Koka Sexton dot Com » Blog

What happened to my Tweets?

Koka Sexton — Sat, 12 Jun 2010 19:26:00 +0000

Maybe I’m being melodramatic but I miss my Tweets. I joined Twitter on June 30 2007 and started adding updates, sharing links and chatting with other Twitter people. I just made a comment about posting my 5000th update. Then at some point in the past week my update count dropped to just just over 800. What happened to all my updates, are they lost for good? Had anyone else lost their Twitter updates? Is there an explanation for it?

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Director of Social Media

Koka Sexton — Sat, 29 May 2010 05:50:00 +0000

In January I took over social media for Paragon Software. Some of the profiles were already created by someone in marketing on platforms I was familiar with like Twitter, Facebook and Wordpress. They were never updated and basically collecting dust.

I started with Twitter since I seem to live in it. I did some tweaking on the @paragonamerica profile, it had about 6 followers at the time and started feeding in some updates and links to news about the company. Basic stuff but I had to start somewhere. 300 tweets later I am at 325 followers and growing a little every day. Now I would be happier if I had 3000 but I wont complain about some modest growth. There are some contributing factors like the company already maintaining the corporate @paragonsoftware profile. There is a strategy to having multiple profiles for the company, I’ll explain that in another post.

In the @paragonamerica profile I focus on updates for our corporate line of software and industry news that applies to the storage market. Since it feels like I have 4 other jobs with the company, social media is not a full focus of mine, I am glad to see that the little bits of interaction I am giving are beginning to gain some awareness. I’ve found some of our partners profiles and connected with them and many others that have some connection to our company or the industry.

Facebook

The second platform I started working on was the Paragon Software Facebook page. Again, there was already a corporate page but was fairly dormant and I started slowly building a group within the new profile. The numbers between Facebook and Twitter are very close, I should make an effort to see how big the overlap is. That would be interesting to know. I was given a bit of a boost when Jackson Chung of Make Use Of -@makeuseof helped promote a giveaway we were running to his enormous following. Now we have regular giveaways and promotion with them and it has turned out to be a great relationship between the companies. Still the following on Facebook could be better. If there was a magic bullet to this, I think I would have found it. So with the time I can spend on it, slow and steady it will have to be.

Wordpress Blog

I believe that any companies social media presence hinges on a blog of some kind. Even ifs it’s just a section of the company website that has updated news. On a more complex level having a full blog platform like Wordpress helps with SEO and a hundred other things. I started a company blog on Wordpress.com. since the company did not have a blog set up, this was the quickest way to be up and running with hardly any resources.I started off with just a few hundred hits a day. Mostly from pushing the blog content out on the other social media platforms. The blog was sorta under the radar of the company since the last thing I wanted to do was call any attention to a blog that was never going to generate any awareness or garner any results. It was a steady climb, then in March we got a post linked to from several other blogs and the numbers jumped. Well, so much for being under the radar. The decision was made to host a Wordpress blog on our company network and now we have blog.paragon-software.com.

wordpress.com hosted blog

Self hosted blog.paragon-software

There was some break in the stats while the site was moved but it’s clear that the blog is getting a lot more exposure than our other social media profiles. There are many explanations for this. You can read more about how this works on the posts Corporate Social Media List and 50 Social Media Links. Ive been working with the other regions especially in Europe on how to pull even more traffic into the blog. The site is very functional, I could make it a little ‘prettier’ but it’s nice. I’m comfortable with Wordpress as a platform (That’s what this blog is too) but I don’t know all the backend stuff that could really make it shine. Once someone starts talking .htaccess
I’m lost. But I don’t need that to get the blog becoming the central hub for the community, which is the plan.

so that’s my quick update. If you have any tips, tricks or links I should see that can help the process, let me know in the comments.

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My Computer Caught on Fire

Koka Sexton — Sat, 29 May 2010 04:35:30 +0000

Earlier in the week I was woken up by the loud sounds of something cracking and a couple loud pops. My first thought was someone was breaking into the house. I started freaking out. I cleared the house like I was in some Iraqi village and didn’t see anything. Then I smelled the smoke. It was coming from my office and I started looking for flames. It stunk like plastic so my computers and the power outlets were my concern. I couldn’t see what was burning and after several minutes the smell started going away. I was lost, I didn’t see anything and after the smell was gone, trying to track down the source was pointless.

The next morning as I started work, I realized one of my PCs wasn’t working and then the light bulb went off. I pulled the computer from the cabinet and there was the smell. Turns out the power supply on the PC melted. I don,t know how the hell something like this happens but I’m just happy it didn’t burn down the house. There wasn’t much online that I could find about other power supplies that do this so I guess I’m just lucky. I was running a Rhino ATX12V I guess I should have checked NewEgg.com before buying this thing at FRYS.

I don’t know if it damaged the Motherboard. I am assuming the drives are safe. I was going to pull them out and throw them into some enclosures but don’t need anything off of them since it was mainly used for browsing, FTP and other basic tasks. It was storage for my music and some files but no apps I need. I figure I’ll get the data off of them when I get a new computer. So that’s my dilemma, what do I replace this PC with? Part of me want to get an Intel Core i7, and have something to really be a geek with but it’s unnecessary and I don’t have a Grand to drop on a new computer.

Maybe I’ll find something this weekend with all the holiday specials. Does it even matter very much anymore what the processor is? Does AMD make a decent processor these days? I was always guided away from them in the past.

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One of my Favorite Grayson Pictures

Koka Sexton — Sat, 17 Apr 2010 22:02:49 +0000

I had forgotten about this picture. I posted it on Facebook a while ago and realized it was never added to my Flickr or anywhere else. I think the drool just adds to the cuteness.

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Foursquare Gowalla and Yelp Oh’My

Koka Sexton — Wed, 14 Apr 2010 04:39:59 +0000

I’ve become obsessed with location based applications for my iPhone. The concept is easy to understand, where ever you go no matter where, click a few keys on your mobile phone and let the world know where you are. The little geo-apps can connect with your other popular social networking sites like Twitter and Facebook and can even identify friends from these other services that are using the same location based apps as you. Yelp was my first introduction to using an application to share my whereabouts with my friends. Though I rarely used it because of the buggy interface, I got the idea and moved on to bigger and better things.

Foursquare caught my attention a year ago when most of my network that attended SXSW started updating their profiles with their locations all over Austin. It started spreading like a firebug and next thing I knew I was seeing updates from people all over the US sending out digital beacons of their place in the world. For the most part the East Bay was untouched territory, most of the locations available in Foursquare here in and around San Francisco which has a higher concentration of people. Little by little I started seeing stores, restaurants and even vacant lots becoming options for me to check into.

As I travel around, I check into airports, hotels and where ever else I go and I earn little badges and become the virtual “Mayor” of locations. I guess it’s cute and a little ridiculous but I still find myself trying to earn more of them and feeling a sharp pain when I get notified that someone took my title as Mayor from my local Starbucks.

Gowalla launched at the same time at SXSW but I only heard about them this year. I guess after reading this post on Mashable about the two companies the reason for the lack of adoption was due to issues with their service. I downloaded the free Gowalla app from the iTunes store and started to play around. The first thing I found was that there were many more places already identified in my area. I think Gowalla must have pre-populated cities with businesses to make it easier. Having to spend the time to add a new location became boring and if the place didn’t already exist using Foursquare I typically just checked into the closest place available.

Gowalla works a little differently. With their service you have to be with approx 50 meters of the spot in order to check in. As annoying as this was at first, it makes a lot of sense. No more checking into a location from the other side of town just to get a virtual prize. Instead of badges and Mayorships, Gowallians get stamps on their passports, collect pins and find items along the way that you get to tote around in a digital backpack. One of the features I like in Gowalla is that people can add photos to the locations, so if I go to a sushi restaurant, I can share a picture of the place with everyone in my network or even the next guy that checks into the location will see it.

Now back to Yelp. I saw that they had an update for the iPhone app and decided to open it up to see what was new. Not surprisingly they added a more simplified check in feature. More up to par with foursquare and Gowalla. Yelp has an enormous user base. Though the site is primarily positioned for reviews, making it an application that people can check in from add to their appeal. I don’t want to write a review for every hot dog stand I eat at but being able to see who else was there, when and get a general idea of what other people think about the place does make Yelp a good tool to use.

There are bound to be more location based mobile applications that hit the market. I bounce around the few I listed here and lean more toward Foursquare than anything else because I am most comfortable with it.

Do you use a different app? If you are using one of these, lets get connected.

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MediaTemple New Server Migration

Koka Sexton — Sat, 27 Mar 2010 05:27:25 +0000

In January I started noticing some problems with my website hosted by MediaTemple. I was getting constant ‘Database errors’ and nothing I did seemed to work. I was hosting my personal blog and a handful of other sites that I like to call my “hobbies” and the fact that all of my sites were up 10 days out of the month was not making me a happy guy. I started using MediaTemple from a recommendation of a friend and they were an easy service to use and up until these issues, I had no issues at all.It got to the point that I was ready to leave and just start using a new host but I wanted to give MediaTemple some time to see if we could get my sites to a place where they were up most if not all of the time. Good thing their support and Twitter contacts were so helpful because if not, I would have made the switch and this post would not be going down the same path.

Server Migration

After a lot of back and forth on what was going on with the sites from analysing the overhead of the server to looking at specific MySql databases, it turns out I had just out grown the grid-server I was using and had to upgrade. I would be moving from the Grid-Service (gs) to a dedicated virtual (dv). Since I was staying with the same host, I figured it would be easy for them to pick up my stuff and just plop it down on my new dedicated service and we would be happy campers. I was very mistaken. The server migration has to be done by me, again, not a huge deal, I can be technical if need be but I didn’t realize that I would have to learn details about command line scripts to backup and restore MySql databases and import them into the new home. As I said before, good thing their support people are so nice, I had them walk me through this on this blog and it took a few tries but we got it working.

Moving some of the other sites I have will be a bit easier. Nothing I was hosting is as large as my blog so I can’t imagine such a painful process. The next site I wanted to move all on my own was HyperLocal Edge. For the most part its a dormant site. I haven’t updated it in a while but the content is still very relevant. Since the databases were small enough, I could run the operations through PhpMyAdmin for export and import them into the new server. I did, they all moved over right but when I pointed the domain to the new location…nada. Yes, I learned how to reconfigure the wpconfig.php to make sure the blog had a conversation with the database. But for some reason, that didn’t work so the site looks like a brand new site with nothing but a “Hello World” post. I’m waiting to hear from MediaTemple support what could have gone wrong.

So the main issue is resolved. This blog, my online life, is back up. Thank God for Twitter and Facebook, I don’t know what I would have done without them.

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Paragon Software Group – A Social Experiment

Koka Sexton — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 00:33:03 +0000

Life is good at Paragon Software. We just finished one of our most successful years to date. The momentum rolling into 2010 is looking really good for us. I am still managing the direction of the companies channel sales group and helping out with product management. Being in these two key sections of Paragon Software Group lets me get a very high level view of where the company is and will be moving to in the future. I am excited for what this year is to bring with new products and some additional technology that is needed and different enough to get peoples attention. One of the obstacles many companies face is the ability to get exposure to more people. Traditional marketing only goes so far and emailing news is not the best way to communicate with people and even worse if you want to have your message shared with others. Social Media seemed like a great venue for Paragon to shift into. The company has a corporate marketing team that manages a Twitter profile and a Facebook page but our region (America) wanted to do more. So we started creating accounts on social media sites so we can push out messaging specifically for the channel and the corporate products in the US.

Paragon Software Group Facebook

I setup a Facebook page for the company and kicked it off with a contest for a free 1TB hard drive and some other prizes. All you need to do for a chance at winning is become a fan. Too easy. Facebook will be the platform to share updates and promotions as well as push out news to fans that want to follow us. I am getting more familiar with Facebook Markup Language or FBML to the rest of you geeks. There are some great examples of Facebook Fan sites that I am using for inspiration. Stay tuned for updates.

Paragon Software Group America Twitter

Every company should have a profile on Twitter. Just about every article on my Corporate Social Media Reading List that talked about Twitter made this point very clear. even as a passive user Twitter can be beneficial. The best companies on Twitter are doing more proactive updates and being a voice for their company and customers. That’s the plan with the Paragon America profile. I’ll be putting out news about storage, server virtualization and retweeting news and tweets from our partners.

Paragon Software Blog

Having a Facebook and Twitter profile is great but the company needed a place to hold key information and a platform to spread news outside of 140 characters. To do this we needed a Paragon Software blog. I chose Wordpress as the platform since I already know how to use it and they are by far the easiest and most customizable blogging platform to use. I started by putting in some of thje latest press about the company and have several new posts planned covering our products and the industry. Subscribe to the Paragon Software Blog RSS feed. Running this blog on Wordpress servers has some limitations with customization but for the purpose of the site, they offer more than enough for now.

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Corporate Social Media Reading List

Koka Sexton — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 04:26:43 +0000

I’m a huge fan of social media. I joined Twitter on June 30 2007 and after a few bumps in the road, I was addicted and even wrote a set of top twitter tips. I try to follow the trends and news around social media as best I can. Really more of a hobby and fascination to me than anything else. I would have loved to get a job in something social media related but that quest always evaded me. That is until recently. I work for a growing software company and they don’t have much of a footprint in the social media world. Like many companies, they didn’t know the difference between Twitter and a blog or that Facebook was for more than keeping in touch with their friends and family.

Knowing that getting into social media and doing it right was needed, especially for a technology company, someone had to step up to the keyboard. That someone was me. I created the Paragon Software Twitter profile and a Paragon Software Facebook page and started looking for inspiration. I know my way around the popular sites. I’ve grown a healthy network of friends and followers. What I needed was a crash course on corporate social media tips so I did what any self respecting geek would do and typed it into Google.

What I found were a collection of sites and posts that spoke to my social media needs. I’m not Howard Stephen Berg but I could probably learn a few things from him. After scouring the internet for information, this is the super list of social media posts that I came up with as a reading list.

Building an Effective Business Profile on Twitter
From TwiTip: As the popularity of micro-blogging continues to grow, it’s going to become a tool used by advertisers and marketers. In the same way that running a corporate or business blog is different from running a personal blog, running a corporate or business twitter profile is different from running a personal twitter profile.
Why Brands ABSOLUTELY DO Belong on Twitter
From Mashable: Article discussing the benefits and value of brands using Twitter.

Social Media Marketing News, Tips, Videos, Articles, Tools and … http://bit.ly/4xx54q
2010: The Spotlight on Social Media ROI | Mark Evans Tech http://bit.ly/4AA20H
Four Social Media Marketing Lessons | Lava7 – A Digital Engagement … http://bit.ly/4oUD5f
HOW TO: Build Community on Twitter
From Mashable: 10 tips for using Twitter to grow a community which benefits you (and your audience)
10 Traits of Highly Effective Twitter Users
From Twitip: Some habits of effective Twitter users that beginners can use to help expand their network.
FOLLOW FAIL: The Top 10 Reasons I Will Not Follow You in Return on Twitter
From Mashable: List compiled by a Twitter “power user” regarding the major reasons why he will or will not return a Twitter follower’s follow when it happens.
99 best social-media and PR posts of 2009 – Holy Kaw! http://bit.ly/85IsrP
The Art of Social Media Optimization http://bit.ly/7dwoMb
8 Social Media Marketing Tips for Companies http://bit.ly/6DMxfD
5 Low Cost or Free Social Media Monitoring Tools – Online … http://bit.ly/7RB62U
How to Convince a Company that Social Media is the Way to Go http://bit.ly/5dp9Nw
Social Media Marketing – Who, What, When, Where, Why and How?
From Louis Gray: Another great getting-started post from Louis….if you’re just looking to get started in social media or deciding if it’s right for you and/or your business, he helps you ask the right questions to make your decisions.
The Essential Guide to Social Media
From Brian Solis: Download this comprehensive PDF ebook that provides an executive guide to Social Media for PR, Customer Service, Product Development and Marketing.
Social Media Marketing Campaigns: How to Set Goals and Define Your Target Market
From DoshDosh: This article talks about the most common goals for social media marketing and includes suggestions on how you can determine your target audience.
10 Secrets of the Best Social Media Users
From Digital Labz: Here are 10 steps to creating a successful social media marketing strategy.
How Social Media Marketing Can Build Your Business | Blog Fully http://bit.ly/4DgCqm
Social Media Marketing- the Top 10 Mistakes People Will Make in … http://bit.ly/8sNZ1G
Social Media Marketing- 11 of the Most Critical Words to Use in … http://bit.ly/5PMa8c
Why B2B Companies Should Be Using Social Media | Socialmedia.biz http://bit.ly/5SP34s
Starting a Social Media Strategy | chrisbrogan.com
From Chris Brogan: Solid advice and ideas on things to consider when starting to plan your social media strategy.
Social Media Starter Pack
From Chris Brogan: Advice on the most important social media tools you’ll want to use when getting started in social media.
50 Ways to use Social Media, listed by Objective
From Forrester Analyst Jeremiah Owyang: 50 ways marketers can use social media to improve their marketing segmented into Forrester’s 5 social computing objectives (e.g. Listening, Talking, energizing, supporting and embracing).
35 Tips for getting started with social media
From Mike Fruchter’s blog- My Thoughts On Social Media: Useful steps and advice for those just getting started with social media.
40 Key Elements to Getting Started In Social Media
From Louis Gray: Social media is more than just the tools, it is about the human element. This post touches upon 40 key elements to aid your success.
Practical Guide to Social Media | Small Business Marketing Blog … http://bit.ly/6Z3YRs
Social Media Isn’t Enough: Why You Need a Dedicated Web Presence … http://bit.ly/7qfNXi
How Dell handles customer service and sales through social media … http://bit.ly/55eZzL
Best Practices in Social Media
From the Society for New Communications Research: 6 Best Practices Tip Sheets for: Developing a Social Media Policy , Corporate Blogging, Co-creation, Blogger Relations, Online Press Releases and Using Social Networks
Social Media Strategy- The Planning Stage
From Chris Brogan: Good list of elements to consider when building a social media strategy for your organization
Twitter for Business Reading List
From Pistachio: Excellent selection of articles covering toipcs you need to know about Twitter for your business.
How Companies Use Twitter to Bolster Their Brands
From BusinessWeek: Good article that is part of Business Week’s CEO Guide to Microblogging.
Superlist of What Not To Do In Social Meda
From our own collection of casestudies and articles about what not to do in social media- mistakes, blunders, failures, etc. .
Comparing Six Ways to Identify Top Blogs in Any Niche
From ReadWriteWeb: A comparison of the pros and cons of six different services to identify top blogs for your business.
Social Media Strategy – Aligning Goals and Measurements
From Chris Brogan: Discussion of importance of aligning goals and measurements to social media strategies.
Defining Twitter Goals: A Tip for Successful Use of Twitter
From Twitip: Useful advice and thoughts on setting specific goals for your use of Twitter.
10 Easy Steps for Twitter Beginners
From Twitip: Not sure where to begin with Twitter? This article provides simple step by step advice to become Twitter savvy.
The Top Ten Reasons for Building an Online Community in 2009
From Vovici: If you don’t currently have an online community, and you are not thinking of building an online community next year, you should be. Here’s the Top 10 reasons why.
Comparing Six Ways to Identify Top Blogs in Any Niche
From ReadWriteWeb: How then can you identify the top blogs in a particular niche field? There are paid services you can use to identify influencers online but they are expensive and not appropriate for quick hits in a new topic. Here’s a comparison of the pros and cons of six different options that are fast and free.
The Social 7
An informative (and fun!) weekly video newscast/conversation that covers the week’s top 7 stories in social media marketing from Nick Mendoza, Alex Miller and Andrea Nowack.
Secret Underground Guide to Using Social Media for Organizations
From Colin McKay of Canuckflack.com: A free PDF guide for exploring the world of social media and building support for social media in a large organization.
Twitter Handbook
From Deb Micek and Warren Whitlock: Get this free PDF e-book, a comprehensive introduction and overview on Twitter and how you can use it to improve the way you do business and market online.
Developing Your Twitter Muscles
From Twitip: A few easy ways to bulk up your Twitter presence that don’t require much, if any, heavy lifting.
Five Ways to Use Social Media to Reach People Who Don’t Use Social Media – ReadWriteWeb
From ReadWriteWeb blog: Great advice on five strategies for using social media to reach people who don’t use social media along with a list of specific tools you can use to do it.
How To Identify & Target The Right Niche Social Media Sites
From Search Engine Land: How to identify these sites and make sure that you won’t just be wasting your time.
Your Brand’s Checklist for Twitter
From A New Marketing: A few things that every brand can do to enhance their Twitter account and make sure that they reach their goals with the program
How to Use Twitter to Grow Your Business
From Copyblogger: Article reveals how bestselling authors and business professionals use Twitter to grow their business and offers advice on how you can use Twitter to achieve your goals.
How to: Build a Social Media Cheat Sheet for Any Topic
From ReadWriteWeb: Step-by-step instructions, with screen shots, for a process to get up to speed on the social media activity in your field or market as fast as you can.
Use Twitter for your Business the Right Way
From Twitip: Some tips to rub your Twitter followers the right way. Soon you’ll find out how loyal and supportive these people can be if only you took the time to get to know them.
18 Ways To Engage Users Online (A Guide for Community Managers)
From Angela Connor: A Free PDF ebook with advice on how to get people to engage and interact with your community.
Social Media Marketing Tactics By Site
From SEOmoz: Review of the benefits and drawbacks of 30 of the top social media sites
Practical 101s: Tips For New Twitter Users
From Dave Fleet: 8 suggestions for how to get the most out of Twitter.
HOW TO: Win Friends and Twinfluence People
From Mashable: 10 tips on winning friends and twinfluencing people using for those still somewhat new to the service.
Develop a Twitter Landing Page
From Problogger: A twitter landing page is a page on your blog or website that is specifically written for those arriving at your blog having clicked on the link in your twitter profile. Advice on why and how to develop one.
How Do You Build An Online Community?
From Feverbee: Fantastically rich post on getting an online community up and running successfully with hyperlinks to detailed information.
50 Ways Marketers Can use Social Media to Improve Their Marketing
From Chris Brogan: List of 50 solid ideas of ways companies can use social media to enhance their marketing and PR efforts
10 Ways to Spy on Your Competitors
From Sitepoint: How to Use the Internet and tools like Twitter, Blogs and Bookmarks to spy on Your Competitors
25 Ways to Build Your Community
From Chris Brogan: 25 solid suggestions for building your blog and community.
Free Report: Twitter Jump Start – The Twitter Guide for Small Non-Profits
From CorporateDollar Blog: Download a free comprehensive guide to Twitter for non-profits.
A Minimalist’s Guide to Using Twitter Simply, Productively, and Funly
From Zen Habits: Advice regarding different ways you can use Twitter without spending too much time doing it.
Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki Maintains a directory of Fortune 500 companies that have active public business blogs. The blogs are listed along with links to reviews of the blogs.
Now is Gone List of Case Studies Geoff Livingston, author of the book Now is Gone maintains a list of social media case studies on his blog of the same name.
The Corporate Twitter Awards List
Forrester’s Groundswell Awards
List of 75+ Big Brand Corporate Blogs
Ignite Social Media’s 26 Social Media Marketing Examples In Depth
The Twitter Brand Index
NewPR/Wiki’s List of Corporate Blogs An extensive A to Z list of corporate blogs on this Wiki, a collaborative tool for PR professionals
300+ Cases & Examples of Social Media Marketing
Society for New Communications Research Award Winning Case Studies
40 of the Best Twitter Brands and the People Behind Them

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Concordian Interview

Koka Sexton — Tue, 28 Jul 2009 06:39:07 +0000

Last month I met with a writer for a local Concord Ca. paper called the Concordian. The Concordian has been around a really long time. I should have asked the date they started. I couldn’t find it on the website.The paper was mailed to everyone in the city. It was a free monthly newspaper that talked just about our not-so-little city. Not to be confused with the local blogs like Mayor of Concord or Claycord that fill the internets with news. Recently the paper has had to stop the mailings but still prints thousands of copies and places them in Concord, Pleasant Hill and surrounding area.

The writer André Gensburger who is also the co-publisher for the paper first entertained the idea of talking with me a few months ago. He said my background would be something interesting that the community may want to read about. The topic of the article was to talk about how I have adjusted post Iraq. I agreed and thought this would be a nice thing to talk about. The last time I was interviewed by the media for Iraq was after coming home and talking to reporters that had read my Last Letter From Iraq.

The email letter was written about 30 minutes after being extended again and was sent to my family as a way to vent. It was forwarded around and I started getting email responses from complete strangers showing their support. It made its way onto a reporters desk and then the requests to talk started. Only so much could be explained while I was still deployed, but once I got home I got my 5 minutes of fame. I was on the news and written about in the SF Chronicle. It was nice to see my name in the paper and my face on the TV. My family got a kick out of it also.

I met André at the local Starbucks, sat down with my iced venti quad mocha and waited for him to pull out a pad of paper. I figured he was going to take notes because any other interview I have ever given that’s what the reporter did. Even when I was being video taped for the CBS News, the reporter had a note pad. André pulled out a tape recorder and asked if that would be cool. Sure. I thought “what could it harm?”. Other than the fact that I may run off on a tangent or say something I shouldn’t, there was nothing to fear. Sorry André, I was a bit intimidated by the recorder but I thought I was a good sport about it.

Instead of taking notes, trying to catch quotes or other information. Why not just have a conversation, see where it goes and then pull from it for the piece. It actually makes a whole lot more sense that way. Again I was concerned I was about to foot my foot in my mouth. As my wife can attest, I have a tendency to do this often. André made it clear that if there was something I didn’t want in the article after I say it, just ask for it to be removed. I have seen this play out on TV more than once. “oh…Ya…off the record…”. Then only the stuff you wanted stricken from the interview is published. Thankfully there were only a couple episodes of ‘foot in mouth‘ and nothing all that bad, just not something I wanted printed for complete strangers to read.

We spoke for about an hour and the entire process was almost too easy. We started talking about Iraq then moved into some background about me and my family. We covered a lot of ground in an hour and at the end he turned off the tape recorder. By the end I had completely forgot he put the recorder on the table. I really started wondering if I had commented on something I should have redacted. Too late now.

Andre sent me a copy of the article that was sent for print. I was more than a little excited to see how the entire piece turned out. He had asked for some pictures for the article and I pointed him to my online photo Flickr account and told him to use what he wanted and pointed him to some of my favorites. He got a picture of me and Grayson in the article. That made me smile. I read through the entire document a couple times. Sure, it’s all about me but considering Andre and I spoke for about an hour, he pulled pieces from the conversation that were scattered through the time line and wrote them all out as if in a chronological order. He did a great job. Andre mentioned he would get me a nice copy not on newsprint that I can put away for safekeeping. I still plan on getting copies of the Concordian around Concord just for family. The print version isnt released for a few more days so I’ll wait to post the entire article.

If you happen to get a copy and read the article, leave me a comment. I’m excited to hear what anyone thinks.

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60 Days at Paragon Software

Koka Sexton — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 20:46:29 +0000

After starting with Paragon Software Group in June I have been able to gain a lot of traction internally with my coworkers as well as build on the momentum of creating a better more efficient channel sales experience.Using the principles I developed while writing the Channel Sales Playbook, I have been able to hit the ground running with the new company. In fact, I may be updating the Channel Sales Playbook or putting together a new one just to give a more detailed set of actions that I have tested with positive results. (In my non-existent spare time)

Besides the channel stuff, I also have the responsibility to work with the developers and the product managers in Europe to generate documents and product copy that will be used for the company website and be distributed internally and externally for customers. This is a new role for me. I did something like this in my last position and I obviously like to write so it seemed like a good fit. Writing product documentation is not as easy as writing a blog post about a shiny new desk or Twitter tips 101. In the latter, I am writing for myself and can be as creative as I want. For product documents there is a much tighter timeline and content focus that needs to be covered. It’s an adjustment but I’m submitting good stuff that is getting approved by the team so I guess I am doing something right.

Paragon even has user created videos on YouTube where people are showing off the software. I really should have looked into this before getting hired. Either way when I stumbled across these, I was excited.

This video is of Partition Manager along with an excellent music track.

I love user generated videos for products. I think Paragon should hold a contest or something with a giveaway for the best user generated video showing the Paragon Software products. They don’t seem to think it would be worth the effort but I see what other brands like Mozy, Carls Jr. and Pepsi are doing and figure Paragon could get into the user content arena also.

The company has a great team of sales, marketing and support people. After the first week getting my head wrapped around the products and what was already being done, I realized everyone is pretty much running on all cylinders making things happen.

Initially there was talk about having a press release done about me joining the company and explaining what my plans were for the Paragon Partner Network. I have never had a press release written about me let alone ever been mentioned in one. I was always the guy in the background making things happen for the people who were getting written up in the media. As the saying goes “Always the bridesmaid never the bride” or something like that.

It took a couple weeks to get used to the software. Drive Backup is a really good backup software. I installed it on my three machines at home and have not had any issues yet. Even my laptop has a scheduled backup run once a week now. Since I’ve been playing around with the product, I feel completely comfortable telling anyone how great it is.

Press Release

The company decided it would be a good thing to have this done. To get the word out to the vast number of VARs we would like to work with and even to the competitive solutions we come up against. Paragon software is going to start popping up on some radars soon and our products are going to start showing up in more and more

Here is what the final result was for the Paragon Software Channel Press Release.

Partner Training is the Key

My plan for building the companies channel sales group is all about getting the right training to the partners. Sure I can recruit reseller all day long but unless they feel comfortable talking about and implementing the disaster recovery software, they never will.

Instead of flying all over the U.S. doing trainings, I got very intimate with WebEx. What I didn’t expect was the desire of the Paragon partners to want this training so quickly. I’ve been averaging about 6-10 trainings a week for new and existing partners so far and more scheduled through the month. I explain more about using WebEx for sales here.

Paragon Software Sales Tools

One of the few things the company lacked was a standard template for demonstrations, trainings and partner recruitment. They were so busy making money no one got around to it. I took on the task since I was already working on other company documentation and created these. After a couple trainings and recruitment calls, I had some adjustments to make based on what partners were responding well too and now I have something I can bring to the masses.

60 Days at Paragon Software Group

In the past 2 months I have been doing a lot. Honestly I cant remember when I have been this busy before. Between putting together the structure and executing on the plans I made, I have been running nonstop. I expected this to be a quick post as an update but I guess I did a little more than that.