In most cases, every customer is already empowered. They can choose whether or not to do business with you. In some cases, as in the case of a monopoly holding, a company may not have a choice about whether to do business with you. For example, any business operating in the late 90s would have had to think long and hard without giving some money to Microsoft as their monopoly hold on the market was such that there were few realistic options. These days almost the opposite is true - giving money to Microsoft, especially considering their hash of a release of Windows Vista - is considered a sign of poor judgement. Yes, there are some businesses who will always depend on them, but for a greenfield site it’s not so clear. The writing was on the wall in 2002 when the Alpha Geeks started to move to Mac OS X, now that transition is almost complete. If you’re not running Mac OS X or Linux then you deserve a funny look. (Why do I lump Linux in there? Consider the Nokia N-series of Internet Tablets, the Chumby, the ASUS eee PC).

If you have customers you can then empower them further by giving them choices. Allow them to tailor your offering to their needs. Give them visibility of the options.

This is something we are developing currently for Mac-Sys. Customers will be able to look at their current status for every piece of work. They will be able to add hours, remove features, request additional support, change the terms of the contract and also view trends in their support needs so they can better estimate their IT budget for the coming year. Mac-Sys had previously tried to do this using open source software but nothing managed to fulfill the specific needs of their business. As a result, they brought in software developers to provide what they could not.

This sort of empowerment begs the question about why so many company web sites are so opaque. Okay - the Infurious web site is nothing to write home about because it’s currently being developed but we maintain a degree of transparency through the blog and through our dealings with contract clients.

That said, don’t just provide choices and think you are empowering the customer. Too much choice can be a much worse thing than too little - consider the problems Microsoft has experienced with the various SKUs and price points of Vista. In comparison, the XP Home and XP Pro SKUs were just about right. Separating these into six different products just meant they confused and segregated their market.

Pay attention to the desires of the people paying you more money. They’re valuing your services higher than others and don’t be afraid to go the extra yard for them. One client of ours told me last year that they deal with several very large companies as suppliers. Their own company is huge as well and the paperwork to get something simple done is often prohibitive. Therefore their client manager asks them to do it and charge it to them, with a premium, in their normal bill. The big client is happy. The smaller supplier has a little extra work to do but gets rewarded for it and at the same time builds a better relationship with the bigger company.

About the worst thing you can say to a good client is: No, we don’t do that.

Okay.

The 10/20/30 Rule - It’s quite simple: a PowerPoint presentation should have ten slides, last no more than twenty minutes, and contain no font smaller than thirty points.

The Lessig Method - the functional opposite of the 10/20/30 rule and best illustrated by the man himself (scroll to the bottom for video).

In both cases the focus of the presentation is to capture attention though they use drastically different approaches. Pick one of them.

Essentially you want to avoid this:

From Seth Godin’s Blog. Used without permission

I think it’s tragic that I’ve seen powerpoint slides in $BIG_CORP that may have beaten this one to the title of “Worst Powerpoint Slide Ever”.

[Chris Brogan’s 100 topics]

Let me start by saying that I’m not a gadgeteer. I don’t rush out for the latest and greatest. That said, apart from Mac computers I have had my fair share of palmtops and phones over the last decade.

Nine gadgets in 10 years isn’t bad. I’ve only ever bought one gaming console, a Nintendo Wii, which I bought last Christmas and haven’t played much (it’s more for the kids) and other than that I have no “spare” computers. I’ve resisted electronic photo albums, I don’t have a massive HD TV, I do have a DVD recorder (at me mums), I don’t have a Gameboy, PSP, DS or any other handheld devoted to games, I’ve never owned a WindowsCE/PocketPC/Windows Mobile device though at one point I had real gadget-lust for a Casio model. I do have an iPod Video 60 GB which stores the kids movies and my music (which means I don’t need to break out the DVDs when the kids want to watch something). Every old Mac has gone to a new home so it’s only a few other smaller, more personal, gadgets that remain.

• Newton MessagePad 120 - given away

• Newton MessagePad 2000 - can’t quite bear to part with it
• Palm Vx - lying somewhere about the house
• Ericsson T39m - traded in…for…
• Sony-Ericsson T68i - traded in…for…
• Motorola RAZR V3 - in my room, as a spare phone
• Sony-Ericsson K800i - spare phone again, just in case
• Nokia N800 - sitting in the house, abandoned…
• iPod touch - with a new master
• iPhone - toy of choice

I guess it depends on how you define empowerment.

Empowerment

# To equip or supply with an ability; enable: “Computers … empower students to become intellectual explorers” (Edward B. Fiske).

For the most part, the phones never changed the way I worked. The only devices which have seriously changed the way I did things were the Newton MessagePad 2000 and the iPhone.

The MessagePad was the first device that made me leave my laptop at home. When travelling I’d have it on the plane, keyboard placed behind the screen, typing away. I’d download email over the modem before dinner at the hotel, eat dinner and reply to email and then when I returned to my room, upload my replies to the mailserver. It worked well. It had enough utility to mean I stopped bringing a heavy Dell laptop bag everywhere. When I got ethernet and a VT100 terminal emulator on it, it became indispensible for my work. I could connect to the routers and switches in the network using either a serial cable or over ethernet. The battery life lasted days rather than minutes (my DELL had a battery life of about 90 minutes) which meant it just stayed with me everywhere. Of course it was massive which meant I had to keep it in my hand, inside a large jacket pocket (and this was before fatigues-style cargo pants were fashionable). It changed my lifestyle. I felt connected. But it got left behind as my job became less “footwork” and more “deskwork” and the keyboard was no match for the Powerbook that graced my desk and powered a 21 inch monitor. People still wax about the Newton and take the jokes about it in a good-natured way. No-one who really used it found it funny - it was just essential and we’re reminded of it every time we empty the trash in Mac OS X or delete a message on the iPhone.

The iPhone has done much the same. Heavy laptop and bag doesn’t often leave the house. It’s still used in the evening because it has apps I need (iWork, Mail for the accounts I don’t carry with me, XCode) and a massive screen. But day to day I carry iPhone with me because it means when I get home I have 10-20 emails to clear down rather than 200-300. Again I feel connected but this time it’s the real thing. The technology here makes Star Trek look positively dated. The only issue is battery life. I get a full day of heavy usage out of it but I’d really like a good bit more than that. It’s not much different to my crappy, blocky, slow K800i but the difference being that I’m actively using the device all day. It’s checking my email every 15 minutes, dragging down updates all day, letting me view my new house, searching out WiFi hotspots continuously and dazzling me with the brightness of the screen. I’ve yet to completely run out but this device is working constantly for me. Web pages load faster than on my allegedly 3G K800i and the whole device is just a lot more fun.

Other than that - technology that empowers me?

• Wordpress - accept no substitutes.
• Mac OS X - working with Windows every day makes me appreciate my Mac all the more.
• Cocoa - based entirely on what I learned and achieved last night with NSMutableArray and NSTableView.
• RSS - because it brings the web back to 1995 in terms of formatting and delivers it to your doorstep. Content-enriched!

There’s more. Digital photography so I can keep photos of my kids with me everywhere. Instant Messenger applications which help me work, collaborate, ask questions, help friends and otherwise be part of a rich social network. Text-Messaging (SMS) because it’s the norm for communication - it’s like RSS - a content rich form of communication with really low overheads. And I’d add social networking because it’s how I met her-indoors. And I’m really grateful for that.

I can’t wait to see what technology empowers my kids. They’ll take so much for granted and it’s getting to the point where they will need to have their own computer, complete with iSight, just to maintain their own social network. I would like to think that our children would grow up educated and informed and wouldn’t be stupid and arrogant enough to believe they can get away with things that are illegal or just wrong.

We can marvel at the iPhone but I marvelled at the Newton and the comparison there is 10 years of technology. Our iPhones now will look as bulky and ridiculous as the Newton does now by the time my kids are in their teens.