Automation is Not Control!

OK, I'll say it. All is not right in the wonderful, all dreamy-like amazeballs land of the Internet of Things (IoT, in case you're still living agoraphobically).

I know, smack me naked and hide my clothes. Ancient colloquialisms aside, it feels like we have just as ancient—and simple—a problem in IoT wonderland. Put down your node.js handbooks, this one requires no code. 

Automation is not control. 

Controlling a device remotely from your smartphone/tablet from the cabin in Tahiti is fine well and good. Fun even. AT&T's ad is pretty nice on this count. It's beneficial too. You can make sure that your carbon footprint is under control, your doors and windows are locked, your TV and music is off...you know, the works.

(AT&T promises the sun and moon in there. I want to believe, I really do. And while I am truly wanting it to be that easy, and that reliable, trust me it is simply not easy! Call a couple dozen CEDIA/CEA system integrators in your area, and they will give you details.)

The dad's closing remark: "Sure you did." Love it, right?

Let's illustrate this a tad more.

"Shoot--I've got to board my train to Shanghai in 2 minutes...lemme check to see if my porch light in San Francisco is off." 

"I wonder if anyone is walking by my front yard right now?"

"I wonder if grandma was able to turn off her bedside light. Hey wait, I can do that for her from the club!"

"Time for homework. Let me turn off the kid's TV from work. That'll learn 'em who's in charge."

These, my friends, are lovely examples of control, not automation. (Yes, AT&T, I'm throwing you into this bucket o' rusty nails.)

Control by itself isn't bad, it's really good and important. What if you did forget to lock down the house? What if you were in a hurry to catch the bus, and weren't sure if you locked your door? Without context, without knowledge of the whole situation you can quickly create real problems. What if grandma got up to go to the bathroom in the middle of you having your martini. You just shut off her safe route back to bed.

Automation is autonomous—doing the right thing automatically. As in, without human intervention. To get to real automation, you of course need the ability to control the device in question. But the reverse is not true. A smart automation system knows (senses) things, and acts (controls) to do them for you (automatically). In the examples above, you are the smarts...the technology is just connecting it to you! You had to go into your phone, check on the door's status, and lock it. You had to turn off the kid's TV. You had to check on the front door camera. 

Sure, you need to be able to do these manually. But its not actually improving lifestyles, is it. The good: you gave them another way to check on things, and make changes if they want. The bad: You just gave someone another thing to check on on their already anti-social phones.

Here's the difference exemplified:

"I noticed that no one is home, and there is nothing in the oven, yet it is somehow on or chewing up gas/electricity. I turned it off (or shut down the gas flow)."

Great. Thanks for letting me know you did it...text=good, k. I didn't need to look!

"The hockey game is on live now, and you appear headed home. I’ve gone ahead and recorded it. Should I have it start when you arrive?” 

No, we can watch it after dinner. Store it for later. Play it 5 minutes after the dishwasher starts.

"It looks like there's someone in the back yard, and it isn't anyone we are expecting. Here's the live feed. Should I alert the authorities or ignore?"

No, that's Fred our contractor. I asked him for a quote on that broken window. 

You can see where this can get complicated. How long before the system alerts the authorities? What if you are in a meeting, or accidentally lost your phone? Or everyone in you family is on vacation? Should I "learn" who Fred is, and if so for how long should he be allowed to visit? During what hours? Sometimes it truly is better for the customer to control things only, with no attempt at smart automation. But rather than assume, you need to frame the questions so that a good, informed decision can be made. 

By CES 2014, we should know better. After all, the promise of the connected home has been around quite awhile (Disney: 1957, 2008). Yet as I watched CNET's Connected Home panel of home automation experts from GE, Revolv, Nest, Phillips, Belkin/WeMo, and a couple of CNET's distinguished editors, I nearly ground my teeth to powder!

Let's agree not to equate the two. The sooner we, those of us in the industry, start using them separately, distinctly, and consistently, we'll be in a much better position to actually sell our vision, illustrate the benefits of our products, and set the appropriate expectations with our customers!

More fuel for your mind:
Ask Hackaday: What is "Home Automation"?, by John Marsh, October 9, 2013
Home Automation, Wikipedia
My "Automation vs. Control" Pet Peeve, by Mark Coxon, April 12, 2012
Control VS. Automation, Vitel Communications Blog

she, being: Brand

she being Brand 

-new;and you
know consequently a
little stiff I was
careful of her

--Excerpted from "she being Brand", by e. e. cummings, 1926

While e. e. was talking about something else entirely, it's hard to imagine anything more talked about in marketing than branding these days. In the technosphere, where I live, branding means so many things. Some sexy, some...not so much.

The video attached is a great case study, on branding. Please watch the beautiful, funny, sexy, sexist, insert your pejorative, expletive-enhanced adjective here video at right. Pause, finish laughing/smirking/lusting/snarling, and think about it.

You like? You dislike?

For a moment, imagine you're the women. What does the video say about them?

Now imagine you're the product manager, of the real "Ps" product from Adobe. Everyone knows what product they are talking about in the video. Now you're the product manager's boss. The VP's boss; now the CEO. What does this say about all of them?

That video sure offers a lot of differing emotions, for something meant to be so tongue in cheek. Truth is, there's a lot of branding-type stuff going on here, some is a +1 and some is a -1. But all of it affects the brand. Now, I don't profess to be a branding expert, but perhaps I'll be allowed by the subject experts a little leeway here to (at last) make my point:

Branding is simply everything you say and everything you do. Nothing more, nothing less.

It used to be so much simpler, or so I thought. In one of my early career junior marketing positions, at a large technology firm in the mid-1990s, we set out to create a new logo--one that would really "reflect our modern brand".  Logo = identity project = new brand, right? While a brand identity (of which a logo is a key piece) is a part, it is certainly not all of it.

Your logo, identity, messaging, sure. But just as certainly  your product, how well it functions, how easy it is to use, how your company runs, its culture, its leaders, its people...all the way to the building management. How you dress. How intelligently you speak, your word choice. Whether you answer your phone or let it go to voicemail. Whether you can be counted on when the chips are down. Who you hang out with. EVERYTHING says something about your company, and you the individual.

Beg to differ? Try being a jackhole to a customer, and see how quickly you find your way escorted out the door.

The Magnifying Glass

Most of the core tools of branding is fairly old school, but no less applicable today than it was decades ago. The relatively new play in branding is of course social. But just because the players are still evolving at a rapid clip doesn't mean you can treat it all willy-nilly. It is not "Amaze"; you must still respect your core brand on any web site. One little 140-character whine is the shot heard round the world, and can bring shock and awe faster than you can type your response. In the same way, showing the grace, poise, elegance, and even humor can enhance your brand. (At least when wielded correctly. Talk to your PR people, they know what they are doing!)

I strive to teach the people who have worked for me to be at least aware of how the world might perceive them. Its a little like dressing in jeans and T-shirt at a formal black-tie event. You will get noticed. For bad, or for good. Some folks may like that you bucked the system. Some may think you're insulting them. Now, you may not care what anyone thinks of you at that event; but somehow, someway, someday...you might. And what you did and how you were perceived will determine what happens next.

Back to the Fs video. I really admire how Adobe the company and especially their brand executive, Ann Lewnes, reacted. Remember, that video did not come from Adobe, it was a one-off gone viral by a very crafty, independent creative, Jesse Rosten.

Ms. Lewnes presents Confessions of a Digital Marketer at the Forrester Marketing Leadership Forum in 2012. While I strongly encourage you to listen to her video all the way through, skip ahead to 14:35 for the Fs video response.

Does her response affect or change your impression of Adobe?

How's your brand these days? 

Gizmology: The Elusive Pursuit

[Reposted from September 2012. -GE]

I love my toys. I don't know anyone who doesn't. Truth be told, they are not all toys, strictly. We are at an exciting time, technologically speaking. It used to be that tech was simply personal--the personal computer. Heck, that thing didn't even have a log on. Only serious iron had that, according to my way-back machine.

Today, the personal has become pervasive--nay, invasive. I can't imagine any job, task, or pursuit that has not been made better through some form of technological enhancement. (Before you cackle on that last point, think it through. Internet porn? Love connections?  Finding Mr./Ms. Right? Personal "gadget" design? Availability of resources on and openness to discuss the myriad intricacies of relationships? All available with a touch-touch-swipe or two.)

I recently lost my Apple product launch line virginity. It was a rather mundane thing, really. You wait with a hundred thousand others, at a preternatural hour with the other fanatics. You get a card that certifies for you that they have the model you want. You progress down the line, slowly yet reasonably. I exchanged a few tech tall tales with the folks like me who waited all the way until 6:30 a.m. to show up. The guys up front, there since 6 p.m. the day before? We ranked them somewhere between irrational loons and lucky stiffs. I even encountered a few of my own customers in line. The donuts, water, and chairs were a super nice touch, though. It's not like every company would have done the same. These folks have done this before, you could just tell.

But I was excited. It was exciting! The iPhone 5! The FIVE. The iMofo Cinco! It was gonna be awesome. My four was what, two years old. Ancient museum piece. It should be encased in glass. What kind of marketing number is four, for heaven's sake? 

It was simply not possible to be disappointed. A quick swipe of the CC, and it was mine at last! (Upgraded to 64Gb for storage, natch--had to have more storage, for, uh, more stuff--just in case. You know.) I spent the next two hours getting the backup of my recently ancient 4 to restore. A number of syncs later, presto! I was a walking 5 model. 

Or rather, more accurately, I was the holder/pedestal/security mount for the device. Blasting over to my local Starbucks, I couldn't avoid anyone in earshot. Not that I was trying of course. They'd say, "OooOOooo. Is that the new 5??" as I handed them a tissue for their drool. They had to touch it, to feel it. To possess it. I--erm, the phone--was King Shit of the Apocalypse, here to defeat the Dark Lord of the Vapor.

"I heard it was sick light, dude!" 

"Whoa that's a nice screen!" 

"Is it fast? I heard it was fast." 

"Passbook. How does that work?"

It only took a couple of probes for me to get overly protective. "My precious! My precious! We wants it! We needs it! Must have the precious!" Yes, I channeled my inner Gollum. Oh, the psychoses we'll go!

Simple truth is, the newness is cool. And we all want cool, however we define it. It's fresh. It's better stronger faster. Do more, go faster; be smarter, more extreme, more beautiful. It's all in there. In the nextness. America, among other cultures, built itself on growth. Its in our vernacular. Produce more, get your numbers up. Win the ballgame. Extra mile. 110%. Year-over-year growth. Seize the day. We must haves it! Budgets be damned!

Forward is the only direction the clock runs. Maybe someday we'll figure out how to put the silly thing in reverse, alter the time-space continuum etc., but for now let's just agree on this point.

No sooner than you have the latest, you start thinking about what it doesn't do. Or how it could be better, on any measure. You quickly promote yourself from irate consumer to the harsh critic, to lead QA, and all the way to executive product management. 

"I mean, how could the VP have signed off on this? Just imagine how that meeting went." 

"Apple Maps?? WTF, dude?"

"Dude, check out my Samsung Galaxy III. Screen is B-I-G! Google Maps!"

"Ooo. Maybe I should get that. <momentary pause> I heard WinMo8 is SICK! I should wait for that. When's that? Like, next week right?"

It's what we've become. It's also what we expect. Technology delivers so much for us--instantaneously technomagically. Tools, insight, sharing, productivity, communication, entertainment, medical science, security, and so much much more. It's fun. It's essential. It's everything in between. Am I glossing over its benefits? Sure am. There are certainly many cautionary tales and serious issues scattered throughout our relentless fascination with our tech. They are worthy of much more than a blog entry. The dark side--only pain and suffering there is.

Until the next one comes out. I heard it's TOTALLY SICK!

(sigh) It never ends. And we wouldn't have it any other way.