LEVEL is wrapping up day one at the Liferay West Coast Symposium in Anaheim, CA.  Chris Stavros (affectionately known as “Stavie”), Technology Strategist at LEVEL had the opportunity to follow-up the event keynote this morning with a general session presentation on the agility of the Liferay Portal platform and best practices for leveraging the technology.  Addressing an audience of around 300 Liferay developers, clients, prospects and partners, Chris encouraged everyone to phase their approach to developing solutions with due diligence. At the end of the day, the fundamental truth is that technology is only the tool. Preparedness and forethought come first.

It seems so simple, but all too often the two get confused and not just specifically with Liferay projects – but any project. Below is a summary of “Stavie’s Success Strategies for Sustainable Liferay Projects,” but I would argue the majority of these apply to all projects.

• Start with Good IA or Prototypes
  “Good” Means “Enough Detail to Keep the Engineers Head from Exploding on Impact”; Practical Solutions will Ensue
• Educate All Disciplines – Training is Priceless
  Get Everyone is On the Same Page to Understand what is Possible (and What’s Expensive)
• Be Considerate of Your Constraints:  Long-Term Ownership and Maintenance Capabilities; There is Typically More than One Path, but Frequently, Only One Sustainable Path
• Acquire or Hire Liferay Experts – It is Worth It!
• Buy Liferay Enterprise Edition with Support – It is Worth It!
  This Applies to Everyone:  Customers, Partners, Integrators
• If You Hire Generalists Get Them Trained
• Stay Inside the Box
  Avoid Work-Arounds and be a Good Citizen and Steward of Change
• Empower Your UI Developers

You can follow LEVEL at the event on Twitter and get updates and insights throughout the day.

“5 for 1 Euro,” the vendor remarks, standing under the shade of the Eiffel Tower. Almost immediately, another man follows down the line of people offering “5 for 1 Euro.” Wait, those sought after mini-Eiffel Towers are exactly the same? Why would I have changed my mind just 5 seconds after the last offer? It is almost like an interrogation process, as we wait more than 2 hours to take the elevator to the top of the real Eiffel Tower. Why would I breakdown and buy one now? I’m getting dismayed, but toward the very end of our wait I hear “6 for 1 Euro.” Really? The same quality, but I get 20% more Eiffel Tower for the same price? I’m sold.

What all these vendors had down really well was the operational piece of their business. They stood right at the point where you demanded their product. They were easy to find, their merchandise was easy to browse, each had a clear pricing model, and the purchase process was a cinch. What they all lacked was differentiation. With near flawless operations, their challenge was moving away from pure price competition and favorable shopping environment, to one that had something distinct that would persuade me to choose them. What could that be?

I turned my gaze on two street performers that started to dance to a Michael Jackson song. At first, only one person stopped to watch. Less than 1 minute into the song, they were surrounded by more than 20 people watching. The crowd was into it. An emotional connection had been made. These guys really stood out of the sea of vendors. A brand was built by just copying the King of Pop and coming up with their own unique dance style. After the song ended, another song started up. Those that didn’t like the next song took off; however, one thoughtful person dropped a coin in their hat. I couldn’t see what it was, but I doubt it was more than a Euro at best.

These street dancers did an amazing job creating a brand. Their product was unique, the audience gave them a tremendous amount of unsolicited time, many gained an emotional tie to the moment and would remember the dancers well after their vacation in Paris; yet, they likely made no more money than the commodity-based Eiffel Tower vendors. Why is that?

Creating a brand doesn’t ensure sales, just as brilliantly designed business operations fail to close the deal if there is no brand tied to what is being offered. Having the fortunate experience of working on multiple eCommerce projects in my life, I’ve come to learn that business operations must be choreographed to the unique demands of selling online, while marketing must have an innovative message and clear go-to-market strategy. Without synchronicity between these two components, failure is certain.

Of course, I already loved Arcade Fire after seeing them at the Hurricane Festival in Germany some years ago. But now they came out with this fab wee ‘music video’ that inspires the UI Developer in me!

It’s an HTML5 movie that uses Google map images of a zip code you enter and then merges it with the video. Brilliant!

My favorite element is when you enter a message to your former self and it becomes branches. But from a coding perspective the true miracle is that this is pure JavaScript!

Go experience it in Chrome or other HTML5 browser! *

The Wilderness Downtown

* HTML5 implementation is coming more and more and you can test how much of it your browser supports already here.

The OMMA Awards for Web Site Excellence has named LEVEL as a finalist in two categories for their work with Marvell and the City of San Luis Obispo’s Tourism Business Improvement District (TBID).

Marvell’s corporate website, built on SWITCH, is now one of three in consideration for the Business-to-Business category in Web Site Excellence. San Luis Obispo Vacations was named as one of the three in the running for the Travel & Tourism Category in Web Site Excellence.

Winners will be announced Monday, September 27^th at the annual OMMA Awards ceremony in NYC.

The final Q&A with Matt Carinio, Sr. Business Analyst at LEVEL, asks who and how.

Question: Apps are just one of the big trends being driven by emerging devices and new user interfaces. Technologies facilitating gesture-based navigation, 3D, location-aware context are also important pieces. Looking ahead, what should brands be doing to identify the types of experiences users will expect in the next 3 years? How should they integrate them into their current roadmap?

Matt:  Brands need to hire good agencies that have the expertise and thought leadership in these area as well as their best interests.  The value of an agency’s strategic service offering is to understand a client’s business goals, objectives, and challenges while fully understanding the trends in marketing, technology, and consumer behaviors to arrive at insights that will create an integrated experience. Ultimately, there’s no one right answer for all brands. Their roadmaps should include a user/customer centric approach to what they need and a deep understanding of the tools and technologies at the brand’s disposal.  It is not something that brands should feel they need to tackle on their own and it is something that great agency partners, like LEVEL, are always thinking about.

Part III of Q&A with Matt Carinio, Sr. Business Analyst at LEVEL, enters the realm of navigation and content engagement.

Question: How far will applications extend into the way we are accustomed to browsing for and engaging with content?

With respect to mobile, applications have already changed our browsing and engagement with content.  The question really is, how will it change the way we consume content on other devices like televisions?  We are already seeing the first real wave of mainstream televisions being marketed with application integration and internet connectivity. This concept really isn’t anything new (WebTV ‘95) and its current form still feels to be a bit ahead of its time and somewhat disparate.  After all, are consumers really saying they want this functionality or are manufactures telling them they need it?  To tell you the truth, I am more interested in who wins the war of content accessibility on televisions when the time comes.  Do television manufactures build in the technology to access applications, the Internet and drive the user experience or will the cable communication companies vie for control therefore relegating TVs back to traditional display functionality. I see this shaping up similarly to the DVR wars of the late ‘90s when the discussions were of putting DVRs in televisions and eventually the cable and satellite companies got serious and seem to have won that battle.

Earlier this month, Ed Shin of Liferay hosted a 3-day workshop on Portal Administration and Portal Development at LEVEL | SJ.  LEVEL is a Liferay Gold Service Partner and a sold out crowd of LEVEL AllStars packed tightly into conference room to soak in as much information as possible.  During the training session we covered a number of topics. I drooled over our discussion on creating portlets and new ways to integrate them with Liferay as well as how to store and report information from a source database, all while maintaining work flow and permission. Slurp. Throughout the training a few friendly debates ignited:  Mac vs. PC, themes vs. layouts for UI, Chrome vs. Firefox vs. Opera –  none solved, but all thoroughly vetted.  I was in heaven. The camaraderie between LEVEL, Liferay and our shared clients is apparent, especially at these training classes. We’re proud to be able to bring people together and solve problems unlike any other agency to date. Ed Shin capped off our training with a much-needed outing for frozen yogurt. Thanks to Ed and Liferay for furthering the education of LEVEL employees to create an even stronger partnership.

Liferay is an open source portal software platform written in Java with the flexibility to integrate with a number of platforms and technologies. My colleagues Chris Guthrie (Technology Manager) and Chris Stavros (Technology Strategist) will be presenting development and business strategies at the upcoming Liferay West Coast Symposium in September.

In Part II of “Q&A on App Trends” Matt Carinio, Sr. Business Analyst at LEVEL Studios,  continues to explore the impact of mobile applications that go beyond the owners of the app stores. Feel free to comment and ask a few of your own questions.

Question: Aside from consumer electronics manufacturers, carriers and other app store owners, who do you think will be impacted by consumer’s increasing familiarity with apps as a way of searching for and accessing content?

Matt: The most significant impact will occur in mobile search (Google, Bing, Yahoo!, etc.). As mentioned in Part I, applications can be thought of as a shortcut, or bookmarks, to content. As applications become more practical and easier to find (which could be another topic all together), users will become less reliant on traditional search functionality on their mobile device to find content. Users are already using applications, that one could argue are actually directional or vertical search engines, like Yelp, Amazon, eBay and Wikipedia more often to find content instead of using traditional search engines. ComScore recently released data (June ’10) supporting this premise finding that users who primarily used apps instead of browsers on their phone were far less likely to use search as a means to acquire content.

Net Neutrality has been making headlines all over the Internet. But what does this mean for the future of the Internet? I like to consider myself to be a well-informed individual who cares about the Internet, and yet, I find all this Net Neutrality a bit confusing. Here is what I know:

• Net neutrality means that all Internet traffic is created equal. Internet Service Providers (ISPs) wouldn’t have the right to slow down particular kinds of traffic, e.g., Comcast purposefully slowing down Hulu or Netflix, not only for their status as a competitor, but because of the huge amounts of broadband these services consume.
• The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) regulates communication – specifically wire, satellite and cable.
• A few months ago, the FCC brokered talks between huge phone/cable/internet companies in an attempt to figure out the net neutrality issue as a whole, but these talks have since broke down.
• Recently, the US Court of Appeals ruled that the FCC didn’t have the authority to enforce net neutrality, siding with Comcast. In 2007, Comcast slowed down bit torrents and a variety of other traffic.
• Verizon and Google – “Googlezon” have come up with a net neutrality framework that at first glance seems okay, but is actually pretty scary.

So what’s going on with the Google/Verizon framework? The two companies have come up with a strange ‘tiered’ solution to all this. They focus primarily on ‘wireless’ Internet – which, strangely enough, the FCC can’t regulate yet (remember, they only can regulate wired communication). That being the case, the Googlezon arrangement largely leaves wired Internet, or “Public Internet” as they call it, alone. Let’s be honest though – the future is in wireless and mobile Internet.

Annalee Newitz over at io9.com summarizes the Googlezon wireless framework as such:

“Googlezon is redefining the internet as a tiered service, like cable. And this new thing called the public Internet is the lowest tier. Kind of like network television is the lowest tier in your television service options. From here on out, you will start to see the internet equivalent of cable service online: For an extra ten dollars, you can get the “movie lovers” package, where your ISP privileges Netflix and Hulu traffic, giving them to you super-fast. For another ten dollars, you can get the “concerned parent” package, which blocks peer-to-peer traffic as well as websites that they consider to be pornographic. And so on.” (Source: http://io9.com/5610328/how-the-googleverizon-proposal-could-kill-the-internet-in-5-years)

This kind of posturing, however, with Google and Verizon at the top of the internet heap directing traffic, means inevitably, these two companies would be able to dictate what kind of businesses would be able to succeed in this bizarre version of the Internet. New start ups or new competitors to Google/Verizon could have their traffic slowed down – or even stopped, effectively killing their business. Why do this? For Google, this is an unexpected turn – especially for a company whose unofficial motto is “Don’t Be Evil.” At the end of the day, however, both Google and Verizon are companies, and their chief objectives lie within how much revenue they can generate.

Trends in mobile applications impact more than just the owners of app stores. As mobile interfaces cause consumer behaviors and expectations to change, we are starting to see an evolution of mobile web-based interactions as well. We recently interviewed Matt Carinio, Sr. Business Analyst at LEVEL, to discuss what apps mean for all businesses that manage online experiences at a broader level. We’ll explore the topic over a series of blog posts. Feel free to post your own questions too.

Question: What are the real behind-the-scenes influencers driving the adoption of applications?

Matt: The two drivers of application adoption are convenience and entertainment.  Convenience in the respect that many mobile applications are form factor specific when it comes to content.  Whether it is your favorite news, weather, or financial website or a service site that provides recommendations of the best movies or restaurants in your area; content is still king when it comes to digital.  Applications allow publishers and their app developers to create an experience tailored to certain devices while taking advantage of the latest OS capabilities.  It is not uncommon for app customers to download all of their desktop bookmarks in their mobile app format as their initial introduction to world of mobile apps.

The second driver revolves around entertainment.  Phones are no longer just reserved for communication or even content consumption; many times they are used to as a fun way to kill time.  Games have always had their place in the history of the cell phone (think Tetris), and the display and performance characteristics of the latest incarnations of phones provide an ever-engaging gaming experience.