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METAFORIX MAIL Volume 2, Issue 9 February 4, 2002 Sites and
insights for the Information Age As all of us hurtle toward the end of this very challenging year, Metaforix Mail thanks you for reading and (occasionally) responding. We send you and yours every good wish for a joyous holiday season and a peaceful New Year. Thanks for reading. CONTENTS AT A GLANCE
ON MY MIND: De-Techtive Work
Crisis Management Par Excellence Neil Rosen is CEO of eWayDirect.com, an online publishing and direct marketing firm. eWay publishes newsletters, sales promotions, and similar electronic documents for clients whose products and services range from diet food to financial services to MP3 players to web site design.Technology is the lifeblood of Neil's business. But Neil understands as well as anyone I've met that doing business on the Internet is not fundamentally about technology - it's about culture. eWayDirect.com had an "adventure" last fall, an adventure that could have become a disaster. A week or so before Thanksgiving (or, to put it another way, a week or so before the holiday selling season), eWay suffered a massive hardware failure that made it impossible to send out any mailings. It took almost two weeks to repair and test the hardware and to rebuild the enormous databases that allow eWay's clients to produce, mail, and track their publications. eWay survived the crisis with its system improved, its client base intact, and its reputation not just unscathed, but burnished by the experience. How did this sow's ear of a challenge morph into a silk purse? Neil had built a culture of customer service, employee appreciation, and strong supplier relationships, a culture whose values proved themselves in the crunch. I've never hesitated to regale you with sordid tales of customer disservice. This time, it's great to recount a textbook case of how to do things right: - Build a business based on values you believe in, from day one. Live your values in good times and bad. - Hire employees and choose suppliers who understand and share your values. Treat them as the valued colleagues they are. Let them, and everyone else, know how much you appreciate them - even when they're not around to hear your praise. When you need them to work 18-hour days, cut short their holidays, and perform assorted miracles, your employees and suppliers will be there for you and for your clients. - Offer outstanding customer service to every client, from the largest to the smallest. In fact, as Neil says, if you aren't prepared to offer a potential customer your highest level of service, direct the client elsewhere. - Keep clients informed in a crisis, at every step of the way. If in doubt, says Neil, err on the side of communicating too often and too much, rather than leave your clients in the dark. Within hours after the hardware failure, each eWay account rep was on the phone with each eWay client, explaining the situation and offering to help. Phone calls and e-mails, from the reps as well as from Neil, continued regularly until the crisis was over. - Understand and address your clients' gravest concerns. In this situation, perhaps the biggest fear was the loss of data. eWay responded with multiple reassurances about the redundancy of the system. - Express your gratitude to everyone who has helped you make it through the crisis: employees, suppliers, and customers. This is the time for public praise. Neil's "Happy Thanksgiving" e-mail to clients was reassuring, upbeat, and epitomized the premise that there's no such thing as too much heartfelt thanks. It's hard to match the internal and external goodwill generated by words like these: It really can't get any better than working every day with such an incredible group of people. [Their] dedication and commitment make us who we are . . . . I can't thank you and all the people here at eWayDirect enough for the support that has brought us through the last week. In the post-9/11 world of anthrax scares and irradiated snail mail, electronic publishing may be one business that stands to prosper. By building a culture that values people over technology, even in a technology-based environment, Neil Rosen has put eWay in a position to do well by doing good. From my perspective as a small business owner who too often gets the short end of the customer service stick, it couldn't happen to a nicer, savvier guy.
Cordially,
Tripping the Light Fontastic Lighthouse International has been working to meet the needs of blind and vision-impaired people for almost a hundred years. Like most "special needs" organizations whose work is supported by grants and private contributions, the Lighthouse faces a perpetual challenge: how to convey the societal importance of its "special" mission to funders and to the public at large.When you're competing for limited resources in a vast universe of worthy causes, there's nothing like a graphic demonstration that the work you do is good for business. With its "Size Matters" exhibit, the Lighthouse has done exactly that. Its message to advertisers couldn't be clearer. Close to a hundred million baby boomers -- the most affluent segment of America's population -- are already experiencing age-related changes in vision. If this highly desirable cohort can't read your ads, says the Lighthouse exhibit catalog, "they'll turn the page. It's as simple as that." To demonstrate the point, Lighthouse International designed a legibility competition. Three hundred print ads were culled from large- circulation magazines published last spring. The ads, aimed at the boomer cohort, were chosen solely on the basis of readability (or the lack thereof) and submitted to a panel dubbed "The Big Guns for Big Type," all noted experts in design, advertising, or vision science. The judges rated each ad according to four criteria: type size (12 point or larger); font (simple, not ornate); spacing and leading (ample space between characters and between lines); and contrast (sufficient contrast between type and background colors). Design aesthetics, per se, were not considered. The exhibit that resulted from the confidential balloting contrasts 30 ads deemed "readable" with 20 others deemed "not readable." The "not readables" included ads for Depend, Viagra, and several financial services companies. One Big Gun, Jerry Della Femina, is CEO of the advertising firm of Della Femina, Rothschild, Jeary, and Partners. In conjunction with the exhibit, Della Femina's firm produced four public service ads aimed at art directors, who tend to be "young and have great eyesight." The theme of the ads is, "Small Type Kills Great Advertising." My favorite of the four, all on display as part of the exhibit, is an eyechart-style rendering of this text: HEY! BIG TYPE WILL BE READ. SMALL TYPE TENDS TO LOSE AUDIENCES OVER 45 YEARS OF AGE, WHEN VISION DETERIORATES." Nuff said. When I visited the exhibit last month at Lighthouse International Headquarters, Director of Media Relations Wendy Maurice and Creative Director Jaine M. Schmidt estimated that several hundred visitors had viewed it so far. Plans were underway to take the exhibit on the road, downtown to the Parsons School of Design. Despite budget cuts and the post-9/11 effect that has become a challenge to many not-for-profit and charitable organizations, Schmidt and her colleagues have been buoyed by the positive media attention "Size Matters" has drawn. Considering the short time frame and low budget allocated for the exhibit, I'd rate "Size Matters" an eye-popping triumph. Postscript: After my conversation with Maurice and Schmidt, as I was leisurely viewing the exhibit, a uniformed employee pushing a delivery cart, a man of a certain age, stepped off the elevator. We smiled in mutual greeting. The man's enthusiasm for the Lighthouse and for the exhibit were obvious. He stopped to chat for a moment and to make sure that I grasped the importance of the exhibit. Leading me to the eyechart poster, he grinned. "See how important this is?" And he went back to work. this is?" And he went back to work. I'd call that an eye-popping triumph of a different, equally important sort. Access previous issues of Metaforix Mail by date by visiting our archives. Or use the search box on any page of the Metaforix site (www.metaforix.com) to search by keywords.
INFORMATICON "It's
O.K. to Hate Your Books" "It looks fine, right? More or less the way you'd like it to look, except for one thing. That is what to do with the books. They've piled up and piled up, and now they seem about to swallow you whole. . . ." "On days when the world seems unmanageable in general, I find myself hating my books. Like children, they sap my time and energy. Their public disarray reflects my inner disorder. Anything else that clutters up my house I can just throw out; books demand special treatment. Perhaps it's because, at some level, I know they don't belong to me but to a universe higher and better and realer than mine. They exist to take their proper place in that vast, impersonal Total Library wherein all knowledge, all being, when properly categorized, forms a perfect Platonic whole."
Google
Wordplay Directory
A
recent writing project for school-age children sent me searching for software
I could use to produce word games -- crosswords, word search puzzles, that
sort of thing. The project, as it turned out, was less fun that I had anticipated,
but it led me to a page on the Google search engine that I had not previously
discovered.
Learn how Metaforix can help you and your business take a byte of the Information Age. See what we have to offer at www.metaforix.com. CYBERSPEAK
Biometrics Biometrics is a security and surveillance technology that makes computerized records of physical characteristics that can later be compared to the characteristics of live individuals.Examples of biometric applications are iris coding, hand scanning, finger printing, voice authentication, and facial recognition technologies. Such biometric records can be used to permit or deny access to places, benefits, and information, to identify persons with criminal records, or to track the movements of individuals. Ultimately, biometric technologies could replace PINs, ID cards, and similar artifacts that must be carried and presented at various checkpoints. Prior to 9/11, the Defense Department and other government agencies, as well as corporations, were actively exploring biometrics, despite the vocal objections of civil libertarians. Now, public sentiment has tilted significantly in favor of biometrics. Airports, banks, social service agencies, and casinos are actively engaged in designing and implementing biometric systems. Congress is proposing uniform standards for drivers licenses that would encompass biometric elements and make state motor vehicle departments the instruments of a de facto system of national ID cards. Some manufacturers of the technology have attempted to allay civil liberatrians" fears by proposing privacy-protection measures, such as "no match-no memory," a feature that would delete images that did not match those of known criminals. Nevertheless, civil libertarians cite the World War II interment of Japanese Americans and the harassmant of Viet Nam war protestors to lend weight to their concerns. Biometrics, they suggest, will make it easier for the government to target unpopular groups, as it has in the past. Opponents also point out that the technology, while impressive, is not 100 per cent accurate. There seems little doubt that biometrics will have a signficant impact on most Americans in the foreseeable future. As biometric policy analyst John Woodward of RAND has said, "unlike car keys, you always have your biometric with you." It only a matter of money, entrepreneurial ingenuity, and time. Sources consulted: Margaret Carlson, "The Case for a National ID Card." Time, 1/14/02 Urusla Owre Masterson, "Biometrics and the New Security Age." MSNBC.com, 11/20/01 Paul McFedries, "The Word Spy," www.logophilia.com, 1/12/96
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