make a lot of assumptions about what will happen in the lead generation industry in 2010.  Undoubtedly, advertisers will continue to demand more accountability from their online ad dollars, which will in turn drive more money toward performance-based advertising/campaign models, and ultimately more revenue into the lead gen space.

Mobile Growth in 2010

Another sector that’s going to continue rapid growth is the mobile industry, or more specifically, the number of internet-enabled smart phones in use around the world by affluent, money-spending consumers.  Google acknowledges this coming shift in user engagement toward mobile, given the number of mobile-related acquisitions they’ve made in 2009, and my guess is that this trend will continue in the coming years (more on that below).  Let us not also forget the importance of better location-based advertising capabilities that comes with these new mobile advertising platforms.

While this is a very good thing for the online advertising space in general, especially for advertisers more interested in promoting brand-awareness, I don’t see a lot of lead generation dollars going to mobile ad campaigns unless some wider capabilities are introduced, and here’s why: while brand advertisers are seeing success with mobile because they’re interested in getting eyeballs to see their product, traditional performance marketing is built around the concept of user interaction; we need the end users to interact with our campaigns by providing their information.

Mobile Advertising + Lead Generation

The standard lead generation model is pretty much the same across all popular verticals; a user either fills out a number of forms or a single form with several fields, which works well on a full size monitor, however this method simply won’t transfer to mobile devices very well.

While it may only take 60 seconds on a full-size keyboard + monitor to fill out a standard lead form, this same form may take several minutes to complete on a mobile device, and users will ultimately abandon the process.

In order for the lead generation industry to fully engage itself the growing online ad world, some combination of the following events must take place:

• Drastically Shorter Forms. The industry have to introduce and accept extremely short forms that include a lot less information than is typical;  this may constitute a first name, email address and a phone number, regardless of the vertical.  Filling out a 20-field form just isn’t going to happen on a mobile device, so the idea is to keep the form short enough to keep the user interesting and engaged.  Then either the lead buyers or the aggregators acquiring the leads calls the user to fill in the gaps for data that would normally be required.


• Identity Profile Sharing. I don’t know what else to call this, but the idea is simple (and one many companies have tried to introduce in the past) -  as much of your identify is stored in your mobile device as you want, and you make it available to others at will.  Maybe it’s just simply your name and phone number, but perhaps maybe it’s a more comprehensive profile that includes your address, workplace, hobbies, etc.  The idea is that you control it, and you control who has access to it.  Advertising campaign could request information to your profile, and with a simple click you can grant that access.  It saves the user the hassle of having to enter redundant data (first name, last name, email, etc) over and over.  Give users the ability to control their level of privacy, and it will work.

I can’t believe something similar to this mobile identify profile hasn’t been introduced already; perhaps it has and has just hasn’t gained any traction, but I think for widespread acceptance it will need a big name behind it, like Google.  In fact, Google already has a “Profile” concept.  Permission-based Google profile integration with advertising campaigns would be a lead generators dream. Google, are you listening?

Google’s Mobile Ambitions

Coming full circle, let’s take a closer look at Google’s moves in recent years both in terms of acquisitions and overall strategic direction:

• Mainstream acceptance of their mobile Android OS
• Acquisition of AdMob for $750M
• Many smaller mobile-related acquisitions (see above)
• Involvement with Motorola Droid campaign
• Their own ‘Nexus One’

The list goes on… clearly, Google is poised to absolutely dominate everything mobile, and that means mobile advertising.  As technology evolves, so will the capabilities of these ad networks.  If Google controls the OS, the software capabilities, advertising network capabilities, I would be really surprised if we didn’t start to see a tighter integration between the people using mobile devices and the advertisements being served to them.

Privacy issues not withstanding, the possibilities of enhancing lead generation campaigns and techniques with mobile capabilities are endless.  I’m looking forward to 2010 and the innovations in the lead gen space that we will with without a doubt see.

Happy New Years…  Cheers to 2009, Cheers to 2010.