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Today's Wall Street Journal called One Key Fits All tells a tale of something that has been on my mind a lot lately.  In the world where websites are requiring users to create accounts to participate from commenting on blogs to reading archives of a newspaper website, user accounts are inevitable.  However, from a usability perspective, it is a pain in the rear to remember all the different variations of user names, passwords, email addresses, etc. for all of these websites you may participate in.  The concept of OpenID enters the picture as a potential solution to this problem.  Ideally it would be the one-stop-shop of user account management. 

For those not familiar with OpenID, it is:

...a shared identity service, which allows Internet users to log on to many different web sites using a single digital identity, single sign-on, eliminating the need for a different user name and password for each site. OpenID is a decentralized, free and open standard that lets users control the amount of personal information they provide. (Source: WikiPedia)

Where OpenID gets interesting is when you think about taking it beyond social websites and think of it with larger corporations.  It is one thing for Yahoo!, Microsoft, or Google to accept an OpenID protocol, but entirely another with your bank, utilities, and investment websites start to accept it.  Think about all the different online accounts you manage, how many of them can you manage with the same login and password.  I "try" to use the same information for most of my sites, however, it doesn't work that way always.  Can it be more convenient?  Yes. 

However, it has several impacts beyond just logging in. Security, fraud issues, and framework maturity are still outstanding for other major corporations ot adopt it.  But think about a level of websites beyond blogs, but not quite your financial institutions.  Can associations adopt this and make it work?  Of course!  Can media websites adopt this an make it work? Of course!  Currently over 22,000 websites accept OpenID (including this blog) as a form of identification.  It is projected that this number of sites will reach close to 50,000 by the end of this year.  So if you have a login/register process for your website, why aren't you looking at something that will make it easier for users to manage their account with your site?  Take a look at offering OpenID as an alternative to your current login procedures.  

Day one had a great line up of speakers and content. Day two looks like it will be no different.

Here is my Twitter Stream which I will be updating during the day. I'll then recap later.

Full Twitter String
RSS Feed

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Online Community Sites of Note:

Dell Community
IdeaExchange by Salesforce
Real World New Cast Member by MTV
IdeaStorm by Dell

Updated: 3:45pm

I'm at the Forrester Consumer Forum in Chicago today and tomorrow. I'll be writing my thoughts and observations on the content from the conference here.

So far there have been some great speakers. The theme of the conference is around the online world, social integration, advertising, and how your company can understand and take advantage of this medium. The format of the Forum is pretty cool. Short presentation on targeted topics, then a "coffee talk" type Q&A with the speaker (literally two chairs with an end-table on a stage w/ two large video screens on each side). The dialog is great and personal to those in the audience.

Kicking off the conference was Forrester Vice President and senior analyst Charlene Li. Charlene does a lot of her research around the social technographics. Who is using the social tools, how, and to what level of participation.

Christie Hefner from Playboy had a great keynote on how Playboy has truly been able to leverage the Playboy brand in ways that most companies would drool over. It is amazing how they have been able to integrate new solutions successfully from Print, to TV, to Online, and now Mobile. They have brought the brand beyond the print publication(s) to the real world, and now virtual world with an entry into Second Life. They also have been able to leverage a key demographic and target market by launching PlayboyU, a social space for college students with an .edu email address.

3:45pm
Richard Edelman, president and ceo of Edelmen PRgave one of the most forward thinking perspectives when it comes to PR/MR. It resonates with a lot of what I've been thinking about when it comes to control of messages, brands, and the interaction with your consumers (and in my work, members and consumers). One of the biggest take-aways was the reality of how the traditional media triangle works. It used (and in many corporations still is) to be that a few influencers controlled the conversation and distributed it to the masses. It has touch points of how it got distributed and they all came back to the same message. The internet, and social media such as blogs, ratings, reviews, etc. changes that model. Today if someone wants to have information about some topic, the influencers are now bloggers, customers, like-minded individuals who publish online. Companies have to realize that there is a limited amount of influential control they have left. Now, the mass audience make up their own minds--right, wrong, or in-different.

I also got to attend one of track sessions. It was about how User Generated Content, or UGC, can have a place in corporate strategies. The panel included representatives from Dell, QVC, and Baazarvoice. Each explained how they have taken UGC and integrated it into their company strategies. From Dell's IdeaStorm, a customer feedback site that allows users to rate feedback for popularity, to how QVC uses real-time feedback to inject into their programming. UGC is a tough cookie to crack and how to use it. Let alone if it really does. Many of us have wondered how to make it work. We are fearful of the backlash and if execs can even swallow the fact that they are not in control of what goes on. But that's OK. Rather, we need to find ways that work for us. For example, customer reviews. Having all positive customer reviews on a product page in reality is just product testimonials. You need negative reviews to show authenticity. Companies have to understand how UGC works, it is written by passionate individuals (for good or bad) and it is often intended to help like minded individuals (though companies can listen and learn from them). Monetizing on this type of feedback and content is still a challenge, but models are being formed and success is in the results--more products shipped and more revenue generated.

I'll be updating this more with my notes and perceptions. This is just the beginning so I can pay attention to the presentations and blogging at the same time.

Additional Coverage
Technorati
Forrester Marketing Blog
Flickr

A new feature of From the 21st Floor: Aggregator Addition. Aggregator Addition (AA) will highlight certain blogs that are in my news aggregator that I feel you might find beneficial to have in yours.

Kicking off AA is Web Worker Daily (feed. Web Worker Daily is a product of the GigaOM network produced by Om Malik. Web Worker Daily discusses tips, gear, how-to, and other productivity tips for young professionals (at least that seems to be the demographic). I've found several great tips here from Telecommuting: Not Just for Disaster Response to Your Eyes Want You to Multitask. Resist!.

So give Web Worker Daily a read and add it to your aggregator probation list to see if it makes the cut.

C|Net quietly was playing around with a business management site over the last two years. BNET, the go-to place for management, was born last recently to address the needs of business professionals. It has a great design and some great resources for business professionals from how to manage your boss to career advice. Their weekly podcast, titled Useful Commute, is one to subscribe to covering some great topics. Registration is required if you want to get access to the real goods, but it is free. If you already have an account with ZDNet or TechRepublic you are already set as your login credentials are transferable.

Short answer: continually give them advancement opportunities.

Now the long answer. The reality is that you won't be able to retain all the good talented staff that walk through your door. That's a given. For some reason they won't blend well into the organization or they will a short attention span and hop jobs (let's face it, it's not where employees stick around for 30 years anymore). I guess I can say I'm somewhat unique in that I've stayed at my first company post graduation for over 5 years without leaving, though I've had opportunities to advance. It is those opportunities to do more with my career that has been the key factor to stay longer and will be for employees your organization.

For many, staying at a company is a balance between "real" benefits and intrinsic benefits (job satisfaction, healthy work environment, knowledge expansion). Sure access to the health club is nice, but if I can leave work knowing that I made a difference, improved my work product, and can be recognized for it, I'm happy. That's what keeps me coming back in the morning and not dreading my job come Sunday evening when the thought of "having to go back to work tomorrow" pops in your head.

I hope employers feel that advancement doesn't always mean more money or a promotion. Advancement could include allowing an employee to:

• improve a skill-set
• have the ability to teach the organization a new way of doing business they have researched
• the ability to provide continual feedback to the organization

Employers should also look to:

• present new challenges to employees where their diverse skill-set can solve
• provide clear career path options (nothing is worse than coming to an organization and find there is no-where to go within the organization)

Eventually you will always tap out on what you can do for an employee, but as long as they feel that they can continue to contribute and be rewarded in some way, they will stay. So when was the last time you sat down with your employees and asked them how satisfied they are in their jobs? What can you do to make it better? Maybe you should.

I was recently at Tech Cocktail 3 here in Chicago and I put this site down on my name tag instead of my work domain.  Many asked me, what is From the 21st Floor?  It dawned on me that I really couldn't explain the purpose of this site concisely in a sentence.  I would say it is about looking at things from the big picture perspective.  That is true, but what I'm really trying to attempt (and I hope to get better at) is explaining how I look at things in a holistic point of view.  The "big picture" falls in that category, but maybe it will be easier to explain to others. 

The holistic point of view I see the world in relates to the balance between strategy and implementing actions to meet goals.  How often have you been in a meeting and heard about a new plan or idea that was going to be implemented and you thought to yourself "But what about that other plan we have?"  or "How does this meet our overall goals or work within or strategic vision?"  That is the world I see.  I think those questions all the time, and more recently I start to ask them in meetings.  I guarantee your company will waste more time and money on developing and implementing ideas that contradict your overall company goals than you want to admit.  This will be because you don't have a vetting process for major projects, and more importantly it is because your fellow employees can't recite what the company goals are.  And for the record, it shouldn't be "to make our shareholders money."

So I encourage you to understand what your companies strategic goals are.  Be able to recite it at a moments notice.  Why? Because when you are in project planning meetings or brainstorming sessions you can effectively ask "How does this idea work towards our strategic goals?"  More often than not you will probably get someone to pause and think about it because they hadn't before.

Coming back full circle, From the 21st Floor is about looking at business, goals, strategy, marketing, communications, the whole package from a holistic view--the big picture.

So if you haven't heard about the way cool new iPhone, the impending lawsuit from Cisco, then you've been under a rock for the last few days. So let's quickly get the phone part out of the way first.

WOW! That is one slick machine. I hope it stands up to all it says it can do. The touch screen is amazing and looks very clean. Did you notice they changed up the menu interface (hmmm....no more paying a license fee to Microsoft (update: or Creative...can't remember) on that anymore)? I love how it can change from portrait to landscape view seamlessly. Cingular scored big with getting that deal for the phone. Many hoped it would be a phone that could be taken to any network, but I guess having it be multi-platform (GSM or CDMA) was too difficult (or Cingular said they would pay hefty for the privilege of having the exclusivity). Bet Motorola is kicking itself for not getting in on that deal (not sure if there was a deal to be had, but they have iTunes enabled phones out on a variety of providers). Well, the price tag is enough for me to say "no" at this point, but what a home run for Apple on taking the coolness of having a smartphone and targeting it for the consumer market instead of the business one.

While the iPhone is very cool and will no doubt change the way we look at mobile phones and how we use them, there was also something subtle that happened at CES with Apple that not many are talking about, the name change. I'm very interested in how Apple moved from Apple Computing Inc. to Apple Inc. This is one of those subtle changes that indicates Apple is no longer just a computing company, but something more. Maybe a media company (iTunes, AppleTV, iPhone), maybe something else. But they are definitely beyond just computers.

So who says you have to be in Palo Alto to have great technology companies? Chicago has two in the top 10 companies to acquire according to Wired magazine. Local favorites FeedBurner and 37 Signals put out great products (which I'm sure you are using...wait, you're not?! What are you waiting for?!) and I'm sure are two companies that one would want to work at (at least I would). So now it begs the question, why don't more start-up technology companies find their way to Chicago?

Here are my top five reasons why Chicago is a great place to start up your new technology company.

1) Location, Location, Location - OK, we might not have Google HQ right down the street, or warm weather all year round, but Chicago is a great city from amenities, lifestyle, a great skyline, a lake front that can double as an ocean (we have beaches and you can't see the other side of the lake so..) and a nicely priced airline ticket being near the middle of the country.
2) Resources - Chicago has a great set of resources from great universities to recruit from, to advertising agencies to help you market your product/service (if you can't do the WOM 3) Networking - TechCocktail. Enough said.
4) Law Firms - We have a ton of them in town, so if you need a good lawyer to protect your assets and intellectual property (those great ideas, etc.) we can help you out.
5) Did I mention location?

Again, if you are not sure about Chicago, come on in for TechCocktail 3 later this month and see what Chicago has to offer as far as our technology community. Maybe I'll actually get to it this time.

Disclaimer: I do know the VP of Publisher Services at FeedBurner.

Ryan and Gillian Carson (producers of DropSend, Vitamin, and Carson Workshops) launched their latest product yesterday, Amigo. Amigo servers a very simple, but powerful purpose — to match e-newsletter publishers with advertisers and advertisers with targeted e-newsletter subscribers. It is a win-win for everyone and it's free. Here's how it works.

Amigo is similar to any other cost-per-click advertising solution (i.e. AdWords) only it isn't a robot reading text to contextually placing the ad next to search results, it is humans searching a database of information to match ads to subscribers.

Note: at this time it is only for text-based e-newsletters, or ones who will only show text ads, no graphical based ones (yet...not sure if they will add that feature).

As an advertiser you want to reach a select target market. It doesn't matter if it is 10 qualified recipients or 10,000, we know that targeting your ads is better than a shotgun approach. So Amigo makes getting your ad in front of that target audience easier. After creating a free account you will want to add a new ad to the Amigo database. Simply add a title for the ad, a headline, body text, and a link back to your Web site (though you will want the link to go to a targeted page, not your homepage). Then choose the target audience you wish to receive this type of ad. Set a price per click you are willing to pay for someone who clicks on the ad. Once the ad is submitted you can check out the statistics of the ad through a dashboard feature. This then lets you see if your text is working for your ad or if you need to change it. Plus you can also track to see if those who do click through are purchasing from you to see if you are getting the ROI you were looking for.

As an e-newsletter owner you can add your publication to the Amigo database and identify the topic(s) it covers and the audience it is sent to. Then you can search the Amigo database for advertisements that match your criteria. Select which ones you want to display in your e-newsletter, follow the instructions and add the text to your next issue. When the clicks start rolling in from your subscribers to the ad, you make money. It's that easy.

If you want to see the progression of how Amigo was thought of, developed, and launched you can check out their Barenaked App blog which recorded the entire experience.