Must. Be. AWESOME!!!

As regular readers of this blog know by now, I had quite a journey getting to present at the Gov 2.0 Expo this year. I’ve spent enough time talking about that preso. Now it’s time to talk about the Expo itself.

There have been metric shitloads of wrap-ups, reviews, commentaries, and think pieces following the Expo. I’ll try to sum up my experience there without repeating too much. (See links below to some of the better wrap-ups.)

First and foremost, I have to give Laurel Ruma, J.B. Wheatley and the rest of the O’Reilly staff huge props for hooking it up for me. Laurel greeted me with a great big hug when I arrived, and her enthusiasm never wavered. The speakers’ lounge gang was a delight as well, providing a great place to meet new connections like David Hale from the National Institute of Health and longtime Twitter pals like Chris Rasmussen.

I expected a lot of cogitation, pontification, and general assholery from this conference… par for the course of most govvie conferences in DC. However, I was pleasantly surprised that the gov in Gov 2.0 was better represented by hyperlocal government (cities, counties, townships) than the federal monstrosity here in DC. While we eventually got to see presos from Price Floyd (Defense Department) and Alec Ross (State Department), their remarks were not near as inspiring as the things coming from local yokels like Joshua Robin (Massachusetts Department of Transportation), Steve Corbett (iStrategy Labs), and Melissa Jordan (Bay Area Rapid Transit). It was really AWESOME and inspiring seeing these representatives and enthusiasts of city and township government speak about crowdsourced apps, programs and ideas that are revolutionizing the way their local governments are engaging with and supporting citizens.

These combined perspectives on citizen engagement of local government really speak to me given my work with Sister Cities International. If it’s one thing my mom taught me (she’s the president of Fort Worth Sister Cities) it’s that the relationships that matter most to government change are those between citizens. And it’s important to remember, government employees are citizens too. People at the Gov 2.0 Expo showed me how true and effective that can be, especially when you activate those citizens’ AWESOME and let them come up with some really badass shi’ to help their local communities and governments.

There were some really great presos that I won’t go into too much detail here, but you should check as many of them out as you can on the Expo’s YouTube channel. I particularly enjoyed the mashup of marketing, Maslow, and media sciences that Dan Zarrella used to scientifically study social media. Kathy Sierra’s talk about passion (and call for a LOLcat Translation Project for the Federal Acquisition Regulation) was much more fun than I’d expected, and surprisingly cooler than Gary Vaynerchuk’s keynote.

Finally, the Expo’s social events were great places for me to connect with people I’d only engaged with online. It was AWESOME drinking beers and shooting the shit with Steve Radick, Chris Ramussen, Steve Ressler, Andrew Krzmarzick, and Steve Lunceford; and meeting new friends like Chris Bennett, Chris McCroskey (hmmm, AWESOME Gov 2.0 peeps seem to go by the names Chris and Steve….), Jacque Brown, David Hale, and the boys from Palantir. As a social animal myself, it was pretty rad to hang out with these cats and others that felt like “fellow travelers” in our particular, individual quests for AWESOME government.

In closing, the source of inspiration for any good Gov 2.0 discussion… TENACIOUS D.

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Sign outside the lecture hall at the American Art Museum where Darwyn spoke.

I never got a chance to blog about Darwyn Cooke‘s lecture at The Smithsonian American Art Museum a couple months ago during the Snowmageddon. Instead, I thought I’d share a couple of the notes I furiously typed into my iPhone during the event and some pics I managed to snap. Apologies ahead: I own a first gen iPhone 3G and the camera sucks, so picture quality is kinda meh.

He speaks with a gravelly voice, like the chief of a newspaper or a Parker-like character from a film noir. He’s reed thin and possessed of a certain class, as if he’s living in the same ’60s of which he so adoringly speaks. He wears a crisp suit and looks comfortable and smooth.

Cooke did all his own lettering for his adaptation of "The Hunter."

He gets choked up when he speaks of Westlake. He’s visibly awed by the legendary writer’s effect on him, how Westlake became the wonderful person Cooke always hoped he’d be. His voice cracks when he mentions Westlake, and his droopy, hound dog face grows longer. There’s much love in this man.

Cooke regaling us with tales of AWESOME.

He tells a story of how he remembers the smell of his dad’s Old Spice cologne. His father would put on a jacket and tie to go dancing with his mom.

Cooke reads from Donald Westlake's original novel, "The Hunter"

Cooke’s 1960s is chock full of art, where furniture and cars are individual masterpieces along with typography, book covers, and more. To Cooke, things just looked good in the ’60s… as opposed to the boring little metal boxes people drive around in today.

A page from Cooke's "The Hunter"

Cooke shuns the label “creator” or “artist.” To him, he’s an entertainer. A storyteller. A workman-like view towards his chose profession: no nonsense and no pretense.

“You can’t sell Red Tornado comics to real people. They wanna read about… skiing!”

Regarding technology, Cooke spoke of how animated the title sequence to Batman Beyond on a Mac in his spare bedroom. It blew traditional animators’ and media techs’ minds at Warner Brothers, who had up until that time, shunned the use of such devices to develop new animation.

Darwyn Cooke, ladies and gentlemen.

Cooke pointing out the elements of AWESOME in his work.

Darwyn sketched Parker when he autographed my copy of "The Hunter"

Darwyn also sketched Green Lantern when he autographed my Absolute Edition of his masterpiece "DC: The New Frontier"

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One of the coolest personal experiences I’ve had of late involved meeting and hanging with a bunch of cats from Palantir Technologies, a Silicon Valley-based company that rocks a pretty cool data analysis tool. I’ve known about their software for some time, and I’ve heard good things about their products and services from some of their clients in the Intel Community and DOD. What I had not experienced, however, was Palantir’s AWESOME corporate culture.

I met Palantir’s Drew and Jon at the Gov 2.0 Expo in DC, where Palantir had spared no expense in setting up the biggest and baddest-ass booth in the entire expo hall. Instead of developing the same old tired convention booth marketing concept, Palantir had designed a cool little area in which to simply hang out and get to know their people. Drew described it as their “mullet booth: business in front, party in back.” While they flaunted the customary multiple widescreens on which to demo the Palantir system, the real draw of the booth was the pleather couches and full-on Wii gaming setup they had going on behind it. Oh yeah, and they were serving their visitors complementary beer. Motherfucker, JAM.

What Drew &  Jon showed me was a corporate culture that valued their people’s AWESOME way more than their products and sales of their products. As I learned, Palantir is all about its people. They let their teams self-organize to solve problems, and they provide tons of on-site perks that enable a creative, fun atmosphere. I got the chance to see this culture of AWESOME in action when I got invited to Palantir Night Live at Palantir’s Tysons Corner office last night.

Pro setup at Williams Sonoma? Nope. Just Palantir's AWESOME kitchen, complete with daily catering menu for its peeps.

Every month, Palantir Night Live features a rad speaker in the national security, intelligence, tech, or other related community that Palantir touches. Last night it was Michael Chertoff, former Secretary of Homeland Security and Skeletor lookalike. The event is a social one and underlies a key facet of Palantir’s people-based marketing strategy. The draw of this event has little if anything to do with the company’s products and everything to do with its culture. Palantir peeps are young, hip folks who enjoy socially building their business. So that means they value facilitating knowledge exchange (via AWESOME catering and bar service) amongst a variety of people in their social business circle. You saw govvies rubbing shoulders with bloggers at Palantir Night Live.

I would be greatly interested in seeing the sales leads generated from events like these, if those are even metrics Palantir tracks for the success of its marketing events. As a social business, I see Palantir experimenting a lot more in non-traditional selling, i.e. allowing its community of interest (customers, personnel, etc) to recommend the company within existing trust networks.

Skeletor-- er, Chertoff, draws the hotness of DC blogger "K Street Kate."

How well this works for the company’s business development strategy remains to be seen, but I can attest to the AWESOMEness of the culture. Their focus on people really underscores the value of a social business. Palantir doesn’t even use a whole lot of social media marketing because their in-person social marketing works so well.

I should also mention that a couple of my former Detica colleagues got picked up by Palantir when that company was unceremoniously acquired and assfucked. One whose work I respect a great deal told me how much he loves his new job and how he feels great working for Palantir. It’s people like this guy whose trust is based more on social culture than the old work-reward hierarchy that tells me there is something imminently special about Palantir. I would LOVE to work with these cats if given the chance.

For more on Palantir Night Live, check out the Twitter hash #pnldc and @palantirtech.

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(Preface: I’ve been wrestling with whether I should use Must.Be.AWESOME!!! as a venue to write about my experiences, opinions, and encounters with any one of the thousands of consumer brands with which I come into contact. Ultimately, I’ve decided to write about only the ones that display some sense of AWESOME about them and not abuse this blog as a platform for complaining. Whatever the subject, we’ll call this The Experience Series.)

Everyone I know has had some kind of problem with Comcast Cable in the past. Be it service interruptions, poor internet speeds, limited channel selection, or crappy equipment, Comcast is like the AT&T of television and internet providers. My own poor experiences with their customer and technician services date back to 2004, but this post will focus on my most recent encounter with them, which was also my first exposure to their @Comcastcares Team.

Image courtesy of Crown Heights.info

I’ve been getting gang raped on my Comcast bill for years. There’s a very specific menu of services I want from them, often which don’t correspond to any of their packages. HDTV is important, fast internet is important, but home phone service I could care less about. In fact, if my condo association allowed satellite dishes, I would have already transferred over to one of the digital satellite companies because of their wider offering of HDTV programming. I am, unfortunately, stuck with Comcast.

This makes me an easy customer to forget about. My options for gravitating toward the competition are limited, especially since Verizon’s FiOS hasn’t been extended to my neighborhood. Comcast essentially has me in a stranglehold, so why should they waste valuable customer service time placating me?

This time, I decided to air my concerns over Twitter to @comcastcares, Comcast’s realtime Twitter customer service handle. Much has been written about Frank Eliason’s success in satisfying Comcast customers via Twitter, so I won’t rehash. Suffice to say, Frank has a whole digital outreach team now that monitors Twitter for any mention of Comcast. Where they find users complaining, their instant answer is, “Can I help?”

The instant gratification of this attention is great. One of the team members replied to me pretty quickly. I explained my dissatisfaction and described what I would ideally like to receive. The conversation moved from Twitter to email where the team member indicated she would like to get more details and then engage other Comcast people to figure out what they could do for me. This all sounded reasonable to me, and I loved the interaction.

However, interaction dost not make satisfaction. The team member who had taken my issue never responded back to me. After a week with no contact, I prodded her to remind her. Nothing. Frustration level: elevated. So I took back to Twitter and blasted out another series of tweets describing how @comcastcares abandoned me… just like Comcast’s usual phone-based customer service. This time, I got replies from two different digital outreach team members. I had to re-explain my situation and forward the email trail to these new folks.

Within a day, I got a phone call from a customer service rep named Lisa who then connected me with another rep in my area. (This was the first inclination to me that there may be a disconnect between their corporate offices, where @comcastcares sits, and regional offices, where accounts are managed and technicians dispatched. More on that later.) Lisa, as it became apparent to me, had been assigned as the “case manager” for my issues.

My local rep, Darcy, was supercool. Darcy examined my account, saw how I was indeed spending way too much money, and made several fixes that would save me about $50 a month on my bill. Furthermore, she arranged for a technician to come out to replace my aging wireless internet setup with a faster one, and even credited my account for a couple free movies. THAT was AWESOME customer service. I only had to wait for the technician to arrive a few days later.

Here’s where it got real frustrating, and this part serves to really illustrate the critical disconnect between Comcast Corporate and Comcast Regional Office Wherever. First off, the technician called me at the end of the three-hour window in which I was to have waited for him and told me (in the worst broken English I’ve ever heard) that he didn’t have any of the equipment he needed to upgrade my home setup and that I would have to call Darcy back and schedule another setup time. This was completely unsatisfactory, demonstrative of Old Comcast that didn’t give a shit about its customers and employed Lazy Assholes.

I called Darcy and Lisa back. More phone calls were made. Broken English Tech called me back saying he would actually get off his ass and go get the required piece of equipment from his office and come back later in the day. Thanks, buddy. You’re a class act. Lisa promised to call me back later and check to make sure everything was fine.

Broken English Tech arrived at my home and immediately set to his mission of showing me how inept he was at his job. After connecting the new device to my modem, he could not figure out why the interwebz wouldn’t come on and proceeded to call someone at his home office to literally walk him through how to fix the problem. Once he was finished, I asked him if he would help me connect what was supposed to be a new wireless router to my laptop.

Take a breath. It gets RETARDED after this.

Broken English Tech informs me that this new piece of equipment isn’t a wireless router. I ask him why I would want another router that does nothing beneficial to my connection at all and forgo all of the wireless networking I have set up in my home. His answer to this is to call his boss and receive top cover for telling me I was shit out of luck, buddy. Call your local Comcast customer service rep.

Image courtesy of The Contrarian

I am barely containing my fury at this point in time. I have internet but no wireless networking, so now my fiancee and I can’t work from home at the same time. Thanks, Comcast. Lisa calls me back to see how the installation went. I give her a double barrel shotgun blast full of ARGH. There’s just no excuse for this kind of idiocy, and I have to reschedule with Darcy again to have a technician come out and re-install the wireless router.

The next day, as I’m contemplating whether I’ll tweet about my Comcast experience, I realize my internet connection on my desktop has stalled out completely. The lights are on but nobody’s home. Cue one metric assload of Twitter-induced fury. Frank Eliason himself picks up my angry tweets this time and manages to remotely activate everything so that I’ve at least got some connection. If he could do all that remotely… why the hell do I need an incompetent technician to come into my home and push a couple wires together?

A second technician appears the next day, this one much more understandable, affable, and competent. He installs the new router. He does some courtesy tests on my connections, TV and internet, to make sure everything’s working properly. He helps me set up the wireless networks on all my peripherals. It’s all good in the neighborhood this time.

Now I have three separate devices taking up space in my office: the cable / phone modem, a wireless “booster” (which has no real appreciable speed increases over my old equipment), and a wireless router. It looks like the prop department from The Matrix downstairs.

After all is said and done, Lisa and the corporate Comcast customer service peeps are all in agreement that the level of service I received was unacceptable. The most telling facet of this whole experience is how shitty local customer service can totally destroy any positive virtual customer service. I appreciated their acknowledgement of that fact. I also appreciated Lisa and Darcy making personal phone calls on their own time to check up on me and make sure everything had been straightened out. While there’s only so much someone can do from behind a phone, those two really made me feel like I was being taken care of.

Here to help Comcast with future customer service upgrades, I offer a simple breakdown of the highs and lows of this, My Comcast Experience:

The Good

• Quick, timely communication from the customer service reps
• Reps genuinely wanted to make things better
• Reps had authority to credit accounts
• Technician #2 was friendly, competent and effective

The Bad

• Long wait time behind initial request for help
• Technician #1 incompetence
• Technician #1 laziness
• Technician #1 unable to communicate effectively
• Services not fixed to standard
• No technical follow-up to ensure everything’s working properly
• Obvious gap between corporate and local customer service
• Comcast equipment is still not high end

More on Comcast:

• Comcast’s Twitter Man (Business Week)
• A Former Customer Berates Comcast (Comcast Sucks)
• Comcast Voices: The Official Comcast Blog