InfoSol Archive

BI Visionary Santiago Becerra to Deliver Keynote at IBIS 2012

By
Paul
Published: April 9, 2012Posted in: Blog Featured, IBIS, Paul Blogs on BITags: , , , ,
BI Visionary Santiago Becerra to Deliver Keynote at IBIS 2012

There have been two majorly inspiring and revolutionary solutions in the world of Business Intelligence in the last decade and one person, Santiago Becerra, has been behind both of them.

The first was Xcelsius, the data visualization dashboard tool that rocketed first Business Objects and then SAP to the forefront of business intelligence dashboard solutions. Santiago once told me that the idea for Xcelsius came about after a casual conversation with one of his sons, who was a computer game developer, about making business applications more visual and interactive like computer games. Santiago had created “Gamification” before it had even become a word (according to Wikipedia it was first used in March 2004 several years after Xcelsius was created). Xcelsius was not only ahead of its time, it was a game changer for Business Objects after they acquired the company from Santiago in late 2005 as within two years it was their hottest selling product and was taking over as the user interface of choice for business intelligence.

Roambi Cardex on iPad

After seeing Xcelsius successfully settled into Business Objects, Santiago moved into semi-retirement but his visionary mind could not stop conjuring up new ideas. After seeing a line of people queuing up for an iPhone, he bought one for himself and became intrigued by its visual display capabilities. This led to inspired, revolutionary BI solution number 2. Gathering together some of the original team that had made Xcelsius successful and some very talented developers, he created the most spectacular BI visualization solution ever seen on a mobile device – Roambi. Today, Roambi is the leading BI visualization solution for mobile devices with a plethora of awards and an ever increasing global presence, Some of the Roambi views like Cardex and Squares have got to be seen to be believed (especially on the iPad) – these are designs of pure genius. You can download demo versions for free off the iTunes store.

Roambi Squares on iPad

Needless to say, I was ecstatic when Santiago Becerra agreed to deliver the keynote address at this year’s IBIS 2012 event. With the theme of the conference being Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0, it is a perfect match-up. Few people have contributed more than Santiago to inspiring the world of Business Intelligence.

Equally as exciting, is a new executive seminar track at this year’s IBIS also entitled Inspired Business Intelligence 2.0 that will consist of 12 customer presented case studies on some pretty cool and inspired BI solutions. The final list of customer presentations will be announced in a couple of weeks so stay tuned.

In the meantime, I suggest you reserve a place at IBIS 2012 very soon as the event is limited to just 250 attendees and seats are filling up fast.

Register now.

BusinessObjects E-Learning Deal of the Century

By
Paul
Published: March 14, 2012Posted in: Blog FeaturedTags:
BusinessObjects E-Learning Deal of the Century

We all love a good deal whether it’s a “buy one, get one free” pizza or free wiper blades with your oil change.

However when it comes to SAP BusinessObjects training, the deals traditionally tend to be somewhat fewer and more conservative. In a survey that InfoSol conducted last year amongst BusinessObjects users, one of the main reasons cited for not attending an SAP BusinessObjects training class was cost.

As an Authorized SAP BusinessObjects Education Partner, InfoSol will frequently offer special deals on training courses from discounts to giving free SAP Press books with certain courses.

At the same time, more and more people are finding that they simply do not have the time to attend a 2-day or 3-day instructor led training course or that they need to train people from many different locations and the cost of bringing them all together in one place on top of the cost of the training itself is way too high. For this reason self-learning or e-learning courses have become increasingly popular. These courses allow you to train from anywhere at any time.

However, the downside to e-learning is that you have no instructor or topic expert to go to ask questions if you do not understand something. This can diminish the effectiveness of the training as well as cause great frustration for the learner.

So InfoSol has put together a new training offering that brings the best of all worlds together: BusinessObjects Certified e-learning courses, and access to a live instructor, all for a “deal of the century” price. We’re calling it the E-Learning Plus Offering

InfoSol is now offering the new SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Subscription Library which offers more than 60 BusinessObjects E-Learning courses, everything from Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports, Xcelsius, Explorer, Live Office to the new BI 4.0 offerings along with up to 90 minutes access to a live instructor. You have access to all these courses on-line and the instructor for a period of 12 months. You can take as many as you like as many times as you want. In addition, if any new courses are released while you are subscribed, you will have access to those as well at no additional charge.

So how much do you think this would cost? Well if you subscribed to all those courses individually, the cost would in excess of $10,000 and the subscription period would only be 6 months and that would not include access to a live instructor.

The cost for this new InfoSol BO E-Learning Plus offering for 12 months is just $2,000! Incredible!

If you need additional live instructor assistance beyond the 90 minutes, you can purchase additional time at a special discounted price.

In addition to the SAP BusinessObjects Business Intelligence Subscription Library, there is also the SAP BusinessObjects Administration and Data Services Subscription Library with over 40 courses on BusinessObjects Administration, Migration, Universe Design and Data Services (Data Integrator, Data Quality). This library is available also for 12 months with up to 90 minutes of access to a live instructor at the same $2,000 price.

So how do you sign up for the “Deal of the Century”?  Just email education@infosol.com.

 

Looking for Inspired Business Intelligence Solutions

By
Paul
Published: March 1, 2012Posted in: Blog Featured, IBISTags: , , , , ,
Looking for Inspired Business Intelligence Solutions

Last week I was visiting a customer in the transportation business. They were showing me a new safety business intelligence dashboard they were working on to analyze accidents and crashes. The first phase of the project focused on all accidents and crashes over a three year period. With more than 16,000 commercial vehicles on the road every day, this is a lot of data to analyze. However, what really struck me was the incredible number of ways they were able to slice, dice and analyze this data in the dashboard looking visually at data by region, depot, type of vehicle at the same time as looking at personnel and all the different categories of accidents and to compare all this at different time periods.

I was floored by the incredible amount of detailed information available at the click of a button and had to ask the question as to how much data was actually available to the dashboard. The customer explained that they had reduced the amount of data from about 500,000 rows to about 300,000 rows by organizing it as a cube in their Teradata Data warehouse and were loading it daily into the XML Data Cache (XDC) and using their XDC connectors in the Xcelsius dashboard solution.

They then showed me phase 2 of the project where they had placed a series of bubble charts on top of a geographical map to show location and type of accidents. They had built in the ability to zoom in on different regions of the country which was really cool.

But what really blew my mind were their plans for phase 3 where they are looking to collect geographic location information from the vehicles which are all equipped with satellite navigation systems that would transmit the location of the accident. The Business Intelligence dashboard would then display where most accidents and accidents of the same type were happening down to the exact street location so they could look for patterns and trends.

This is a truly inspired business intelligence solution and one of many that I am seeing these days. It is for this reason that at this year’s IBIS 2012 event in Dana Point, CA in June, there will be a 3-day Executive Track dedicated to “Inspired Business Intelligence Solutions”.

The track will consist of 12 inspired BI solutions presented by the customers themselves that created them. We have already encouraged several customers to present their solutions but we are still looking for a few more.

Inspired people with inspired ideas create inspired BI solutions so if you would like to submit your solution for this year’s IBIS and receive a $500 discount if selected then Just email ibis@infosol.com  a description of your inspired solution focusing on the following points :

- Why did you create it?

- How did you create it?

- What were the benefits?

Please include any additional diagrams, screenshots, documents, quotes , photos or anything else that will help to further explain your inspired solution. Also provide your contact information and the best times to call you to discuss your entry.

Of course, if you would just like to come along and listen to 12 highly informative inspired business intelligence customer case studies and save $400 then be sure to Register by March 31 to take advantage of the early bird discount.

 

InfoSol Delivers through Riots and Earthquakes

By
Paul
Published: October 30, 2011Posted in: InfoSol, Paul Blogs on BITags:

Portland, Oregon is definitely a rainy place as I discovered this weekend while attending the Net Impact conference but it is also known for its bookstores, micro breweries, bicycles and weirdness.  These last two items come together when Portland holds its annual naked bike race every summer.

I went to dinner with two of my colleagues from InfoSol, Amy and Teresa, who live and work out of Portland. Teresa was halfway through a two week engagement delivering Xcelsius design consulting services at a client in Oakland, California. She loves her weird home town of Portland so much that she flew back for the weekend.

So I asked her how the project was going and she casually answered, “Fine but it has been difficult to eat out some nights and get some sleep”.  Teresa then explained that the hotel she was staying at is less than a block from City Hall, downtown Oakland where the local Occupy Wall Street movement has been camping out and where things got a little out of control this week.

So the night the trouble started, she was walking down the street heading  for a restaurant when she ran into a solid wall of Oakland police officers decked out in full riot gear. She turned back and stopped in at a Subway to get a take-out sandwich to bring back to the hotel.  She tried to hurry the guy making the sandwich but those “sandwich artists” take their work seriously. As she was paying she saw streams of protesters heading past the Subway in the direction of the riot police and then all hell broke loose as she heard explosions (probably flash bang grenades). By the time she got outside, it looked like a war zone and she scurried back to the hotel.

There was little peace there due to the three police helicopters hovering outside her hotel room on the 26thfloor making sleep almost impossible.  Then, just as she thought she might doze off, there was an earthquake causing the building to both shake and sway.

I sat there, hardly believing what I was hearing. Most people would have just packed up and gone home at that point but Teresa delivered her first week of services and will be back again this week to deliver the rest.

Last month another InfoSol consultant, Simon, was delivering Data Integrator services in Washington DC when an earthquake caused the ventilator in the middle of the room to come crashing down. Fortunately nobody was hurt and he finished the services in another location after the building was evacuated.

Wow – this kind of dedication is nothing short of inspirational. Teresa and Simon – you rock!

Xcelsius on iPad and iPhone Wows Attendees at IBIS Welcome Reception

By
Paul
Published: June 20, 2011Posted in: Blog Featured, IBIS, InfoSol, News, Xcelsius, Xcelsius End UserTags:
Xcelsius on iPad and iPhone Wows Attendees at IBIS Welcome Reception

IBIS 2011 kicked off last night with its welcome reception and solutions showcase demonstrating some of the latest business intelligence solutions and one solution in particular created quite a buzz – MyBI Mobile.

As I walked around the showcase showing Xcelsius dashboards running on an iPad, people stopped with looks of disbelief mixed with wonder.

“How are you doing that?”

“Xcelsius doesn’t run on an iPad or an iPhone”

Well, I am happy to report that with MyBI Mobile, not only does Xcelsius run on an iPad and an iPhone, but also on an Android. And it not only runs but it sings too! It has a fabulous simple menu system to serve up different content on the device and that content can also be Crystal Reports, Web Intelligence, Desktop Intelligence in addition to Xcelsius. With Web Intelligence you can also create new reports from the mobile device – that’s cool! When viewing and interacting with the content, you can perform a “pinch and zoom” action on any part of the screen to automatically enlarge that area of the dashboard or report.

While many companies have invested in building both dazzling and effective Xcelsius dashboard business intelligence solutions, they have often been challenged when trying to find ways to move these to mobile devices. The operating system for the IPhone and IPad (iOS) does not support Flash and SWF outputs natively but with MyBI mobile the barriers have been lifted. You can now take your key Xcelsius dashboards and just serve them up on iPads, iPhones and Androids without changing them and interact with all the features just the same as on the PC.

I cannot express enough how incredible this is and what it means to the millions of Xcelsius users around the world who want to take their dashboards mobile  - you are free of your shackles and you can now deliver Xcelsius to the most popular mobile smart devices out there.

I recently heard there are an estimated 200 million iOS devices in use today and now all those users can enjoy the full functionality of the amazing data visualization of Xcelsius through MyBI Mobile.

If the excitement at IBIS is anything to go by, you will certainly be hearing and seeing a lot more of this solution in the coming months so stay tuned.

They say that you are known by the company you keep – IBIS 2011 Partner Update

By
Paul
Published: June 12, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBIS, InfoSolTags: , , ,
They say that you are known by the company you keep – IBIS 2011 Partner Update

With only 7 days to go until the start of our annual IBIS I wanted to blog about some of our partners that will be joining us this year.  They say that you are known by the company you keep and it is with great excitement that I get to welcome the following partners to our Inspired Business Intelligence seminar.

Centigon Solutions – Ryan Goodman and Evan DeLodder (California, USA)

Centigon provides add-on components for Xcelsius dashboards like GMaps for incorporation of Google Maps in your dashboards and a group of neat components know as the Essentials Bundle. InfoSol resells these offerings and includes the Essentials Bundle in our InfoBurst Dash solution. Centigon is an Onyx sponsor at IBIS 2011 and will be demonstrating their solutions at the Solutions Showcase on Sunday and Monday evening.  Ryan Goodman, Centigon Founder and Xcelsius evangelist will be delivering one of the keynote addresses on Inspired Dashboard Solutions on Tuesday morning. He will also be leading two sessions in the “Next Generation of BI” track (Track 7). Evan Delodder the CTO and product architect at Centigon will be delivering the 2-day FleXcelsius boot camp in the IBIS Post-seminar offerings on the Thursday and Friday after IBIS. This boot camp will teach you how to build your own Xcelsius components in Flex.

Keyrus – Klaus Binder and Aurelien Vadi (France)

Keyrus, a large Consulting company based in France has also developed some add-on solutions for BusinessObjects, like Version Manager for version control of universes and reports. We partner together, with Keyrus reselling InfoBurst in Europe, and InfoSol reselling Version Manager in the US.  They are an Onyx sponsor at IBIS 2011 and will be demonstrating Version Manager at the Solutions Showcase on Sunday and Monday evening.

Blueprint Management – David Searro and Mike Saunders (U.K.)

Blueprint  a specialist consultancy that creates business intelligence and data warehouse platforms for improved performance management and financial planning is also one of our partners and an InfoBurst Reseller in the UK.  David Searro is from the senior management team at Blueprint and Mike Saunders is a technical specialist.

Affecto – Jesper Schultz-Pedersen (Denmark)

Affecto is a BI Solutions Company in Denmark covering Scandinavia and the Baltic States.  Jesper is a technical specialist. 

CTTSI – Michael Ward (Michigan, USA)

CTTSI (Creative Technologies and Training Solutions Inc.) is based in Michigan. They offer training and consulting in BusinessObjects and have been a long time partner with InfoSol.   Michael is the President and Owner of the company.

You can find links to other InfoSol partners on our website.

image credit: presentermedia.com

Keeping IT Executives Current with BI Technology

By
Paul
Published: May 5, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, IBIS, InfoSol, Paul Blogs on BITags: , , ,
Keeping IT Executives Current with BI Technology

I recently interviewed a college student who told me that his ambition was to be an IT Director.  He was completing a college program in computer security and had worked as an intern doing network support in the IT department at a large organization.  I did not want to burst his bubble, but most IT Directors I know spend half their time dealing with budgets and administration processes, and the other half in meetings.  They spend very little time exploring and brainstorming over new technologies, innovations and ideas for revolutionizing IT in their organizations.

However, a successful IT Director does need to keep abreast of current and new technologies and IT innovations and compare their processes and ideas with their peers in other companies and organizations.  Unfortunately it is often a challenge to find both the time and the forum to do this effectively.

At best, most IT Directors will only have time to attend one or two conferences or technical seminars a year.  Most such forums typically last three days and will run multiple tracks to provide more choice to a wider audience.  Some events try to be more generic in terms of technology but most will be specific to particular applications, software products or technologies.  However, these types of conferences tend to be put on or sponsored by software application or technology companies, resulting in a disproportionate number of marketing oriented sessions to promote products rather than to educate.

It was with these factors and IT managers, directors and executives in mind that InfoSol created a series of highly informative executive seminars at this year’s InfoSol Business Intelligence Seminar (IBIS).

IBIS is well known for its hands-on immersion training boot camps on different BusinessObjects products, but there has been an increasing demand for concentrated and effective seminars on key  new Business Intelligence technologies as well as how to effectively utilize the latest and greatest BusinessObjects solutions.

There are three Executive Seminar tracks at IBIS 2011.  One covers the new and enhanced offerings with the latest release of the SAP BusinessObjects suite, namely XI4.0.  The sessions in this track will both explain and demonstrate live the new capabilities and educate attendees on their key benefits.

A second track (The Next Generation of BI) covers new and emerging BI technologies with particular emphasis on mobile BI which is of great interest to all these days.  There are also sessions in this track on geographic BI solutions, in memory databases for BI and integrating with internet data sources and applications.

The third executive track (Business Intelligence for Executives) is designed for managers and executives to have a better understanding of all the facets involved in planning, managing and executing a successful BI project.

In addition to the information packed seminars, there are case study demonstrations, customer and expert panel discussions, and plenty of opportunity to have real quality one-on-one information exchanges with peers.

The entire event is limited to no more than 250 attendees, ensuring that it remains a productive and quality gathering for everyone.

I hope you will join us at this year’s InfoSol Business Intelligence Seminar.

Inspiring Business Intelligence

By
Paul
Published: February 25, 2011Posted in: Business Intelligence, Events, IBIS, InfoBurst, InfoSol, Roambi, XcelsiusTags: , , , , , ,
Inspiring Business Intelligence

A few weeks ago I was participating in a career event at a State University where undergraduate students from both Business and I.T. schools were looking for internships with local businesses.  As they stopped by the InfoSol table, the number one question was “What do we do?”  This gave me the opportunity to talk about one of my favorite topics – Business Intelligence.  While most of them had heard of, or even studied, Business Intelligence as part of their courses, few appeared to understand its significance.

The table next to us was a major airline company and I used them as an example, citing that in the recent economic downturn, airlines had to make some tough choices in terms of reducing costs.  They needed to know which aircraft cost the most to maintain and which routes were the least profitable.   That information allowed them to make informed decisions about reducing aircraft and routes with minimal impact to their business and their customers.

I could see the lights go on in their young faces which encouraged me to tell my current favorite Business Intelligence story.

At last year’s InfoSol Business Intelligence Seminar (IBIS 2010), one of the winners of the prestigious Xcelsius Dashboard Awards was a manufacturing company from the Netherlands.  They explained that they were deploying a new manufacturing execution system and wanted to provide some engaging and compelling business intelligence from this system to both encourage usage and provide useful information that was previously unavailable across the company.  They decided to create a business intelligence user interface using Xcelsius.  It would provide in excess of 120 different metrics, deployed graphically and dynamically, about the different production line processes broken down to individual shift level.  The dashboard was dynamically refreshed through the unique intelligent caching mechanism from InfoSol and the impact of this application exceeded the expectations of this company.  For the first time, production, and issues encountered on the production line, was viewed by the entire company and the results were quite revealing.  The dashboard showed that one particular shift was measurably behind all the other shifts.  Since this was visible throughout the company, the workers on this particular shift felt they needed to do something about this and took it upon themselves to correct the issues and improve productivity so that they were on pace to do better than the other shifts. 

What a totally amazing side effect, but one that truly exemplifies not just the power, but the inspiration that can be derived from Business Intelligence.  It was with this example in mind that the theme of this year’s IBIS event “Inspiring Business Intelligence” was born.  There are so many fascinating and inspiring business intelligence stories like this and IBIS 2011 will be based on sharing some of these stories as well as offering an incredible line up of immersion boot camps, executive seminars, training workshops and specialized certification programs. 

IBIS is unique in so many ways as it goes beyond the regular SAP BusinessObjects training to teach best practices that go beyond the conventional ways of designing, developing and applying business intelligence.  The individuals leading these boot camps, seminars and workshops are not just teachers; they are highly experienced consultants, mentors and gurus in their field.

The knowledge transfer that occurs at IBIS is intense and the opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences unparalleled.

IBIS 2011 features hands-on immersion boot camps in Xcelsius, Web Intelligence, Crystal Reports and Xcelsius Data Caching.  The executive seminars cover best practices for success in business Intelligence projects, what’s new on BusinessObjects XI 4.0, and emerging business intelligence tools and technologies.  The main seminar is three full days and the registration is fully inclusive of four nights accommodations at the jaw dropping Ritz Carlton Laguna Niguel on the southern California coast (inspirational in itself!).

New to IBIS this year are some very special certified boot camps which will be held on the Thursday and Friday directly after the main event.  These include the renowned FleXcelsius course from Centigon Solutions, teaching you how to create your own Flex components for Xcelsius.  The Roambi Black Belt certification and the InfoBurst Certified Expert (ICE) boot camps will also be offered. 

Most importantly, there will be the coveted Best Xcelsius Dashboard Awards, which are quickly becoming legendary.  The awards are open to everyone and the deadline for submitting your inspirational dashboard entry is April 15th.  You can enter your dashboard in one of the following four categories:

-          Best Business Dashboard

-          Most Innovative Dashboard

-          Most Valuable Dashboard

-          Most Xcellent Dashboard

To submit your dashboard entry, click here.

I know that some of the students who stopped by our table left inspired by what they heard about business intelligence just based on the slew of follow-up enquiries.  In fact we have invited two interns to join us starting today. 

I also know that anyone attending IBIS 2011 will undoubtedly leave more inspired about business intelligence than before they came – don’t miss out!

Register today – Early registration discount expires March 31st.

Europe Trip 2010: Day 6 Snowboarding Lessons

By
Paul
Published: April 18, 2010Posted in: Business Intelligence, Europe Trip 2010, InfoSol, Paul Blogs on BITags:
Europe Trip 2010: Day 6 Snowboarding Lessons

After my previous disastrous attempts to ski when I visited my son last year, he suggested I try snowboarding. When I told him I had heard it was more difficult than skiing, he just shrugged and said that I couldn’t do any worse. I figured he had a point and agreed to give it a shot.

After spending 20 minutes putting on all the protective equipment and some bright purple pants that my son insisted were an essential part of any serious snowboarder’s attire, we headed for the slopes where he showed me how to strap my boots to the snowboard.  The next part was significantly more challenging, namely how to stand up when attached to your board. After scores of failed attempts that amused the groups of youngsters watching to no end, my son finally showed me that if I rolled on my belly and then pushed myself up while facing up the mountain, I could actually stand up without immediately falling over again! Of course, this made me look like a beached whale, but it did work!

My first run down the slope was not very graceful and ended with a spectacular head first crash into the snow.  On my second run I collided with my son who bravely tried to slow me down and paid the price as I simultaneously wiped us both out.

The third and forth runs were not actually bad as I completed a couple of 50 yard runs at some speed. Amazingly, I survived my first ever 90 minutes of snowboarding with no broken bones or serious bruises but I was so exhausted from all the falls and attempts to stand up, that I could barely move a muscle.

As we sat and ate lunch, my son explained that I did better on a snowboard than I did on skis because my feet were locked in a position on the board and I could not move them like I can with skis.

Sometimes when there are less options or steps involved, we tend to master them quicker.  The same is true in Business Intelligence. If you give a user a Universe or View with access to hundreds of objects in different databases and a tool like Web Intelligence for self-service query and analysis, they will usually struggle to create any type of useful report, get themselves tied up in knots and become frustrated to the point of blaming the tool and not wanting to use it again.

If, on the other hand, you create a small specialized universe or view for a user with just a few relevant objects and a pre-made report that with which they can start, they have less options and directions to choose and they can master the tool a lot easier. They can still add, delete, modify, sort, filter and save in different formats but they are working from an already created report and do not have an overwhelming number of choices to select.

While many Business Intelligence tools have become more powerful, feature-rich and versatile, most users just want information delivered in a simple, easy-to-understand way and do not want to spend time learning products and becoming experts in tools that they may not use that often.

InfoSol has developed many self-service business intelligence solutions using Web Intelligence, Xcelsius Dashboards and InfoBurst and applying best practices to allow users to get immediate benefit from them without weeks of training and usage.

Now, not everyone wants to be a casual user and those individuals should take more advanced training.  But, for the novice snowboarders like me, just standing, staying up and gliding for 50 yards is great!

Europe Trip 2010: Day 5 The French Alps – Social Networking in the Snow

By
Paul
Published: April 13, 2010Posted in: Europe Trip 2010, InfoSol, Paul Blogs on BITags:
Europe Trip 2010: Day 5 The French Alps – Social Networking in the Snow

A weekend in the middle of my trip gives me the opportunity to visit my son who works and snowboards in the French Alps for six months of the year.

He has to work on the Saturday so he sets me up in an Italian restaurant /pub with WiFi so I can catch up on a week of being out of the office. So for four hours, I diligently work away as various interesting characters come in and out – mainly to use the bathroom but sometimes for food or a drink.

At about 6 pm, I hear a lot of noise outside in the street; a combination of shouting and honking car horns.  Then suddenly, this man with his pants around his ankles and wearing a thong and a tiger mask bursts into the restaurant shouting in English with a strong French accent, “I am not John Lennon, I am John Lion!”

He continued to repeat this mantra multiple times as people either stood there smiling or made a quick exit in the opposite direction. Since the people in the bar (the smiling ones) offered him a drink and patted him on the back, I figured that this was not an uncommon occurrence.  A few minutes later my son shows up to tell me that it was this guy’s birthday and that before he came into the restaurant, he had run into his shop minus the thong!

When my son finished work, we went to a different restaurant for dinner which also had free WiFi for customers and since I still had my computer, my son wanted to show me a couple of things on Facebook.  We ended up on my Facebook page where I had very little written on my wall so I decided to post a message saying, “Visiting my son in the French Alps and watching naked Frenchmen running around in the streets”.

Now I only have about 15 friends on Facebook who can see my messages but within minutes I had 7 or 8 responses to my posting in addition to several requests to become my friend!

In this tiny little example, I had learned firsthand the power and effectiveness of social networking and viral messaging on the internet. No wonder so many businesses are shifting their sales, marketing and collaboration focus to this medium.

It is no longer sufficient just to have a nice looking web site to promote your business or interact with your customers and prospects. Without an internet social networking presence  through Blogs, Forums, Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook and others, many businesses and institutions are simply missing out on marketing, sales, technical, cost savings, recruitment and collaboration (just to name a few) opportunities .

There is no other medium in the world today where information can be disseminated to so many people so quickly.

So get ready to see a lot more from InfoSol in the social networking arena in the coming weeks and months but that will not include video clips of naked Frenchmen running around in the Alps.

Related links: InfoBurst 2009 YouTube channel and 9 ways to use social networking for blog promotion

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