You want my money? Get my name right! Click!

Tonight, we received yet another call from telemarketers who don't seem to know the difference between a "p" and a "b". I let the person speak for about 2 minutes as she proceeded to call me Mr. Duberval at least four times. When she asked me "Mr. Duberval, can we count on your contribution?" I replied "No," since she evidently was not referring to me. Click.

Herein lies two of my pet peeves about telemarketing:

1. Pronounce my name correctly: my name isn't that hard to pronounce, especially in French. Yet, it regularly gets butchered by telemarketers. I've been called Mr. Duberval, Mr. Duverbal, and others. My favourite, though, remains Mr. Duverpal which translates to "Mr. Light Green" in English. If you're going to ask me for money, at least take the time to pronounce my name properly. If you don't know how to pronounce it, ask me, I'll gladly help out. Then, I may be more inclined to listen to you, and I might even buy.
2. Get my name right: my wife and I don't have the same last name. In many countries, wives still take on their husband's last name but in Quebec, they keep their maiden names. Our home phone line is registered to my wife's name. Nothing says "telemarketer" quite as well as someone who hears my voice on the phone and says: "Hello, Mr. Wife, how are you today?" My answer: "There is no Mr. Wife here, sorry." Click.
3. Act like you care about me: one of my biggest annoyances is a subscription company that calls me every other month or so, to make me an offer. The problem is, I'm already registered. When that happens, it makes me feel like a number. What am I saying? It makes me feel like less than a number: at least a number can be weeded out to avoid duplication. I must admit that the only reason I still subscribe is that I like their product. Otherwise, I would click them also.

Telemarketing loses its effectiveness if you cannot touch the client emotionally. You can do that much faster if you can make the potential client seem important. And you make a client feel important by getting his or her name right.

Otherwise, you may just be clicking your way to oblivion.

Defusing arguments quickly

Have you ever been in an argument and the situation becomes more acrimonious with each exchange? How do you stop that rapidly? Seth Godin has an interesting piece on his blog about this. Notice that he talks about written communication, but the same is true for oral communication also:

• Accept the other person's point of view. In any given situation, no matter what feelings the other person conveys, she is right. She is conveying her sentiment of anger, frustration, fear, and so on. Telling a person that her feelings are wrong only exarcerbates the situation.
  
• You don't have to agree with her feelings. Just because someone else has the right to harbour the feelings she wants, it does not mean that you have to agree with her.
  
• Look for solutions. Once you've agreed with a person's feelings, they can't escalate them. think of little kids: why does teasing work so well? Because the person being teased reacts. If the person being teased stops reacting, the teaser gets bored an finds a new target. It's similar in a heated argument. Once you start accepting the other person's point of view, you take all the wind out of her sails. The only option left is to look at what can be done to make the situation better.

Annoying Web Sites

Ugh! Don't you hate going to Web sites and having to wade through layers of useless "stuff" before getting to the meat? Here are a few things that can be highly annoying about a Web site (any resemblance to Web sites living or dead is purely coincidental):

• Flash-only home page: Not everyone installs Flash. And even so, Flash slows down access to your site and hogs bandwidth. Many people including me, evidently) will block Flash animations. If your home page is only Flash-based, you run the risk of people turning away.
• Flash-only Web site: this is even worse! Unless your products and services can only be described with Flash technology, spare us please! Plain-Jane HTML may seem boring, but it's quick, efficient and gets the job done well. Keep the Flash separate from the rest of your site.
• Hard-to-find contact information: Do we have to dig through multiple layers of muck before finding a way to contact you? Once the information is found, do we have to go through 7 steps before being able to send you a message or being able to contact you directly? Do you really want people to contact you or are you doing your best imitation of Voice Mail Hell on your site?
• Email-only contact: In this day of high-tech-only communication, it feels good when you can pick up a phone and call someone and talk to an actual, live, real human being. Email forms are fine, but it shouldn't be the only way to contact you.
• Psychedelic animations: Do you really need 47 animated images on the site? Where is the attention supposed to be drawn? Animated images can be fine for directing someone's attention to one special element on a page. But putting too many just makes me go nuts. And I'm sure I'm not the only one, or there would be no use for this.

And there is probably more, but I'll stop here. If your Web site is a way to attract people to you, make it easy on the user. Don't give them all the reasons in the world to stay away!

Picking fun at oneself

Here is a great video on Bill Gates's final day.

Video Le dernier jour de Bille Gates vost_fr - Microsoft, Bill, Gate, dernier, vost - Dailymotion Share Your Videos

You can never take yourself too seriously. It's refreshing to see such a monument of a man poke fun at himself so easily. And he does itin such a way that he still remains dignified in the end.

Kudos! I was rarely a fan of the software company, but the man did good!

A prank

Every year, around this time, there are a few pranks going around. I particularly like the Linux/open source/techie pranks. Well, I began my professional like as a techie. And the techie in me is still very strong.

Nevertheless, we now have:

What Happens When You Call Microsoft Support To Remove Linux?

Enjoy!

Communication Tips for Geeks and Other Experts

Information is what you say. Communication is what your audience understands.

Coming from a techie background (as a programmer, no less) I've been accustomed to the following tenet: if the client doesn't understand, then the client is stoopid. We've even got expressions for that: the problem is between the chair and the keyboard, this is an ID ten T problem (also known as ID10T), and so on.

As geeks, we often place ourselves above the fray, looking down upon the masses. We require our audiences or our clients to raise themselves to our level, to speak the same language we speak. If they are unable to do that, we consider them morons. We obfuscate our speech in techno-babble, to ensure that the "little people" clearly get our message: you aren't worthy, this is my domain, get out of my way.

This self-aggrandizing posturing is a mask for a geek's inability to speak in language that can be understood by most people, without making the listener feel stupid. It takes a lot effort to take your expertise and explain it in layman's terms. Few people do it effectively.

Seth Godin's recent post "The posture of a communicator " touches on this topic in a concise, insightful way.

A few tips to help geeks get their points across:

• Ask questions. If your client or your audience or your listener doesn't understand, ask them what they don't understand. Also ask them what they do understand, to help you figure out what the gap is.
• Use metaphors and other images to explain difficult concepts. It is harder to grasp a vague topic like directories and inodes; it is easier to understand folders and documents.
• Put yourself in the other person's shoes. Think of something you can do, but not very well. In my case, that would be playing the guitar. I can make it sound like a guitar, but nobody would ever mistake me for a great (or even a good) guitarist. I can't fathom my reaction if in my first course, the teacher were to tell me: "What's wrong with you? A Gm7b5 chord is easy to play." (The chord is easy to play, I just can't figure it out without a picture in front of me.)

Oscars 2008

Here are some of the lessons (good and bad) from the 2008 Oscar ceremony:

Brad Bird, winner for Ratatouille: start with a story. His anecdote explaining why he made movies set the stage perfectly for the thank you's that followed.

Javier Bardem (Best Supporting Actor): he displayed one of the most important qualities of a great speaker: confidence. He spoke well, he spoke convincingly, he spoke in Spanish. At the risk of offending many people in the audience, he took position and said what he believed he should say instead of saying what he felt the audience wanted to hear.

Tilda Swinton (Best Supporting Actress): one word: humour. She messed up the beginning of her speech but recovered well from the moment she began comparing the statuette to her agent. Lesson here: even if you don't start off well, you can still deliver a good speech.

The Coen Brothers: speak only if you have a message. When Ethan Coen took the stage, he said "We..." looked a bit lost and then said "Thank you." I'm not sure if time ran out or not, but it didn't leave a positive impression. You undoubtedly have been in situations where a speaker ended his speech and you were left with one question: "Why did he even bother to speak to us?" That's what I felt. The second time he came to the stage though, he played humorously on what happened earlier ("I don't have much to add to what I said before."). That was pretty good.

Karen Baker Landers and Per Hallberg (Sound Editing): they had planned something and they blew it. So they dropped their script and ad libbed. Once in awhile, things go awry. It's not the end of the world. Suck it up, do your best and go home.

Marion Cotillard (Best Actress): she was a wreck! I thought I was about to see a train fall off a cliff. But she finished with a brilliant line, "It's true, there are angels in this city!" Great sound bite and flattering to the hosts. Nice conclusion.


Christopher Rouse (Film Editing) and Stefan Ruzowitzky (Foreign Film): don't begin your speech like most other people would.

Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova (Best Original Song): a great emotional moment and kudos to Jon Stewart for bringing Irglova back to say her thanks. That was a gracious move on his part. As an MC, his role is to make sure that everything goes smoothly. As I was sitting with my wife, her reaction was "Well that's cheap, they could have given her a few seconds to speak." She had a great message to say and was given the opportunity to do so. However, I felt her message lacked compared to Hansard. He told a story, and that is memorable. His message: even with a $100,000 budget you can still make it to the Academy Awards.

Daniel Day-Lewis (Best Actor): he epitomized eloquence. His description of the ideas sprouting from the mind of the writer was a thing of beauty.

Overall, a decent show. It didn't seem as long and boring as previous years. Eitherr that, or I was in a particularly generous mood tonight!