Late last week, I had the unfortunate privilege of having one of my wisdom teeth extracted due to it being partially impacted and entirely painful. The procedure itself didn’t scare me much. Rather, it was the post-operative care and trying to avoid dry socket — which can take root in the gaping hole left after the tooth is removed — that gave me pause.

Now, I had a 6:30 p.m. appointment last Thursday to get the procedure done. Obviously I was there by 6:15 p.m. — this shouldn’t be much of a shock to anyone. Now, being that this dentist office is like virtually any other medical office, I expected to wait in the chair for approximately 30 minutes. Things happen, and for whatever reason, the medical profession seems to think its fair to penalize you for being late even though they are almost never on time. Go figure.

The clock turns 6:45, and I’m listening to a news program on the television while playing Brickbreaker on my BlackBerry. No matter; I was expecting this. Then, 7 p.m. comes around — 7:15, 7:20 — you get the picture.

Now, I’m all alone in the operating room tweeting my displeasure and messaging my friend who was waiting to take me back to my apartment after the procedure. By the time it was 8 p.m., I was ready to rip out other people’s teeth, let alone my own. No one had come by to tell me what was going on.

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Karen Adler is a small business owner, an award-winning cook, author, and a BBQ Queen. She also happens to be my aunt. Adler owns her own cookbook publishing company, Pig Out Publications, based in Kansas City, Missouri and she and partner Judith Fertig travel the country offering tips on grilling and outdoor cuisine. The crowned “BBQ Queens” have been in the limelight for the past decade. From book signings to TV spots, they are extremely busy.

During a weekend trip home to Kansas City, the “BBQ Capital of the World,” I sat down with my aunt and, in conversation, mentioned a few social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. “I know I need to have a presence on those sites, but I just don’t have the time or the know-how,” my aunt told me.  Then a light bulb went off. Why not have me help her with the Facebook and email marketing stuff? Of course I accepted. To me, putting my aunt on Facebook and helping her establish a social presence is fun. For her, it’s a chore.

To my surprise, Adler knows a lot about social networking. She gets the basic premise and pointed me to companies that she thinks do a nice job of marketing themselves on the Web. She said it’s something she’s thought about for the past year or so — but just hasn’t gotten around to. With a new cookbook out in bookstores and with BBQ season in full swing, it’s no wonder that she has gotten a little sidetracked. She’s busy putting out daily business fires — no pun intended. Adler also said she’s afraid of going about it the wrong way. She showed me her Facebook profile that she had set up one day, but hadn’t yet uploaded a photo or any profile information. She’s not sure where to start.

I said I would help my aunt under one condition: She learns Facebook, Twitter, and email marketing herself. I’m happy to get her up and running, but from here on out, she needs to be the one communicating with fans on Facebook and developing the content for her newsletters. She knows her business — not me. I’m excited to see firsthand how “getting social” will affect my aunt’s business. I already have grandiose dreams of her, in real time, walking Twitter followers through steps to marinading pork chops. I’m imagining her BBQ events circling Facebook with hundreds of attendees. Pig Out Publications could find fans and followers that it would have never reached had it not been for social networking. We’re going to smart small, but it doesn’t hurt to dream, right?

For all of you small business owners out there, do you share a similar mindset when it comes to social? You know it’s important, but how are you finding the time? What has helped you overcome fears and hesitations to eventually dive into the social landscape?

Jessica Tsai is still in San Jose, Calif., but she’s moved on from the 3rd International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (her Twitter feed from that conference can be found here (Day 1) and here (Day 2), and her destinationCRM.com news story — “How Online Social Networking Explains Offline Social Behavior” – is here).

She’s now covering the Where 2.0 conference on geolocation, and we’ve collected a lightly edited selection of her live-twittering below.

More info can be found at the conference’s own Twitter channel, @where20. The hashtag for the conference seems open for debate, but tweets from other Where 2.0 attendees can be found at this Summize link w/combined results. (combining both #where20 and #where2.0 hashtags).

 

Wed May 20 09:10            At Where 2.0, first speaker: “Reality Mining for Companies: How Social Networks Network Best,” Alex “Sandy” Pentland

Wed May 20 09:33            Now Speaking: Lieutenant Sean Maday, Intelligence Officer, “Project Intersect” 

Wed May 20 09:49           Lior Ron, Steven Lee (Google) “The Evolving Geoweb”

Wed May 20 11:08           Michael Halbherr (Nokia), Christof Hellmis (Nokia gate5 GmbH), “Mobiles Around the World” 

Wed May 20 11:18            “Junk Mail and the GeoWeb Shine Light on New Orleans Recovery” Denice Ross & James Fee (RSP Architects)

Wed May 20 11:35            “Innovation Through Open Location,” Tyler Bell (Yahoo! Inc.) 

Wed May 20 11:56            “Maps in Four Dimensions,” Brandon Martin-Anderson (Urban Mapping) 

Wed May 20 13:39            “Tricky Issues With Local Search,” Danny Sullivan (Search Engine Land) 

Wed May 20 13:50            “Beyond Maps – The Hyperlocal Experience,” Mark Law (MapQuest) 

Wed May 20 14:07            “Footstreams: Clickstreams for the Physical World,” Jeff Holden (Pelago, Inc.) 

Wed May 20 14:24             “Wild Style City: Breaking the Clean Reality of the Virtual World,” Anthony Fassero (earthmine, inc) 

Wed May 20 14:34            “Wearable Sensory Substitution Devices for Navigation,” John Zelek (University of Waterloo) 

Wed May 20 14:51            “Decoding the Urban DNA and Harnessing the Power of Social Intelligence,” Greg Skibiski (Sense Networks) 

Wed May 20 14:58            “Realizing Spatial Intelligence on the GeoWeb,” Jack Dangermond (ESRI) 

Wed May 20 15:14            Panel Discussion: “Local Search: Funding Geo” -  
                                               Danny Sullivan (SE Land), Tyler Bell (Yahoo! Inc.), Michael Halbherr (Nokia),
                                               Marc Prioleau (CloudMade), Mark Law (MapQuest)

Wed May 20 16:28            “Red State, Blue State: Election Maps at The New York Times,” Matthew Ericson (New York Times) 

Wed May 20 16:42            “Putting a New Spin on Lidar Imaging,” Bruce Hall (Velodyne Acoustics, Inc.), Rick Yoder (Velodyne Lidar) 

Wed May 20 16:57            “Windows 7 – Location Awareness Made Easy,” Alec Berntson (programmer, Microsoft)

Wed May 20 17:10            Panel Discussion: “Mobile Reality” 
                                                    Raven Zachary (raven.me), Mok Oh (EveryScape Inc.), 
                                                    Will Carter (Nokia Research Center Hollywood)

Wed May 20 17:32            “DIY City: An Operating System for Cities,” John Geraci (DIYcity) 

Wed May 20 18:00            Final Session: “Where, When, Why, and How: Directions in Machine Learning and
                                                 Reasoning about Location,” Eric Horvitz (Microsoft)

 

 [The complete tweetstream, after the jump...]

Last week, I attended SAP and the Americas’ SAP User Group’s (ASUG) user conference, SAPPHIRE, in the friendly and extremely hot confines of Orlando, Fla. While I blogged, live tweeted, and wrote for the Web site about some of the key takeaways from the conference, there was a not-so-subtle lesson about customer service that I personally learned.

If you look up Type-A personality in the dictionary or, in my case, Wikipedia, you’ll probably find a picture of me. If not, you should. I like being early, having things done, and I can’t function without a to-do list nearby. I called a shuttle service the day before I was to fly back to CRM magazine’s world headquarters in Manhattan in order to arrange a pick-up from the Orange County Convention Center to Orlando International Airport.

Mind you, when I spoke to the customer service representative (CSR) at the time, she told me to be at a very specific location at a very specific time  — outside the North entrance between the two escalators at 3:50 p.m. OK. I also obtained a confirmation number, which turned out to be a lifesaver.

Fast forward to Wednesday afternoon at 3:40 p.m. Of course, I am outside in my designated location 10 minutes early on the off chance that the shuttle arrive early. I have the slip of paper with the confirmation number in my right hand, and in my left hand I have my mobile phone at the ready in case the shuttle doesn’t show up.

At 3:55 p.m. I see the shuttle coming around to my location. A small smile of relief took away the epic frustration I had for the shuttle being five minutes late. (Type-A? Me? Never …)

That smile was quickly turned upside down — again — as the shuttle slowed down slightly but didn’t bother to stop. The shuttle drove away, much to my chagrin and despite my waving frantically and yelling, “Right here!”

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As a bit of historical reference to complement Baseline Consulting partner and cofounder Jill Dyché’s guest-blogpost yesterday, we thought it might be useful to dig up an old Q+A with Siebel Systems founder Tom Siebel, conducted by our forebears here at CRM, way back in 2002.

It’s also worth remembering the days before cloud computing, software-as-a-service, and on-demand CRM — and the fact that they relied on now-disposed-of terms such as hosting, ASP (application service provider), and “the integrated enterprise.”

The more things change, the more they stay the same…

One key excerpt:

CRM: Do you believe the hosting model for CRM like the one promoted by Salesforce.com is a threat to vendors like Siebel?

Siebel: They’re not in my consideration as a competitor. I believe I have never encountered them competitively in nine years. And I am absolutely satisfied that they do not have a viable business model.

[More after the jump....]

Read on… »