Make sure your social media channels have current AND CONSISTENT content

A few months ago, I suggested that businesses should make sure that their social media channels have CURRENT content.

This does NOT count as current content.

But that’s only part of the battle.

It also helps if the social media channels of a business exhibit CONSISTENT content.

Because of my years of competitive analysis experience, I engage in some competitive analysis for one of my Bredemarket clients. This includes regular visits to competitor social media channels. I won’t mention the name of the competitor (after all, I don’t want to promote a company that competes with one of my clients), but one competitor is very good at social media channel consistency. The competitor uses four major social media outlets, and generally ensures that content on one outlet is also available on another outlet, in a format appropriate to that outlet.

Some companies…don’t do so well.

I’ve run across several companies with multiple social media outlets that fail to take advantage of them.

  • In one case, a company published a very good video on its YouTube channel, but failed to share a link to the YouTube video on any of its other outlets, missing a golden content sharing opportunity.
  • In another case, a company had created two Twitter accounts over the years, but never let the followers of the old Twitter account know about the new Twitter account. Sadly, the new Twitter account had FEWER followers than the old one, again missing a golden content sharing opportunity.
  • In a third case, a social media consultant created accounts on multiple social media outlets, but NEVER posted to one of the social media platforms. (And this is a social media consultant!) It would have been best to have NEVER created that dormant account at all, rather than creating an account with NO content.

I’m struggling with this myself at Bredemarket, since I have multiple accounts devoted to the Bredemarket business itself, and other accounts devoted to me in a professional or personal capacity. For example, I’m probably going to share this blog post after I publish it. Where should I share it? Why? How?

If only there were a service that could help me analyze my web/social media content…oh yeah, I offer one: Bredemarket 404 Web/Social Media Checkup.

If you’d like me to perform an unbiased third-party social media checkup, contact me. (I can analyze your competitors also.)

Water is (literally) critical and needs to smarten up

Presidential Policy Directive 21 (2013), the successor to Homeland Security Presidential Directive 7 (2003), defines 16 critical infrastructure sectors that need to be protected by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and other entities.

There are 16 critical infrastructure sectors whose assets, systems, and networks, whether physical or virtual, are considered so vital to the United States that their incapacitation or destruction would have a debilitating effect on security, national economic security, national public health or safety, or any combination thereof.

Some of the critical infrastructure sectors are obvious at first glance, including sectors such as transportation systems, nuclear reactors/materials/waste, and government facilities. But these aren’t the only ones. Take the Water and Wastewater Systems sector, overseen by the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA).

Safe drinking water is a prerequisite for protecting public health and all human activity. Properly treated wastewater is vital for preventing disease and protecting the environment. Thus, ensuring the supply of drinking water and wastewater treatment and service is essential to modern life and the Nation’s economy.

Look at the pain that we’ve suffered because of water issues in Flint, Michigan and other cities. Now imagine what would happen if the water in a larger region, such as the Colorado River valley, were to become undrinkable.

Oh yeah, climate change.

Data show extreme weather events are increasing. This is challenging utility providers who are managing critical infrastructure around the globe. The year 2020 was truly devastating for wildfires. From California to Australia, the world got a firsthand glimpse into how warmer, drier conditions are causing harsher droughts — resulting in longer fire seasons and greater water scarcity.

Most of us don’t make a habit of reading Water Online, but this site published a recent article on the part that technology plays in preserving the water/wastewater critical infrastructure system. These technologies are converting our water infrastructure into “smart” infrastructure, a key part of any smart city.

One of the technologies that is making our water infrastructure “smart” is referred to as “digital twins.”

No, not “Twins is the New Trend” twins.

Here’s what “digital twins” means from the critical infrastructure perspective.

Digital twin technology is providing promise in this regard. Digital twins are software representations of assets and processes that help understand, predict, and optimize performance to achieve improved business outcomes. Digital twins consist of three components — a data model, a set of analytics or algorithms, and knowledge — and are extremely valuable when it comes to predicting the impact of a storm for sewage and stormwater management.

Digital twins, like weather, are revised as more data is gathered and more information becomes available. Like any science, we don’t know everything on day 1, but if we continue to gather information and test hypotheses we will know more on day 2, and then even more on day 145.

The benefit of digital twins? Lower repair costs by better targeting of responses.

For more about smart water, see this article in Water World.

Biometric RFP writing experts, to a point

As part of my effort to establish Bredemarket as a biometric proposal writing expert (I eschew modesty), I researched some documents that weren’t about proposals, but about REQUESTS for Proposals (RFPs).

One way to write biometric RFPs

There are various ways to write RFPs, including RFPs for biometric procurement.

I don’t think I’m giving away any deep dark secrets when I state that biometric vendors want to influence the content of biometric RFPs. I know of one blatant example of this, when (many years ago) one U.S. state issued an RFP that explicitly said that the state wanted to buy a MOTOROLA automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS). So it issued an RFP to Motorola and several other vendors asking for a Motorola AFIS.

Luckily for the state, Motorola chose to submit a bid. (The bid/no-bid decision was a no-brainer.)

As a Motorola employee (not in proposals, but in product management), I was pleased when that state, after evaluating the RFPs, selected Motorola to provide its AFIS. (Are you surprised?)

But the other bidders didn’t give up and cede the victory to Motorola. Via FOIA requests, Motorola was able to read the proposal of competitor Sagem Morpho, which I can paraphrase as follows:

Your state has requested a Motorola AFIS. Well, Sagem Morpho has provided systems that replaced Motorola AFIS in two states when these states became dissatisfied with their Motorola systems. Since Sagem Morpho AFIS is by definition better than Motorola AFIS, Sagem Morpho EXCEEDS your state’s requirement. So award us extra points for exceeding the requirement and give US your AFIS contract, NOT Motorola.

It didn’t work, but it was a good effort by Sagem Morpho.

Some of you know how this story ended. Motorola subsequently sold its Biometric Business Unit to…Sagem Morpho, I was transferred from product management to proposals in the new combined company, and two of my new coworkers were people who wrote that very proposal. I was therefore able to tell them personally that Sagem Morpho’s proposal was better than Motorola’s. The reaction of the two states who founded themselves back with “Motorolans” again was unrecorded.

(Actually, the new company MorphoTrak and its corporate parent that was eventually named Morpho were big enough that they could get around the concerns of dissatisfied customers. So I’m sure that, at least for a time, those two states were probably visited by ex-Sagem Morpho folks rather than ex-Motorola folks. And I know of at least two instances in which MorphoTrak either bid on or implemented systems outside of MorphoTrak’s geographic territory, just because the customers had relationships with MorphoTrak that they didn’t have with Morpho.)

Back to Motorola’s win of an RFP that requested a Motorola system. Usually, the RFP writing strategy of “write a proposal that favors one vendor over all the others” isn’t always the popular course. Some RFP writers prefer a better strategy, in which the overall needs of the customer are carefully considered.

A better way to write biometric RFPs

Enter the Law Enforcement Standards Office, a division of the National Institute of Standards and Technology. In 2013, this entity released its “Writing Guidelines for Requests for Proposals for Automated Fingerprint Identification Systems” (NIST Special Publication 1155), a copy of which can be downloaded here. (For historical interest, an earlier draft version is online here. The draft is somewhat longer than the final version.)

I should mention that the committee that created the guidelines included some clear experts in the AFIS world. Let me just mention three of the names:

  • Peter T. Higgins, who was at the time a noted consultant for agencies writing AFIS RFPs and who had previously worked on the FBI’s IAFIS system;
  • Peter Komarinski, another noted consultant and a former key AFIS person for the State of New York; and
  • Mike Lesko, who was at the time employed by the State of Texas as one of their key AFIS people. He has since left the state and has a new job.

And the rest of the committee exhibited similar experience, so these people knew AFIS and knew what agencies needed when they procured an AFIS.

One of the key issues that concerned the committee was latent AFIS interoperability. I don’t want to spend the time to discuss the topic in detail here, but for now I’ll just say that when you have multiple vendors providing AFIS (there were three major vendors and several other vendors in 2013), there is often a challenge when latent (crime scene) prints are processed on one AFIS but searched on another. To sum up the story succinctly, there were methods to overcome these challenges, and the committee was clearly in favor of employing these methods.

Beyond this, the committee was concerned with two topics:

  • The process to procure an AFIS.
  • The process to upgrade an AFIS, which includes steps both before and after procurement.

Regarding procurement, the committee identified four specific phases:

  • Phase 1: Establish Leadership and Align Resources
  • Phase 2: Develop the RFP Requirements and the Document
  • Phase 3: Evaluate Proposals and Award a Contract
  • Phase 4: Manage Procurement Implementation

The meat of the guidelines, however, covered the upgrade itself.

First, the agency needs to explicitly state the reasons for the upgrade.

Once this is done, stakeholders who have a vested interest in the upgrade need to be identified and given assignments; consultants need to be selected if needed (did I mention that at least two committee members were consultants?); and plans to govern the upgrade process itself need to be created (did I mention that one of the consultants had federal government experience?).

Then the procuring agency is ready to…plan. Where is the agency going to get the money for a new AFIS? What should the new AFIS do? What do the latest AFIS do today that the agency’s (older) AFIS cannot do? Are these new features important?

Once the procuring agency has a high-level view of what it wants, and the money to do it, it’s time to solicit. (I’m talking about legal solicitation here.) This involves the creation of a draft of the Request for Proposal (RFP) that is eventually finalized and distributed to bidders. Perhaps a Request for Information (RFI) may be released before the RFP, to solicit additional information to flow into the RFP. This can be an involved process, as is shown by this one example of something to place in an RFP (I’ll return to this example later, and don’t forget that this example was released in 2013):

Form and fit requirements (type, make/model, or physical size/capacity), such as specifying an Intel® dual-core processor that runs on Windows 7® with a 500-gigabyte hard drive and a 20-inch monitor…

Once the vendors get the RFP, the procuring agency has to manage the bidding process, including questions from the bidders, perhaps a bidder’s conference, and then final submission of the proposals to the agency.

Then it’s time for evaluation. The committee includes this statement at the beginning of the evaluation section:

The evaluation of submissions must be fair and consistent.

I don’t think the members of this committee would have authored an RFP that stated “we want a Motorola AFIS.”

And the evaluation would similarly not favor one vendor over another, and would use a previously-defined Source Selection Plan in which each bidder is graded on specific criteria that were prepared well in advance.

Eventually a vendor is selected, and while the original RFP is still part of the package government the implementation, it is usually superseded by subsequent documents, including plans jointly agreed upon by the vendor and agency that may differ from the original RFP.

But is the “better way” truly better?

In general I am in agreement with the guidelines, but as a former employee of a biometric vendor, and as a present consultant to multiple biometric vendors, I have one piece of advice.

Concentrate on the WHAT rather than the HOW.

(By amazing coincidence, this is something that the engineers liked to tell ME when I was a product manager. Live and learn.)

A biometric RFP should state an agency’s biometric needs, but shouldn’t go into excruciating detail about how a potential vendor should meet those needs.

Take the example above. Would the world end if the hard drive only had 400 gigabytes, rather than 500? (Again, I’m thinking in 2013 terms; in 2021, it’s possible that the computer may not have a hard drive at all.) Every time that an RFP includes a low-level requirement that is not met by a vendor’s offering, the vendor has to take time to create a special offering just to meet the requirements of the RFP, an effort that increases the costs to the agency.

Sometimes these special requirements (I don’t call them custom requirements) are justified, but sometimes they are not.

By the way, my least favorite requirement that I ever encountered was the one that told the bidders and their R&D teams exactly how the fingerprint matching needed to be conducted. As long as the system meets the accuracy requirements agreed upon in whatever document dictates accuracy, who cares HOW the match is conducted?

As I’ve noted a couple of times, this document was written in 2013, and therefore is fingerprint-centric (although it notes that the principles also apply to other biometric systems), includes dated technological references (Windows 7 being an example), and does not account for the cloud systems that are offered and/or have been implemented by several biometric vendors. (Storage of biometric data in the cloud introduces a whole new set of requirements to ensure that the data is protected.) I don’t know whether there are any plans to update these guidelines, and some of the principals who authored the original guidelines have since retired, but an update would be beneficial.

Oh, and if anyone plans to write an RFP mandating a Motorola AFIS, don’t. Motorola left the AFIS business over a decade ago.

But Motorola can supply a real-time computer aided dispatch system.

The tone of voice to use when talking about forensic mistakes

Remember my post that discussed the tone of voice that a company chooses to use when talking about the benefits of the company and its offerings?

Or perhaps you saw the repurposed version of the post, a page section entitled “Don’t use that tone of voice with me!”

The tone of voice that a firm uses does not only extend to benefit statements, but to all communications from a company. Sometimes the tone of voice attracts potential clients. Sometimes it repels them.

For example, a book was published a couple of months ago. Check the tone of voice in these excerpts from the book advertisement.

“That’s not my fingerprint, your honor,” said the defendant, after FBI experts reported a “100-percent identification.” They were wrong. It is shocking how often they are. Autopsy of a Crime Lab is the first book to catalog the sources of error and the faulty science behind a range of well-known forensic evidence, from fingerprints and firearms to forensic algorithms. In this devastating forensic takedown, noted legal expert Brandon L. Garrett poses the questions that should be asked in courtrooms every day: Where are the studies that validate the basic premises of widely accepted techniques such as fingerprinting? How can experts testify with 100 percent certainty about a fingerprint, when there is no such thing as a 100 percent match? Where is the quality control in the laboratories and at the crime scenes? Should we so readily adopt powerful new technologies like facial recognition software and rapid DNA machines? And why have judges been so reluctant to consider the weaknesses of so many long-accepted methods?

Note that author Brandon Garrett is NOT making this stuff up. People in the identity industry are well aware of the Brandon Mayfield case and others that started a series of reforms beginning in 2009, including changes in courtroom testimony and increased testing of forensic techniques by the National Institute of Standards and Technology and others.

It’s obvious that I, with my biases resulting from over 25 years in the identity industry, am not going to enjoy phrases such as “devastating forensic takedown,” especially when I know that some sectors of the forensics profession have been working on correcting these mistakes for 12 years now, and have cooperated with the Innocence Project to rectify some of these mistakes.

So from my perspective, here are my two concerns about language that could be considered inflammatory:

  • Inflammatory language focusing on anecdotal incidents leads to improper conclusions. Yes, there are anecdotal instances in which fingerprint examiners made incorrect decisions. Yes, there are anecdotal instances in which police agencies did not use facial recognition computer results solely as investigative leads, resulting in false arrests. But anecdotal incidents are not in my view substantive enough to ban fingerprint recognition or facial recognition entirely, as some (not all) who read Garrett’s book are going to want to do (and have done, in certain jurisdictions).
  • Inflammatory language prompts inflammatory language from “the other side.” Some forensic practitioners and criminal justice stakeholders may not be pleased to learn that they’ve been targeted by a “devastating forensic takedown.” And sometimes the responses can get nasty: “enemies” of forensic techniques “love criminals.”

Of course, it may be near to impossible to have a reasoned discussion of forensic and police techniques these days. And I’ll confess that it’s hard to sell books by taking a nuanced tone in the book blurb. But if would be nice if we could all just get along.

P.S. Garrett was interviewed on TV in connection to the Derek Chauvin trial, and did not (IMHO) come off as a wild-eyed “defund the police” hack. His major point was that Chauvin’s actions were not made in a split second, but in a course of several minutes.

Case studies, revisited

A little over a month ago, I mentioned that Bredemarket was going to be getting some more case study work. And it has.

No, not that type of case! By Michael Kammerer (Rob Gyp) – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=37604962

(I’m gonna run my “case” study visual joke all the way into the lost baggage room.)

So how is my client USING these case studies that I am helping the client to create?

To win more business from law enforcement customers.

When my client’s law enforcement customers are pleased with the client’s offering, they’re willing to participate in case studies addressed to OTHER law enforcement customers.

Case studies are effective because they speak to the needs of the readers. The reader has a problem, and the case study tells how a similar entity solved that same problem. In this case, a law enforcement agency learns of a solution that has already worked for another law enforcement agency. “If it worked for my friends in the next county, it will work for me also.”

“Hey, mate, did you read the case study about that software package that Bruce’s agency uses?” By Love Makes A Way – https://www.flickr.com/photos/lovemakesaway/15802177909/, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=101171928

The power of case studies doesn’t just work for law enforcement. It can work in any industry where the customers band together to help each other out. E-commerce developers. Security experts. Mobile car washing services.

If you’re a company that provides identity solutions (or technology solutions, or other solutions), and you have customers who will rave about your product to other customers, then you’re a candidate to create a case study. If you want help, contact me.

(Past illustrations) Introducing products from the European market into the U.S. market

(This past illustration describes something that I performed in my career, either for a Bredemarket client, for an employer, or as a volunteer. The entity for which I performed the work, or proposed to perform the work, is not listed for confidentiality reasons.)

PROBLEM

There was a strong desire to introduce two products, popular in the European market, into the U.S. market. However, the products could not be introduced as-is without adaptation.

klompen from the Netherlands. By Berkh – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=17202956

SOLUTION

For the first product, I participated as part of a team that not only identified the peculiarities of the U.S. market (which differed in significant ways from the European market), but also identified target customers (both core customers and growth customers) and estimated revenue for the first product. The initial revenue estimates were unrealistic and were revised.

Several months later, as we were preparing the introduce the product in the U.S. market, I created the sales playbook for the product. This included a product description, competitive products, and answers to frequently asked questions. This playbook was presented to account managers via a webinar upon completion.

For the second product, I again participated as part of a team that identified the peculiarities of the U.S. market. In this case, the U.S. market was VERY peculiar, and it was determined that it would be best to enter the market slowly, via strategic partners.

Some time later, we were asked again to enter the U.S. market. I provided the historical perspective from the earlier analysis, noting that the U.S. market was STILL very peculiar, and that no changes to the original strategy were warranted.

RESULTS

The first product has been successful in the U.S. market, has advanced through several generations, and continues to expand its functionality and its reach.

The second product has not yet been successful in the U.S., since the peculiar market conditions continue to exist.

The business TikTok post that I couldn’t share with you

I had a really good post planned for today.

While I’m not a big creator of video content, I can certainly appreciate good content, and I planned to share some excellent video content with you.

There is a mobile car washing service in my hometown of Ontario, California. Now videos of mobile car washing are more exciting than videos of…well, videos of writers writing, but not by much. So if you want to grab someone’s attention, you have to put entertaining content into a mobile car washing video.

(No, not that.)

So this local mobile car washing service posted a video on TikTok that began with the service washing…a kid-size vehicle.

Completely cute and entertaining, so I decided to share it from the TikTok app to one of my Facebook groups, and then decided that I wanted to write a blog post about it.

So I went to share the video from the TikTok web page to this blog, and was told the video was not available. I investigated further, and found this on the account page.

Yes, you read that right – a COMPANY’S TikTok account is PRIVATE.

I went back to my TikTok app, navigated to the account, and confirmed that the video was still there (for those of us who were logged in and following the account) and that hundreds of people have seen it.

But I can’t share it with you, nor can I share any of the company’s other videos, which are restricted to “Followers only.”

But trust me, it was a really cute video.

What is an “antimicrobial” contact fingerprint reader? And what is it NOT?

(Part of the biometric product marketing expert series)

In the COVID and (soon) post-COVID area, people don’t want to touch things. That impacts how identity products are marketed, including biometric readers.

Why contactless biometrics are “better” than contact biometrics

In the biometric world, this reluctance to touch things has served to promote CONTACTLESS biometric technologies, such as facial recognition, other other technologies. The loser in this has been fingerprint-based technologies, as several facial and iris vendors have made the claim that face/iris biometrics are contactless, while fingerprint biometrics are NOT contactless.

Well, my friends at my former employer IDEMIA might take issue with that claim, since you literally do NOT touch the fingerprint reader in IDEMIA’s MorphoWave product. IDEMIA does not (to my knowledge) make any medical claims about MorphoWave, but the company does emphasize that its contactless fingerprint reader allows for fast capture of four-finger slaps.

To protect their premises, organizations need access control solutions that are efficient, fast, and convenient. A contactless fingerprint scanner provides an optimum answer high throughput workplaces. IDEMIA’s MorphoWave™ contactless fingerprint solution scans and verifies 4 fingerprints in less than 1 second, through a fully touchless hand wave gesture. Thanks to the simplicity of this gesture, the throughput can reach up to 50 people per minute.

An antimicrobial contact fingerprint reader?

But what if there were a CONTACT solution that allowed you to capture prints with a reduced fear of “bad things”?

That’s what Integrated Biometrics appears to be claiming.

Integrated Biometrics (IB), the world leader in mobile, FBI-certified biometric fingerprint scanners, and NBD Nanotechnologies (NBD Nano), the surface coating experts, today announced the inclusion of NBD’s RepelFlex MBED transparent coating on IB’s entire line of fingerprint scanners.

An ultra-thin, transparent coating, RepelFlex MBED is designed to provide outstanding antimicrobial, anti-scratch, and anti-stain protection to devices. Long-lasting and multi-functional, RepelFlex MBED is ideal for surfaces that must stand up to high throughput and harsh conditions without compromising accuracy.

So what exactly does “antimicrobial” mean?

A cluster of Escherichia coli bacteria magnified 10,000 times. By Photo by Eric Erbe, digital colorization by Christopher Pooley, both of USDA, ARS, EMU. – This image was released by the Agricultural Research Service, the research agency of the United States Department of Agriculture, with the ID K11077-1 (next)., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=958857

Let’s see how NBD Nano describes it.

Preventing the presence and growth of microbials on surfaces is becoming increasingly important. Antimicrobial performance is especially critical on surfaces that are accessible to the public in order to prevent the spread of stain and odor causing bacteria and microbes.

And if you drill further down in NBD Nano’s website, you find this information in a technical data sheet (PDF).

Antimicrobial Performance: Japanese Industrial Standard (JIS) Z 2801 – PASS*
*as tested by Microchem Laboratory, Round Rock, TX

Now since I’m not up to date on my Japanese Industrial Standards, I had to rely on the good folks at the aforementioned Microchem Laboratory to explain what the standard actually means.

The JIS Z 2801 method tests the ability of plastics, metals, ceramics and other antimicrobial surfaces to inhibit the growth of microorganisms or kill them. The procedure is very sensitive to antimicrobial activity and has a number of real world applications anywhere from the hospital/clinical environment to a household consumer company concerned with the ability of a material they have to allow bacterial growth.

The JIS Z 2801 method is the most commonly chosen test and has become the industry standard for antimicrobial hard surface performance in the United States.

It may be antimicrobial, but what about preventing the “C” word?

Now you may have noticed that Microchem Laboratory, NBD Nano, and Integrated Biometrics did not make any medical claims regarding their products. None of them, for example, used the “C” word in any of their materials.

There’s a very, very good reason for that.

If any of these product providers were to make specific MEDICAL claims, then any sales in the United States would come under the purview of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

This is something that temperature scanner manufacturers learned the hard way.

Digression: if fever scanners are fever scanners, does that mean they are fever scanners?

Remember “fever scanners”? Those devices that were (and in some cases still are) pointed at your forehead as you enter a building or another secure area? I won’t get into the issues with these devices (what happens when the scanner is placed next to a building’s front entrance on a hot day?), but I will look at some of the claims about those scanners.

About a year ago, John Honovich of IPVM began asking some uncomfortable questions about the marketing of those devices, especially after the FDA clarified what thermal imaging systems could and could not do.

When used correctly, thermal imaging systems generally have been shown to accurately measure someone’s surface skin temperature without being physically close to the person being evaluated….

Thermal imaging systems have not been shown to be accurate when used to take the temperature of multiple people at the same time. The accuracy of these systems depends on careful set-up and operation, as well as proper preparation of the person being evaluated….

Room temperature should be 68-76 °F (20-24 °C) and relative humidity 10-50 percent….

The person handling the system should make sure the person being evaluated…(h)as waited at least 15 minutes in the measurement room or 30 minutes after exercising, strenuous physical activity, bathing, or using hot or cold compresses on the face.

Let’s stop right there. For any of you who have undergone a temperature scan in the last year: how many of you have waited in a measurement room for at least 15 minutes BEFORE your temperature was taken?

Last summer I had a dentist appointment. My dentist is in Ontario, California, where the summers can get kind of hot. The protocol at this dentist’s office was to have you call the office from your car when you arrived in the parking lot, then wait for someone from the office to come outside and take your temperature before you could enter the building.

I was no dummy. I left my car and its air conditioner running while waiting for my temperature to be taken. Otherwise, who knows what my temperature reading would have been? (I also chose NOT to walk to the dentist’s office that day for the same reason.)

Back to John Honovich. He had read the FDA advice on the medical nature of thermal imaging systems, and then noted that some of the manufacturers of said systems were sort of getting around this by stating that their devices were not medical devices.

Even though the manufacturers still referred to them as “fever cameras.”

For example, one vendor (who has since changed its advertising) declared at the time that “thermal temperature-monitoring technology assists in reducing the spread of viral diseases,” even though that vendor’s device “is not a medical device and is not designed or intended for diagnosis, prevention, or treatment of any disease or condition.”

Fever scanners, testosterone supplements…and fingerprint readers

Yes, that language is similar to the language used by providers of natural supplements that, according to anecdotal evidence, work wonders. The FDA really polices this stuff.

So you really don’t want to make medical claims about ANY product unless you can back them up with the FDA. You can say that a particular product passed a particular antimicrobial standard…but you’d better not say anything else.

In fact, Integrated Biometrics only mentions the “antimicrobial” claim in passing, but spends some time discussing other benefits of the NBD Nano technology:

The inclusion of RepelFlex MBED coatings enable IB’s scanners to deliver an even higher level of performance. Surfaces are tougher and more difficult to scratch or stain, increasing their longevity while maintaining print quality even when regular cleaning is not possible due to conditions or times of heavy use.

So the treated Integrated Biometrics products are tough…like those famous 1970s crime fighters Kojak, Columbo, and Danno and the other people from Five-O. (Not that Sherlock and Watson were slouches.)

Book ’em, Danno! By CBS Television – eBay item photo front photo back, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19674714

On win themes and proposal themes

Once you’ve figured out the benefits of your solution for various customer stakeholders, you need to communicate the benefits in your proposal.

Sorry, this is a different type of “WIN.” Whip Inflation Now needlework picture. By Unknown author – Gerald R. Ford Presidential Museum, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=20829024

While I try to avoid complexity where possible, there are times when the communication of benefits will follow a hierarchy. Cheryl Smith describes two levels of the hierarchy in her Privia blog post:

Win Themes. These subtle messages are woven into your proposal narrative, reinforcing your Win Strategy. Knowing specifically what they are upfront will help reviewers know what to look for and identify how and where to improve them.

Proposal Themes. These explicit, section-specific statements are used to guide the evaluator as they read. Knowing specifically what they are upfront will help reviewers test how well they support your Win Theme(s) and identify how to improve them.

As you may recall, different evaluators read different sections of a proposal. For an automated fingerprint identification system (AFIS) proposal, you may have a certified latent examiner reading the latent entry section of the proposal, while an information technology person might read the network and security section of the proposal.

Unless you’re a sole proprietor, your win themes, proposal themes, and benefits will probably need some level of buyoff from multiple people. Perhaps your salesperson will advance some themes, but maybe his or her boss will need to approve them. (Approvals are a necessary evil in the proposal process.)

And then when the writers actually write the proposal, the writing will be measured (among other methods) for its faithfulness to the themes. Smith addresses this measurement also:

Be careful what you ask for. When you ask reviewers a generic question like “feedback,” you should expect a generic answer like, “this is weak.” Instead, ask reviewers a specific question like “how can I improve this section” or “how can I support this Win Theme”? This small adjustment in reviewer mind-set will transform a “this is weak” comment into an “add this proof point to strengthen the section” instruction. 

This is something discussed by Carl Dickson (someone I’ve mentioned before in another context).

In the perfect world, a proposal—even a proposal hundreds of pages long—will have consistent themes throughout. It won’t sound like it was written by a bunch of different people—even though it probably WAS written by a bunch of different people.

One of my clients is a practitioner of something called a “book of truth,” a short document distributed to all of the writers for a particular proposal. The book of truth not only states the win themes and proposal themes, but also has some rules for consistency, such as how to refer to the customer. You don’t want to refer to the customer as “Los Angeles County” on page 2, “the County of Los Angeles” on page 7, “L.A. County” on page 9, and “San Francisco” on page 11.

Yes, the latter can happen when you repurpose text and don’t check it carefully. Watch out, because despite the fact that San Francisco and Los Angeles are in the same state, they are not the same city, despite what some people might think.

Calendarizing content

(And verbing nouns, but that’s an entirely different topic.)

You may have heard of the acronym WiFLi, which stands for Wider, Faster, Lighter and is used by one manufacturer within the bicycling community.

WiFLi is SRAM’s name for a 2x drivetrain with wide-range cassette. The short cage eTap rear derailleur officially maxes out with a 28-tooth cog; the eTap WiFLi rear derailleur can take up to a 32-tooth cog. This provides lower gears—for higher cadences and easier hill climbing—than a traditional 2x drivetrain, without needing to sign up for a triple-chainring drivetrain.

(Um, has anyone in the bicycling industry heard of benefit statements rather than feature statements? Is the 28-tooth cog missing the wisdom teeth?)

So maybe you’ve heard of bicycling’s WiFLI. But you may not have heard of MY acronym WIFLI, which stands for “when I feel like it.”

For the most part, my blogging at Bredemarket and other places is conducted in a WIFLI fashion. I’ll get an idea, jot down some things about it, sleep on it (sometimes), and then distribute it to the world at the Bredemarket blog and other online locations.

More often than not I DO “feel like it,” so my social outlets don’t necessarily suffer from lack of content. But do my momentary whims lead me to create the RIGHT content?

And this, my friends, is why people suggest content calendars. Although you don’t need to keep them on paper these days.

A calendar from the Petaluma and Santa Rosa Railroad. By Visitor7 – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=26340569

Content calendars exist not only to make sure that you’re generating enough content, but that you’re generating the right content.

One of my goals at Bredemarket is to assist general technology customers, so this, my first post under my new Bredemarket content calendar schedule, is supposed to be a technology post. (I can’t post about identity all the time, after all.)

And I chose to write this technology post about content calendar technology.

I think that’s cheating. (If it were identity day, would I have posted an autobiography?)

But there ARE technology issues to consider when creating a content calendar. You can either adapt common tools such as Excel (example) or Trello (example) to create your content calendar, or you can use special-purpose applications such as Agorapulse or DivvyHQ or Loomly or Monday to do it.

As of now, I’m leaning toward the “adapt common tools” route, and the common tool that I adapted was…Google Calendar. I just created an additional calendar, called it “blog/social content calendar,” and marked the days on which I wanted to address different topics. I’m putting notes in the calendar entries as needed to spur my creation, distribution, and so forth.

Perhaps I can get fancy later, but for now this is getting me started. In the future I may iterate toward something more complex, or alternatively I may iterate away from the entire idea of a content calendar altogether.

The important thing is to start, evaluate, and then adjust.

Now I obviously can’t go to clients and tell them that I am an expert at content calendars, with deep knowledge of the topic. But I at least know the questions to ask.

  • What are the important topics that your company wants to address?
  • How will you address those topics? Blogging? LinkedIn? Paper planes flown through potential clients’ open windows?
  • How often do you want to create content?
  • Can you truly create content at that pace?

If you want me to fire a bunch of these and similar questions at you, and possibly to help you create content that aligns with your content calendar, contact me.