Matrix Group International

Month: October 2012

  • How SMACNA Used QR Codes at this Year’s Annual Conference

    How SMACNA Used QR Codes at this Year’s Annual Conference

    I had the pleasure of presenting at this year’s annual conference for the Sheet Metal and Air Conditioning Contractors’ National Association (SMACNA). My co-presenter was Tim Eads, SMACNA’s IT Director. When I asked what was new, he said, “QR codes!”

    Quick Response codes, or QR codes, are web shortcuts that let your customers snap a photo of something that looks like a square bar code and be taken automatically to a web page, video or file. So instead of typing a long URL into their phone or tablet browser, users just access their QR code app and snap a photo.

    QR codes were everywhere at the SMACNA convention.

    At registration, a QR code took you directly to the SMACNA convention app in the iTunes store.

    Sign at regisration desk with QR code

    The signs for the sessions had QR codes that took you directly to the each session’s handout.

    Session sign with QR code

    Some of the exhibitors had QR codes that took you directly to their website, product video or special offer.

    How about you? How is your organization using QR codes at your conferences and tradeshows?

  • Monsters University

    Monsters University

    Website for Monsters U, Pixar’s new movie. Real-life universities could learn a few things from this site!

  • Art.sy

    Art.sy

    Powered by The Art Genome Project, Art.sy allows users to discover works of art through connections between art-historical movements, subject matter, and formal qualities. Cool!

  • What’s In a Brand?

    Many of my clients are rebranding. I think there’s something in the air. Clients are changing their names, updating logos, creating new palettes, and revisiting collateral styles.

    But what does it mean to rebrand? Matrix Group Alex Pineda is obsessed with branding. He spends a lot of time thinking about logos, colors, typography, imagery, and user experience. Alex says that the sum of your customers’ experiences, over time, with your company, represent your brand and your brand promise. In the end, your name, logo and collateral may represent the design component of your brand but it’s the customer experience that helps you win, lose or retain customers.

    Every time your customer visits your website, receives an invoice, and reads an e-mail from you, that’s your brand. How your organization answers the phone, completes a project, resolves a problems, sends a useful e-mail, or ignores a complaint, that’s your brand.

    Alex also maintains that the design aspect of your brand should be consistent with the user experience. Think about the Apple brand. Apple promises a clean, simple, user-friendly experience. The logo is simple and spare. The website is simple and sleek. The language on the website and e-mails is friendly, free of tech jargon. When you visit an Apple store, the employees are friendly and it’s easy to get in and out of the store. All of that represents the Apple brand. Everything is consistent – by design.

    Changing your logo and colors doesn’t mean you’ve rebranded. What was it about the old brand that wasn’t working and that you now want to change? What are you doing to change the customer experience and your internal staff culture so that they match the promise of the new brand?

    Want to learn more? Alex recently did a Matrix Minute with me on branding. Check it out.

  • Why I’m Not Taking My Right To Vote For Granted

    Voting boothsDuring election season, I’m reminded of a popular Filipino joke from the early 1980s.

    “There was a Japanese man, an American and a Filipino in a bar. The Japanese man said: our voting system is so advanced that we know within hours who won an election. The American said: the American system is so advanced that we know within minutes who won the election. The Filipino said: here in the Philippines, we know a week ahead of time who won the election.”

    And so it was in the Philippines in the period after President Marcos lifted martial law and the country was supposedly transitioning to a democracy. Even I, a young teenager, knew that the voting was tainted, the outcome known in advance.

    Fast forward to 1984. I became an American citizen when I turned 18 and that summer, I was a volunteer at the Democratic National Convention. I watched the Rev. Jesse Jackson give his famous rainbow coalition speech. I still remember Sen. Ted Kennedy’s fiery speech to a hall full of hard-core Democrats. And I was there when Geraldine Ferraro accepted her nomination for Vice President as women and men wept in the audience.

    I remember being so proud to vote that November, even though Mondale and Ferraro lost the election. Since then, I’ve viewed voting as a right, an obligation and an honor.  Although I’ve missed voting in a few primaries and a couple mid-term elections, I’ve never missed voting in a Presidential election.

    I think about the millions of men and women around the world who are disenfranchised and don’t have any say in how their countries are run. I think about the millions of Americans who willingly disenfranchise themselves by not voting.

    Post it note reminder to voteThe news media says this year’s election is “the most important election in a generation.” Bah. Every election is historic. Why is this election more or less important than 2008, or 1980 or 1992?

    Until recently, I was one of Virginia’s undecided voters. But I will never be a non-voter.

    PLEASE VOTE AND TELL YOUR FRIENDS, CO-WORKERS AND FAMILY TO VOTE.