Joel Bruckenstein kicks of T3 2011

The 2011 edition of the Technology Tools for Today conference wrapped up this afternoon in sunny Weston FL.

Like last year, I’ve come away with several ideas about ways our financial advisory practice can make better use of technology.

For extensive coverage of T3, check out the live blog by RIA Biz. As for me, here are my main takeaways:

Integration

Without a doubt, this was the main theme of this years conference. Unfortunately, there is no clear consensus on how to accomplish this objective. Bob Veres pointed out in the wrap-up session, that there are multiple ways firms could integrate. The custodians have their view (and among the big four, they have four different methods), the paperless solutions offer another method, and then there are other options from CRM tools as well.

Many sessions addressed the integration concept. The “super sessions” from Fidelity & Schwab cited several different approaches to integration.

However, my takeaway fro me these sessions was not an overriding affinity to one tool over another. Sure, I have my preferences, but the message from talking with 3 network admins at dinner on Thursday. Integration doesn’t mean easy. Above all else, you must begin the process of designing work flows for much of your business.

Work flows that can be automated within your CRM will drive the biggest efficiencies in a firm. Yes the technology must exist to support your processes, but just having a new shiny object, so to speak, won’t improve much.

Furthermore, everyone on staff MUST buy into the process. After all, if actions are scheduled automatically, but never completed, what’s the point?

iPad

Standing room only for iPad for advisors

Although somewhat self serving, a big takeaway for me was getting to present on a panel with Bill Winterberg on the panel “iPad, How Advisors are using it productively.” I’ve known Bill for a couple years, but hadn’t met in person until T3.

I wasn’t sure what to expect of this session. We had prepared our remarks, along with fellow panelist Sandra Goodstein and moderator Diane MacPhee, but much of our session was dependent on audience participation. Given that our session was at 5:00 on Friday, after a long vendor break, i wasn’t sure how many attendees would be swayed away from happy hour to talk tablets.

Fortunately for us, the iPad seemed to be on everyone’s wish list. Half of the room had one and wanted to know more about using it for business, and the other half were considering a purchase. As you can see, we had a standing room only crowd.

As for the specific takeaways from our session, I think Bill said it best: the iPad IS digital paper. It really closes the loop for me in being paperless at the office, and it is my preferred way to read everything – books, articles, the Internet, and even scanned magazine articles I tear off for “later”.

Transformative Technology

Finally, the best session of T3 was held last. Also with Bill Winterberg and joined by Jo Day of Trumpet Inc. I knew ahead of time that they had prepared a sold deck of 212 slides to cover in their hour! 212, but only the contact slide contained any bullets. You can see their slides here by Sunday evening.

Bill Winterberg presenting

The concept was simple: of all this great technology, what are specific things wen could start doing today, to make collaboration and communication with clients and staff easier and better. Ideally, we’d choose one idea and test it out for 90 days.

Ideas ranged from using Dropbox for collaboration of documents, Tungle or Timebridge for scheduling meetings, and using Yammer or Chatter for creating a workplace social news feed.

My favorite idea was a way to use mindmaps to stop wasting everyone’s time!

How?

Jo covered ways to use mapping to organize thoughts for creating work flows, but her extra idea was fantastic. She keeps her Mindmap program open at all times with a tab for each employee she coordinates with. Then, every time she has an idea that she is tempted to talk to them about, she joys it down in their tab.

Possibly the biggest time suck of an organization are the random “brief” interruptions by coworkers. So the next time you’re tempted to stop by someone’s office, or email them, start a running list of issues, and then block off time each week to cover that weeks issues.

Sports

2nd Row!

Finally, my personal “fun” takeaway from T3, was a last minute decision to drive 10 minutes from our hotel to Bank Atlantic Center to see the Panthers take on the Red Wings. I went with advisory website developer Matt Peterson We didn’t have tickets, but given Florida’s record, we suspected getting in wouldn’t be tough.

As we parked the car, we were literally surrounded by 4 scalpers trying to unload tickets. They were so desperate that their initial offer was lowered before we could even say word one. We chose to pass on the first set of seats wondering of the tickets were knockoffs or legitimate.

We walked up to the gate, and after a brief check with the box office decided to find another scalper. We quickly found a guy with multiple options of 2nd row seats for $75 each (a decent savings from the absurd $250 face value).

All in, my second year at T3 was a success. Between vendors bringing their CEO’s to man the booths (a rare sight in any conference), the discussions outside the sessions, and spending time with other advisors each evening made the trip to Florida well worth it!

I’ll see you next year at T3 in Dallas.

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Image via Wikipedia

When I first started writing, I admitted that I tend to be somewhat of a technology snob. It seems that since that time, I’ve actually become known as much for being a “techy” as I am as an advisor.

Ideally, it would be nice to be known for what pays the bills, but we’ll get there one day.

Coming up in the next few weeks, there are 3 things that further my technology brand if you will.

In February, I will be flying to Florida, for this years T3 conference. It is the conference for the advisory industry when it comes to technology. I attended last year as an attendee, but this year have been asked to speak on a panel about how advisors are using the Apple iPad with my friend Bill Winterberg, and Sandra Goodstein.

Also next month, I will be a part of the Winter issue of “In Wheeling” magazines piece on Wheelings “Digital Generation”. From what I understand, they are looking at 10-12 locals who have either moved to the area because of technology, found their spouse online, or apparently just use the bejesus out of it like me.

Lastly, I will be talking next week with Amy Buttell, a journalist I met online (I know, right?) about the best smart phone apps for financial advisors.

I guess what they say is true. Everything happens in threes. Just strange that it’s all coming about in February.

Resolution Update

I hadn’t planned on doing this, but it felt ironic, considering the content of this post. Earlier this month, I listed 3 goals I planned on accomplishing this year. One, was to read a book each week for the year. So far, I am nearly two books ahead of pace, but the weird thing is that all of them except one were actual physical books. I assumed they’d all be on the iBooks or Kindle app….

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Since then, I’ve experimented with several GPS based apps to track my pace, and distance, and broadcast my mile splits during races over Facebook and Twitter. But that’s probably the subject of a future review.

Today I wanted to look at my mixed experience trying to find a suitable set of Stereo Bluetooth headphones to run in.

At first I used regular clip around the ear style headphones. They worked fine for music, but the wire often got in the way of my arms when running. At first this proved to be mildly annoying, but eventually became a problem. After a few times of accidentally grabbing the wire with my hand, the cord shorted out and they stopped working.

Sure, another set of wired headphones would be cheap, but I figured over time the same thing would keep happening.

So, I did what I often do in this situation, and turned to Google & Twitter. I couldn’t find much outside of sponsored content or reviews unrelated to running on Google. Luckily, a friend on Twitter had experience with a pair and highly recommended them.

As it turns out, I should have been a little more skeptical since he only used his around the house and while cutting grass.

photo by plantronicsgermany

The brand of headphones he recommended were the Altec Lansing Back Beat stereo bluetooth headphones available at most AT&T Wireless stores. They usually retail for $100 and I’ve seen similar looking headphones re-branded elsewhere.

Overall the quality seemed fine, and worked as advertised. The battery life, and sound quality were both good, and everything seemed to work as planned.

Since I was using them initially in the spring outside, the weather was still cool, and I wasn’t sweating like I would in the summer. This detail is relevant because when the weather warmed up and I used them while sweating, they basically crapped out.

Unfortunately this happened more than 30 days after purchasing them, so I couldn’t return them for a full refund. I could however return them during the first year for a replacement.

Hoping that it was just bad luck, I exchanged them for a new pair and started over.

After having the same experience two more times, I can say with some confidence that the ear buds aren’t sealed properly in this model, and if any amount of sweat gets on them, they’ll soon short out.

If you want stereo headphones for regular phone calls, this could be a good purchase. But for exercise, steer clear of the Altec Lansing Back Beat headphones.

Photo by Kevin Lim

Later this summer, I was at a Best Buy and saw two other models of wireless headphones. I ended up getting a pair of Motorokr S9-HD wireless headphones. I decided to plunk down another $100 for a different model for a couple of reasons.

I was used to running without wires, and if they worked, really preferred them to traditional headphones. I had some expectation the Motorola brand could work better for running based on appearance. The Altec brand was thin and mostly consisted of a loose rubber wire connecting the two ear pieces. The Motorokr was much more rigid, with a larger, albeit awkward looking battery, on the back.

As it turns out, the S9-HD works perfectly for running. I’ve used it for almost three months now, including one of the hottest August’s we’ve had, and it hasn’t missed a beat (cue rim shot).

If you’re looking for a reliable option for running, the Motorokr S9-HD is a great choice. I highly recommend it.

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In 2009, I was knew to most things “new media” and was able to use what I learned at Podcamp Pittsburgh 4 personally and professionally. This year, I invited a friend of mine who is in the same position I was last year. File this under you don’t realize how much you’ve learned until you are asked what’s an RSS feed, or what is a Tweetup.

Words or short hand that many of us “get’, comes across as a foreign language to many. Fortunately, there are many people willing to give of their time and talents to explain it all one weekend a year.

This year, I attended some sessions to learn, and the other half for entertainment. I started out at Andy Quayle’s open forum on SEO. Although I’ve attended many webinars, and seminars on SEO, I picked up a lot from Andy’s session. He covered a variety of topics, ranging from keywords, CMS platforms, and plugins based on questions from the crowd. He has positioned himself as a reasonably priced SEO expert and webhost in the Pittsburgh market. It’s refreshing to hear him speak given all of the “SEO experts” I’ve been spammed by on Twitter.

Next up was my friend Deanna Ferrari’s session “Tweeting to 13.1 miles”. She covered how social media is impacting the world of health and fitness. I especially liked her point that “Jennifer Anniston is skinny because she’s rich & it’s her job” when describing how blogs, and other media are beginning to influence people in their quest for better health.

Over lunch, I caught up with my friend who is an attorney who’s just starting to explore what blogs, and other media can do to build his brand and depict him as the expert in his field. Some of our conversation was like talking to me from a year ago.

In the afternoon, I bounced around some after hearing from two of Pittsburgh’s podcasting experts – Hutch Bailie and Mike Sorg. It isn’t something I currently do, but would like to explore more in future months. It is encouraging that you can start out with just about any recording device, but if you really want to do it right, some form of higher end audio equipment appears to be necessary. Not sure I’m ready for that commitment just yet.

Tomorrow I won’t be able to make it back to Pittsburgh, but the beauty of Podcamp is that every session is streamed live online. Even better, each session is eventually posted on the website making each 45 minute class available to anyone, anytime. If you haven’t had the privledge of attending, take a look at this years event, or read my reviews of last years here.

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So what did I come away with?

Like most businesses, we all seem to struggle with finding a balance between the cliche of “working in your business vs working on it”.  The common theme here was that better technology, or better adoption of existing tools will lead to dramatic improvements in productivity, and therefore more time to spend on higher ROI activities.  The catch is prioritizing which solutions to adopt first, but more importantly, getting the “buy in” from all employees to use it effectively.  Ultimately, if I had to sum up my key takeaway or buzzword, it’s integration.  The “gold standard” for firms is finding the right solutions ranging from CRM systems, document and workflow management, to planning software, and then getting it all to integrate together.

Although I went into the conference secretly hoping to learn about a new or groundbreaking product (think new Apple announcement hype), I was pleased to see strong competition in each category our firm would consider adopting.  On Thursday I spent most of the day talking with vendors about CRM’s and document management services.  It seems most firms are either in the “cloud” or desktop based, but I and most attendees prefer a virtual setup over desktop software in most instances.  I spent most of the day Thursday & Friday talking to these and other vendors about their solution.  While this was helpful to learn about what is possible, I figured I wasn’t getting the whole story.

For the unbiased story, I listened to several people that I trust.

Industry leaders like Kristen Luke, Matt Peterson, Gary Davis Jr, and Laurie Gripshover.  Each of them work with advisory firms in different capacities, and have a sense of what firms are using, but more importantly, how the technology actually works in practice.  Which products are great in theory, but far too complicated for firms to implement.  By describing our current situation, number of employees, and current struggles with technology, they were all able to give me great advice about areas we should consider.  Kristen works with firms as an outsourced marketing department, Matt designs great websites specifically for advisory firms, and both Gary & Laurie consult with firms from an operational perspective.

Having said all that, there were several sessions I came away with new ideas or new perspectives on things I’m already doing.  Here is a brief recap in the order the sessions were scheduled:

Ethics session – In one of the more interesting sessions, considering the Tiger Woods press conference scheduled the following day, Patrick Kuhse spent two hours detailing his research and personal history of struggles with ethics.  As his website says, he became an expert on ethics the hard way.  During a career as a successful, and legitimate stock broker, Patrick slowly took one bad turn after another before he was in deeper than he could cover.  He illegally raised commissions as an advisor to the State of Oklahoma’s multi-billion dollar investment portfolio, and then paid “kickbacks” to the friend who got him the job.  After fleeing the country and living for four years in Costa Rica, he was arrested before spending years in Federal prison.  Take a look at his site, for his incredible story, and a few videos.  Don’t miss the chance if you ever have the opportunity to hear him speak.

Quantuvis Consulting – Stephanie Bogan, CEO of Quantuvis spoke on business development best practices in the first session of the week.  Stephanie covered a variety of ideas, but the key takeaway for me was advisors should make a list of the five to ten ideas you have for development, narrow it down to two, and then DO THEM.  Although one advisor might be successful meeting new clients through golfing (for example), if that isn’t your thing or you don’t like golf, DON’T DO IT!  Find something that you naturally enjoy doing, and do it with other people.  Sounds simple, right?

What’s New in Document Management Software – This session had panelists from competing firms.  Two of which operate in the “cloud”, Net Documents and Laser Fiche, and two operate as desktop systems, CEO Image and a fourth I can’t recall.  It didn’t get heated, but this was by far the most awkward if not CONTENTIOUS pairing of the weekend.  Although the session was about “what’s new” it turned into a debate over whether a desktop solution or one in the cloud was best.  Fortunately I did get a sense of how advisory firms are using this technology, and that it is truly effective if it integrates with your other systems.  If you can’t link a clients documents to their record in a CRM system, it doesn’t seem as helpful beyond managing your documents.  Clearly that is a critical solution, but without integration, it doesn’t appear complete efficiencies would be gained.

Fidelity – Social Media Trends & Opportunities – Fidelity provided a general overview of the top 3 social sites, Facebook, Twitter, and Linkedin, how they are currently using them, and what advisors should be thinking about.  They started with a humorous look at the roughly 15 year history of the internet as we know it (think AOL CD’s and phone lines to Al Gore jokes).  They used examples of their use of Twitter – mainly as a customer service portal and to search for rollover opportunities – to the StockTwits site and how traders use it to find up to the moment news, & rumors about a company.  The main takeaway was that your clients are quickly adopting some form of social media, and if you want to communicate with them where they are, you need to consider maintaining a presence.  Again, like the Quantuvis takeaway, if it fits what you naturally do or enjoy, do it.  I.e., don’t get on Twitter because you think you “have to”.  Having said that, time spent on Facebook has surpassed email use, so it might be something you want to consider.

Webinars and Blogging – 2009 seemed like the year of the webinar for me.  Most weeks I watched 1 or 2 lunchtime webinars on social media, or blogging among other topics.  By no means do I know all there is to know, but I felt like it was time to “do” instead of looking for more ideas.  Then again, we all heard more about “Google Juice” than I care to recall!

This session was different though, because Rick Kahler gave several insights into his process and the results he has seen.  Rick is well known online among the advisory world as he has consistently been active with his blog for several years.  The amazing thing to me was that he attributes 50% of his new business from his online efforts!  HALF!  Rick generally posts twice a week, and uses this content to educate his clients, feed his blog, produce his email newsletter, as well as for multiple newspapers.  Although writing is not easy, he is clearly leveraging what he produces in a number of mediums.  Furthermore, he records all of his webinar’s, and provides video & audio recordings of certain articles..

David Druckers Technology ROI white paper – David had put together a compilation of other studies, surveys, and white papers from 7 of the sponsors for the conference.  The statistics were impressive, but only truly so if implemented by all employees at a firm.  Because this paper is available for a fee, I’m hesitant to list details of the report here.  If you are interested in learning more, you can find the paper here.

I’m sure there are many areas I’m overlooking, but these were my takeaways from the sessions I was able to attend.  There were generally 4-5 sessions per time slot, so I clearly missed other areas.  If you attended and can add something from other sessions, please do so in the comments below.

For more on the event, pleased read the official T3 blog, see this post from Kristen Luke, or follow the conversation on Twitter, with the #T3show hashtag.

What solutions are you using for your firm?

Are you pleased with your current CRM, or other solutions?

I’d love to hear your ideas or details of what you’ve found to work well here or on the contact form.

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Today I was looking for a better way to handle the comment section on my site.  I wanted to allow people to subscribe to the comment section to know if someone replied to something they said.

Until recently, I would have searched through the plugin section, or done a quick Google search to see what was popular.  Instead of either of these, I went to Twitter, so see what the “crowd” thought was the best plugin for WordPress:

Within 15 minutes I had 3 responses, all from people I trust for this type of answer:

Adam, Brian, and Deanna each suggested I take a look at Disqus as a quick, easy plugin to my existing site.  Each responded within minutes of my question with a great suggestion.

Minutes after the last Disqus suggestion rolled in, I received an offer to help from a rep of Disqus!

I was literally in the process of installing their service when I heard from them.  As it happens, though, I did have a question for them.  During the install, my existing comments went away.  I assumed there was a way to easily import old comments, but I figured I’d ask the experts for help again.  A few minutes I had my answer:

In the last week I’ve turned to Twitter and Facebook to help plan a trip to San Diego, and upgrade my website.  In each time I found great answers within minutes of asking.  This time I received input from the company as well.  The only downfall is I’ll have even less patience with call center “Steve” who’s clearly in India!

Have you had similar experiences online?  Have you asked “the crowd”?  Give it a try, things are much easier this way!

photo by Michale

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Click the image for a larger, clearer version.

I asked the question on both Twitter and Facebook.  I was a little surprised that I received much more feedback from Facebook than Twitter (10 to 1 so far).  Thanks to the simple question, I know feel comfortable knowing exactly what to do, and what to avoid!

Do you have anything different to add?  I’m not going for 3 months, so any tips would be greatly appreciated!  Please add anything you think I should do or avoid here.

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I am Nick Burns.  It’s pathetic, but true.

The first time I remember exhibiting this behavior was at a friends house soon after we both started using Tivo in the mid 2000′s.  This was soon after you could add your Yahoo! pictures and hook it up to your PC to transfer video’s etc.  If you’ve used Tivo, you’ll remember (I say remember as I’ve unfortunately moved on to the Directv DVR) that you could “hack” the box to add a 30 second skip feature that wasn’t standard to skip commercials. While spending the weekend at their house, I did the Nintendo Contra style remote control code to add  the skip feature to their Tivo.  I, of course, did this without asking if he would want the feature.

Seriously, how could he not?

They, of course, did NOT want this great feature so I had to remove it.

Fast forward to every dinner at my parents house.  Recently they purchased an HDTV and after some convincing, upgraded their cable box to add HD programming and the DVR.  Although most HD programing is in wide screen, some shows they watch are not.  They do not like to watch 4:3 shows with black bars on the side, so they’ve set the TV display to stretch everything to fill the screen.  This distorts both 4:3 shows, as well as 16:9 HD content and for me, renders a show unwatchable.  Since I can’t help myself, I grab the remote, set the defaults back to native, and watch the way it was meant to be watched.  I am, as I said, a technology snob…

This does not please my parents, and least of all my wife.  Nobody else in the room understands why I made the change, nor how it is better!  Insanity, right!  Soon after I leave, the settings are changed back to wide zoom…

Fast forward to tonight, when I was showing my brother Google Wave. I explained both how it works today in Beta, as well as how it could work in the future.  I then asked if he’d heard of Google Voice. He said no, and without thinking, I let out an evil chuckle, as if I held the keys to some great toy.  Pathetic, but like I said…snob.

Sadly, the Hulu vido of Nick Burns isn’t that far off.  I’m often asked “how-to” questions at work.  If I can’t handle by phone, I usually go over to the computer in question.  Soon after huffing in disgust that they are ignoring the “invention” of tabbed browsing, I fix the problem, mumble a few things to my self, chuckle as if I’m hilarious, and go about my day.  It’s a sickness, I know.

I am curious though, do you think it’s a sickness, or are you just like me?  Are you “that guy” or are you calling your version of “me” for help?

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Then last night, at an event for Pittsburgh Young Professionals I met a few people and we exchanged business cards.

Maybe its the fact that it’s almost 2010, or my eternal fear of technology passing me by, but it seems to me that it’s time to retire the paper business card.  Think about it.  The cards I exchanged last night lasted only to this morning.  Once I went to work, I added the contacts to our database, synced it with my cell phone, and searched for them on Linkedin.  Then, they were thrown away.

For about a month I’ve been trying out a few other options, and think we may be close to replacing the business card.  The first is  called Bump, and is available as an iPhone app.

The program works by allowing you to trade your contact information with anyone else who also has the app on their iPhone.  You can choose to transfer multiple phone numbers, your email address, website company information and even a photo.  Or, if you prefer, just your name and number.  The obvious downfall is that the person you meet needs to have an iPhone with the app already installed.  Can’t imagine it would make much sense to download the app, and set it up 2 minutes after meeting someone!  Take a look at their YouTube video to see it in action:

The second replacement tool I’ve been testing is call Contxts and only requires the person you met to have a cell phone and the ability to text.  You can set it up easily online, or using your phone.  All the person has to do to receive your contact information is to text the name you set it up under to 50500.  To receive my card, just text dunkin to 50500.  It doesn’t offer as much information as Bump.  You can include your name, title, and company, and whatever information you can fit in under 140 characters.  It’s just simple enough to work.

Clearly neither of these tools are used widely enough to truly replace the business card.  But that day just might be coming.

Are you using either of these tools?

Something different?

Can you ever imagine not exchanging cards but zapping information to someones cell phone, or whatever comes next?

photo by bargainmoose and joe shlabotnik

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While WordPress has a variety of options for backing up your blog, ranging from simply exporting it, to a more elaborate plugin, Twitter, Facebook, and other “social networking” sites do not offer much help.  Posts on Facebook seem to disappear after a month, and Twitter “streams” by quickly.  I could use an RSS feed for tweets, and a different solution here, but instead I wanted to find one option to backup all of my sites.

I first read about Backupify when it was called Lifestream backup on Bill Winterberg’s blog FP PAD.  After testing the free version for a couple weeks, I signed up for their Premium (10 gb) plan about a month ago.  I know have a daily backup of Twitter, Facebook, Gmail, Google Docs, and this site.  All this for $39 a year (there is a $29 plan for $29, and a $109 50 gb plan).

While I have been very pleased with the service thus far, as it does exactly what I need, I have been most impressed by the company’s customer service.  This past week I decided I wanted the service to backup everything on my Facebook account except pictures. Because I had already elected to backup everything, I was unable to stop backing up pictures, and delete them from my account.

This clearly isn’t a deal breaker, but something I was hoping to do.  About an hour after leaving a voicemail on their toll-free number, I received a call back from the founder of the company, Rob May.

I figured it was a small company, but  I was still surprised and pleased to hear from the founder!

He reviewed my request, and explained that was an option they had planned on adding, but hadn’t had a request to do so.  Based on my call, they would take care of it the following week!  While I’m sure it won’t take a lot of programing to add this feature, I was very pleased to see a company so responsive to its clients!

Recession or not, it’s service like this that builds great companies, and very loyal customers!  Have you had a similar positive experience with a company?  I’d love to hear about it here.

photo by Docklandsboy

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