Concept: A way to make meetings better through technology.

Who are you again?

Are like me attending a lot of a lot of virtual meetings. I think this would help. http://moultonstudio.com/?p=1574 pic.twitter.com/cbsS9F3yUo

If you are like me, you have attended a lot of phone only and or virtual meetings. As a new Salesforce employee, I have attended my share of  “Go to Meeting” and WebEx meetings. These faceless encounters make getting to know a virtual team difficult. The meetings tend to start right on time or even a minute or two late and leave little room for pre-meeting small talk.

Additionally, in these virtual meetings, the facilitator skips or forgets introductions. However, even with a lack of personal connection, it is important that we do connect and communicate to get off to a fast start.

Research, research, research

Concept design for a service that would extract the attendee list for you meetings and create a summary email on the attendees and a private web site where you could go deeper.

One way I have tried to make connections with what amounts to a group of strangers is by proactively learning about meeting attendees through Salesforce and then via LinkedIn profiles. When I am researching I am looking for a photo so that I can associate a name with a face.

Additionally, I am looking for where in the business they work. This often means figuring out who their manager is and mapping that back to an org chart. It's not perfect, but I work with what I have. Finally, I look for connections that we have on a personal level. Groups we are in on LinkedIn, past companies we've worked at and where we went to school are all things I scan seeking connections. It is amazing how a little thread can help.

All of this is a ton of work and while it pays off, it is not always possible. Plus it is repetitive. If only there were a better way…

Apps and services to the rescue

That is where the app and service come in. Below is a concept video showing how, once you gave the app access to your calendar, Salesforce account, LinkedIn and others (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) it would create a simple summary email with short profiles about the people you were meeting with and a private web page with further details on each person you are meeting with.

Patents take awhile…

Over three years ago, I was designing a interface for the Bosch Automotive group (as a consultant for Cynergy). Those interface's were rolled out to the public as part of ENCORE, an integrated diagnosis tablet powered by Android. Today I received the notification that the first patent has been granted (it was actually 10/6/2015). I have been eager for this day as this has been a long process and this is my first patent. I am listed with James Fish and Kevin Gray, both incredible partners when working on this project. As the process continues, I am hoping that the pending patents that I know about are approved and issued. 

This patent, number 9,153,078 is for "Graphical user interface capable of changing units of measurement. 

A graphical user interface is provided that can be used on a diagnostic tool. The graphical user interface allows a technician to operate various functions of the diagnostic tool including searching for additional information on the Internet, receiving weather information that is relevant to certain diagnostic tests, and displaying in certain formats the retrieved vehicle data and when certain vehicles were last scanned or diagnosed.

Cross-over app experiences will drive customer engagement

One of my predictions for mobile in the next six to eighteen months is heavy cross-over in brand and mobile experiences where integration in mobile apps drives customer engagement.

We all ready see this app integration as native functionality in iOS. Apple lets you shoot pictures in the their camera app and then use the photo edit tools from other apps you have via the share sheet. For example I can shoot in Camera and edit in Camera+. This functionality is going beyond the share sheet and is part of other apps. Starbucks lets you get an Uber right in their app. That is incredible for Starbucks, Uber and you.

If this integration is the next trend in Mobile Customer Experience, and I think it will be, the possibilities are incredible.

Recently I have been working on some ideas for a major burger chain and had fun coming up with  ideas on how the brand can become part of other experiences.

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iOS Share Sheet in Camera App.

Hail an Über from Starbucks App

iBooks as a sales tool

Since April (2014), I have been creating interactive Customer Stories or Customer Journeys for Salesforce Marketing Cloud (formerly ExactTarget). These Customer Stories have pushed me, and now my team, to dive deep into using iBooks Author, along with Keynote, Photoshop and Illustrator, Google spreadsheets and lots and lots of sketching and experimenting

Its been, at times, frustrating, yet, also exhilarating. iBooks Author is still a very new (at times, buggy) software. Over the months, we have matured our process, increased our knowledge and elevated our end products.

One of our goals is to surprise people with our work and how we breath life into these stories. Sometimes we do unexpected things with the software. At one point a director commented that "You are the type of person that makes software do what you want rather than do what you are supposed to do with it." And she is right. I'm they guy who filed my taxes with Photoshop last year (kidding).

A lot of our work I won't/can't talk about, call it private/trade secret, but some, I want to talk about openly, with the hope that the intimate community of iBook Author users will benefit and perhaps share their discoveries and war stories.

In this part of the series I want to talk about the following.

• Tips, Tricks and Bugs
• Building Your Own Template
• "Responsive" content

Don’t duplicate your .iBA file

Trust me, iBooks Author is not the place to use Duplicate. Sadly its in the UI controls and you would think safe to use. However if you do duplicate your iBA file and then try and load both books only one will work. We had several big deals for Fortune 500 clients going at once and the team in the field had to keep loading one Customer Story at a time. After digging and digging I found the solution was to Save as Template and then create a duplicate version from a new template. Its a hassle, but worth it.

Option click on the Inspector tabs to open multiple Inspector windows.

Sometimes you need several Inspector windows open and clicking on the Icon covered Tabs at the top over and over is infuriating. Option click to the rescue!

Height and Width are not always1024 x 768

The height of your viewable space is 20px or 40px shorter than expected due to the status bar at the top of the screen. Use 1024 X 748 in your Photoshop or Keynote files to get your pixels lined up… not immediately obvious as I was doing prework in Keynote, Illustrator and Photoshop. (I am not to a point where I can “think” in iBooks Author yet.

The Colors Inspector window is expandable!

There is a tiny dot at the bottom of the window. Click and drag to expand your color palette.

"Responsive" content

No, its not exactly responsive (like responsive web), but iBooks Author lets you customize your layouts for landscape and portrait. When you are setting up the a master (I think this is what these template are/should be called) you can designate what content is shared between the layouts. Unfortunately, you can not share the interactive widgets (these great tools are limited to just the landscape view. However, copy, shapes, and images are all sharable. Just click on the check box (Shared with portrait layout). Its in the Layout tab of your Inspector under Layout Object. This is also where you would decide if an object is editable or locked.