JADN: Gerba's take on key advice for newbies
April 10, 2008 by Dave Haynes
Smart people would look on a map of the northeast, think for a second or two, and conclude that driving from Montreal to Manchester, NH makes a a lot more sense than flying.
So here I sit in row 7 of 9 on something called a Beech 1900D, in hour five of my 6-plus hour journey through Toronto to the city where Segways were schemed up.
Next time, we drive …
On the plus side, lots of time to write … as long as I angle my laptop into the 12-inch wide aisle.
I didn’t actually have that much time to take notes at JADN, and some of the presenters did their thing in French – a language I have commanded, despite high school classes many centuries ago, only to the level of Please and Thank You and Can I Get Another Beer?
However, I did sit down and scribble notes from Bill Gerba’s afternoon presentation on five pieces of advice on how to set-up and run a network, based on trapping inbound call information and client experiences at Wirespring, where he is CEO. He’s probably had this stuff on his blog, but it is worth repeating here in abbreviated form:
1 – Know your business model
– figure out how, why and if your digital screens are going to add value to the environment, and ask yourself if that can be quantified
– understand what’s in it for each stakeholder
– learn to recognize successes, whatever they may be
– learn to recognize failure and to change course as needed
2 – Understand your goals
– set goals before deploying and get everyone on the same page
– figure out how goals translate to value and check progress against goals
– redfine those goals as needed
3 – Build a solid team
– Please God have someone on the team who comes from the industry you are targeting, ie health care, retail
4 – Avoid common pitfalls
– like assuming your partners always have your best interests in mind
– not being creative about growth and exit strategies, as well as strange bedfellow partners
– underestimating working and capital costs (take a number and triple it)
– being afraid of financing
– starting an ad network and not knowing a lick about ad sales (96 per cent of the people Gerba’s company tracked on that went out of business)
5 – Learn from the mistakes of others
– how many times have you been stuck in meetings with God’s answer to digital signage? You know, the guy who already knew everything and essentially invented the industry.
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