This is a tremendous result given that there are only 11 winners from around the world – and we are the only Australian winner.

Thanks to all who worked on this.

Focusing on “impact” also makes a listener pay attention. This one word causes people to assume they will see a measurable difference. People want results. Talking about “effort,” or even “solutions,” doesn’t work; Americans don’t care about good intentions. They want to know how well you execute.

Thanks to our growing dependence on electronic technology, coupled with dwindling free time, another word with increasing resonance is “reliability.” When it comes to such products as automobiles, cable television, and personal communication devices, reliability is now even more important among customers than price. In fact, it’s often a crucial factor in determining the price of a product or service. Value is now the sum of price plus convenience plus reliability.

On October 31st Virgin fired 13 of its cabin crew who had posted derogatory comments about its safety standards and some of its passengers on a Facebook forum. Among other things, crew members joked that some Virgin planes were infested with cockroaches and described customers as “chavs”, a disparaging British term for people with flashy bad taste. On November 3rd BA began investigating the behaviour of several employees who had described some passengers as “smelly” and “annoying” in Facebook postings.

Funny, wasn’t it Virgin that sponsored the Delta Airlines blogger that was fired for inappropriate behavior?

It’s still stunning to me that most want to prevent this kind of behavior. Ok, I’m all for not for stereotyping customers in public forums – give them some coaching here. But if I was an executive at Virgin I’d rather hear about cockroaches on planes rather than not at all. And it would tell me something about my culture if this is where I had to go to learn about this stuff.

The irony is that these same companies – who are so concerned about what their employees are saying online pay near no attention to what their customers are speaking about. Here’s a stab on American Airlines who I travel with every few weeks:

1. The food is disgusting. I dare you to try and get your children to eat it.
2. Your entertainment system is close to worthless. Go check-out Air New Zealand, Virgin and others. Fix it.
3. Your employees run on board service in a slightly less friendly way than hospital receptions. Tenure seems to qualify their role, not customer satisfaction.

Lets see if anyone is listening. In a recent blog in which I complained about Air New Zealand and the way they handled loosing my baggage I got a call from their head of baggage services who apologized and explained which of my ideas they were going to implement. Strangely his company policy prevented him from replying to my blog post – I suggested he break the rules and do so – and all credit to him, he did.

At least Air New Zealand was listening. The point of monitoring forums isn’t to prevent employee and customer dialog online but rather to take appropriate action on it, which only in the rarest of rarest occasions will warrant firing someone. BA and Virgin have it wrong. In fact – you want the conversation!

Why in an age of transparency are so many companies looking to muzzle employees rather than unleash conversations? Insight and innovation happens at the edge – and to get at it you have to let the dialogue flow.

This might be an abhorrent pollution of the idea but I wonder what would happen if they opened this up to PR professionals to seek writers for their stories and ideas… Kind of a platform for freelance writing and brokering of ideas.

As with anything, there would be all kinds of issues. Like how to protect the idea from competitors eyes. This could be done easily though.

There is also potential for spot to be used as a way for PR people to collaborate with each other and journos on pitches.

• First, it is democratic and decentralized. Like Dell’s IdeaStorm…
• Second, it aims to inform the conversation. (Which is different than engineering stories).
• Third, it calls for engagement with influencers of all stripes.
• Fourth, it suggests that reputation is built on policy and communication. See what we are doing with Regeneration.org.

Well worth a read…

So when Larry Ellison says that cloud computing and open source won’t produce many hugely profitable companies, he’s right, but only if you look at the pure software layer. This is a lot like saying that the PC wouldn’t produce many hugely profitable companies, and looking only at hardware vendors! First Microsoft, and now Google give the lie to Ellison’s analysis. The big winners are those who best grasp the rules of the new platform.

So here’s the real trick: cloud computing is real. Everything is moving into the cloud, in whole or in part. The utility layer of cloud computing will be just that, a utility, without outsized profits.

But the cloud platform, like the software platform before it, has new rules for competitive advantage. And chief among those advantages are those that we’ve identified as “Web 2.0″, the design of systems that harness network effects to get better the more people use them.

Nick argues there are inherent flaws to what Tim has to say… both are worth a read.

1. Dell, Inc., the 2008 SNCR Brand of the Year. The Brand of the Year is awarded to the organization that made the most significant advances in utilizing new communications and social media tools, technologies and practices.

• Gartner had expected budgets to grow 3.3 percent in 2009.
• Now the most likely case is IT budget growth of 2.3 percent to 0 percent;
• The worst case is that IT budgets will be down 2.5 percent.