L@C TV: David Ednie on Selling Your Ideas, vidcast

Posted on November 19, 2008 by per

L@C May 30: Selling your ideas to technology-agnostic decision makers

— The 4 vital questions you must ask to create rapport, build trust and get the outcome you want in every situation — with David Ednie, founder and President of SalesChannel Europe

David talked to us about “Selling Your Ideas. The Art of Persuasion” with a particular focus on how to sell technology to “technology agnostic” C-level managers. This is how David describes the theme: “Selling Your Ideas transcends selling products or services, your company, or even yourself. Selling Your Ideas is the most critical skill you need today to succeed in business and in life. In this interactive discussion you will learn how to:

• Leverage the Psychology of Change
• Ask questions in colour
• CREATE insights in others

Learn how to master the 3 steps to Selling Your Ideas. The Art of Persuasion and make them work for you.”

David is an expert in sales performance and motivation and President of SalesChannel Europe (http://www.saleschannel-europe.com/, http://saleschannel.blogspot.com/). He has previously worked in various senior management roles in the technology sector, e.g. as Vice-President of International Sales at Genuity Inc. and at BT. He is also one of the founding members of the French Professional Speakers’ association. And a familiar face to many of you who come to Lunch at the Circle!

LeWeb 08 Paris program announced

Posted on October 31, 2008 by per

One of our previous speakers, Loic le Meur, is the organiser of the leading European conference on new internet technologies, “Le Web” (well, it is based in France…).

The announced a while back the program for the next edition of Le Web.

Here’s what Loic says:
“This year’s program brings many fresh faces to the LeWeb stage. Geraldine and I announced the LeWeb 08 program at a press conference last week. This year’s conference, which takes place in Paris on December 9th and 10th portends to be as big as before, with at least 1500 entrepreneurs, journalists, bloggers and Internet industry players from 40 Countries. ”

Here’s more info:
http://www.lewebparis.com/

More on: Selling your ideas to "Technology-Agnostic" Decision Makers. The Art of Persuasion

Posted on June 30, 2008 by per

For those of you who asked for more information about the 3 key concepts that were discussed in ‘Selling your ideas to “Technology-Agnostic” Decision Makers. The Art of Persuasion.’

The 3 key ideas were:

• Leverage the Psychology of Change
• Asking questions in colour
• CREATE insights in others

Learn how to master the 3 key ideas to “Selling Your Ideas. The Art of Persuasion” and make them work for you. Selling Your Ideas. The Art of Persuasion

L@C member H-J Jeanrond exposes "The perversions of the stock market: Posing tough challenges to SAP’s next product cycle"

Posted on May 29, 2008 by per

L@C member Hans-Josef Jeanrond, strategic analyst and consultant, exposes the dysfunctions of financial markets being unduly focussed on short term financial results. This short-sightedness forces software companies with sometimes incompressible development cycles to make decisions that run against their best interests – and hence against the best interests of long term investors. Reconciling the different time and expectation horizons of customers, engineers and investors is a challenging task for the new company management.

Here’s the intro in French:

SAP a pu développer R/3 pendant plusieurs années et investir un montant substantiel, sans être perturbée par des analystes financiers et des investisseurs à la bourse insistant sur des gains à court terme. C’est une des raisons pour lesquelles SAP avait un produit pour les nouvelles plateformes client serveur quand aucun autre éditeur n’était à un stade comparable de maturation. Aujourd’hui, étant cotée à la bourse de New York (NYSE) et les fondateurs étant devenus minoritaires, SAP n’est plus dans une telle situation privilégiée. Deux informations apparemment anodines dans la publication de ses résultats pour le premier trimestre 2008 font apparaître la pression et les effets potentiellement néfastes des exigences de la “communauté financière” auprès de l’industrie du logiciel. R/3 : le succès d’un projet R&D de long terme, affranchi de pressions financières à court terme

Read the full article, “Les aberrations de la bourse : un défi important pour SAP et sa prochaine génération de produits”, on CIO-Online .com

L@C co-founder launches new marketing consultancy: SO’xperts

Posted on May 19, 2008 by per

Co-funder of the Lunch at the Circle, Sophie Callies, has recently launched a new company, SO’xperts, specialised in marketing performance managment for technology enterprises. It’s web site is www.so-xperts.com

A consulting company specialized in marketing performance management for the high-tech industry, SO’xperts mission is to help marketers and top management address four principal business challenges: how to acquire and keep customers, how to enter new markets, how to drive excellence in execution and how to measure marketing contribution to the business. What makes it unique is a comprehensive approach – from marketing strategy and benchmarking to performance improvement – that helps companies identify and pursue market opportunities while optimizing programs and resource allocation.

Co-founder of the Lunch@the Circle, Sophie Callies has a track record in driving marketing performance at worldwide levels in companies such as Apple, Netscape, AOL Time Warner, Alcatel and Cartesis.

You can reach Sophie here.

L@C TV: Giffor Morley-Fletcher on Making your web site business effective in a world with broadband & SEO

Posted on March 31, 2008 by per

Here’s the video from the latest Lunch at the Circle event, with Gifford Morley-Fletcher, strategy director at Skive.

— Gifford mentions the BP Rally Game in his introduction and you find it here.

— Some other examples can be found here.

— If you want to listen to Gifford’s full presentation you can download the full audio mp3 podcast here.

— If you want to see some photos from the event you can take a look at Emmanuel Vivier’s photo album here.

Here’s a sample:

Lunch time at L@C

(Thank you Emmanuel Vivier, www.culture-buzz.com)

Some more background:

Strategies for success in promoting your business on the internet in the next 18 months

with Gifford Morley-Fletcher, Strategy Director, Skive

Gifford Morley-Fletcher

Gifford will approach this subject from two angles: the fabled “SEO” and the power of broadband. SEO is one of the buzz words that basically just means “how do you get your site noticed by search engines and thus by customers”. It is critical for any web site to take into account how search engines rank web sites. It can, literally, be a matter of life and death for a business web site if you are on the first page or the tenth for search engine results. And it is not just a question of “build it and they will come”. You have to know how to attract search engines, and customers. The second aspect is that the increasing uptake of broadband has changed the way to build web sites and make people notice them – today you can offer “rich media”, video, animations, sound etc, in a way that was not possible just a few years ago.

And if you don’t believe that it’s important how you manage your web presence and think about how to appear from a search engine perspective, consider this: What do you think you will find if you do a Google search on “miserable failure”? You’ll be surprised. (http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3298443.stm)

Gifford Morley-Fletcher has worked in New Media since 1994, making him a bit of a ‘web dinosaur’. He is currently based in London as Strategy Director at Skive, an award-winning digital strategy and design agency based in London, responsible for developing interactive web sites, games and promotions for brands such as Reebok, Playstation, McDonalds and Gillette. During his career, he has worked in all areas of web development and online marketing, most recently spending 4 years in Paris where he was a founder of LSF Interactive, specialists in SEO, Paid Search and online lead generation.

More info on the digital strategy, design and production company as well as rich media agency Skive here.

The Future of Interactivity

Posted on March 30, 2008 by per

FOR YOUR INFORMATION:

The American University Clubs of France
Cordially invite you to attend a speaker event on

The Future of Interactivity

April 15, 2008

This event will feature three guest speakers who will address the topic of the Future of Interactivity from three very different perspectives.

· Youth trends and a GenY perspective. Day in the life of a Gen-Yer and how new social media is integral to their lifestyle and social behavior. Addressed by Chauncey Zalkin, youth trend spotter, writer and brand strategist.

· Communication perspective and the impact of social media and web 2.O on reputation management, public relations and journalism. Addressed by Silvia Cambié, cross- cultural communications and social media expert.

· IT Perspective and how to embrace, understand and control the innovative power of new technology at a boardroom level. Addressed by Pauwl Lunow, who coaches CIO’s and teams on integrating new technology into business processes.

DATE: April 15, 2008

TIME: 7:00 – 9:00

ATTENDEES: AUC members and Guests of AUC members and speakers

PRICE: 25 Euros. Check must be received by April 7th. Includes wine,kir, beverages & light snacks

LOCATION: L’Echangeur 66 rue des Archives 75003 www.echangeur.fr
Centre Européen sur les Pratiques Innovantes de la Relation Client

REGISTRATION: You must go to the AUC site to register at http://www.etheryl.net/AUC/ and send check for 25 Euros payable to AUC – AMERICAN UNIVERSITY CLUBS OF FRANCE; mail to: Bassem Maalouf 13 rue Anatole France 92800 Puteaux, France

L@C TV: Carlos Diaz on Enterprise Social Software, founder and CEO of blueKiwi, vidcast

Posted on February 21, 2008 by per

Lunch at the Circle’s Per Karlsson interviews Carlos Diaz, founder and CEO of blueKiwi on February 4, 2008 at the Restaurant Maceo, Paris.

You can also listen to the full MP3 sound podcast with Carlos here.

You can download the video with Carlos Diaz here if you prefer to watch it off-line (go to the page with this specific video and you will find the download links).

Social software… FaceBook, SecondLife, Wiki… It’s just for kids or teenagers, right? Wrong! Perhaps.

There is a new breed of “enterprise social software” emerging that potentially may change the way we work and the way we collaborate. As well as the way hierarchies work in organisations. You can also think back to the days when millions of dollars were invested in enterprise “knowledge management” solutions. And change the scenario to something that may actually work and that costs only a fraction. And that is implemented and managed by line managers – not the big IT departments.

But first you have to understand what it is and start imagining what you can do with it. This is what Carlos Diaz will tell you.

Carlos Diaz is founder and CEO of blueKiwi, a French enterprise social software company. Gartner recently listed blueKiwi on its pick list for the top “Team Collaboration and Social Software” solutions. In fact, blueKiwi was the only European company on the list… (“blueKiwi has successful deployments of Web-based open collaboration solutions where the emphasis is on information sharing, strengthening of employee relationships and expert identification.” -Gartner 2007.)

Before founding blueKiwi Carlos was CEO of GroupeReflekt, a consulting company and web agency that he founded with his brother in Limoges ten years ago and recently sold to the Belgian company Emakina.

More info:
blueKiwi: http://www.bluekiwi-software.com/