iaocblog

A New Industrial 'YouTube' for the World's Engineers

Don Dunnington — Tue, 20 Feb 2007 21:16:16 -0500

Joe Taylor, publisher of the industrial websites waterandwastewater.com and powderandbulk.com, has brought online video sharing to the industrial sector. With its easy upload tool and social tracking tools (such as most viewed, viewer voting and tagging), Taylor's industrial video communities (see here and here) bring a new impetus for equipment marketers to create an entirely different breed of video.

I did a few B2B corporate and marketing videos BTI (before the Internet), and I have to say I'd do them differently today. I'd make them shorter. I'd lose the music soundtrack, and maybe the voiceover narration, too. I'd spend less of my video budget on a single video's production values and more on increasing the number of videos.

Just Show the Machines at Work

I like the simplicity of this machine demo where all kinds of foreign objects, from a rubber glove to a tennis shoe, are dropped into a shredder used to keep sewer lines clear of debris. I also like the ability video gives you to capture action. This demolition of grain silos is from Poland.

Humor also works, though the humor in this conveyor video is more for insiders. For those who missed the joke: the guy with the shovel wouldn't need to be there if the conveyor belt were just a foot longer. If you're really bold, you might even figure a way to make this "happy wastewater guy" into a viral marketing campaign.

This Bulk Solids Pump (BSP) video is a good example of what happens to a traditional marketing video when it's moved to an online video sharing site. Seeing the BSP's unique technology in action works fine, but the soundtrack is a bit out of synch. You can see same video here (bigger Quick Time file, a little better sound and picture). If I were developing this video today with Joe Taylor's new sites in mind, I'd keep it shorter and simpler and just let the machine do the talking.

How Taylor Created His Video Sharing Sites

To create his industrial video sites, Joe Taylor says he started with the free open source Mplayer (also see the Wikipedia article) and the closely related MEncoder that enables visitors to upload their own videos and convert them on the fly to a small Flash file. Taylor did his own customizing and says he spent about $2,000 on outside programming help.

Getting Around the Corporate Barriers

Forget about trying to go to YouTube from inside most corporate networks. Like many organizations, my company's IT department has setup barriers to block employee access to potential bandwidth hogs, such as music downloads and streaming video sites. Taylor's sites haven't been immune to these barriers. Sometimes marketing people can persuade IT to loosen the rules for business-oriented sites (my request to allow Taylor's sites was promptly acted on by our IT manager).

But rather than leave it to chance, Taylor has experimented with different naming conventions that might keep the barriers from ever being raised. He found that a URL like http://video.powderandbulk.com was a certain invitation for blockades to rise, where www.powderandbulk.com/videos didn't set off nearly as many alarms. With the growing migration of business into the social networks with their music and video and 3-D reality, this issue is going to become an increasing headache for IT managers.

PRWeek Career Fair

Mordechai (Morty) Schiller — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 12:48:01 -0500

PRWeek is running a free Online Career Fair. According to the announcement you can:

Meet with recruiters in online booths
Search for positions in the PR industry
Interact live with company HR representatives
Attend live webcast presentations

All from the convenience of your desktop!

Event Information and Registration
Evelyne Valls
646.638.6010

Blog Communities May Be Best Option for Small to Mid-Sized Companies

Don Dunnington — Mon, 15 May 2006 09:46:48 -0400

As I mentioned in a post on PowderandBulk.com, I was at the Powder Show exactly 10 years ago, introducing K-Tron International's first website (we now have about a dozen and the number keeps growing). Believe it or not, crowds gathered in our booth to see the Powder Show's first-ever demonstration of a website. I ran the demo from a CD because there was no broadband available then.

I'd say blogging for most businesses is at about the same point the World Wide Web was 10 years ago. It remains to be seen if business, especially small to mid-sized companies, will find the resources to enter the blogosphere to the extent they have embraced the web. I suspect that community sites like PowderandBulk.com, may become the preferred medium for most companies. Unlike the industrial "web malls" that had a brief but spectacular rise and fall, blogging communities will likely start slow and grow over time. They offer companies the opportunity to blog without the time and financial commitments, and legal risks, of hosting their own blogs. That may appeal to a broad range of companies.

Don Dunnington
IAOC President

Joe Taylor Builds His Tree House for Process Engineers

Don Dunnington — Sat, 23 Jul 2005 21:59:23 -0400

During our first blog week devoted to industrial online communication I interviewed Joe Taylor, one of the pioneers in web sites and e-newsletters for process engineers and manufacturers of process equipment.

In discussing how his web sites have helped form a sense of community among his regular visitors, I asked him if any of his regulars had sought to further the community spirit. He replied:

"Some of the regulars have suggested that we should build a tree house or start a club. There is a feeling among process engineers dealing with bulk solids that they don't have a way to congregate with their peers. There is no professional society focused on their field. Who knows, maybe a blog could help serve that end."

The idea took hold, and Joe continued to call to talk about it from time to time. Finally, a couple months ago Joe said he was going to build that tree house and asked if I would help. The PowderandBulk.com blog was launched July 18.

Joe wanted to host the blog on his own server. He chose Movable Type from six apart because he wanted to buy a commercial package that offered support. We've found the software reasonably easy to setup, and except for the lack of a rich text editor, the user interface is friendly and intuitive. Joe found a great rich text editor plug in at FCKeditor, an open source HTML editor that offers the most editing features I've ever seen in one of these tools.

Joe has just begun furnishing his new tree house. He's in the process of recruiting contributors, which I know from experience here at IAOC takes some persistent missionary work.

In IAOC's first industry blog week, Todd Van Hoosear noted that blogging has been slow to develop among engineers, with the exception of software engineering.

In our second industry blog week, Paul Gerbino, publisher of ThomasNet Industrial Newsroom and the Industrial Market Trends blog asked the question, are blogs and wikis viable industrial business models or simply light conversation over drinks at a social gathering?
Paul proceeded to demonstrate over the week how blogs and wikis are already serious tools for serious players.

Blogs n Wikis: Business Models or Drinks at a Social Gathering? Part 5 Your Comments

Paul Gerbino — Fri, 01 Jul 2005 11:08:05 -0400

Last of this series, we share comments from both blogs.

Blogs n Wikis: Business Models or Drinks at a Social Gathering? Part 4 The Corporate Wiki

Paul Gerbino — Thu, 30 Jun 2005 10:13:36 -0400

Companies are beginning to use wiki technology to create collaboration tools to save time and create centralized knowledge warehouses.

Blogs n Wikis: Business Models or Drinks at a Social Gathering? Part 3 - The Focus Group

Paul Gerbino — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:50:21 -0400

Companies are scraping blogs accross the Internet for opinions and attitudes of their potential customers.

Blogs n Wikis: Business Models or Drinks at a Social Gathering? Part 2 The Marketing Blog

Paul Gerbino — Tue, 28 Jun 2005 07:35:42 -0400

Corporations are now using blogs to communicate with the marketplace. Are they affective? What are the risks?

Blogs n Wikis: Business Models or Drinks at a Social Gathering?

Paul Gerbino — Sun, 26 Jun 2005 22:20:42 -0400

Blogs and wikis have a role in the enterprise as internal communications and colaboration tools.

Blogging at IBM

Phil Borremans — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 11:27:38 -0500

Hi everyone, just wanted to give an overview of how blogging is used at IBM.

At this moment we have ...

Communicating for communication's sake

Todd Van Hoosear — Fri, 04 Mar 2005 10:23:49 -0500

... Yes, there's feedback [on blogs]--but blog feedback is usually in tinier type, and, with a few notable exceptions, missing from a vast majority of blogs (including my own much of the time). Perhaps engineers prefer the wiki model, a much more democratic (or is anarchic a better word?) model.... I'd like to see more discussions on how to make online communication tools more effective for technical communicators. There are lots of discussions about "tone" and "voice," but engineers will be the first to tell you that content trumps tone. Without content, there is no context, and without context, there is no community....

Q&A with Joe Taylor, who may be the first to build a 'tree house' for process engineers

Don Dunnington — Wed, 02 Mar 2005 11:21:59 -0500

Joseph Taylor is the founder of two industrial websites: www.PowderandBulk.com and www.WaterandWastewater.com. His is one of the early success stories of using the Internet as a tool to help engineers find industrial equipment suppliers.

Who's Going to Write the Industrial Industry Blog?

Don Dunnington — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 14:40:35 -0500

Paul Scrivens at BusinessLogs.com writes that blogs are the digital path to word of mouth marketing. In The Power of the Industry Blog, Scrivens declares, "Word of mouth spreads quickly. Get your product a blog and get it mentioned in your industry's blog (if there isn't one, why don't you start one?)."

Industrial Advertising or a Letter to the Editor?

Mike Wasson — Tue, 01 Mar 2005 10:16:28 -0500

I must admit Blogging is a whole new experience for me. Im in favor of a free flow of information. Its my business. As Don Dunnington posted on Monday, the blog may not have passed muster with my first brain as a trusted source.

B2B's Emotional Gatekeepers

Don Dunnington — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 17:07:54 -0500

I first came across the primitive-brain-as-gatekeeper idea in You've Got to Be Believed to Be Heard by Bert Decker (1992), a good guide to effective speaking that also offers insight into communication theory.

How Do You Communicate with Engineers?

Don Dunnington — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 10:41:21 -0500

Does emotion play a role in online industrial communication? The question is more ofen addressed in the consumer market, as in Margie Weinsteins report, Getting Emotional about Branding from the National Retail Federations 94th Annual Convention and Expo. Her post covers a presentation by psychiatrist and author Dr. Clotaire Rapaille.

Welcome to IAOCs Industrial Blog Week

Don Dunnington — Mon, 28 Feb 2005 08:20:05 -0500

Industrial Blog Week is originating from South Jersey (Southern New Jersey for those beyond the reach of the Philly cheese steak). If you drove two hours north of here, youd come to Paterson, New Jersey, where Alexander Hamilton founded the Society for Establishing Useful Manufacture.