Conversation Agent - Valeria Maltoni

High-Rollers and Mind Reading

Making Sense: Two strong pieces of reporting (not coming from journalists). A technologist who is also a very experienced blogger outlines a path forward for journalists to make use of technology; a business strategist who also writes about the state of journalism in the age of the Internet. How to Rebuild Journalism. Dave Winer: We have enough open formats and protocols to build a dozen news distribution systems with all kinds of algorithms. We have bright-eyed J-school students who are excited about the future of news. Even some graybeards such as myself are still totally excited about the future. Come... Read more →

Thanksgiving

You can tell a lot about a person by analyzing the words and body language they employ when they talk. Words matter. A choice of terminology, composition -- how they string words into phrases and sentences, and body movement in addition to tone are rich with human data. Listen closely enough and you will detect someone's line of work, role, worldview, and personal culture from their style; this is the realm of observation, taking in clues that go beyond the sounds and modes of expression. The ultimate test whether there is consistency between what someone says and what they do... Read more →

Secrets, Gossip, and Rumors

Noah Brier has an interesting bit about secrets# in which he quotes Peter Thiel on secrets (I go from Zero to Italian). Thiel uses gossip as an example of silly secrets. Maybe. Yet I like to look a bit more closely to what is behind behaviors. If you are in the business of behavioral change/impact, you should be interested in understanding how information spreads. In my research and work on influence over the years, I have come across the ideas of gossip and rumors as two ways people -- i.e. social animals -- use to connect with each other. The... Read more →

Overcoming the Three Most Common Challenges with Content Production

As consumers, it is easy to see how technology is transforming our experience by giving us the ability to research and compare options when it comes to product choices. Likely, the brands that win our preference strike a good balance between convenience, cost, and a compelling story. Research shows that by the time they click “buy” – physically, and online – people have done their due diligence. On average, individuals are 57% through their research process by the time they contact a sales person. Shoppers and customers using a web site and/or walking into a store are armed with information... Read more →

Content Strategy for the Customer Journey: Marketing that Makes Business Sense

First, I’d like to offer some definition: a content strategy is the systematic approach for an organization to deliver the most relevant and appropriate content to the person seeking it at the time of need. It takes into consideration a) how content is experienced -- for example, items like screen size, and considerations like mobility -- b) how it is delivered -- the technology managing it, and considerations about it becoming a pathway for collaboration -- and c) its governance, or the processes and corporate policies that determine the why, what, where, when, and who of content creation. As for... Read more →

Digital Prescription for Building a Good Web

So SnapCash is really an identity play for ads and revenue for SnapChat and an ecosystem play for large mobile base for Square. Got it. — Bradley Leimer (@leimer) November 18, 2014 Making Sense: On the one hand we move through physical spaces like drones, by force of habit; on the other, we are becoming quite good at spotting differences that create an advantage for us. So far, it is a skill we are using mostly when shopping. How to Stop Annoying Behaviors and Handle Offensive People. Adam Grant: Dan Pink, is on a mission [...]. He’s the host of... Read more →

Designing to the Way Things Are

The first step in a healthy process of figuring where to next is about recognizing where we are now. This means taking more of an outsider view -- because in our day-to-day we get so involved in what we do and say that we forget to notice their full impact. For example, taking the time to articulate how we work. Making it apparent by writing it down, including the connection and disc-connection points, so that we can: talk about what we want better make the/any roadblocks visible confront issues (hard on issues, soft on people) redraw, re-connect, and/or create the... Read more →

Fixing Broken Links

“It is much harder to fix a culture that to create a culture.” Jeff Veen, Adobe/Typekit#. @veen [via] This past weekend I took a few hours to fix broken links from my earlier posts at Fast Company#, those I wrote before they moved onto a new platform and redirected the rest. It was my custom, back in 2006-2008, to write wrap posts about the same topic here from the Conversation* Agent point of view. To me the difference was using my own voice as individual on this site and using a voice more aligned with the vision of the magazine... Read more →

Told You So

A couple of stories making the rounds in the last 24 hours: Facebook is about growing its business and market value -- duh! Brands should not be sharecropping and neither should you. It's not like the about face is new, either, kind of endemic, actually. It owns your content, and it will steal your customers. Not to mention reputation tied to a closed system you do not control. Remember Beacon? Treat it as a channel and a tool to serve your needs and you have a fairly different strategy. Yes, fan-gating a like for a chance to ___ option is... Read more →

Decisions are a Means to an End

In the last couple of days I have re-read one of the books I recommended off my spring reading list: Decisive: how to Make Better Choices in Life and Work by Chip Heath & Dan Heath. My biggest takeaway from the book continues to be that decisions are a means to an end and therefore we want to become better at understanding and then trusting the process we can put in place to inform them. We are like organizations in that we also create a personal infrastructure around past decisions. If we have found to have good results by doing... Read more →