Here are the Categories and the link.

Here are their rules:

About The Weblog Awards

The Weblog Awards are the world’s largest blog competition with over 545,000 votes cast in 2007 edition and nearly two million votes cast in all editions since 2003.

For The 2008 Weblog Awards open and public nominations in 48 categories began on November 3, 2008.  Voting for selected finalists is expected begin in early December 2008.

The first thing I read today was by Carter Lusher on this subject.  He calls it getting them to Change their presentations.

As always it is a good read and of importance to Analyst Relations.  After talking about this subject to analysts before, during and after presentations and conferences, I’ve developed my personal pet peeve list.

His example was an executive using a sales presentation for a deck which happens about 387 out of 365 days a year.

With that lead in, here is the list of issues I’ve thought about having done or been a part of close to 1000 analyst presentation decks (likely over that number).

1. Carter is right, don’t bring your sales presentation to the table, instant credibility loss.

2. If you can’t get your message delivered in 15 charts or less, you likely have clarification issues.

3. Analysts (most people) look at the number of charts and immediately judge what point they are going to listen to before they check email.

4. Send it in advance and ask what is clear and what is important to them to get to the point.  If you have to get through a couple of set up charts fine, but say that in advance.

5. No chart is golden, (many) could (should) be sacrificed.

6. Discussion about strategy and technology is a much better use of time than chart after chart preaching.

7. Don’t take offense in chartsmanship, most people aren’t that good at it.

8. If the analyst wants to go off the charts, be willing to go as long as you stay on topic.

9. Use A/R to speak to the analyst before the briefing/discussion/meeting/conference to see what is the analyst goal and actually make charts to answer the issues, not pound your chest on what your end of year rating is based on.

10. Accept criticism where appropriate, the analyst is right.

11. Never fail to have a chart to say, what do you think or are we on topic, message, right course or other to let the analyst offer advice or opinion.

12. Consider using web conferencing if your audience is over 10 people.

13. Personal opinion here - I hate powerpoint, it’s been used as a crutch for too long and we were able to get our job done well prior to it’s invention.  Please someone invent the next tool.

14. A presentation deck has a life.  Don’t recycle charts too long.  I’ve seen analyst eyes glaze over with “I’ve seen this before blaring in neon” on their face.

15. Be aware of your audience.  We at IBM run more conferences than months in the year by at least double.  I’ve seen the same charts at multiple conferences where I knew their were the same analysts (this is a similar comment to 14).

16. Leave time for questions at the end.  Don’t look at the time and gauge the number of charts you can cram into it.

17. Give the analyst a copy if you haven’t sent it to them upfront.  Sometimes there are circumstances that prevent one from sending early (the executive didn’t finish until 5 minutes before the presentation, been there and done that double digits).

18. If there are multiple executives presenting, have them compare notes prior to the briefing so they don’t conflict or aren’t redundant.

Today is Veteran’s Day.

We honor and remember those who fought for the Freedom of our country and fought side by side with those who are now or were friends of ours.

It is important to never forget that Freedom isn’t Free.  Man has been at war since he was put on the face of the earth.

We appear to be on that track until the end of our existence. While I don’t advocate war, pacifism has always lead to tragedy because of the ruthlessness of those who seek power, ignore borders and human rights.  Even Osama is predicting an attack.  Like him or hate Bush, the war has been an away game since 9/11.

Here are links to Veterans Day that I found interesting:

From John Ray: Click on it to see these pictures.

The 11th of November in 1918 was when the First World War officially came to an end. And that day has been formally marked every year since in remembrance of those who died. When I was growing up it was known as Armistice Day in Australia and I still think of it as that. It is however now formally Remembrance Day. It is Veterans Day in the USA. It is perhaps a little more significant this year as the 90th anniversary of the event. Britain certainly seems to have been engaging in more than the usual amount of commemoration in the last few days.

Anything by Blackfive (a 4 part series this time)

Likewise for Murdoc

A great Picture from Knowledge is Power

Dedicating the Intrepid. A Carrier that saw plenty of action and sacrifice.

Michelle Maulkin Linkfest

US Dept of Veterans Affairs

Atlas Shrugs

Make that 1.3 million plus 2, my wife an I.

I can’t have had a worse customer service experience with a company (I don’t own a Dell, so trust others).  It wasnt’ so much that they didn’t have service where I live, but that they were rude to me and had to call me on my land line to tell me I had service in my area because when they called my cell phone the service died (lack of signal strength).  They wouldn’t let me out of my contract so I waited, and waited, and waited….it was worse than a kid waiting for Christmas.

Few will argue that our economy is suffering.  Those with great customer service will have loyal customers, even through the tough times.  I am a devout Capitalist, I vote with my dollars.  Needless to say, the very day my contract was up, I was gone.

My choices are few where I live.  Many kids are told by their parents, do you think we live in a barn (because of their lack of neatness).  I actually live in a (converted) barn deep in the woods.  So it was down to Verizon or ATT.  Given the corporate tendencies of ATT which go against beliefs I hold, they were out so off to the Verizon store for me.

I ran into Matthew Doede who was my Customer Service Rep, I was able to get a contract and phones and I will say excellent customer service.

At the end of the day, it is about customer service.  This applies to phones, computers, software and yes…Analysts (oh btw, Analyst Relations too).

The Phone Saga

I actually wanted an iPhone, but given that ATT was out, so was the iPhone.  I wanted the capabilities of the phone like touch screen, international capability and 3G (plus cut and paste, plus a video recording, plus sms and mms, plus no Google unless I want to) so the options were pretty much limited to a phone that hasn’t been released yet.

Update: I bailed on the blackberry because I didn’t want the contract and the phone just wasn’t compelling enough at this point.