Category Archives: Uncategorized

The Word “Memorial” and the Phrase “Memorial Day”

Words matter. 

Since Bredemarket works in words, let’s examine the word “memorial.”

The Merriam-Webster definitions of the adjective or noun primarily emphasize remembrance or commemoration. In the general sense, a memorial doesn’t necessarily require some type of life or death struggle. 

Heck, the final episode of the TV show M*A*S*H can, and has, been memorialized. After all, the episode title incorporates the sacred word “Amen” into its title (“Goodbye, Farewell, and Amen”). And when you say Amen, you always explore Deep Meaning.

Forever and Ever, Amen anyone?

OK, in truth a memorial can be rather pedestrian. (Although I like Randy Travis.)

But when people in the United States encounter Memorial Day, the importance may escalate.

Or it may not, if you merely think of Memorial Day as Pool Opening Day or Get Propane for the Grill Day.

But this is the time that Americans who have fought in wars and police actions remind the rest of us that Memorial Day is not Veterans Day. Here is what American Legion Post 304 says, in part, about Memorial Day.

“Memorial Day, observed on the last Monday of May, is a day to honor members of the military who were killed in service, both during deployments overseas or in training and service in the U.S. Across the country, Americans spend the day visiting cemeteries, attending Memorial Day events and otherwise honoring those who lost their lives in service to the country.”

To be blunt about it, Memorial Day is a day about death, and if you can’t handle this truth, go back to the pool.

For example, the National World War II Museum notes that 407,316 U.S. military personnel were killed in World War II. This does not denigrate the civilian losses in Hawaii and elsewhere, nor does it denigrate the sacrifices outside of this country (24 million in the USSR alone), nor does it denigrate the losses in other wars.

But, as American Legion Post 304 reminds us, words matter.

“Because Memorial Day is a somber day to honor those who died in service to the country, saying “Happy Memorial Day” is considered to be in bad taste. For those who have lost family or friends through military service, the day is far from happy.”

And while John McCrae’s poem “In Flanders Fields” is primarily associated throughout the world with Remembrance Day (Veterans Day in the U.S.), in this country the subject matter of the poem naturally lends itself to Memorial Day observances.

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow

Between the crosses, row on row,

    That mark our place; and in the sky

    The larks, still bravely singing, fly

Scarce heard amid the guns below.

“We are the Dead. Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,

    Loved and were loved, and now we lie,

        In Flanders fields.

“Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

    The torch; be yours to hold it high.

    If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

        In Flanders fields.”

(Riverside National Cemetery picture Sigris Lopez, CC BY-SA 4.0. Source.)

Escape from Spiderweb Mountain

In a recent Instagram post, Maxwell Finn wrote:

“People don’t buy solutions…they buy escape routes.”

If you apply the “people buy escape routes” thinking, what does Bredemarket offer?

I guess in Bredemarket’s case, I sell an escape from nothingness.

Not insightful.

My current clients realize the importance of a consistent presence, even without my help. They’re always reminding prospects of the benefits of their solutions.

Some of my former clients and non-clients never grasped that importance.

That’s NOT breaking news.

That’s why they are former clients and non-clients; they didn’t need me, or anyone else. One last blogged in February…February 2024. Wonder how many new prospects found THAT company today?

If you don’t want to escape the fate of anonymity, save time and stop reading here. If you want to escape this, read here…and better still, act by booking a meeting at https://bredemarket.com/cpa/

This is a real book: https://bredemarket.com/7qs/

(Imagen 4)

Gripping my Conference Planning Papers

While Bredemarket as an entity has only officially worked one trade show, my personal trade show, conference, and exhibition experience extends back years.

My years of session and speaker coordination 

For example:

In a past life I was tasked with session and speaker coordination for an annual conference. Dozens of sessions, dozens of speakers, probably about a dozen rooms, a myriad of microphone and table and cable setups, a little under a week…plus a dozen planners and dozens of employees and third-party conference staff.

There were many ways in which things could go wrong:

  • What if a demonstrator wanted to show an application on their iPhone, but you only had one-stage cables for a Windows laptop?
  • What if a keynote speaker wanted to show an application video as part of their remarks, but the audio-visual staff hadn’t tested the video yet? (Back in the day I worked with Sardis Media. They are magicians.)
  • What if an executive had an inspired idea to move one of our main room speakers to Wednesday morning…right when the speaker was conducting a workshop? (Human cloning was not an option.)
  • Worst yet, what if a speaker fell ill before boarding their flight to the conference venue…and we now had a big gaping hole the next morning?

Some of these things didn’t happen, but they could have…and if they did, it meant disruption of my “three chairs and 2 mics on the main stage on Tuesday at 8:45” meticulously made plans.

I excelled at session and speaker coordination

Yes, plans. I had them.

This was one of the times in which I fell back to Excel as my go-to project management tool, capturing all the necessary data, making it filterable and sortable. 

The years have faded my memories of the details I tracked, but I needed to know session titles, dates and times, rooms, speakers, panelists, presentations, videos, live demos, on-stage chairs and tables, handouts, and other things besides. 

This speaker could use the podium mic. And he had the conference app.

And that was just for DURING the conference. BEFORE the conference I needed to ensure that session abstracts and speaker biographies were written and found their way to the printed conference program, the registration website, and the conference app.

This was also one of the times that I heavily relied on the color printer that was hidden away in the conference organizers’ area. And it had to be color, because some schedule items were green, some yellow…and some red.

The schedule was constantly revised. And as the week wore on and the days dwindled down to a precious few, I would hide the older rows on my schedule and literally lighten my workload.

I would grip the latest iteration of my private master schedule and race around the conference hotel—sometimes the Hilton Orange County/Costa Mesa, sometimes another—checking things off my checklist. (All names are fictional.)

  • Hey, John, could you get your presentation to the Sardis folks by noon today? And you decided not to show that video, right?
  • Paul, the handouts for your workshop should be in the Guasti Room…I’m sorry, your session is in the Etiwanda Room. The handouts will be in the Etiwanda Room a half hour before your workshop.
  • George, you will be mic’ed up before the session…right?
  • Ringo! Side room. Five minutes. We need a raffle winner before 10:30.

By mid afternoon Thursday the last large sessions were done, the last workshops were wrapping up, the last raffle prizes were given away, and all that was left was the final banquet. Plenty could go wrong there, also, but that’s not part of this story.

And Ringo’s real name was Sharon.

Stealing and Awareness

The reason that I redirected the purpose of my Substack posts is because much of my audience there isn’t familiar with the…um…minutiae of biometrics and identity. (For example, my reference to minutiae would probably go right past all but two of my Substack subscribers.)

My Substack audience is best served with awareness content.

But awareness content is not only informative and educational.

Awareness of you

It also makes prospects aware of your company…which is critically important.

Last month I said the following about awareness:

“Technology marketers, do your prospects know who you are?

“If they don’t, then your competitors are taking your rightful revenue.

“Don’t let your competitors steal your money.”

Perhaps steal is a harsh word, but it’s accurate. 

Or perhaps a better word is indifference: your actions indicate that you don’t care whether customers buy from you or not. If you cared, you’d actually market your products.

Who needs marketing?

“Nonsense, John! We have a sales staff. Who needs marketers?”

Especially when content marketing may take up to 17 months to convert. That doesn’t help the current quarter.

But your sales staff cannot be everywhere. If your prospects don’t know about you and aren’t reaching out to you, then you have to reach out to them.

And the calls? “Hi, I’m Tom with WidgetCorp.” “With who?”

So how is that current quarter looking now?

You need marketing, now

Your current quarter and future quarters would look better if your secret salesperson were working for you. As Rhonda Salvestrini said:

“Content for your business is one of the best ways to drive organic traffic. It’s your secret salesperson because it’s out there working for you 24/7.”

But the secret salesperson won’t engage your prospects until you act to create that content.

Talk to Bredemarket about your content, proposal, and analysis needs: https://bredemarket.com/cpa/

Before your competitors steal more from you.

Razor and Blades as a Service: HP Instant Ink

You know the razor and blades business model, where you can buy the razor very cheaply, and then you spend a lot of money over the years buying the blades.

Of course, this business model also applies to other complementary products, such as game consoles and video games, and printers and ink.

Ink as a Service

And companies can extend the business model. Rather than buying individual razor blades, video games, and ink cartridges, you can obtain the complementary products “as a Service.”

For example, HP Instant Ink:

“HP Instant Ink is the hassle-free, money-saving ink subscription service that automatically delivers ink only when you’re running low. Plans start at $1.79 a month.”

Of course that price assumes you only print 10 pages a month, but whatever.

I won’t dwell on the specifics on the plan (charging by the page rather than the ink used, reducing your privacy by letting HP and whoever else know when you print 900 pages, etc.). 

Vendor benefits from as a Service

But I will note that HP instant Ink has the same vendor advantage as any other “as a Service” offering:

Increased customer lock-in.

I will speak from my own experience. 

  • When my company sold on-premise solutions to government agencies, they paid from their capital budget and the contract was for a fixed term. After 5 or 7 years or whatever when the contract term expired, the agency’s hardware would be antiquated and it would have to go out to bid again.
  • Later, when my company sold cloud solutions, there was more budgetary flexibility. Some agencies didn’t have to use capital funds; this was a service, after all. And if the vendor was really fortunate, there was no contract term limit either, so the agency could stay with the vendor forever. Obsolescence wasn’t an issue because Amazon or Microsoft took care of that behind the scenes.

HP Instant Ink isn’t a perfect parallel, since it doesn’t include obsolete printer replacement. (But it could.) But the Ink as a Service (IaaS) offering certainly helps lock you in to HP…and to using HP ink rather than third-party ink.

And it’s yet another move from people owning things to people licensing things.

But if it provides a benefit (HP Instant Ink claims “up to” 50% cost savings), then it may be worthwhile.

(Imagen 3)

Can Non-productive Weeks Be Productive?

This has been a weird week.

Productivity-wise, I started off on the wrong foot because of pre-scheduled personal appointments on Monday and Tuesday afternoon.

No sweat, I thought, I will make up the time on Wednesday.

Until I fell ill mid-morning Wednesday and spent most of the rest of the day doing nothing.

With limited work yesterday and today.

Which reminded me that the best-laid plans can derail quickly.

But I still completed some critically important tasks…so that’s good.