Web 3.0 – The Sensory Web
Here’s a great presentation by a good friend (and extraordinary hotel educator), Lukas Ritzel. Lukas presented on the topic of the sensory web (Web 3.0) at the second ever TEDx event in Switzerland (Zug – May 27, 2010).
Explore Lukas’ presentation below using Prezi, a superb presentation tool:
Here’s a video of the presentation:
Hotel Internet Marketing by 2013 – Are we on Track?
I came across a piece I’d written about 17-18 months ago on the future of hotel internet marketing. The article talked about 5 broad tech trends that I thought would radically alter the way we approached digital / internet marketing for hotels back at the end of 2008. I thought it’d be fun to take a re-look at the article and see how far we’ve actually come in the last year or more and if those predictions still hold water… here goes:
1. Choice is king.
The clear winners of the online distribution race will be suppliers and 3rd parties that provide the most choice to the customer. “Experience building” will become key to the looking and booking process online. This will mean that successful suppliers (hotels) will have to break down elements of their inventory like rooms, dining, sports, spa and supporting services into individual units that can be booked and packaged both internally and externally. The more elements you provide to what I like to call the “Experience Engine”, the better the choice available to customers to personalize and tailor their experiences. This creation of experience units will also allow tourism industry suppliers to collaborate more effectively online, as well as spur the evolution of 3rd party providers who provide superior experience engines, taking destination marketing to a whole new level.
Carrots, Sticks and Innovation
Since innovation is such a crucial part of what we do as New Tech marketers, the approach taken by businesses to foster that innovation is absolutely vital. I guess we all know intuitively that we’re the most creative and tackle problems with no obvious solutions well in an environment that does not rely on pressure and rewards – the proverbial carrot on a stick (or even the stick itself!). Psychologists have long agreed that there are two basic approaches to motivation – Intrinsic and Extrinsic. The former, inimitable variety comes from within and the latter is tied to rewards, etc.
In yet another TED video shared on HoteleMarketer.com, Dan Pink touches on these very issues and explains how the findings of science and how business is run today are completely at odds to each other. We just cannot expect innovation and radical problem solving to emerge from people focused on incentives. Absolutely agree with Dan on this talk…and a great watch for anyone looking to hire a marketer to explore new tech and emerging media spaces. Also check out this earlier article from Dec 2008, which touches on a couple of these aspects “When the going gets tough, Hotel eMarketers play harder“
Enjoy the talk!
Interview with Marketing Guru Naufel Vilcassim
I finally had the chance to grab a little time with Naufel, whose Marketing course I attended at London Business School, to ask a few questions about how he got where he is, what excites him…and his thoughts on some key marketing issues:
[JJ] Could you please tell us a little about yourself and why you chose the world of Marketing and Academics?
My path to an academic career in Marketing was quite accidental. My undergraduate degree was in Physical Sciences (Physics, Chemistry and Mathematics) and after completing my studies, I joined a diversified corporation in Sri Lanka as a management trainee and that kindled my interest in the study of management. While studying for my MBA degree, I took a liking to Economics and Applied Econometrics in particular, and so chose to do further studies (i.e. Ph. D.) in that subject. However, being in a business school, I chose to apply my training to modeling consumer choice and that led me to the field of Marketing. Not a grand design, but one that happened quite fortuitously and I never looked back. It has been a wonderful experience.
Success, Failure and Passion
Here’s quite an entertaining and thought-provoking speech by Alain de Botton about Success…and our perceptions of this elusive concept.
Open Linked Data and the next phase of the Web
Tim Berners-Lee’s recent speech at TED was released a few days ago…it’s interesting to watch Tim in his nervous excitement. as he asks the audience to repeat “RAW DATA NOW” after him, with a gleam in his eye.
The move towards more open sharing of ‘raw’ data is an inevitable but powerful shift in the development of the web. We’ve all heard about the Semantic Web, but this just won’t be possible without enough credible, pliable data to draw from…
Slides from the presentation are available here: http://www.w3.org/2009/Talks/0204-ted-tbl/#(1)
Imagine a Web where we can draw on the collective intelligence of our times, when, where and how we really need it…that’s what it’s all about!
Excerpt from TED: 20 years ago, Tim Berners-Lee invented the World Wide Web. For his next project, he’s building a web for open, linked data that could do for numbers what the Web did for words, pictures, video: unlock our data and reframe the way we use it together. More about WWW and Tim Berners-Lee - http://www.w3.org
Smart Decision Making – The Role of Results and Intuition in Modern Business
In this interview, I have the distinct honor of interviewing Professor Zeger Degraeve, who is the ‘Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum Professor of Innovation, Professor of Decision Sciences’ at London Business School. Not only is Zeger a fascinating individual and an insightful teacher, but also brims with a bountiful supply of energy, zeal and experience. Here we talk about the fundamental issues in today’s business environment…the decisions we face, the results we’re held accountable for…and perhaps a clearer way to approach decision making than just relying on gut feel.
[JJ] We face many decisions on a day to day basis, ranging from personal to business…and from the critical life-changing type to the more mundane. Shouldn’t decisions be judged on the basis of the results they achieve?
[ZD] The result is irrelevant … as a measure of decision quality. People, including managers and business leaders typically equate the quality of a decision with the quality of the result. When people observe a good result they conclude that they made a good decision. Likewise, when a bad result is observed, people conclude that a bad decision was made. This is untrue. Decisions and results are two different things. Time elapses between a decision and the realisation of its result. Decisions are made at a specific moment in time. Afterwards, people implement these decisions and the result is observed in the future. The future is uncertain, there are no facts about the future, and nobody has a crystal ball. In the future, events can happen that managers and organisations cannot control. Also, events can happen that managers could not foresee. Such events can cause good decisions to have a bad result and vice versa. Therefore, the quality of the result is not an indicator of decision quality and the result is irrelevant as a measure of decision (and execution) quality.
Full Video Interview – Marc Andreessen on Charlie Rose
A great 60 minute interview on Charlie Rose with Marc Andreessen, the man behind Netscape and Opsware, both companies that were acquired and made Andreessen a billionaire. In this interview Marc talks about a variety of topics, including Cloud Computing, Facebook, Twitter and Ning. Some really great insights on tech development and the (non) impact of the current recession on Silicon Valley. A must watch for any tech enthusiast!
You can watch the entire interview below (note: 60 mintues long!)
http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docid=-3628271656800759125&hl=en&fs=true
