Next week (Thursday, May 13th), Pacific Business News will host a breakfast tech seminar for managers, executives and business owners.  I will be one of the panelists and we will discuss how your business can leverage technology to stay competitive.

As part of my presentation, I will explain a checklist of items every business can adopt and implement right away with little or no upfront cost.  The point is to get-going on the latest market trends to ensure your company’s mid to longterm viability.

By the way, it’s not too late to join the event.  I am confident you’ll find it relevant and useful.  For more info: http://bit.ly/bdM9Rv

Here’s my checklist for making your business tech-ready:

• Nuke your website. If you’re like most businesses, you spent a good chunk of money on a nice website…a few years ago.  Well, times have changed and as a result the site is probably dated in terms of design and features.  Your website is your most important face to the world.  It should also be your best salesperson.  Enhance your site using WordPress, which is a free, open source, content management system.  WordPress is easy to use, fully featured and search engine friendly.  It will also give you everything you need to start blogging.

• Use analytics for everything. Knowledge is power.  You need to know how many people are visiting your website.  You need to know what interests them.  The more you mine  the data, the better you can serve your clients.  Add Google Analytics to your site.  It takes just a few minutes.  I will gladly do it for you free of charge.  Also, go to bit.ly and create an account.  It costs nothing.  You can use bit.ly to create smart URLs, so you can measure what’s popular and what’s not.  The link in the third paragraph of this column in one of those smart links.  It will tell me how many people clicked on it and from where.

• Poll your customers, employees and vendors. I wish I had learned this one in high school.  If you want to know something, just ask!  Too often we business owners feel we must operate on instinct when the truth could be just a click away.  Go to SurveyMonkey.com, create an internal survey, and ask your employees what they think about you.  The survey is anonymous, so fasten your seatbelt!  Equally important, solicit feedback from your clients.  You can automate the whole process so every customer receives a thank you note and has the opportunity to give feedback. The info is gold.

• Use Google Alerts. Google offers a free service called Google Alerts.  You tell Google which keywords or key phrases interest you, and Google will email you a report every day summarizing where those keywords and phrases hit the internet.  Use Google Alerts to monitor your brand, market trends, your competition, and new opportunities.  Brilliant.

• Socialize your business. This is the boat you don’t want to miss.  Social media is here to stay.  Create accounts for Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.  Use TweetDeck.com, HootSuite.com and Ping.fm to help you manage all those accounts.  You don’t have to understand social media, you just have to start using it.  You’ll ‘get’ it soon enough.  Don’t let your competitor eat your lunch.

• Use a reader. In the old days, newspapers printed what they considered news and we took what they gave us.  Now, you can create your own ‘channel’ of news and selected topics of interest.  Using Google Reader, you choose the content you want to read everyday and Google Reader will pull it all together for you into one convenient stream of info.  You are in the driver’s seat.  Google does all the work for you.  Free. You will need to stay on top of market trends so you can make blog posts and interact with others.

• Do webinars. I absolutely love GoToWebinar.com.  From the convenience of my home,  in my pajamas (!), I can give timely, relevant online presentations to my staff, to my clients, and to potential customers.  It’s a terrific way to keep your base informed and it’s a very effective sales tool: http://bit.ly/bcc35I

• Start a Wiki. Our mission in business is to make a difference, to make the world a better place.  This is what drives us.  Ultimately, though, we also want quality of life.  We can work hard when we’re in our twenties and thirties, but at some point we value freedom from schedule, the ability to affect change through philanthropy, etc.  If you run an organization, your most important tasks is to capture on paper your wisdom and knowledge.  In other words, you want to map out critical operational issues like policies, proceedures, and expectation, so in the event you get hit by the proverbial bus, your business has a playbook to use a guide to keep things going.  I highly recommend Zoho Wiki.

• Use Google Docs. This one is a no-brainer.  Microsoft Office is expensive; Google Docs is free.  using Google Docs, you can do Word, Excel, and Powerpoint. You can import ‘old school’ files from colleagues who haven’t yet migrated to Google Docs, you can work off-line, you can store everything online, you can share the same doc with others so it becomes a dynamic file, always getting updated, always current, etc. The sooner you move to Google Docs, the better.

• Do targeted advertising. There’s been a neat shift in the way we capture leads and convert prospects.  Conventional advertising like display ads and direct mail, for example, is alive and well. We do it religiously at SuperGeeks.  But we also use new weapons, like click-thru online advertising.  What’s really powerful about new media is I can target a very specific demographic, say engaged, college educated women living in Hawaii who speak Spanish, and I can present that well-defined group with a very specific advertising message.  Moreover, I can send that click-thru prospect to a custom-tailored webpage, full of analytics, so I can measure how many people actually purchase or take some kind of action, like request a free consultation.  This has completely reinvented the way we advertise and has given us extremely valuable metrics on what works and what doesn’t.  It’s both effective and a lot of fun!

To learn more about these and other tech tips, join us on the 13th: http://bit.ly/bdM9Rv

I will be one of the panelists.  Hope to see you there.

Register: http://pacific.bizjournals.com/pacific/event/21671

PBN PRESENTS TECHNOLOGY FOR BUSINESS, A BREAKFAST SEMINAR

THURSDAY, MAY 13, 2010, AT THE SHERATON WAIKIKI, LANAI BALLROOM

Registration & continental breakfast – 7:00 a.m.

Program – 7:30 to 9:00 a.m.

Seminar topics include introductions to the following:

• Social media for business
• Cloud computing
• Internet security
• Programming
• IT outsourcing
• Internet connectivity
• Web site design/development
• APPS
• Servers/Networks
• Software
• SEM
• Optimization…and much more!

KEY TAKE-AWAYS INCLUDE:

• Cost cutting tips to get more out of your technology
• Gaining market share
• Increasing productivity
• Promoting your business through social media

Register by completing the form here and submitting or email dtavares@bizjournals.com.

DEADLINE TO REGISTER IS FRIDAY, MAY 7.

Call 955-8074 with any questions.

Read more: Pacific Business News (Honolulu): PBN Technology for Business

I was recently invited to speak to a board of directors.  The company was considering investing in technology. It was not an easy decision for them.

Through the years, the company had managed to sustain itself amongst heftier competitors, but they weren’t thriving and it was clear they needed solutions.  The company had that old-school feel about it, and had the kind of stale bureaucracy that festers over a long period of time.

So there I was, invited by one executive, to make a case for the proposed network upgrade.  About half of the Board were dead set against it and their questions were intended to torpedo the project:

“If we decide to move forward with this project, we will have to be trained on how to use it, right?” one exec asked, as if it mean the kiss of death.

“Yes,” I answered.

“Then that means some staff will have to learn it, too…They are not gonna want to do that!”

“Yes, they will need training,”  I replied while quietly thinking it would be ok to let them go if they didn’t embrace the training.

“And then they’ll have to use it.  On top of everything else they do…”

“Yes, they will have to use it,” I said.  That’s what they get paid to do.

None of the questions focused on the bigger issues like how will this solution improve our operations, how will it boost productivity, and how will it enable us to do what we do even better.

As business owners, we need to push ourselves, our employees and our companies to incessantly explore technology – even if it’s just for the sake of exploration.  Why?  Because it will make your business more competitive.

Companies fail because they stop learning.  People fail because they stop developing new skills.  Comfort breeds complacency, and complacency is the precursor to decline.

We are helping one of our clients develop a new browser.  I strongly encouraged him to by an iPhone and start using – if for no other reason than to understand why/how the world has purchased some 30 million units and downloaded more than a billion items.

The same is true for Twitter (http://twitter.com/).  As business owner, you may not have time to do it faithfully every day, but you should make the time to play with it – if only to see what appeals to the 12 million or so people who have signed up for it.

As an employee, when was the last time you picked up a new tech skill just for the sake of learning something new?  The next time you have 30 minutes free during lunch, hop online and check out Google Docs (http://docs.google.com/) or Zoho Wiki (http://wiki.zoho.com/).  You will become more knowledgeable and more marketable.  You may also discover a new tool for doing your work even better.

Is your business in good shape?  Regardless of answer, poke even deeper into technology.  Gte uncomfortable with it.  You may discover something your competitor hasn’t.

James Kerr is Chief Geek at SuperGeeks.  Follow him on Twitter: SuperGeeks

I earned my engineering degree 20 years ago. After graduating from college I headed straight to Tokyo to work for Sony in their R&D Planning and Corporate Strategy Group. Our job was to identify promising technologies on 10-year horizons and help turn them into products.

After seven years in Japan and another 12 here in Hawaii starting various businesses, I have learned to love the rapid and ever-changing landscape of the tech industry. At the same time, as a business person, I have developed a deeper appreciation for what works – regardless of how boring the winning solution may be.

Here are some of the lessons I’ve learned:

Early adopters pay the price. We first started making digital cameras at Sony 20 years ago. The first few generations were built by hand and we produced only 15 cameras per month. We lovingly referred to the new cameras as ‘bleeding edge’ technology. As a manufacturer, the cameras were very expensive to make. For the consumer, digital cameras were very expensive to own and operate, too. Bottom line: Early adopters of technology pay more for their toys than the rest of us. And thank goodness! Someone’s got to pay for all that R&D.

Late adopters pay, too. Does your dad still own a pair of corduroys? Well, it may be painful to watch him wear those around town. But it’s very expensive if he maintains the equivalent in technology at home or at the office. I’m a strong advocate for using something until it dies. I love the new netbooks and I would take a new 3GS iPhone any day, but the stuff I have now works well so I will just keep things as-is until my Fujitsu LifeBook and older iPhone call it quits. However, when the cost of ownership of the older solutions exceeds the cost of ownership of the newer solutions, I would be silly to hang onto the old like a dog with a newspaper in its mouth. Lesson: Legacy hardware and software will kill your bottom line.

Avoid proprietary solutions. Proprietary solutions are custom solutions. They are typically designed specifically for a particular client or a specific industry. Try to avoid those. All proprietary solutions are expensive. They also seldom end well. After 2 to 3 years of using a custom solution, for example, your company will essentially become ‘married’ to the provider. And when the provider decides to raise pricing and skimp on the customer service, you will be wishing you went with someone else. As much as possible, use off-the-shelf solutions which can be easily supported by anyone.

Don’t neglect proper care and feeding. Tech is complex. Unlike nature, technology doesn’t yet have self-correcting and rejuvenate abilities. This means we have to take care of our systems like we take care of our children. Hardware and software need regular and ongoing maintenance – just like everything else. Be sure to steward the health and wellness of your equipment, or you will pay a bigger price for it later.

In the end, it’s gotta work. If you think about it, there’s probably no other device in our home or office which is more difficult to understand and use than the computer. The toaster is easy. The fridge is easy. Even the air conditioner is easy. But the computer is a headache. Whichever solution you choose, try to make it transparent to the user. For example, the break in my car works well. I use when I need it; it gets the job done well. I don’t need to think too much about it. That’s the way computers should be. Useful.

I really like this quote from Einstein: Make everything as simple as possible, but not simpler. That’s the approach we should take towards technology. Focus on the benefits of the solution. Choose the one that works best. You will be happier in the long run.

James Kerr is Chief Geek at SuperGeeks. He can be reached at (808) 531-GEEK and you can follow him on Twitter: SuperGeeks

Last weekend I had the honor of giving the keynote address at Sacred Hearts’ 16th Annual Science Symposium.  My speech focused on the technological advances we’ve seen over the last 2 decades and highlighted some of the innovative things we can expect 20 years from now.

Predicting the future is hard enough.  But you can imagine how tough it was to come up with a funny yet g-rated opening joke for the several hundred parents, girls and school officials in attendance?  (You can get the joke here: http://su.pr/2KUSHX.  It worked!)

Your business, like mine, is volatile to change.  Technological advances can undermine seemingly robust industries overnight.

As business owners, we must be vigilant about protecting market share and profit margins. At the same time, we have to be willing to introduce products and services which could cannibalize our cash cows.  After all, if we don’t create the perfect competitor, our competitors certainly will.

With this unique mix of paranoia and opportunity, we must look towards the future and anticipate change:

• Attachments are so old school. Many of us are still send and receiving attachments. These range from Word files to PDFs.  The world is rapidly moving toward ‘cloud’ computing.  This means your applications and your files will be stored entirely online.  The upside:  You and your colleagues can collaborate real-time.  All you need is internet access.  Storage and security will be managed by the cloud provider.

• Computers will ultimately fix themselves. Remember the scene in The Iron Giant (wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Iron_Giant) , where the robot explodes into a gazillion pieces and then the pieces automatically crawl back to the epicenter so the robot can reassemble itself.  At the very least, twenty years from now, computers will be simpler and less prone to failure.  Either way, we can expect better yield and longer life spans.  Think of your car or your fridge.  The newer models are already full of computing techonologies,  yet we consumers dont have to pay much attention to them.  They work.  Period.

• We can say goodbye to the mouse. The big thing at the recent Computer Electronics Show was natural interfaces.  We currently use a mouse to command the standard desktop computer and we use the painfully inept TV remote to change channels. Future technology will do a better job of sensing or knowing the users intentions.  This will be accomplished by reading gestures, eye movement and facial expressions.

• Display technological will go real. The ultimate goal is a picture so real and so lifelike it’s indistinguishable from reality.  It will look 3 dimensional and emulate all the shading and lighting in the immediate surroundings.  Education, medicine and – of course – entertainment, will benefit tremendously.

• Electronics will be biodegradable. The first manufacturer to successfully integrate green components will surely enjoy a windfall in business. The amount of e-waste we’re dumping into the ground will eventually reaching a tipping point, galvanizing the industry and policy makers to adopt environmentally friendly solutions.

But the best inventions need not be so complex.  Often the most elegant solutions are the simplest.  And sometimes the biggest problems we face, like diarrhea in the developing world, are easy to solve.  I challenged the girls to create products like the Pee Poo bag (Peepoople.com) ,  for areas of the world where there’s poor sanitation. Or my favorite, the LifeStraw (LifeStraw.com), an inexpensive device which filters harmful bacteria from water, rendering even the Ala Wai safe to drink.

One of my favorite tenets: Companies do not destroy companies.  Instead, companies destroy themselves.  If we are to stay viable as a business, we must always keep a watchful eye on the horizon.