Tech Forward:

Well, I arrived safely here in Los Angeles to speak at the Executing Social Media conference tomorrow. I could have done without the toddler who screamed all the way from Kansas to Los Angeles, though. Someone should have told her that’s not the kind of social media we mean.

I read on Peter Shankman’s Twitter feed that he’s arrived here, as well. If you don’t know who Peter Shankman is, find out by subscribing to his Help A Reporter Out (HARO) service. It’s real, legitimate, free leads for media coverage. My company has received some great coverage by responding to some of the queries that come through his mailing list–and no, it’s not just tech stuff.

I took a nice walk around Old Town Pasadena today and I really like it. I can live here, but lately I’ve been saying that a lot about everyplace but New York. Hmmm . . . maybe there’s a small change brewing?

Pasadena is great, relaxed and the peeps are really friendly. You can wear flip-flops in just about every fancy restaurant. I collect art and I try to pick up pieces from my travels, so I asked a few local Pasadenans what Pasadena is famous for and they all said the Rose Parade. Soooooo . . . since I missed that, I’ll take a few pictures of the gorgeous architecture and leave it at that. Maybe I’ll have a fewshots framed.

Anyway . . . the conference starts tomorrow. I’ll try to do some live blogging, but I have a session to lead and a roundtable to orchestrate, so I’ll do what I can to keep you informed of what’s going on here.

Stay tuned…

Business travelers (and I’m one of them) have to worry about a plethora of things when flying to a meeting or to make a presentation… Did I remember hard copies of the presentation? Did I bring the projector? Are our ideas strong enough? Do we have time to rehearse? Am I going to make my flight?

The folks at Projector123.com make our lives, travels and presentations easier.

They rent LCD projectors online and will send the projector via next-business-day delivery by FedEx to any location in the United States. Whoo hoo!

All the projectors they stock are simple to use, capable of HD quality, and they’re sent with a little step-by-step guide to the set-up process. And just in case you get caught in a bind, a 24-hour support line provides immediate technical assistance.

Finally, a service that makes sense and, if they can deliver on their promises,that’s  even better!

I’ll get back to the answers to the question from Part 2 in a moment.

Right now, Greg Spragg, executive vice president of merchandise for Sam’s Club is addressing the women. I kinda’ like his style . . . right away he poked fun at the fact that he’s one of the only men in the room.

He just shared a story about Martha’s Place, a restaurant in Montgomery, Alabama. Turns out some of the people who started Sam’s Club gave Martha a two-story building to use–for free as long as she needed it–as the location for her restaurant. Today, Martha’s Place is nationally known and is a “must-do” for anyone who visits the Mongomery area. Hey, if it’s good enough for Angela Bassett, Whoopie Goldberg and Walter Matthau . . . I might want to check that out.

I never thought I’d say it, but “Good on ya, Sam’s Club!”

Leaders of small businesses are more hands-on and more involved in the daily operations of their businesses; many take on IT in addition to their other responsibilities, according to CDW’s Small Business Driver’s Seat Report released today. The study also identified some significant differences in technology strategy, experience and plans among women-owned small businesses.

The study found that 69 percent of executives of women-owned companies with five to 18 employees are “totally involved” in IT decisions, and 50 percent of executives of women-owned companies with 50 to 99 employees are “totally involved” in IT decisions.

Additional findings indicate that women-owned companies adopt core technologies in line with other businesses, but lag slightly in hiring dedicated IT professionals and adopting data warehouse/business intelligence tools.

For a complete copy of the CDW Small Business Driver’s Seat Report, please visit www.cdw.com/driversseat

People are overloaded and completely innundated with e-mail. I’m one of those people, and I’m getting to the point where I’m seeking out solutions to the madness.

One of the things I’m trying is a new product called Email Center Pro, from the good folks at Palo Alto Software.

They say it’s supposed to be great for companies that have multiple e-mail accounts to check, but I’m finding that it’s great for any super-busy person.

It lets you delegate e-mail, add notes to each e-mail and do other stuff that you’ve always wanted to be able to do with e-mail. The interface is easy to use, so the learning curve is looooow.

If you want to try it with me for 90 days for free, I’ve only got 30 invites. First come, first served. Click here to try it. The form should automatically add “LenaMedia” in the promo code section.

Drop back to comment and let me know what you think…

You Need to Be A Little Crazy to have a conversation with Barry Moltz, but that’s a good thing.

People who are as creative and inventive as Moltz break molds and don’t follow conventional thinking. I like-y. As my mentor-in-my-head, Roy Williams, would put it, “Barry is my brand of crazy.”

After thoroughly enjoying his keynote–complete with Nerf ball blaster and the permission to be a bit of a slacker (thanks, Barry!)–I cornered Moltz at the Small Business Technology Summit and spoke with him about his latest book, Bounce! Failure, Resiliency, and Confidence to Achieve Your Next Great Success.

Check it out…

I’m not sure what’s going on in your company, but we’re growing every day.

When I founded xynoMedia, my intention was to build a completely virtual company with low overhead and enough flexiblity so that our team can enjoy their lives and get work done. I wanted our company to benefit from the input of global citizens, which is why we have teams working all over the world.

We have administrative assistance in Australia, development teams in the States and in South America, and writers in Canada.

If you want to build this kind of an orgnization, you need some sort of secure online collaboration tool. Something like CatalystWeb’s product CatalystOffice.

At the Small Business Technology Summit, I asked Bob Mathew every single hard question I could come up with based on how my team uses our online collaboration tool, and I was mucho impressed (it’s not that easy to impress a New Yorker).

Listen for yourself…

Right now, CatalystWeb only works with Firefox…but, you’re using that as your default browser anyway, right?

While I attended the Small Business Technology Summit in February, I had the opportunity to have a Tech Forward Convo with Jennifer Walzer of Backup My Info (BUMI).

Jennifer’s company offers a much-needed service to businesses–you already know how I feel about proper backups, and Jennifer offered some really critical information about new legislation involving the use of Social Security numbers online…along with a tip about BUMI’s new service, Qwipit, to help businesses bypass such challenges. Can you say, $250,000 fine?

Take a listen…

If you’re a public relations professional–or an above-average entrepreneur–you’ve probably wondered how you can get bloggers to talk about your business…in a favorable way.

Late last year, I was a guest speaker on a webinar that was geared toward PR agents. Prior to that I had had extensive conversations with business owners and PR pros about social media–and most honestly admitted they had no idea how to make social media work for them. They saw it as this black hole of yet more new technology that wasn’t going away as previously thought but, in fact, was taking the world by storm.

During my speaking tour last year a frustrated woman actually asked, “Who are these bloggers? What do they want from us? What drives them? Why do they care?”

Truthfully, most companies DO get it all wrong and end up angering the bloggers with whom they want to become allies. But, you? You’re lucky…you know me and you read this blog. That doesn’t have to happen to you.

That’s why I wrote The Blogosphere Cluebook–to show you, step-by-step, both what to do and what NOT to do when befriending bloggers. It’s not the War and Peace on social media influencers by a long shot, but it will serve as a bit of a North Star in the confusing world of widgets and wikis.

The book is free to download, post on your site or blog or e-mail to colleagues and friends.

Over at Utterz, the topic of conversation is “Service Interruptions: How Long is Too Long?”

It’s a good question.  And it piggybacks (is that a word?) on a topic I wrote about a few days ago: the ins and outs of disaster recovery.

Our company provided direct relief efforts for businesses affected by 9/11 and Hurricane Katrina, so I know of what I speak.

Of the cases that were assigned to us, we could only help 20 percent get their business’s technology back on track. That means 80 percent of businesses went under.

And, believe you me, it wasn’t for lack of skill, expertise or effort. We tried. They tried. We all tried. But, ultimately there is not much you can do for a company that:

• Doesn’t have an off-site back-up of its critical files;
• Has a backup device that has never been tested and, when push came to shove, the device malfunctioned or couldn’t restore for some other reason;
• Can’t supply a complete contact list of suppliers, clients and alliances for communication and notification;
• Doesn’t have enough money in the budget to replace destroyed equipment;
• Has not identified an off-site location to set up temporary residence; or
• Does not have access to project files, business planning documents or even legal and financial documentation.

Your clients may very well be raving fans. Your suppliers may routinely go the extra mile for you. Your alliances may deliver value-added service for your clients time and time again.

However, at some point, your clients/alliance partners/suppliers will have to get back to business, with or without your company on board.

Business is not personal; business is business. And your colleagues simply will not wait forever for you to get your act together.

Here’s a clip from an email I just received:

“Properly applied, the strategies revealed during this event will allow you to have an autopilot, never-ending flow of new clients pounding down your door–PLUS–a simple technique to create info products for passive revenue. “

Or what about this one:

“Never work again. There’s a new book out that explains that you don’t have to work as long or as hard as you think you do…”

For some reason, people think that the internet is going to make them rich. It reminds me so much of the old “Fool’s Gold” days.

I do believe in working smart and being strategic. I really do, but no amount of strategy in the world is going to bring in $12,000 of online income a week in the first week of business–unless, of course, you have $10,000 per week to spend on marketing and promotion. It just doesn’t make sense.

Most of the “net marketers” are just rehashed versions of pyramid schemers. Any good marketing tip they have, believe you me, they’ve used until it doesn’t work any longer and then they package it and sell you their “foolproof system” for $2,000.

The internet makes businesses easier to start, and it does a good job of removing some of the traditional barriers to entry for business. But it, too, comes with its own set of challenges that need to be addressed.

So take it for what it is: grease on the wheel, not an overnight money-making machine. Stay focused and don’t take any wooden nickels.

I was poking around over at the Future Boy blog and came up with this idea…

I don’t think small businesses as a whole have any desire to turn into international conglomerates. Maybe some do, but most don’t.

Small business owners know how to run the show with our buying power and still stay small and agile.

Now, THAT’S progressive.

Check it out: http://futureboy.blogs.fsb.cnn.com/2007/12/03/video-why-small-business-is-the-future/