We have a CTO!

Yes, we, the market research company, now have a CTO! Read below for all the details, but needless to say this is very exciting and huge for Sentient Services and our social innovation and market research platform - icanmakeitbetter.com.


Sentient Services hires best-selling author and renowned developer – Bruce Tate (March 2012)

[Austin, Texas. March 2012. For immediate release.]

Bruce Tate has joined Sentient Services as CTO and will head up all technology practices, including Sentient Services’ groundbreaking social innovation and research platform (www.icanmakeitbetter.com). Bruce is an internationally in-demand speaker (Ruby World in Japan, The Server Side Symposium and other), and best-selling author, including the Jolt award winning Seven Languages in Seven Weeks and From Java to Ruby.

Prior to joining Sentient Services, Bruce founded and ran RapidRed which worked with high growth start-ups to rapidly build genre-leading web applications such as DigtheDirt. Bruce spent 13 years at IBM, including co-authoring several IBM patents and serving on IBM’s certification board for application development.

Bruce will be managing the icanmakeitbetter.com platform – a patent-pending SaaS solution providing crowdsourced innovation, customer engagement and market research in a seamless, scalable and dead-simple platform. Since its quiet launch by Sentient Services in 2011, it has changed the way organizations engage with customers, innovate and conduct market research.  

Sentient Services CEO and icanmakeitbetter founder Paul Janowitz states: “Bruce’s is nothing short of a huge win for us. Bruce’s proven experience with rapid application development for scalable social platforms with leading technologies such as Ruby on Rails will let us move quickly to build the next generation of market research and innovation software. Having Bruce full-time as our CTO changes the game. Expect big things to come out of Sentient Services and the icanmakeitbetter.com platform.”

About Sentient Services, LP

Sentient Services is a Knowledge Studio® - the amalgamation of market research, user experience and information design practices. We leverage these core competencies for our clients in product development, interactive, usability, sales, marketing and branding.

icanmakeitbetter is a patent-pending, revolutionary social innovation and market research platform developed from the ground up by Sentient Services. icanmakeitbetter enables organizations to create, share, and act upon ideas to drive innovation, engage customers and conduct market research.

For more information on Sentient Services or icanmakeitbetter, please go to:

www.sentientservices.com or www.icanmakeitbetter.com

Contact:

Paul Janowitz

paul@sentientservices.com

512.288.1706

Building a Community around Interests

While surfing the web the other day, I came across a blog post by one of my former professors, George Howard, on his personal blog 9GiantSteps.

The post “Shifting Social Sands” tries to explain the recent phenomenon regarding the rapid boom of Pinterest and other interest-oriented websites/applications and how this boom sheds light on the way emerging companies should position themselves in the “Facebook era”.

Everyone (or at least 800 million people) has a Facebook profile. While Facebook is the market leader by a long shot, social network upstarts like Pinterest, Instagram, Chowhound, etc. are having a major impact (Pinterest share button now on CrateandBarrel.com!) beyond Facebook – how?

According to Howard, it is because social networks like Pinterest focus on object or interest-oriented networking instead of acquaintance-oriented networking (Facebook). The simple way to explain this is that Pinterest connects people through the things/interests they share in common, while Facebook connects people through other people.

This finding gives great insight to how emerging companies should think about building their network and customer base. As Howard says, “There is tremendous opportunity to rethink how we should be conceiving of networks moving forward. As I’ve argued forever, look to objects of interest (in some respects, the more specific the better) that people are passionate about, and give them the tools to better organize. Doing so will lead to far more durable, rewarding, and expansive connections than organizing around existing social connections.”

This is what we at Sentient Services and those at other companies should strive to do on a daily basis. We work to connect people around their personal interests and things they care about.

While our platform icanmakeitbetter is a tool used for market research, in its simplest form it is a network that we hope allows our users to collaborate around ideas/objects that they genuinely “want to make better,” and then see the results of their collaboration. We connect people based on the products they use and the ideas they have. Through this they become engaged with each other and the brand through social collaboration. We allow them to become part of the brand/product through their ideas. Our users are able to post their ideas, receive feedback on their ideas from other users, and then see their ideas implemented by the company. This creates a depth of brand engagement that is hard to find elsewhere, and gives our users a sense of accomplishment once they see their ideas at work. We think the future of innovation, research and social networks lies in these shared “objects of interest” and making them better!

Back to the Basics

I came across an interesting article today called “Why I Will Never, Ever Hire A “Social Media Expert” featured on Business Insider by Peter Shankman. In addition to being quite hilarious; it also covers the serious subject of current social media and how it can get in the way of what organizations NEED to do – deliver customer services and products people really want to buy.

Peter brings up a great point about the use of social media stating that at the end of the day a company’s success is not based alone on Facebook page likes or Twitter posts but is really about a simple basic driver - “It’s about generating revenue through solid marketing and stellar customer service, just like it’s been since the beginning of time.”

While social media outlets can create buzz, they should not be the only thing in your marketing toolkit as they do not make up for the basic marketing principals. As Peter states, “Do you know your audience? Have you reached out to them? I’m not talking about “tweeting at them.” I’m talking about actually reaching out. Asking them what you can do better, or asking those who haven’t been around in a while what you can do to get them back. It’s not about 10 percent off coupons or “contests for the next follower.”

The question is: How do you marry the latest buzz creating social media with direct customer interaction, innovation, and market research?

The answer is: icanmakeitbetter

I know this may seem like a cheesy plug for my own company (which it sort of is), but this article and this type of discussion is one of the main reasons we created icanmakeitbetter. While social media is a great tool, customers want to be heard and feel their feedback is shaping the products and services offered to them. We created icanmakeitbetter as a solution to do just this.

Please check out the platform and see how Dell and City of Austin are using social media to innovate, engage and actually do more of what works and less of what doesn’t. And if you have any questions, comments or ideas, I would love to hear from you!!

Sentient Services UX client City of Austin launches new acclaimed site

We had the pleasure of doing the end-user citizen UX (usability and IA) research for the City of Austin's completely redone website. Steel Advertising and Interactive did the design and knocked it out of the park.
Check out the City of Austin website here.

And the MuniNetGuide article here. Where they state "To say Austin's revamped municipal website is "impressive" is like calling a giraffe a tall animal." Read it and see why usability research pays big dividends!

icanmakeitbetter.com 2.0 released!

My apologies for the lack of recent posts. We have been extremely busy launching new clients on icanmakeitbetter.com and building our 2.0 release - announced today!

This release includes many tweaks for speed and stability, but also takes the platform to an entirely new level with these key features:

1. Facebook app: In 30 seconds add our app to your Facebook page and start innovating and conducting market research.
2. Customization: Customize "How can you make it better?" text, customize Forum text and more.
3. Public Discussions: Create open "town-hall" meetings.
4. Customize all system emails.
5. Improved discussions: Super cool new expanding features and user flow, makes the user experience way better!
6. Private Communities: That's right, create completely private online communities for innovation and research with employees, partners, you name it. Limit by invite, IP or email address.
7. Enhanced security: SSL, email validation.
8. Updated website: icanmakeitbetter.com - scroll down and check out the new "how this works" and "key features"
9. Improved Forums: make Forums private, choose where Forum ideas show and more.
10. Feature Box: Promote a Forum, Idea, Survey, or Discussion in one click to your home page.
11. Surveys!: Now create quick and easy question-of-the-day or full surveys and promote right on your home page. Integrated reporting and unique ability to allow respondents to see how the community answered if you choose.

A few screen shots are below, but please contact us with any questions or needs at all. Thank you!