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Open Letter to Lynda.com

I just cancelled my Lynda.com membership.  I think Lynda.com is great.  You can learn just about any software program, lessons are taught through video, and the lessons are far more exhustive than their competition.  I have tried Codecademy and Team Tree House.  Codecademy is great, but they only teach a few programming languages, which are far from exhaustive.  Codecademy is free, so I can understand why they have such a limited curriculum.  Team Tree House is good, but it costs $25/month and I think Lynda is better for the money.  I hate how Team Tree House's videos show the teacher and not the code.  That seems dumb.  And they have this weird story line like the course is made for kids.

There are basically three primary things I want to learn right now.  PHP, MySQL, and SQL.  I have gotten almost entirely through PHP with MySQL Essential Training with Kevin Skoglund.  Great course, but for some reason MySQL quit working for me.  I thought maybe an update to Apple OSX caused it but when the Installing to Yosemite was added, none of that video showed helped.  I started from the beginning of the course to check that my Apache, PHP, and MySQL settings were right.  According to the course they are, but MySQL still does not work for me.  I tried emailing support and it seems support is not very supportive.

I then tried SQL Essential Training and MySQL Essential Training with Bill Weinman.  Where the Kevin Skoglund uses the webserver tools on OSX, Bill Weinman uses XAMPP.  Wouldn't it make more sense if the PHP with MySQL Essential Training, SQL Essential Training, and MySQL Essential Training all used the same platform?  I can't figure out how to use XAMPP because I can't figure out how to turn off web sharing on my Mac.  So now there is no way to do those three courses on my machine locally.

You would think with the hefty price tag, they could update the courses pretty frequently.  Guess not.  Anyway, thanks for nothing Lynda.  When you get your shit together, let me know.

How Salesforce could grow market share and help unemployed

I think one of the coolest business intellegence tools is a customer relationship manager (CRM).  I have a friend that is a sales manager that has told me he couldn't do his job without a CRM.  It has become as intregal to sales and marketing as a finance ERP like SAP is to finance organizations.  A large number of the marketing roles I have applied for have required experience with a CRM.  I recently completed Google's Google Analytics Individual Qualification certification, which Google offers for free.  I thought I would see if SalesForce offered similar training.  I was suprised to find that Salesforce classes are several thousand dollars.

I remember in the 80s and 90s, Apple offered huge discounts to schools on their computers.  Shocker, the computers I used in school was an Apple.  Why?  Apple was smart enough to figure out that if students use their products in school, they will buy them later when they need their own computer.  That was true in my case.  The first (and second) computer I bought was an Apple.  Microsoft has a similar program where they offer huge discounts to students.  They also have a program where startups can get almost all their products for free.  Same strategy.  I assume Google is using the same strategy by offering Google Analytics certification for free.

I have not looked at SalesForce's income statement, but I would venture a guess that training revenue is not much compared to what they get from the main CRM license fees.  CRMs, especially SalesForce, is not cheap.  $125 per user per month for their enterprise level.  According to this article at Forbes, they are the industry leader but only have 14% market share.  The reason for that is the huge number of CRMs out there.  The Forbes chart shows the largest segment is "other" with 40%.  It is an extremely competitive market worth $18B+ growing at double digits.

I think free CRM training could be a huge marketing opportunity for SalesForce.  Imagine how much of an edge it would be if you had certification in the most utilized CRM?  If you are a business looking to make a decision on a CRM and you knew the majority of the workforce looking for sales and marketing roles were certified in one particular CRM, would that make a difference in your decision?  I would say so.  It seems most CRMs try to get an edge by being a CRM for a specific industry niche.  For instance, they might be the CRM for real estate.  Some have tried to leverage social sites like LinkedIn, Twitter, and Facebook.  Focusing on any one industry or market could actually be counter productive to SalesForce since they are the market leader and I am sure they would insist would work equally well in any industry or market.  According to indeed.com (see chart below) job growth in CRM has grown from 25% in 2006 to 175% in 2015.  With such a large number of job postings looking for CRM experience, training job seekers with free CRM training could achieve several things that could simulateously all drive growth and market share.  It increases the number of people that have a working knowledge for that platform and they will likely add that certification to their resume and profiles on sites like LinkedIn.  Free CRM training for one specific platform will definitely be a contributing factor for businesses looking to choose from the growing number of CRMs.  I think it would also create a great deal of positive plubicity.

Twitter Analytics

There are so many companies that help analyze Twitter data, including Twitter's analysis page, which I just found.  A couple weeks ago I had Simply Measured run a free report on my Twitter data.  Honestly, a lot of it I could have told you before I looked.  But it confirmed what I already know.  There are a ton of social tools out there, I have a list of social tools you can check out.  Here is what I learned from Twitter and Simply Measured.

Twitter

Honestly, I don't think their tool is working right.  They have three sections: Tweets, Twitter Followers, and Twitter Card.  I couldn't get the Tweets section to show me anything other than the last 4 days.  So that isn't helpful.  Few interesting things on the Twitter Follower section:

  • My Top Topics are Entrepreneurship, Startups, and Business & Finance.  That is what I Tweet about, but I already knew that.
  • 60% of my followers are from Texas and 52% are from Dallas.  I kinda knew that but this quantified it.
  • 77% are male and 23% are female.  This is wrong.  I follow and am followed by a ton of businesses and startups.  So male/female doesn't make sense in that case.  A lot of businesses are using Twitter and there should be a "business" category instead of just male and female.  I think that is something Twitter needs to fix.

Simply Measured

This was pretty cool.  They will send you an Excel dashboard, which I make a lot for work so it was cool to see an automated one that looks sharp.  It had a lot of information, but a lot of it I knew or would have guessed at.  But here are three things I learned:

  • My Klout score is 44 versus 38 for my audience.  Not sure exactly what audience is but think it must be people that follow me.  Maybe their followers as well?  Not sure.
  • 27% of my audience has more than 2,500 followers.  If I could just get them to retweet me!
  • My Top Most Influencial Followers: Threadless with 2.2 million followers, Ben Landis (who does not follow me any more), Scott Eddy with 526 thousand followers, Fuze The MC with 457 thousand followers, and Pandora Radio with 308 thousand followers.  So if any of you are reading this, thanks!

 

HONY

I don't have a lot of apps on my phone.  At least considering how many apps are out there.  And of the apps on my phone, there are only a few I use daily.  One of those is Instagram.  And a very real reason for that is Humans of New York.  Humans of New York (HONY) are photographs by Brandon Stanton.  I don't know if he wrote the book first, or if it started as a project on Instagram.  He takes a picture, maybe one or two a day, of just everyday people and does a on the spot interview.  What is your biggest challenge?  When were you most afraid?  What are you most sorry about?  Who has been most instrumental in your life?  Simple questions, but the result is really amazing.  Lately he has been covering Mott Hall Bridges Academy in New York.  He even started an India Gogo crowdfunding campaign that so far has raised over $1 million dollars.

In one of the latest images, Ms Lopez, the principal, admits she was about to quit.  She just felt she wasn't reaching students, that they didn't care.  Then HONY took a picture of one of her students and was asked, "Who's influenced you the most in your life?" To which he answered Ms Lopez.  Apparently that did it.  Just the simple act of recognition.  One photo and a comment and this teacher was ready to do battle again.  Amazing.  I think people don't realize how powerful one comment can be.  How much of an impact one comment can make.  In this case it made all the difference in the world.

If you are on Instagram, do your self a favor and join the 2.4 million people following HONY.

Mandatory Arbitration

Yesterday I went to talk to a recruiter. Before we met, I was asked to fill out some paperwork. Pretty typical. One was a legal document several pages long on one topic, mandatory arbitration.  Basically, mandatory arbitration says you are agreeing to not settle legal disputes in a US court room but through arbitration instead.  One issue I have with that is that presumably the other party, in this case the recruiter, hires the arbitrator so I feel they would be biased to a point that their objectivity would be comprimised.  I also feel that it undermines our consitutional right to a trial in the US court system.  In arbitration, the arbiter might not even have a legal background.  You have no say.  But many states, Texas being one of them, allow for this.

If you don't believe me, there is a great movie on this very topic.  Hot Coffee.  In fact, if I hadn't seen Hot Coffee I wouldn't even know it was an issue.  This movie talks about tort reform, lobbying, and mandatory arbitration.  The mandatory arbitration segment tells of the true story of Jamie Leigh Jones who was a Haliburton employee that was raped, possibly multiple times, while working overseas during the war in the middle east.  Haliburton had her sign a mandatory arbitration clause during the hiring process.  She went overseas and was put in a coed dorm.  The men there would make harrasing comments.  One night they drugged and raped her repeatedly.  Keep in mind she is overseas in a war situation.  She tried to complain and they, Haliburton, detained her in a fucking shipping container with an armed guard.  Not the US military, Haliburton.  She tried to sue Haliburton but then was told she no longer had the right to because she had signed a mandatory arbitration clause.  Haliburton is scum of scum.  And that is how I feel about anyone that uses mandatory arbitration.  It shouldn't be legal.

I had no choice to sign.  i don't think an issue will come up, but if it does, I will not have the right to sue this company or any of its employees.  I feel mandatory arbitration is unethical and unconstitutional.  It should not be legal and I hope one day our legislators in Texas and the US repleal it.  If I can do anything for anyone fighting this, please ask.  It truely is an evil.

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