Bredemarket

When wildebeests propose

(No, this is NOT a post about wildebeest mating rituals. If that is your interest, go here. This is a post about how businesses develop sales proposals that they send to other businesses. This process has its own rituals, but they are not studied by biologists.)

Bredemarket isn’t my first time working as a contractor.

I still remember a night in October 1994. I had been contracting for several firms, and had just started a new contracting assignment in Anaheim, in an oddly shaped triangular building. I was contracting with a company’s Proposals Department, despite the fact that I had never written a proposal before. I had once helped to write a Request for Proposal, but that RFP was pretty much just a checklist.

As a contractor, I was paid by the hour, so I didn’t mind the fact that I was asked to work extra hours that October evening. While the actual employees were feverishly working on a response to a state-issued RFP, I was tasked with writing sole source proposal letters for things I had never heard of before that day. So there I was, writing letters that explained the “Input Station 2000” and the “Latent Station 2000” and things like that.

I continued contracting after that night, and eventually became an employee of the company as a proposal writer. I spent over five years writing about Input Stations and Latent Stations and Search Processors and amazingly small Fingerprint Processor boards, and after a while I even knew what I was writing about. I still remember my joy when I mentally had an understanding of RAID.

Image from https://www.abebooks.com/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=30500418192

After my five years in Proposals, I stayed with the company in another role (product manager) through two corporate acquisitions, and after the second corporate acquisition I rejoined the Proposals organization, spending another five years there. And even after I left Proposals for the second time, I continued to contribute to proposals afterwards. My flying pig did a lot of flying.

I have continued to do proposals work for Bredemarket, helping a firm develop standard proposal templates that its salespeople can use.

But Bredemarket also writes its OWN proposals, which is how Bredemarket gets some of its business.

You’ve heard the saying about eating your own dog food. That statement bored me, so I started talking about eating your own iguana food. Eventually I tired of iguanas and pivoted to wildebeests.

Black wildebeest. By derekkeats – Flickr: IMG_4955_facebook, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=14620744

Whether dog, iguana, or wildebeest, you get a slightly different perspective on proposals when you’re writing them for yourself.

But only a SLIGHTLY different perspective. After all, you’re still promoting a product or service, and still communicating benefits to a potential customer. That remains true whether the proposal was written on behalf of Printrak, MorphoTrak, Bredemarket, or one of Bredemarket’s clients.

But things are still a little different when you’re proposing for yourself and your service.

For one, the approval cycle is streamlined. As part of a multinational corporation, the MorphoTrak proposal approval cycle was relatively complex, even after my boss took extreme steps to simplify it. If MorphoTrak was going to release a $20 million dollar proposal, there was a good chance that someone at MorphoTrak’s corporate parent in France was going to have a seat at the approval table.

Now I’ll admit that Bredemarket has never issued a $20 million dollar proposal. Because of this, all of the proposals that Bredemarket has issued have only required a single approver.

Even then, however, you may have to wait a day to get that proposal approved. After all, the proposal approver is a strong practitioner of the “let’s sleep on it” school, and usually comes back with revised proposal ideas a day later after sleeping on it.

For example, let’s take a recent proposal that Bredemarket submitted to a potential client. The proposal was pretty much done, but the “sleep on it” interval had to take place before it was re-examined the next morning. I incorporated my new ideas (my dreams?) into the text, and then I printed a copy of the proposal for one last review.

A few minutes later, the printed copy was filled with changes.

So I made the changes, printed the new final version, and reviewed it one more time.

And added more markups, resulting in changes.

In the end, the proposal exceeded the three review cycles common in some of my offerings. And I probably could have reviewed it one or two more times, but I wanted to get the proposal out the door.

And even as I emailed the proposal to the potential client, I realized that proposals are often iterative, and that my potential client may have some requests for changes, resulting in a proposal modification.

Or maybe more than one proposal modification.

Back when I was at MorphoTrak, I regarded a proposal modification as a sign of failure. It meant that we didn’t get it right the first time, and therefore MorphoTrak would have to spend money to issue a revised proposal, and perhaps a re-revised proposal, and perhaps more. At the time MorphoTrak appended a letter to its revised proposals – “a” for the first revision, “b” for the second revision, etc. To my knowledge MorphoTrak never issued a “z” proposal revision, but we did go fairly deep in the alphabet.

By Serg!o – Own work, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83494916

From my present perspective, I’m a little more welcoming of proposal revisions. It’s an admission that I don’t know everything about the client, although I can hazard a guess as to what the client needs.

Remember Bredemarket’s client who needed standard proposal templates? Well, my own proposal to that client went through a few revisions, even after the original contract was finally approved. There weren’t any huge overhauls in the original proposal content, but there were a few things here and there that needed to be tweaked so that both parties were satisfied.

While I’ve had some successful proposals, some of Bredemarket’s proposals to potential clients did not result in business. (Yet.) These potential clients, for various reasons, decided not to pursue business with me.

Of course, this is true of any proposals organization. No proposal team that I know of has sustained 100% success over an extended period, although I know of one team that won the majority of its competitive bids over a 2 to 3 year period.

By Danijel Mihajlovic – https://thenextcrossing.com/wildebeest-migration-kenya, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=96024366

But the wildebeest continues to hone his own proposal skills, while using what he learns to benefit future clients.

My entry for the Spilled Coffee Story Challenge

All the cool kids are doing online social media challenges. Some of these challenges, such as the Ice Bucket Challenge, are very beneficial to society. Others, such as the Tide Pod Challenge, are not.

I believe that this challenge, the Spilled Coffee Story Challenge, falls somewhere between the two. It won’t cure any debilitating diseases, but it won’t kill you either.

Before continuing, I want to emphasize that this is the Spilled Coffee STORY Challenge, not the Spilled Coffee Challenge. The Spilled Coffee Challenge could be very dangerous, because coffee is hot. So DON’T do that.

By Julius Schorzman – Own work, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=107645

Now most of you have never heard of the Spilled Coffee Story Challenge. That’s because I just made it up based upon an online conversation. So I’ll start by explaining how the Spilled Coffee Story Challenge came to be, and then I’ll tell my spilled coffee story.

How the Spilled Coffee Story Challenge came to be

Not too long ago, Sumair Abro and Rhonda Salvestrini were on a podcast together, talking about storytelling. To illustrate the importance of storytelling, Abro proceeded to…tell a story. It’s a story that he overheard about a woman who spilled coffee. By the end of the story, we all knew that…well, I’ll let Abro tell his story. The video can be found here.

After telling the story, Abro mentioned three points:

“When you tell a story from your personal experience – people are genuinely interested.”
“Don’t show all your cards immediately – have an element of surprise.” (Abro’s story DEFINITELY had a surprise at the end, revealing how spilling coffee could be a wonderful event for a particular person.)
“Tell your story to the right audience.”

Salvestrini then chimed in, noting how stories need to be engaging and relevant.

Before going on, the brief clip that I linked above is actually part of a longer conversation between Abro and Salvestrini, which I mentioned before in this blog post.

But in this case, we’re only talking about the short excerpt on storytelling. I shared this excerpt myself on my Bredemarket LinkedIn page, making the following comment as I did so:

But my coffee-spilling story, in which I almost spilled coffee on a customer (but thankfully didn’t), would be hard to spin into a wonderful business truth.

This prompted a response from Rhonda Salvestrini:

Coffee-spilling stories are authentic and let our audience know that we are human. I’m sure you can spin it into a wonderful business truth. Let’s try!

Sumair Abro also chimed in:

hahaha..you dont need to spin it. It’s authentic as mentioned by Rhonda

Well, Rhonda and Sumair…CHALLENGE ACCEPTED.

My Spilled Coffee Story

My spilled coffee story took place a few years ago, when I was working for MorphoTrak. MorphoTrak was a merger of two former competitors that combined their operations—including their previously separate user conferences. I had been involved with the old Motorola User Conferences, so I knew the customers from that side of the company. And as time went on, I got to meet the customers from the non-Motorola side of the company (the Sagem Morpho side).

Me at a User Conference, several years after the coffee incident.

One of the ex-Sagem Morpho customers was from Hawaii. Specifically, the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center. This customer not only used MorphoTrak’s fingerprint identification technology, but also used its facial recognition technology, providing Hawaii law enforcement with the ability to use faces as an investigative lead when solving crimes.

Several years ago, the Hawaii Criminal Justice Data Center was represented on the Users Conference Executive Board by Liane Moriyama. Moriyama is a key figure in Hawaii criminal justice, since she was present when Hawaii established its first automated fingerprint identification system in 1990, and was also present for the establishment of Hawaii’s facial recognition system in 2013. But she is proudest of her accomplishments for vulnerable populations:

“We realized that we needed to help the non-criminal justice communities by using the technology and the biometrics (to protect) our vulnerable populations, our children, our disabled and our elderly through licensing and background checks. That really does protect the common citizen, and the culmination of all of that is when I was elected chair of the National Crime Prevention and Privacy Compact Council. I served two terms as the chair nationally and we have made tremendous strides in keeping the vulnerable populations safe.”
Liane Moriyama, Women in Biometrics 2017 Award recipient, quoted in Secure ID News

So Moriyama was a key customer for MorphoTrak, and a nationally recognized public security figure. Oh, and she’s a wonderful woman also (she gave away more macadamia nuts than the guy from Magnum P.I.).

All of this was very true when I was walking down the hall one fateful day. The Users Conference Executive Board was in town planning the next Users Conference. I was not involved in Users Conference planning at the time, but I would usually see Liane and the other customers when they were in the facility.

USUALLY I’d see them.

I didn’t see her one day when I went to the lunchroom to get some coffee, then exited the lunchroom and turned the corner.

Only THEN did I see her, as I turned the corner and found her right in front of me.

And disaster struck, and I spilled my coffee.

Luckily, I spilled it on MYSELF, and DIDN’T spill it on Liane.

She was extremely concerned about the fact that I had spilled coffee on myself, and I was incredibly relieved that I hadn’t spilled coffee on her.

Because if you have the choice, it’s better for you to suffer a mishap than for the client to suffer one.

So all ended well. Liane didn’t have to incur a dry cleaning bill while traveling, I took care of my own clothes, and she still gave me macadamia nuts in the future.

So now I’ll ask you: is “if you have the choice, it’s better for you to suffer a mishap than for the client to suffer one” a wonderful business truth?

Why you need current online content (or, one reason to prove to your customers that your firm is an ongoing, viable concern)

This is a follow up to my post from two days ago…with a critical data point.

In that prior post, I listed some ways that a company’s website and social media channels could look attractive or unattractive to customers. I focused on the second of my three issues, which was whether the website/channels have current content.

But that prior post consisted of my opinions regarding why your company should hire Bredemarket to work with you on written content creation. Obviously self-serving.

But to be honest, is current content all that important? “Does website and social media content really matter?” you may ask. “Don’t B2B customers gather data by word of mouth anyway?”

The Demand Gen Report June 2020 B2B Buyer Behavior Study

Um…word of mouth is not that prevalent, according to Demand Gen Report, which released a B2B study last June entitled “2020 B2B Buyer Behavior Study.” You can download that study yourself for free here.

Much of the study concentrated specifically on COVID-19 related effects, but one item on pages 7 and 8 of the study caught my eye.

This portion of the study concentrated on the sources that B2B purchasers referenced when making buying decisions. Specifically, the survey participants were asked, “What were the first three resources that informed you about the solution in question?” Responses were as follows:

Web search: 53%
Vendor web sites: 41%
Review sites: 30%
Prior experience with the vendor: 28%
Peers/colleagues: 27%

Yes, almost twice as many B2B buyers depend upon the web for initial research rather than asking peers and colleagues.

Demand Gen Report offered the following comments on these and related responses (emphasis mine):

Making a positive first impression is important in any buying situation, but the survey showed that it is becoming an even more critical part of the buyer journey. Not surprisingly, most buying journeys start online, with a general web search, specific vendor websites and review sites as the first resources buyers used to inform them about a specific topic area related to their purchase….
The survey underscored that content remains a critical influence on B2B buying decisions, with 76% of respondents saying the winning vendor’s content had a significant impact on their buying decision.
Demand Gen Report, 2020 B2B Buyer Behavior Study, page 7. Available via download (5,664KB).

Now I don’t want to quote the entire study: again, you can download the study yourself. And I’ll admit that I’m only concentrating on a portion of the entire study.

But there’s no denying that a company’s online content is critical in B2B buying decisions.

Does your content cater to potential buyer behavior?

So, is your website and social media content the content that you want your customers to see?

Have you posted product-specific content on your website blog and/or your website “news” page in the last 3 months?
How about your website case studies, product data sheets, testimonials, white papers, and/or presentations? Are these recent, or is your company relying on past successes and failing to communicate present successes?
Have you posted relevant content on your company LinkedIn page in the last 3 months?
How about your other company social media outlets? Facebook? Instagram? Twitter? YouTube?

Although I refrain from linking to them, I know of countless bad examples of outdated content. Web “news” pages or social media accounts with no posts in years. LinkedIn company pages with no posts at all. Companies that haven’t posted presentations in a decade. Data sheets that prominently mention a product’s compatibility with Windows 7. Companies that post wonderful YouTube videos, but then fail to share the video link on their other social media channels or on their own website.

Call to (your) action

This is the part of the post where I share my “contact with me!” pitch, but before I do that, perhaps you should take the following steps yourself.

Take a look at your website and your social media channels from the view of one of your potential customers. When putting the “customer” hat on, do you like what you see?
If you don’t like what you see, what are you going to do about it?

Now perhaps Bredemarket is NOT the answer to question 2. Perhaps you have an employee who has the time to update your content, and do so on a regular basis.

But if you find that you need outside help in creating content (short blog posts, longer white papers, whatever), feel free to contact Bredemarket.

As a reminder, my process to work with a client to create content is a collaborative process. For example, here’s the process that Bredemarket uses when working with a client to produce written text of approximately 2800 to 3200 words, such as the content for a white paper.

Agree upon topic (and, if necessary, outline) with client.
Client provides relevant technical details.
Bredemarket conducts any necessary research and provides the first review copy within seven (7) calendar days.
Client provides changes and any additional requested detail within seven (7) calendar days.
Bredemarket provides the second review copy within seven (7) calendar days.
Client provides changes and any requested detail within seven (7) calendar days.
Bredemarket provides the third review copy within seven (7) calendar days.
Client prepares the final formatted copy and provides any post-formatting comments within seven (7) calendar days.
Bredemarket provides the final version within seven (7) calendar days.

(By the way, these times are maximum times. For the white papers that I have written, both the client and I have provided our deliverables in less than seven days, and we didn’t need all of the review cycles. Better preparation up-front minimizes the need to fix things at the end.)

A similar (but simpler) process is used for shorter Bredemarket writing projects of approximately 400 to 600 words, such as blog posts or LinkedIn posts.

Regardless of the specifics of the process, the goal is to work together to create text that states your company’s message and attracts your company’s desired clients.

And letting your potential customers know that you exist.

Why you need current online content (January 27, 2021)Download

Three ways to prove to your customers that your firm is an ongoing, viable concern

[Update, January 27, 2021: a July 2020 study from Demand Gen Report explains WHY up-to-date content is important. I addressed that study in this post.]

When a customer is looking for a business to provide products and/or services, the customer would probably prefer to deal with a business that is not bankrupt.

Now I haven’t conducted specific surveys on this topic. This is just a wild hunch that I have. (As the meme says, prove me wrong.)

The search for viable businesses also applies in B2B relationships also, or businesses that provide services to businesses. Bredemarket, of course, provides marketing and writing services to businesses, and I’d be wasting my time if I pursued businesses that no longer existed.

What if your business IS still an active business, but just LOOKS like it no longer exists?

I’m going to list a few things that I check out, either when Bredemarket is looking at selling something to potential clients, or when I as a potential customer want to buy something. If you’re a business owner, here is a three question checklist to ask yourself when you look at your website and your social media channels.

Make sure your business website still exists.
Make sure the business website and social media channels have current content.
Get the copyright date right.

After looking at these three items in the checklist, I’ll then have a few more comments on the SECOND of these three items, current (NOT outdated) content, because this is the one for which Bredemarket (or another consultant, or perhaps one of your own employees) can have the most impact.

Checklist Item 1: Make sure your business website still exists

This sounds like a no-brainer, but I’ll say it anyway. If a business website no longer exists, either the business is bankrupt, or the business has changed its marketing and forgot to take care of a loose end or two.

Just today I was surveying local businesses in a particular industry, and I ran across the Google listing for a particular business. The business was highly rated in Google reviews, so I checked out the business a little more. In the process of checking out the business, I found its Yelp page, which had one negative review (and an explanatory reply from the business owner). I also found a social media page for the business, which included a post about the company’s brand new location and how wonderful it was.

But in between checking out the Google listing and the Yelp page, I happened to check the business’ own website. This website was prominently mentioned on Google, Yelp, and the social media channel. And when I followed the link to that website, I saw this.

Now I’m going to give the business the benefit of the doubt and assume that the business DIDN’T send unsolicited commercial email, violate copyright, or used fraudulent credit cards. (If it did, the business owner is in REAL trouble right now.)

I’m just going to assume that the company didn’t pay its web hosting bill.

Why am I assuming this? Because after I visited the web page, I looked at the Google listing again, and took a more careful look at the other content that I found on Yelp and the social media channel. When doing so, I noticed that no reviews or other content had been posted about the business in more than a year. (See the second item on the checklist, below.) So my guess is that the business is no more.

Now, of course it’s possible that the business is still operating in a minimal way, without a website. (If I felt like it, I could drive by the new location advertised on its social media channel and see what’s there.) Or perhaps the business created a new website with a different URL and never closed the old one.

But do people really want to do business with a company that doesn’t pay its bills?

Checklist Item 2: Make sure the business website and social media channels have current content

Lack of current content is something that troubles bankrupt companies and ongoing companies alike. Ever since I started Bredemarket, I’ve dealt with several companies that are facing a “dated content” problem. Now I know that these companies aren’t bankrupt, and are in fact bringing in revenue; it’s just that their content is outdated.

What usually happens, in small and large companies alike, is that an effort is made at some point to “spruce up” the content of a website and/or its social media channels. Perhaps an employee is assigned to this task, or perhaps a consultant does it. (I’ve done both.) A heroic effort is undertaken, and a bunch of new content is produced, impressing the company heads and the company’s clients.

But then…things happen, and next thing you know your online channels have content that is three years old…or ten years old.

Or if the exact year of the content isn’t explicitly identified, there are clues within the content itself as to its age, such as “Our product is now supported on Windows 7.”

What are the ramifications of dated content? Visitors begin to wonder why there isn’t any new content.

Perhaps the company went bankrupt; see my first checklist item, above.
Perhaps the company is still a going concern, but hasn’t done anything in the last few years. Maybe that great customer reference from three years ago was the last new customer that the company got, or maybe that great presentation from several years ago was the last time the company presented anything.
Perhaps the company has continued to do business, but its more recent business isn’t as impressive as its previous business.
The most positive explanation is that the company HAS done amazing things in the last few years, but hasn’t taken the time to tell the story of its most recent accomplishments. (TL;DR: I can help.)

Now I don’t always eat my own wildebeest food myself in this regard. I’ve previously noted that my Empoprise-NTN blog isn’t updated regularly; in fact, it has only had one update in the last five years. (And no, I can’t really use COVID as an excuse.)

If you’re a business owner, ask yourself: do you want your business social media channels to look as outdated as the Empoprise-NTN blog? I don’t think you do.

Checklist Item 3: Get the copyright date right

This is a simple little thing, but it can stick out when it’s not fixed.

But let’s get back to Checklist Item 2

Outdated copyright notices are more of a nuisance than anything else, and if your company has already gone bankrupt there isn’t much that can be done.

Outdated content is something that a company CAN remedy. And it’s something that the company SHOULD remedy.

Neil Patel provides one practical reason for removing outdated content:

The more low-quality content you have on your site, the less authoritative you’ll look to Google, and the harder it will be to rank.

But that’s just Google. Google and Bing are important, but perhaps not as important as real people.

Hugh Duffy wonders how those real people react to outdated content.

An outdated site makes your firm seem behind the times. These days, that can be cause for potential clients to steer clear. They think if you’re not updating your site, there may be other aspects of your business left unattended.

You don’t want your dated website to cause Google to question it, and you certainly don’t want your dated website to cause living breathing people to question it.

By © Nevit Dilmen, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=12214419

So fix the content in the website and the social media channels!

To fix an outdated content issue, you just have to ask yourself a few questions.

What do you want your online channels to say (the message)?
What recent examples can you cite in your online channels that support your desired message?
Who knows about these recent examples? (The account manager? The program manager? The customer?)
Who can talk to these subject matter experts (SMEs) and convert the examples into the proper messaging?

Now of course the step of eliciting the correct information from the SMEs and finalizing a written message has its own sub-process. For example, here’s the process that Bredemarket uses when working with a client to produce written text of approximately 2800 to 3200 words, such as the content for a white paper.

Agree upon topic (and, if necessary, outline) with client.
Client provides relevant technical details.
Bredemarket conducts any necessary research and provides the first review copy within seven (7) calendar days.
Client provides changes and any additional requested detail within seven (7) calendar days.
Bredemarket provides the second review copy within seven (7) calendar days.
Client provides changes and any requested detail within seven (7) calendar days.
Bredemarket provides the third review copy within seven (7) calendar days.
Client prepares the final formatted copy and provides any post-formatting comments within seven (7) calendar days.
Bredemarket provides the final version within seven (7) calendar days.

A similar (but simpler) process is used for shorter Bredemarket writing projects of approximately 400 to 600 words, such as blog posts or LinkedIn posts.

Regardless of the process(es) that I use, or that another consultant uses, or perhaps one of your employees uses, the goal is to create written text that meets your company’s needs.

And if you have an outdated content problem and need a consultant to help you fix it, contact me.

Will the Kami Doorbell Camera sell in Illinois?

There was a recent press release that I missed until Biometric Update started talking about it two days later. The January 19 press release from Kami was entitled “Kami Releases Smart Video Doorbell With Facial Recognition Capabilities.” The subhead announced, “The device also offers user privacy controls.”

And while reading that Kami press release, I noticed a potential issue that wasn’t fully addressed in the press release, or (so far) in the media coverage of the press release. That issue relates to that four-letter word “BIPA.”

This post explains what BIPA is and why it’s important.

But it starts by looking at smart video doorbells.
Next, it looks at this particular press release about a smart video doorbell.
Then we’ll look at a competitor’s smart video doorbell, and a particular decision that the competitor made because of BIPA.
Only then will we dive into BIPA.
Finally, we’ll circle back to Kami, and how it may be affected by BIPA. (Caution: I’m not a lawyer.)

What is a smart video doorbell?

Many of us can figure out what a smart video doorbell would do, since Kami isn’t the first company to offer such a product. (I’ll talk about another company in a little bit.)

The basic concept is that the owner of the video doorbell (whom I’ll refer to as the “user,” to be consistent with Kami’s terminology) manages a small database of faces that could be recognized by the video doorbell. For example, if I owned such a device, I would definitely want to enroll my face and the face of my wife, and I would probably want to enroll the faces of other relatives and close friends. Doing this would create an allowlist of people who are known to the smart video doorbell system.

However, because technology itself is neutral, I need to point out two things about a standard smart video doorbell implementation:

Depending upon the design, you can enroll a person into the system without the person knowing it. If the user of the system controls the enrollment, then the user has complete control over the people that are enrolled into the system. All I need is a picture of the person, and I can use that picture to enroll the person into my smart video doorbell. I can grab a picture that I took from New Year’s Eve, or I could even grab a picture from the Internet. After all, if President Joe Biden walked up to my front door, I’d definitely want to know about it. Now there are technological solutions to this; for example, liveness detection could be used to ensure that the person who is enrolling in the system is a live person and not a picture. But I’m not aware of any system that requires liveness detection for this particular use case.
You can enroll a person into the system for ANY reason. Usually consumer smart video doorbells are presented as a way to let you know when friends and family come to the door. But the technology has no way of detecting whether you are actually enrolling a “friend.” Perhaps you want to know when your ex-girlfriend comes to the door. Or perhaps you have a really good picture of the guy who’s been breaking into homes in your neighborhood. Now enterprise and government systems account for this by supporting separate allowlists and blocklists, but frankly you can put anyone on to any list for any reason.

So with that introduction, let’s see what Kami is offering, and why it’s different.

The Kami Doorbell Camera

Let’s return to the Kami press release. It, as well as the description of the item in Kami’s online store, parallels a lot of the features that you can find in any smart video doorbell.

Know exactly who’s at your door. Save the faces of friends and family in your Kami or YI Home App, allowing you to get notified if the person outside your front door is a familiar face or a stranger.

And it has other features, such as an IP-65 rating stating that the camera will continue to work outdoors in challenging weather conditions.

However, Yamin Durrani, Kami’s CEO, emphasized a particular point in the press release:

“The Kami Doorbell Camera was inspired by a greater need for safety and peace of mind as people spend more time at home and consumers’ increasing desire to reside in smart homes,” said Yamin Durrani, CEO of Kami. “However, we noticed one gaping hole in the smart doorbell market — it was lacking an extremely advanced security solution that also puts the user in complete control of their privacy. In designing our video doorbell camera we considered all the ways people live in their homes to elegantly combine accelerated intelligence with a level of customization and privacy that is unmatched in today’s market. The result is a solution that provides comfort, safety and peace of mind.”

Privacy for the user(s) makes sense, because you don’t want someone hacking into the system and stealing the pictures and other stored information. As described, Kami lets the user(s) control their own data, and the system has presumably been designed from the ground up to support this.

But Kami isn’t the only product out there.

One of Kami’s competitors has an interesting footnote in its product description

There’s this company called Google. You may have heard of it. And Google offers a product called Nest Aware. This product is a subscription service that works with Nest cameras and provides various types of alerts for activities within the range of the cameras.

And Nest even has a feature that sounds, um, familiar to Kami users. Nest refers to the feature as “familiar face detection.”

Nest speakers and displays listen for unusual sounds. Nest cameras can spot a familiar face.⁴ And they all send intelligent alerts that matter.

So it sounds like Nest Aware has the same type of “allowlist” feature that allows the Nest Aware user to enroll friends and family (or whoever) into the system, so that they can be automatically recognized and so you can receive relevant information.

Hmm…did you note that there is a footnote next to the mention of “familiar face”? Let’s see what that footnote says.

4. Familiar face alerts not available on Nest Cams used in Illinois.

To the average consumer, that footnote probably looks a little odd. Why would this feature not be available in Illinois, but available in all the other states?

Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=526967

Or perhaps the average consumer may recall another Google app from three years ago, the Google Art & Culture app. That app became all the rage when it introduced a feature that let you compare your face to the faces on famous works of art. Well, it let you perform that comparison…unless you lived in Illinois or Texas.

So what’s the big deal about Illinois?

Those of us who are active in the facial recognition industry, or people who are active in the privacy industry, are well aware of the Illinois Biometric Information and Privacy Act, or BIPA. This Act, which was passed in 2008, provides Illinois residents control over the use of their biometric data. And if a company violates that control, the resident is permitted to sue the offending company. And class action lawsuits are allowed, thus increasing the possible damages to the offending company.

And there are plenty of lawyers that are willing to help residents exercise their rights under BIPA.

One early example of a BIPA lawsuit was filed against L.A. Tan. This firm offered memberships, and rather than requiring the member to present a membership card, the member simply placed his or her fingerprint onto a scanner to verify membership. But under BIPA, that could be a problem:

The plaintiffs in the L.A. Tan case alleged that the company, which used customers’ fingerprint scans in lieu of key fobs for tanning membership ID purposes, violated the BIPA by failing to obtain the customers’ written consent to use the fingerprint data and by not disclosing to customers the company’s plans for storing the data or destroying it in the event a tanning customer terminated her salon membership or a franchise closed. The plaintiffs did not claim L.A. Tan illegally sold or lost customers’ fingerprint data, just that it did not handle the data as carefully as the BIPA requires.

L.A. Tan ended up settling the case for over a million dollars, but Illinois Policy wondered:

This outcome is reassuring for anyone concerned about the handling of private information like facial-recognition data and fingerprints, but it also could signal a flood of similar lawsuits to come.

And there certainly was a flood of lawsuits. I was working in strategic marketing at the time, and I would duly note the second lawsuit filed under BIPA, and then the third lawsuit, and the fourth…Eventually I stopped counting.

As of June 2019, 324 such lawsuits had been filed in total, including 161 in the first six months of 2019 alone. And some big names have been sued under BIPA.

Facebook settled for $650 million.

Google was sued in October 2019 over Google Photos, again in February 2020 over Google Photos, again in April 2020 over its G Suite for Education, again in July 2020 over its use of IBM’s Diversity in Faces algorithm, and probably several other times besides.

So you can understand why Google is a little reluctant to sell Nest Aware’s familiar face detection feature in Illinois.

So where does that leave Kami?

Here’s where the problem may lie. Based upon the other lawsuits, it appears that lawyers are alleging that before an Illinois resident’s biometric features are stored in a database, the person has to give consent for the biometric to be stored, and the person has to be informed of his or her rights under BIPA.

So such explicit permission has to be given for every biometric database physically within the state of Illinois?

Yes…and then some. Remember that Facebook and Google’s databases aren’t necessarily physically located within the state of Illinois, but those companies have been sued under BIPA. I’m not a lawyer, but conceivably an Illinois resident could sue a Swiss company, with its databases in Switzerland, for violating BIPA.

Now when someone sets up a Kami system, does the Kami user ensure that every Illinois resident has received the proper BIPA notices? And if the Kami user doesn’t do that, is Kami legally liable?

For all I know, the Kami enrollment feature may include explicit BIPA questions, such as “Is the person in this picture a resident of Illinois?” Then again, it may not.

Again, I’m not a lawyer, but it’s interesting to note that Google, who does have access to a bunch of lawyers, decided to dodge the issue by not selling familiar face detection to Illinois residents.

Which doesn’t answer the question of an Iowa Nest Aware familiar face detection user who enrolls an Illinois resident…

Four of my identity information sources that I have created over the years, including one that you can access in the next ten seconds

How many of us keep on doing the same thing, but just use different tools to do it?

For example, I am going to provide four examples of ways…I mean, for example, I am going to list four ways in which I have disseminated identity information to various internal and external audiences over the last fifteen years. Three of these methods had restricted access and some are no longer available, but the last one, Bredemarket Identity Firm Services, is publicly available to you TODAY.

You can get to this information source in ten seconds if you like. If you’re a TL;DR kind of person, click here.

For the rest of you, read on to see how I used COMPASS (most of you haven’t heard of COMPASS), SharePoint (you’ve heard of that), email (you’ve definitely heard of that), and LinkedIn (ditto) to share information.

Take One: Using Motorola Tools

For the first identity information source, let’s go back about fifteen years, when I was a product manager at Motorola (before The Bifurcation). Motorola had its own intranet, called COMPASS, which all of us Motorolans would use to store information except when we didn’t.

Using this intranet, I created a page entitled “Biometric Industry Information,” in which I pasted links and short descriptions of publicly-available news items. I’m not sure how useful this information source was to others, but I referred to it frequently.

Eventually Motorola sold our business unit to Safran, and “Biometric Industry Information” was lost in the transition. For all I know it may be available on some Motorola Solutions intranet page somewhere, though I doubt it.

Take Two: An Industry-Standard Tool and an Expanded Focus

The second identity information source was created a few years later, when I was an employee of MorphoTrak. Two things had changed since the Motorola days:

MorphoTrak’s parent company Safran didn’t use the Motorola intranet solution. Instead, it used an industry-standard intranet solution, SharePoint. This was tweaked at each of the individual Safran companies and regions, but it was pretty much a standard solution.
The second change was in the breadth of my interests, as I realized that biometrics was only part of an identity solution. Yes, an identity solution could use biometrics, but it could also used the driver’s licenses that MorphoTrak was slated to produce (but didn’t), and other security methods besides.

So when I recreated my Motorola information source, the new one at MorphoTrak was a Microsoft SharePoint list entitled “Identity Industry Information.”

Again, I’m not sure whether others benefited from this, but I certainly did.

Take Three: Taking Over an Email List

The third iteration of my information source wasn’t created by me, but was created about a decade ago at a company known as L-1 Identity Solutions. For those who know the company, L-1 was a conglomeration of multiple small acquisitions that provided multiple biometric solutions, secure document solutions, and other products and services. Someone back then decided that a daily newsletter covering all of L-1’s markets would be beneficial to the company. This newsletter began, and continued after Safran acquired L-1 Identity Solutions and renamed it MorphoTrust.

MorphoTrust and my company MorphoTrak remained separate entities (for security reasons) until Oberthur acquired some of Safran’s businesses and formed IDEMIA. In North America, this resulted in the de facto acquisition of MorphoTrak by MorphoTrust, and some significant shifting in organizational charts and responsibilities.

As a result of these changes, I ended up taking over the daily newsletter, tweaking its coverage to better meet the needs of today, and (in pursuit of a personal annual goal) expanding its readership. (This email was NOT automatically sent to everyone in the company; you had to opt in.)

Now some may believe that email is dead and that everyone should be on Volley or Clubhouse, but email does serve a valid purpose. As a push technology, emails are provided to you every day.

OK, every five seconds.

But modern email systems (including those from Microsoft and Google) provide helpful tools to help you manage your email. This allowed people to prioritize their reading of my daily newsletter, or perhaps de-prioritize it.

Two years later IDEMIA underwent another organizational change, and I was no longer responsible for the daily newsletter. Last I heard, the daily newsletter still continues.

Take Four: Market Me, Benefit You

Eventually I left IDEMIA and started Bredemarket, and the identity industry became one of the industries that I targeted for providing Bredemarket’s services. To build myself as an identity industry authority, and to provide benefits to identity industry firms, I needed to market specifically to that segment. While my online marketing outlets were primarily focused on my website, I was also marketing via LinkedIn and Facebook. My LinkedIn marketing was primarily though the Bredemarket LinkedIn company page.

In late November, I decided to create a LinkedIn Showcase page entitled Bredemarket Identity Firm Services. While the page was initially created for other reasons, I eventually settled into a routine of sharing identity industry information via the page.

Like I’ve done one thousand times before.

I’m trying to add new content to Bredemarket Identity Firm Services on a daily basis. It’s primarily content from other sources, but sometimes my own content (such as this post) will find its way in there also. And, as in the example above, I’ll occasionally include editorial comments on others’ posts.

So if you’re on LinkedIn and would find such content useful to you, go to the showcase page and click the “Follow” button.

P.S. I have a technology showcase page also.

Owning up to misteaks

I am forced to admit that I am not perfect.

Within the last two weeks alone, I have:

Sent an email to a client invoicing the client…but failed to attach the actual invoice.
Contacted an opportunity, and (due to an editing error) referred to a DIFFERENT company instead of the opportunity’s company.

Obviously I am not eating my own wildebeest food (yes, I’m burned out on iguanas). While these were short missives which would have been significantly delayed if I had literally “slept on it,” I could have caught these errors if I had read my communications just ONE MORE TIME.

In the first case, the client alerted me to my mistake before I realized that I had made it. I have a good relationship with the client, so I just re-sent the message WITH the attached invoice and thanked the client for alerting me. I WAS paid.

In the second case, I had no previous relationship with the opportunity, so I couldn’t draw upon any goodwill. Perhaps I would have lucked out and the opportunity wouldn’t have caught my mistake…but I doubt it. I could have remained silent and just chalked it up as a loss, but I proactively apologized for the mistake. Perhaps I’ve lost the opportunity anyway, or damaged my chances severely, but it was the right thing to do.

Sometimes mistakes are intentional

I guess I could have used the excuse that I made the wrong company name mistake intentionally.

For example, the title of this post is an example of an intentional “misteak,” designed to grab the attention of the discerning reader.
And phishers and scammers often embed intentional mistakes in their pitches, figuring that if the reader completely ignores the intentional mistake, the reader is more likely to fall for the scam. Although I’m sure that this product (advertised in a game app) is NOT a scam, but is a perfectly legitimate product.

Actually, this mistake may have been TOO MUCH of a mistake. It took me several readings to figure out what “bad stars” was supposed to mean. (If you’re similarly confused, it’s supposed to be “bed starts.”) Then again, I’m not the target audience.

But I can’t think of a way to claim that I INTENTIONALLY messed up the opportunity’s company name. There goes that excuse.

Why to proactively own up to mistakes

Some people may have legitimate reasons for not revealing a mistake to someone else. Perhaps the person is a secret agent, and doesn’t want to let the enemy agent know that the information is incorrect. Or perhaps revelation of a mistake to a competitor could allow the competitor to take advantage of it.

But in most cases, you’re not a secret agent, and you’re not talking directly to a competitor. Therefore, it’s best to admit the mistake and not let it fester.

Laura Click of Blue Kite Marketing described an instance in which the company sent out an email but didn’t format the email correctly. As a result, their subscribers received a message that began:

Morning, <name>!

This was especially embarrassing to Blue Kite because it is a marketing firm, helping clients to better market their products and services. An error like this seems to suggest that Blue Kite doesn’t eat its own wildebeest food.

So Blue Kite Marketing sent a follow-up email. If you read the post that described the episode and included the text of the follow-up email, you will see that Blue Kite did the following:

Admitted the mistake.
Described how the mistake happened (without making excuses for it).
Noted that these mistakes can happen, even to seasoned marketers.
Apologized profusely.
Thanked the people who pointed out the error.
Used the episode as an opportunity to have the recipients update their profiles (“if you want to make doubly sure we know your name”).

The recipients appreciated Blue Kite Marketing’s honesty, and that email admitting the mistake resulted in tremendous engagement. As Blue Kite noted, an episode like this “builds trust and loyalty.”

Of course, apologizing for a mistake is not a guarantee that things will be better. We’ll never know, but perhaps one recipient was so incensed by the error that the person resolved never to do business with the company again. And in my case, I very well could have blown my opportunity by using the wrong company name.

But I still maintain that sincerely apologizing for a mistake is better than doing nothing at all.

And it could have been worse

But if I think about the two mistakes that I know that I made over the last two weeks, and all the mistakes that I DIDN’T know that I made over the last two weeks, and all of my other mistakes over the past few decades, they all pale in comparison to a mistake that I made about 15 years ago.

I was working for Motorola (pre-split) at the time, and if you know anything about Motorola, you know that Motorola is very big on process. Our little division at Motorola was working on achieving a particular Software Engineering Institute – Capability Maturity Model (SEI-CMM) assessment, and I was one of two people responsible for the Requirements Management Key Process Area (KPA). Our team would revise the division’s processes at times, and would announce these changes in release notes.

When I wrote the notes for a particular release, my notes made a reference to “qualtiy.”

Yes, that’s “tiy,” not “ity.”

Even <name> criticized me for that one.

Postscript

After I drafted this post, but before I published it, someone sent me a “God job” message.

But the message came with money, so I didn’t quibble.

Revisiting my “pursue multiple income streams” goal…with SMA Inc.

You may recall that I previously announced a desire to repurpose and extend my content by revisiting some of my five (plus one) goals that I set for Bredemarket in 2021.

I’ve already revisited my “have fun” goal, clarifying that you need to have fun…with a purpose.

Today I’m ready to revisit my “pursue multiple income streams” goal, with a specific WAY in which I plan to pursue multiple income streams. Because multiple income streams can potentially merge into a large income stream.

By Vvnataraj – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=9783411

What was the goal again?

For your benefit, I’ll start by restating the goal itself, taken from my most recent revision to my 2021 goals.

Goal 2: Pursue multiple income streams. This is really an internal goal for Bredemarket, but it affects my approach.
While I know WHAT I want to do—I’m not going to quit marketing and writing and start selling nutritional supplements—I’m exploring HOW I want to do it. In some cases I’m approaching potential clients directly, while in others I’m using one of several intermediaries to do it.
There are advantages and disadvantages to direct vs. intermediary solicitation, but it’s wise to have multiple options. Some options may perform better at some times, while others perform better at other times. We’ll see what happens.

Which brings me to a conversation that I had a few months ago.

At about the same time that I became a free agent last July, one of my coworkers also became a free agent. Jenna Beck, in addition to managing proposals for biometric systems, has also consulted and written in many other disciplines.

One day, Jenna reminded me of Wordman.

Wordman? Who is Wordman?

Now there are a number of superheroes that are saving the galaxy, but those of us who know our APMP from our STC are well aware of the super powers of Wordman. While other superheroes can leap tall buildings in a single bound, Wordman can optimize your use of Microsoft Word via supplementary software, consulting, and training. This is a super task indeed.

However, like many superheroes, Wordman has a second identity, although his is not so secret. (Of course, with the introduction of new biometric technologies, the identities of other superheroes aren’t that secret either.)

When he is not wielding macros and styles, Wordman goes by the identity of Richard (Dick) Eassom, Vice President of Corporate Support at SMA Inc.

Jenna knew that I was already set up as an independent contractor, and suggested that I consider signing up as an associate with SMA.

SMA? What is SMA?

SMA is a consulting firm, originally established as Stephen Myers & Associates (SM&A) in 1982. It started as a proposal assistance firm (Fun fact: many proposal assistance firms incorporate “wins” either in their corporate name or in their web URL, and SMA at smawins.com is no exception.) Over the years, and after several acquisitions and pivots, SMA has grown from a proposal assistance firm and now helps clients with all aspects of a program lifecycle, from pursuit through performance. A complete list of SMA’s capabilities can be found here.

To fulfill this, SMA needs associates (independent contractors) with experience in a variety of disciplines. Figuring that SMA could possibly use an identity professional with strategy, marketing, proposal (primary state and local) and product management position, I put my name into consideration.

This required an evaluation of my experience in a format consistent with SMA’s Talent on Demand® system. As part of this process, I identified approximately 40 specific projects that I have worked on in the last 25 years. Yes, it’s a thorough process.

After completing this evaluation as well as two interviews, I was officially accepted as an associate with SMA late last year. Now that the paperwork has been completed, I am officially on board as an associate, available to serve SMA’s clients as a market / competitive strategist.

Thanks to Jenna, Wordman, and everyone else who helped me to onboard with SMA. I will still be consulting with clients directly—in fact, SMA assumes that its associates have income streams outside of SMA—but now am also available to clients via SMA’s TOD system.

As I said before, we’ll see what happens.

Revisiting my “have fun” goal

When thinking about content to create, there’s one idea that I’ve had. “Over the course of 2021, why don’t I make a point of revisiting my 2021 goals and seeing how I’m doing on them?” (Content repurposing and extending for the win.)

I hope to soon revisit my multiple income streams goal. But for now, this is an ideal time to revisit my “have fun” goal.

I’ve already talked about how I snuck iguanas into a proposal for a potential client.

Well, I just had the opportunity to write a proposal for a particular opportunity.

The title of the opportunity?

“Funny and Witty Creative Writer.”

The potential client needs to create some content, but fears that if the content is too dry, it won’t be digested by the people who read the content.

So the opportunity description talked about how the content needs to be funny and witty.

I certainly had fun when I wrote my proposal to this client. Iguanas made another appearance, for example. But I also pointed out that funny and witty is NOT enough.

Here’s how my proposal began.

Having read your description of the work needed, I believe that I can provide the balance that you implicitly requested – namely, a balance between conveying the necessary content, but conveying it in an interesting manner. A service provider that can only do one without the other is as useful as a two-wheeled automobile – you’re not going to get anywhere.

My proposal continued by describing the types of content that I could provide before veering into…iguanas. (I’m going to need to find another example. The poor iguana is getting tired of being used over and over again.)

My iguana content started with a story about my former coworker who despises the cliché “best of breed.” She managed technical proposals, not entrants to the Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show.

By Kjunstorm (Lori) – https://www.flickr.com/photos/kjunstorm/3346671755/, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=6605832

This example served to explain why one of my 2021 goals was NOT to “eat my own dog food.” Continuing my story, I then reproduced some of the text that I’ve already reproduced in this post.

After some more of the same, I changed from a yuk-yuk tone to a more serious tone. Leaving out some of the “fun” text, this is what I said to my potential client.

So what have I done here?
I have satisfied the requirements in your description by using a conversational tone that employs storytelling.
I’ve provided you with links to my web and social media content, and given you an incentive to explore them….
I have ensured that you understand my distinction between “fun writing” and “fun writing with a purpose.” You still need to convey the content.
The examples that were provided, including the attachment, exhibit different facets of my writing style, and also exhibit the breadth of topics that I can address.

We’ll see if my conversational, iguana-infused tone will actually help me get business with this particular client, and if the client is prepared to address more serious topics, such as the overall goal of the content that the client wants me to create.

While it’s important to have fun, it’s important that the fun contributes to the overall goal. Remember when I told a group of people at work that I was going to “play” with something? Some of my coworkers understood that I wasn’t going to play for play’s sake. They understood that I was going to play and ensure that the item in question achieved the goals set by the corporation.

Have fun…with a purpose.

And remember that different clients have different needs and require different conversational tones. Perhaps I may have fun while RESEARCHING the benefits and risks of using temperature sensors as a COVID-19 response, but I may choose NOT to exhibit a “fun” tone while WRITING about these benefits and risks.

(Oh, and if the “funny and witty creative writer” potential client happens to read this particular post while reviewing my writing examples, I’ll give you a bonus iguana color: orange. Let’s talk about that…and other things.)

While the contractors test the service providers, the service providers also test the contractors

When I wrote Bredemarket’s goals for 2021 (latest version here), my second goal was to pursue multiple income streams. This requires me to sign up with various middlepersons that marry service providers (such as Bredemarket) to contractors.

Or to TRY to sign up to such middlepersons.

I signed up with one such middleperson a month and a half ago, and never heard back from them. I had occasion to ask someone from the middleperson how long signup takes, and the person indicated that the process should complete within 10 business days. So I contacted the middleperson to see where my application stood, and waited…and waited…and eventually re-read the signup process instructions and realized that the middleperson only contacted SUCCESSFUL applicants. Non-successful applicants receive no response.

Anyway, there’s another middleperson that’s much better at these sorts of things, and I’m trying to solicit work from that service. Essentially you bid on jobs by providing a rate and a text-based technical proposal. After that you either hear from the potential contractor…or you don’t.

I began wondering if there was a way to increase my chances of hearing from the potential contractor.

As I was bidding on a content and social media strategy opportunity, I hit upon an idea.

After describing the service that I would provide, but before my call to action, I included the following section in my text proposal. (If you read my goal 2, you already know why I talk about iguanas.) Pay special attention to the last paragraph.

REFERENCE WEBSITES
If you’re contracting with someone to manage your company’s social media, you’re probably asking if I eat my own iguana food. (Dog food is boring.) Please check out my Bredemarket and Bredemarket-related online channels:
Website: https://bredemarket.com/
Blog: https://bredemarket.com/blog/
LinkedIn page: https://www.linkedin.com/company/bredemarket/
LinkedIn identity showcase page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/bredemarket-identity-firm-services/
LinkedIn technology showcase page: https://www.linkedin.com/showcase/bredemarket-technology-firm-services/
Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/Bredemarket/
Professional Twitter account: https://twitter.com/jebredcal
Personal Instagram account: https://www.instagram.com/johnebredehoft/
I do not have Pinterest, Snapchat, or TikTok accounts, and I have not posted YouTube videos in years.
Incidentally, if you check out the links above, one of them will specify the color of the iguana. Let me know if you see it.

I have no idea who the potential contractor is, but I’m hoping that he/she is an ex-IDEMIA employee who exhibits curiosity. If so, the person may click on the links to discover the color of the iguana.

If so, I could be really cruel and wait to reveal the iguana’s color until the very last link (Instagram).

But I’m a nice guy. The color of the iguana is being revealed right here, in the second link (the Bredemarket blog). THE COLOR OF THE IGUANA IS PURPLE. (Color purple. Geddit?)

Then again…perhaps I’ll specify a DIFFERENT iguana color in one, or more, of my OTHER social media channels.

There may be an entire army of multicolored iguanas waiting to be discovered.

Obviously I’m wondering if my potential contractor is curious. And I might be wondering if others are curious.

Have fun. (Goal 5.)