Previous posts: here (Part I), here (Part II), here (Part IIb), here (Part III), here (Part IV), here (Part V).

Wherein Our Hero Eats Turkey & JetBlue Makes Boo-koo Bucks Off of Him

It’s been a while since my last post, admittedly, but with good reason. As I said in a previous post, I acquired a nice little nest of 35 points for buying the All-You-Can-Jet and got quite close to a free roundtrip.

Thanksgiving has put me over the threshold, which, this year, in terms of JetBlue eating my money, was significant.

You see, my dear CRM-heads (to retool a phrase we use over at Speech Tech), I was an awful procrastinator buying tickets to fly home to Florida this year. For a while I wasn’t sure, because of work, whether I would even make it. I ended up having to contend with the mercenary fares the airlines charge two weeks in advance of the carbon-emission-nightmare free-for-all that is holiday travel.

[More after the jump...]

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So here’s a new feature: We’re going to start aggregating each month’s posts, for easier reference.

We’ll start this off with a few groupings from the month of October — which, if you’ll permit a moment of horn-blowing, I have to say I’m really proud of. We covered a lot of ground in the month, literally and figuratively, with staffers filing on-the-scene dispatches from nearly a dozen events at various locations nationwide, and guest-blogposts from not only our regular contributors but several newcomers as well.

October also marks the introduction of these monthly archives (which, one hopes, will appear sooner after the end of each month), and compendiums of coverage from all the big events (which, one hopes, will appear sooner after the end of each event). In the Comments below, I hope you’ll let us know if we’re giving you the kind of material you want.

For starters, here’s a blog-only exclusive, one I hope you’ve been watching all along:

Eric Barkin’s “Eric Across America” series of blogposts, a firsthand look at JetBlue’s “All-You-Can-Jet” promotion from the perspective of a participant:

• Eric Across America, Part I: The Story of One Man’s Journey into the Heart of JetBlue and JetBlue’s Entry into the Heart of That Man http://sn.im/dcrmblog100909b
• Eric Across America, Part II: Buying the JetBlue Pass http://sn.im/dcrmblog101209b
• Twitter Drove JetBlue Promotion — Eric Across America, Part II(b) http://sn.im/dcrmblog101309c
• Eric Across America, Part III: Booking Flights http://sn.im/dcrmblog101509a
• Eric Across America, Part IV: Trouble in the Contact Center http://sn.im/dcrmblog102009b
• Eric Across America, Part V: JetBlue Levies a Penalty? http://sn.im/dcrmblog102609b

And our posts from this year’s Oracle OpenWorld #oow09:

• Hello From OpenWorld ’09 http://sn.im/dcrmblog101209a
• GUEST-BLOG: The Perplexities (and Fun) of Oracle OpenWorld, by Beagle Research Group’s Denis Pombriant http://sn.im/dcrmblog101309b
• A Keynote That Will Pump (Clap) You Up http://sn.im/dcrmblog101409b
• GUEST-BLOG: Overloading on Oracle, Both Good and Bad http://sn.im/dcrmblog101409c, by Third Idea Consulting’s Marshall Lager
• GUEST-BLOG: Cloudy Computing at Oracle OpenWorld http://sn.im/dcrmblog101409d, by Third Idea Consulting’s Marshall Lager
• Also keep an eye out for our compendium post of #OOW09 coverage from across the Web.

The rest of the month’s posts — including coverage from The Conference Board’s Social Media Summit, the DMA 2009 show, eMetrics ‘09, the RightNow Summit ‘09, and Forrester Research’s Forrester Consumer Forum — are after the jump.

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• Keep your eyes peeled: you never know who might sit down next to you — a potential mentor, a potential partner, or, in the case of presenter Soren Stamer, a potential wife. Stamer, who presented Tuesday morning on “Surviving and Thriving in a Web 2.0 World” met his wife two years ago at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. The German citizen soon thereafter relocated to San Francisco and the two have, thus far, lived happily ever after in a Web 2.0 world.

• Remember the Skittles social media marketing campaign where they put any and all consumer tweets and Facebook mentions on their homepage? It came as no surprise that people started posting inappropriate messages for a short-lived giggle or claim-to-fame. Who would have guessed that something similar would go down at a conference full of professional adults?

Web 2.0 conference coordinators probably didn’t see this coming when they had the idea to broadcast a real-time Twitter stream on a huge screen on the keynote stage. The tweet stream was enjoyable, albeit slightly distracting, to follow along with. And I’ll admit, I got a little giddy every time my #w2e tweets made it on the screen. The Twitter stream lost its cool factor when some attendees turned on a presenter, making harsh remarks about Danah Boyd’s keynote delivery.

I’ll admit it–Boyd struggled to connect with the audience. She hardly looked up from the document she read straight from and went through her slides at lightening speed. It’s too bad because her concept was intriguing. Boyd’s Twittering post-presentation indicates that she heard laughter in the audience and deflated. Following Boyd’s keynote, the conference coordinators began monitoring the tweet stream, to avoid the rude comments that were previously broadcast. So thenceforth, the stream was a few minutes delayed and only a portion of tweets were streamed. I guess that’s the price that must be paid. Although we are all adults, childish impulses seize to fade.

• Thank you, Chris Brogan for flat out telling me I’m a fool for using Twitter’s Web client. TweetDeck has changed my life … and made me that much more addicted to Twitter.

• Apparently soggy wraps and brick-like sandwiches is all the Javits Center is capable of. Thank goodness for IBM’s Sweet Tweets candy stand. Seriously great idea. If anyone from IBM is reading this, big kudos to whoever hatched that plan.

• I had been missing out on a lot of hilarity occurring on Twitter thanks to The Onion Editor Baratunde Thurston. Please if you haven’t done so already, check out the handle Thurston created, The_Swine_Flu. Receiving a notification saying “The Swine Flu is now following on Twitter” seriously made my day. Thurston spoke about “There’s a hash tag for that” and said, “[Hash tags] seem to be these tiny grassroots movements… They are also a great way to mess with people.” Thurston showed hilarious tweets involving the following hash tags:

#howblackareyou, #worldthinnestbooks, #unseenprequels, #next4dobbs, #webrunchhard, #twammogram, and #greatmomentsintwitterhistory.

Web 2.0 was a lot of fun. Thanks to all the conference staff members, session leaders, and keynote speakers for making it a great show.

Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference has barely opened its doors and there’s already plenty of howling going on.

Yesterday, I reported that Microsoft had set up an ersatz truth squad for the event. Today, SugarCRM joined the act.

[Editors' Note: According to SugarCRM representatives, 1,000 copies of a "book" were distributed at San Francisco's Moscone Center in advance of this morning's opening keynote by Salesforce.com Cofounder, Chairman, and Chief Executive Officer Marc Benioff. The "book" is a send-up of Benioff's recent Behind the Cloud memoir, excerpts of which appear in CRM's November 2009 issue about Salesforce.com's 10-year history.

Lisa Holden, a spokesperson for SugarCRM from Schwartz Communications, told CRM magazine that, as of noon Pacific Time today, a Salesforce.com customer has already confirmed its switch to SugarCRM as a result of the company's offer for "a free data migration for Salesforce.com users through the end of the year."]

After the jump, you’ll find the email I received, in its entirety — along with my commentary on SugarCRM’s move.

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By Tien Tzuo, cofounder and chief executive officer, Zuora

I spent nearly a decade at Salesforce.com, eventually as chief strategy officer, and I learned first-hand what it takes to build a $1 billion company. (In fact, I’m trying to do it again.)

[Editors' Note: Zuora was named a Rising Star in CRM magazine's 2008 CRM Market Awards.]

We’re really looking forward to Dreamforce 2009. Our company has grown significantly since last year’s event, and we’re eager to catch up with the Salesforce.com community. I’ve worked closely with the AppExchange partner community, while at Salesforce.com and now Zuora, and I’ve seen it grown to 500+ companies. And still, every company wants to learn how to run its business like Salesforce.com.

The market for cloud computing is $160 billion, according to a report by Merrill Lynch. Every major software company in the world has launched a software-as-a-service (SaaS) initiative to become part of this cloud-computing phenomenon. And they’re all trying to achieve the success seen by Salesforce.com.

The fact is, it took Salesforce.com 10 years and 111 plays to reach $1 billion, 60,000-plus customers, and 1 million-plus subscribers.

And on top of that, it was expensive. Salesforce.com had to raise $65 million in capital, hire and staff more than 3,000 people, and build its own systems to support its growth.

So, how did Salesforce.com grow in less than a decade from a start-up in a rented apartment into the world’s fastest-growing software company?

In his new book, Behind the Cloud: The Untold Story of How Salesforce.com Went from Idea to Billion-Dollar Company — and Revolutionized an Industry, Marc Benioff reveals 111 “plays” for starting and running a successful business. I want to share my top 5 strategies for implementing these plays:

1. Multiple Editions: Salesforce.com offers multiple product editions, so they can easily target different customer segments, verticals, and markets. For example, companies with small sales departments can get up and running with Group Edition, while others might select Unlimited Edition to get their entire company on board. Either way, Salesforce.com can easily attract new business from a wide variety of potential customers.

2. Free trials: When you visit www.salesforce.com, it’s hard to miss the offer for the free 30-day trial. Free trials have always played a big part in Salesforce.com’s customer-acquisition strategy, and it’s easy for trial users to become customers: They can automatically convert their trial into a paid subscription with a few clicks.

3. Compliance: Salesforce.com has always played by the rules when it comes to compliance. Seek out vendors who make it safe for you to do business, especially when it comes to payment processing. Gateways such as PayPal, CyberSource, and Authorize.net are trusted payment gateway names.

4. License management: If you’ve ever purchased Salesforce.com licenses, you know that Salesforce.com manages upsells, upgrades and renewals better than most companies. Salesforce.com has tools in place to automate renewals, notify reps when trials expire, and alert them of a potential upsell. The sale is never final. You need tools to help you manage the entire lifecycle of your business, from the initial order to renewals, upgrades, and upsells.

5. Metrics: Know your numbers and you can plot your next move. If you’ve ever listened to CFO Graham Smith rattle off net new subscriber revenue and monthly recurring revenue (MRR) on Salesforce.com earnings calls, you know that the company is metrics-driven. You need full visibility into key subscription metrics — such as MRR, churn, and renewal rates — in order to make real business decisions.

By implementing these core Salesforce.com plays, you can really drive your business to the front of the pack. Attempting to build these capabilities yourself eats up precious time and resources you could be spending on your core products.

Take Marc’s advice in Play #8: Work only on what’s important. See you at Dreamforce!

Widely recognized as a thought leader in the software-as-a-service industry, Tien Tzuo cofounded Zuora after 9 years at Salesforce.com. Zuora’s platform provides pricing and packaging flexibility, support for free trials, credit-card orders with PCI compliance, subscription lifecycle management, and metrics. While holding various executive roles at Salesforce.com, he built that company’s original billing system, and oversaw the vision, direction, and design of the first 17 releases of the company’s award-winning product line. In 2004, Tien was named CMO of the Year Finalist by the CMO Council and BusinessWeek Magazine.

Salesforce.com's Dreamforce 2009 "Chatter" swag #df09 (Photo: Jessica Tsai / CRM magazine)

At Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce conference in San Francisco’s Moscone Center, CRM Associate Editor Jessica Tsai is live-twittering Marc Benioff’s opening keynote as we speak — find her tweetstream at @jesstsai, and the conference hashtag is #df09; her coverage will appear here on the blog and over at destinationCRM.com for the rest of the week.

Meanwhile, we thought we’d thrill you with the live-twittering from the company’s conference call with media and analysts last night to discuss its third-quarter financial results.

Benioff and CFO Graham Smith were on the call, and you can find my tweets after the jump.

But first, a teaser — and Comment bait:

• Tu 11/17 Promising a major, MAJOR pair of surprise guests on Thursday at #df09. #Benioff
• Tu 11/17 [Any guesses about #Benioff's teaser? @ciscosystems' John Chambers? @Google's Brin/Page? Leave them in the Comments, below...]
• Tu 11/17 One last guess (for now) abt the “major, MAJOR” guests #Benioff teased for #df09 on Th: #Apple’s Steve Jobs? [Benioff talks at length in his new book about his admiration for Jobs, dating back to Benioff's short stint at Apple in the ’80s.]

Benioff, you’ll recall, made a shocking appearance at Oracle OpenWorld last month — in fact, he referenced it in the conference call (see below). Earlier in the month, Denis Pombriant, founder and managing principal at CRM consultancy Beagle Research Group, casually wondered if Larry Ellison might return the favor with an appearance at Dreamforce.

Oh, and here’s the company’s Q3 press release, if you want to read the whole thing.

Salesforce.com is twittering under its corporate handle (@salesforce) and also under an event-specific channel for Dreamforce (@dreamforce).

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Some 19,000 people are expected at Salesforce.com’s Dreamforce 2009 and we’re all filing into the conference hall awaiting CEO Marc Benioff’s morning, two-hour-long keynote.

I’m set up in the sweet press/analyst section where we not only have Internet connection but outlets! (After going to as many shows as we have this season using laptops with abysmal battery life, I think it appropriate to get excited about this perk.)

Anyway, if you’re tweeting, you probably already know that this year’s hashtag is #df09 and I welcome you to follow me as I live-tweet the event at @jesstsai. You can follow the coverage on the Dreamforce Blog or join their Facebook page.

This year marks the company’s 10th birthday and the sky’s the limit for this company. We recently published our November issue of CRM magazine covering the company’s past, present, and future. Let us know what you think!

Not surprisingly, CRM magazine’s been covering this company for quite sometime. Want to take a trip down memory lane? Trace the company’s growth across our stories from Dreamforce dating back to the conference’s inception in 2003.

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The harder retailers work to get us to buy on their products, it seems, the lazier we can be.

Who needs to go into the store now that product recommendation engine RichRelevance and interactive marketing firm, and member of the Augmented Reality (AR) Consortium, Zugara just unveiled Fashionista, a solution that allows shoppers to try on items using a computer and Webcam.

I met with RichRelevance’s CEO David Selinger when he came down to our offices last week and I was seriously impressed by the solution. Sure, there were a few bugs to work out around oversensitivity and stuff like that, and when I tried out the solution, the size of the sleeveless dress didn’t quite “fit,” making it seem more like I was a plus-sized paper doll and all that was left were petites. Anyway, Selinger assured me the various bugs would be addressed. The product just launched yesterday with its first customer online retailer Tobi.com.

As stated in the company press release, here’s a brief description of how Fashionista works:

Fashionista creates a totally individualized and engaging customer experience from three core components of emerging media, technology, and eCommerce:

Augmented reality combines real-world and computer-generated data where computer graphics or objects are blended into real-time footage.

Motion capture recognizes and records an individual’s movements and integrates them into an on-screen model. Hand motions enable the user to virtually navigate backward or forward on screen to select clothing, indicate preference, and take a photo.

Personalized clothing recommendations deliver a highly engaging and individualized shopping experience based on the current shopper’s session as well as “wisdom of the crowds.” Recommendations are displayed and updated based on immediate user feedback on preference.

Here are a few screenshots of the solution:

Or, watch the video on how to use the solution here.

The product is available on RichRelevance’s enRich personalization platform. Learn more about the product on RichRelevance’s site here.

Today, open-source CRM pioneer SugarCRM announced that the “interim” has been officially removed from now Chief Executive Officer Larry Augustin’s title. I had the chance to speak with him in advance of the announcement about what he is most looking forward to in his role, as well as the future he sees for open source and cloud computing.

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In a move that many will claim to have seen coming, Xactly Corp. is announcing tomorrow that Liz Cobb — founder of both Centive (recently acquired by Xactly) and Makana Solutions (acquired, even more recently, by Salary.com) — will be joining the company.

Cobb will be handling Xactly’s small-to-midsize business (SMB) initiatives — a role reflected in her new title: general manager of SMB solutions.

In an exclusive interview with CRM, Cobb and Xactly President and Chief Executive Officer Christopher Cabrera revealed how Cobb came aboard at Xactly following the sale of Makana Solutions to Salary.com.

Stay tuned for more, both here and over at destinationCRM.com.