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Jon Gatrell

Yahoo! Unbelievable communication

So I got this note, which ended up in my junk folder and I found by accident:

Dear Yahoo! Small Business customer,

We’re writing to notify you of an important change to your [tag]Yahoo![/tag] Domains plan. On December 4, 2007, we will change the email service included with your plan to provide the best service for all of our customers.

We understand that this change may inconvenience some of our customers, but we hope to make the transition as easy as possible. Please read on for important details about your new service.

How This Change Affects You
On December 4, 2007, we’ll replace your current email service with the more-powerful Yahoo! Business Email. During the switch, you will not experience any interruption in your domain service, and your domain name and account information will remain intact.

Please note, however, that your existing email addresses and messages will not be transferred automatically to your new service. To avoid losing important messages and prevent email from “bouncing” (returning to their senders) during this transition, complete these two steps:

Set up POP access to save messages received before December 4, 2007, and to receive email during the transition.
Re-create your existing email addresses in your new email service as soon as possible after December 4.

Re-create Your Email Addresses
On December 4, your existing email tools will be deactivated. At that time, you’ll need to prepare your new service to receive email by re-creating your existing, active email addresses with your new tools.

To help you avoid losing incoming emails during the transition, we’ll continue to route messages to your old account for seven days after December 4 (you can use POP to receive this mail). After seven days, we’ll disable your old email service and reroute your emails to your new Business Mail addresses.

Please be sure to re-create any active email addresses with your new tools by December 11.

To reach your Business Mail tools, you’ll click the “Manage Email” link on your Domain [tag]Control Panel[/tag] as you do today. Learn how to set up Business Mail.

When the transition to your new email service is complete, you can continue to use POP to manage your email and transfer saved messages to your new service, but you will need to change your POP settings.

Please note that you will continue to access your account by signing in to Yahoo! with your Yahoo! ID and password. If you don’t remember your Yahoo! ID or password, please visit our reminder page now for assistance.

Review Your Terms of Service
Before you begin using your new features, please review the Yahoo! Small Business Consolidated Terms of Service, which reflects recent enhancements to our products and services. Your continued use of Yahoo! Small Business after December 4, 2007, constitutes your acceptance of these terms and conditions.

To ensure uninterrupted service, we also recommend that you visit our billing center and verify that your payment information is up-to-date (you’ll need to sign in with your Yahoo! ID and password).

Get Help
We expect you’ll have questions about the upcoming changes, so we encourage you to visit our online help center, where you’ll find answers to common questions about the changes to your service, managing your email, and more.

Best regards,

The Yahoo! Small Business team

So are they or aren’t they interrupting service? Is your target market not so technical folk? Why didn’t you build a transition tool to the new environment. Isn’t this a service people pay for? Isn’t long term storage for data part of the offering? Isn’t that the value of using Yahoo!?

So why do you explain “Bouncing”, but not POP? Perhaps it’s because your users are technical, but don’t know the jargon – wait – is POP jargon?

The folks at Yahoo not only need to learn change management but more efficient way of managing progress. The “upgrade” to Flickr was a “your hosed” message as well. Very disappointing execution. I’ll be watching my domains to ensure they aren’t impacted, but have already left yahoo due to poor follow and live assistance for hosting/email. Go [tag]media Temple[/tag]!!!

November 2, 2007 by
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Meeting Maxims

So I have this quote in my relevant quotes slideshows:

If you had to identify, in one word, the reason why the human race has not achieved, and never will achieve, its full potential, that word would be “meetings.” – Dave Barry

So I got to thinking – what makes a meeting productive? so i have the four maxims on having effective meetings. Very often meetings end up being general discussions, rather than action oriented or goal driven. To avoid that, just try and not be part of the problem, we can’t impact other peoples’ meeting modes, only our own.  So I thought I would put some meeting maxims together.  Let’s just synchronize on maxim:

max·im [mak-sim] –noun
1.  an expression of a general truth or principle, esp. an aphoristic or sententious one: the maxims of La Rochefoucauld.  2.  a principle or rule of conduct.

So here are my  4 meeting maxims:

Manage the meeting: the management of the meeting starts at the invite. Identify attendees that can drive to closure the purpose of a meeting or those that need briefing. During the meeting address the agenda and begin the meeting on time and frame expectations, the situation and the goal of the next N# of minutes.  Provide background material and context in the invite.

A Single Item: Have meetings with a single purpose.  An Update meeting, literally only updating on activities. Have a session on a single decision, not the follow on concepts or tactics. Often meeting drift into next steps, additional topic extensions and general scope creep.  A single topic scenario:

Should we Pursue Project X?

The decision/purpose of the meeting is the pursuit of the project, not the tactics or plan. Don’t meeting creep into what to do on project X, keep it to what you should pursue –  why, who and how is a different meeting.

Stay Topical: Meetings are not a social event, while I know it may make the meeting more interesting, but the water cooler, cube chatter and general hallway drive-by’s should be used for catch up and trivia. If you stay focused, you may get done ahead of time and be able to get back to the business and avoid a time killing event

Have the [tag]Meeting[/tag]:  Bring your opinions, facts and willingness to engage and contribution to the discussion.  Very often meetings, don’t really happen.  I mean everyone shows up, or you start late or you go off topic and ultimately you need another meeting, on the same topic.   Have the meeting also means, don’t have a meeting after the meeting about how much the previous meeting didn’t meet expectations or express exceptions not voiced during the meeting.  Best to just have the meeting once.

So this is how I look at driving productivity from a meeting, just an idea.

November 1, 2007 by
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Kudos to Xobni!

I had the most pleasant discussion with matt brezina, a founder of Xobni or as listed on thier website a person who’s “excitement level is high. He’s our co-founder, mascot, and deal maker, all in one.” He did seem a little over caffeinated, but hey it’s apparently understood in throughout the Xobnni business and played well on the call.

So due to my post on Marketing 3.0 where I referenced the importance of product and cited my uninstall on Xobni, we exchanged notes and chatted.

These folks at [tag]Xobni[/tag] are passionate about search and email! I explained some items which did work and didn’t work, but Matt was straightforward on thier strategy and goals with the product. With the core infrastructure in place a build out of more capabilities exist on thier roadmap. It really seems the next version or so will require a re-install.

Matt also explained their target market and the general benefits – so I’m optimistic on the new capabilities…. So as I said in the other piece, give it a try. Matt’s candor, passion and willingness to SOLICIT and FOLLOW UP on feedback shows a service oriented approach to technology which is more or less lacking in many organization.

Thanks for the call Matt – I so hope your thing explodes into a crazy business for y’all. I also hope you can allow it to help me manage all of my extended networks, personal and business from a single and currently embedded interface for an application which consumes our typical business life – [tag]email[/tag].

November 1, 2007 by
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#19. Where is the best show you NEVER went to…..

So I was just thinking about not being at a music show today, which is possibly one of the best days of the year to see live music and teed up NOLA from 98 in my iPod. I then realized this might apply to one of my items on my geographic blog topic post.

Where is the best show you NEVER went to from in your live music collection?

[tag]Halloween[/tag] [tag]NOLA[/tag] 10/31/98 for Panic.

10/31/98 Kiefer Lakefront Arena, University of New Orleans, New Orleans, LA
1: One Arm Steve > Fishwater, Diner > Porch Song > Sleeping Man, The Waker, Peace Frog > Blue Sunday > Pusherman > Blackout Blues
2: Swamp*, Red Hot Mama* > Superstition* > Red Hot Mama*, Big Wooly Mammoth > Blue Indian > Radio Child > Drums > Climb To Safety > Love Tractor
E: Driving Song > Over The Hills And Far Away > Driving Song > Henry Parsons Died
* with Efrem Towns on trumpet, Gregory Davis, Kevin Harris on tenor saxophone, Roger Lewis on saxophone
[First ‘Blue Sunday’, First ‘Over The Hills And Far Away’, First ‘Peace Frog’, First ‘Red Hot Mama’, First ‘Superstition’, First ‘Swamp’; Slow ‘Porch Song’; ‘Third Stone From The Sun’ jam after ‘Radio Child’; The Dirty Dozen Brass Band opened]

[where: 70123]

October 31, 2007 by
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