“I’m a friend of Sarah Connor. I was told she was here. Could I see her please?” – Cyberdyne Systems Series 600 Terminator

The uncanny valley is a concept coined by robotics professor, Masahiro Mori, in 1970 to describe the reaction humans have to robots with human appearance.  The graph can be interpreted by saying the more human a robot looks, the more familiar and comfortable we are with it. (Translation of Mori’s article.)

As a species, we’re comfortable being around other humans.  So, the more human something looks, the more comfortable we are around it.  Motion affects this response by amplifying our familiarity with the object. Humans move.  Therefore, it’s easier to recognize a moving human than a stationary one.

This overall positive feeling we have toward human-like robots holds true until the robot reaches a point at which it looks nearly identical to a human…but not entirely human.

Then we get freaked out.

“‘More human than human’ is our motto.” – Dr. Eldon Tyrell

So, what does a psychological response to robots have to do with corporate communications?

Regardless of what politicians say, most people view large corporations as companies full of people working toward a common corporate goal.  Although, corporations have been afforded some rights of individuals over the last 100 years or so, that’s not how most people view them (and those rights are legal and political in nature, not humanizing).

You probably wouldn’t invite United Airlines over for dinner or turn to Ford Motor Company to chat about relationship problems with your girlfriend.  Because those personal relationships are reserved for actual people, not companies.

Yet I see a recent trend where corporations engage their customers (or potential customers) in exactly that way.

I find this creepy and inappropriate when companies attempt to manufacture an emotional bond with their customers.  I suspect their corporate communications department or outside social media consultant is purposefully trying to “humanize” the company.  In many cases, this is laughable.

Pepsi Corporation likes bicycling into the sunset. (Really?  A multi-billion dollar beverage corporation enjoys romantic sunset bike rides along the beach?)

McDonalds Corporation wants to know if I have any EXCITING plans for the weekend! (C’mon, seriously? What McDonalds Corporation really wants to know is…will I swing by McDonalds this weekend to eat a Big Mac?)

Pizza Hut Inc cares about my mom! (I can tell they really do care.)

Tweets like this run the gamut between weird and creepy for me.   Mostly because they come from corporate communication departments trying desperately to sound human.  Although, if any one of those tweets would have come from a friend of mine, I wouldn’t have given it a second thought.

Friends telling me out a fun bike ride and beautiful sunset feels completely normal.  Multi-billion dollar beverage companies waxing poetic about sunsets feels creepy.

I’m sure social media consultants will tell me that those tweets are indeed coming from real people.  For instance, Pepsi’s corporate Twitter account bio says:

“Your direct line to party time! It’s summer! You have Joanna, George, Grace and Shiv here in the Pepsiverse! Follow us for a good time.”

I’m sure Joanna, George, Grace and Shiv are really nice people and charming in person.  However, they being paid by Pepsi Corporation to promote Pepsi as a brand.  If you actually believe those 4 people care about your child’s pool party last weekend (because you mentioned “Pepsi” in a tweet about it), I have some beachfront real estate to sell you in Nebraska.

Call me old fashioned, but I think the relationship between large corporations and customers should be a professional one. Not a cute chummy one.

So much like the uncanny valley in robotics, I experience the same weird uneasy feeling when corporations are attempting to become a little too human for the sake of sales and marketing.

What do you think?

(By the way, I think the rules are different for small businesses…because they have a face. I’ll expand on that in a later post.)

Send fewer emails.

Yep, that’s it. That’s the entire secret rolled into one sentence. For every email you send out, there is a good chance you will receive a reply. If you’ve copied multiple people in your outgoing email, you will probably receive numerous replies.

We live in a world with numerous forms of communication, yet most companies disproportionally rely on email for the majority of their contact throughout the working day. Depending upon the situation, email could be the worst form of communication to use with your coworkers, clients and business partners.

Here are some alternate forms of communication you should consider before firing up your email program: face-to-face meeting, collaboration tools (wiki, BaseCamp, Salesforce.com, Google Docs, etc), instant messaging (AOL, GTalk, Yahoo, MSN, ICQ, Skype, etc), social networks (Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc.), phone call, text Message, video conference, video chat, blog, fax and last, but not least a good old fashioned hand-written note.

Here are a few instances when email is NOT the best tool for the job.

1. When you need a simple yes/no answer. Use an instant messenger, text message or Twitter direct message. You’re in and out and nobody loses much time in the process.

2. When multiple colleagues need to edit and/or approve a document. Use collaboration tools like Google Docs, BaseCamp, a wiki, etc. Emailing a Word or Excel document to six of your coworkers to edit is shear insanity. Stop the madness. Seriously.

3. You sent an email to several colleagues and you got a reply from someone who clearly confused. Unless you are absolutely sure one simple email reply will clear up the confusion, pick up the phone and call this person. Chances are, one 10 minute phone call will prevent 3 or 4 more emails.

4. You need to sell something. Whether you’re selling a product to a client or an idea to a supervisor nothing beats a face-to-face meeting.

5. Someone just emailed you the funniest joke along with a hilarious photo of a kittens. I beg of you. If you really need to tell the world just how funny this joke is, post it to your blog. Please, under no circumstances should you forward this joke email to your entire address book.

So tell me, are there any communication tools you use (other than email) throughout the day?

Let me know in the comments.

The Guardian published an interesting interview with open source stalwart, Richard Stallman.  He speaks his mind on the concept of “cloud computing.”

One reason you should not use web applications to do your computing is that you lose control,” he said. “It’s just as bad as using a proprietary program. Do your own computing on your own computer with your copy of a freedom-respecting program. If you use a proprietary program or somebody else’s web server, you’re defenceless. You’re putty in the hands of whoever developed that software.

You can read the entire article here.  Needless to say, he doesn’t like “cloud computing” very much.

Photo by Han Soete

Justine and I attended BarCamp Houston at the Houston Technology Center yesterday and had a great time. A big thanks to all the organizers (Marc Nathan, Kelsey Ruger, Josh Tabin, Scott Stolz). You guys made the event a smashing success for everyone. And thanks to all the sponsors for helping to make BarCamp Houston possible.

For those who don’t know what BarCamp is, here is a brief explanation:

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. – Wikipedia

This can be simplified to “day camp for nerds.”

I watched some great presentations and participated in some interesting discussions throughout the day. BarCamps are only as great as their participants, and we had some great participants this year.

Ed Schipul’s presentation on PR and social media was sharp. His creative use of a green laser pointer kept the crowd in line (as much as possible) as he explained how to “put the relations back in public relations” using social media. It’s a pleasure to watch a pro on stage engage the audience as well as Ed does.

Josh Tabin spoke about how start-up funding works. I found his discussion about the ins and outs of financing to be pretty enlightening. I left the discussion knowing a lot more about how start-ups make that initial leap into businesses.

Tracy and Imelda whipped up an impromptu discussion on digital photography and social media. I’m pretty sure there should have been a cover charge for the room and IDs checked at the door. Tracy had the room in stitches for a solid 30 minutes, while feeding them great advice for managing their photos in Flickr.

Katherine Druckman also jumped into the mix with an impromptu presentation about Drupal, the open source content management system. The crowd had lots of questions and she fielded them like a pro.

Wynn Netherland and Jim Mulholland from Squeejee.com gave a great presentation on virtual collaboration tools. I’ve gotten used to keeping much of my work “in the cloud” and Wynn and Jim did a nice job of rounding up the most useful tools for working with teams spread across the globe (they even did their presentation live on Google Docs. Cool.)

Here’s a photo of the schedule board in the lobby. A little something for everyone.

My own presentation about mobile web design & SMS went pretty well (at least I think so…it’s hard to gauge while standing behind a podium). I used a live SMS poll to determine how the crowd used their phones the most (talking, email, text messaging or mobile internet). Email and WAP came out on top, which isn’t surprising given the technologically savvy crowd at BarCampHouston. (Screenshot of the BarCampHouston3 mobile poll results.) I also posted some photos on Flickr yesterday.

(Update: I just found out my presentation deck was featured on the homepage of Slideshare today! Woot! Here’s the screenshot.)

Have a great Sunday, everyone!

P.S. – Bill Shirley posted a nice BarCampHouston update, too. Check it out.

P.P.S – Steve Evatt also recapped BarCamp Houston and took some cool photos as well.

I recently realized that we have quite a few fans of social media here at work. So, here is a list of some Twitter users working at the Houston Chronicle. You may even find your favorite writer or editor in this list…enjoy.

Web operations (designers, developers, system admins, etc):
@cmason
@wiredrogue
@sevatt
@elegantmachines
@big_dead_fish
@glove
@tes735

Editorial (writers, reporters, editors, content producers, etc):
@dsilverman
@LauraWeisman
@deanbetz
@houstonbands
@rjustinchan
@scifirantergirl
@lsteffy
@mcberkowitz
@rickdunham
@matt_stiles
@joeyguerra
@juliemason
@SydKearney
@howarddecker
@sbuggs
@corilyns
@kyriememo
@nick_anderson_
@mrglenn

Sales / Marketing (account executives, marketing specialists, etc)
@linafuh
@krmichell

If you know of anyone missing from this list, please post their user name in the comments and I’ll update the list. Also, here are a few Houston Chronicle Twitter feeds so you can keep up with local news via Twitter:

@TechBlog
@ChronSports
@TubularTV
@HoustonChron
@traffichouston

(Oh yeah, and you can find me at @davidherrold)

Have fun meeting some Chronicle folks!

- Dave

Video link.

I’ve been using Twitter for a while now and thought this was a great explanation of exactly how the site works. Look me up on Twitter if you’re interested.

LinkedIn recently launched Company Profile pages that display detailed information on companies like the Houston Chronicle. I must have forgotten the shear volume of data LinkedIn has from all of its members diligently entering all their connections, past jobs, associations and groups.

I thought it was pretty interesting to include information on popular career paths (jobs before and after) and other companies most connected to (see screenshot to the left).

This is a nice addition to LinkedIn, however, it looks like they plan on adding even more functionality to the profiles eventually:

Coming soon, companies will be able to do the following to their LinkedIn company profile:

* post targeted jobs, recruitment videos, and other promotional material for recruitment
* post information about products and services
* upload company images
* and more…

This sounds great, but I’m betting LinkedIn charges for some of these new services…especially job posting. They’d be crazy not to.

The age, sex, title and school breakdown of employees within the company are also very interesting data to consider. I think you could learn a lot about a company by giving these stats a quick glance.

The stats will likely be skewed to younger and more technically savvy employees because the data comes from only registered LinkedIn users (not every employee in the company). But, hey I could be wrong.

It would be more accurate if it came from the HR departments of each company, but that would fairly labor intensive for LinkedIn to pull together.

The last feature I think is interesting is the “Popular Profiles.” Not sure why I showed up in that list, but it gets me one step closer to becoming the most popular David Herrold on the internet.

At which point I will retire and dispense wisdom from a mountain top.

Here is the link to the Houston Chronicle’s company profile on LinkedIn.

Enjoy.

2. Hearing Jason Fried & Jim Coudal speak frankly about their businesses and the creative process.  These guys are bright.  I took notes.

3. Frog Design party.  Fire dancers from Sangre del Sol Fire Troupe.  Neato.

4. Meeting a ridiculous number of fascinating technology professionals in various stages of inebriation.

I’ll be posting some of the things I learned after I decompress and read my feverishly-scratched notes.

It’s good to be home.

Since NOLA is a fun place in general, I’ve convinced the missus to join me. I have a feeling she will be doing more shopping than BarCamping, but I’m just glad she’s coming along regardless.

It looks like the campers will be helping a local business with the power of technology. I assume this will involve legions of man-servant robots and rocket-powered jetpacks. More likely it will involve a handful of programmers and a few laptops. I suspect Twitter will be involved somehow too.

The most popular Steve I know will also be attending (I think).

Looking forward to some beignets and a cup of chicory coffee…and finding a room in the French Quarter for under $250 a night. Yikes.

- Dave