Business as usual no more as WiFi becomes airborne

. . .The excuse is dead. The sanctuary has been exposed. Business travel will now and forever be all about business. And you can blame it all on WiFi. That silent killer of quality time and relaxation that is rapidly being adopted throughout the world of aviation. It used to be that getting on an airplane freed you for a brief time from the 24/7 obligation of answering your e-mails, being constantly accessible and always on call. Whether it was short haul or long, the minute your plane took off, you were largely untouchable. Your time was your own. You could shut down and not feel like you were violating some sacred trust. Here at last was an opportunity to be in total control. Chill to some music. Catch up on that reading. Even better, catch up on that sleep. Sure, travel was a slog. The airports miserable. The planes crowded and uncomfortable. But for some of us, you could always justify the hassles as a means to the ultimate reward. Total disconnection.

But those days are now officially over and with it we’re being forced to say goodbye to one of the businessperson’s last true sanctuaries. No doubt there will be those A-types that welcome the change. And those workaholics who wonder why it took so long. But I’m guessing there are a lot of other travelers like me who’ll lament the loss of those precious hours when life felt totally untethered. Now there’s no escape. Flying just became work.

And if you’re wondering how I feel about cellphones in flight, don’t even get me started.
ismboston.blogspot.com

Everything is negotiable. Want more vacation days, a company car, a more impressive title? Entrepreneur Shawn Broderick says it’s all negotiable, even in a recession, if you’ve got the skills a company wants. Broderick, who is running the summer TechStars entrepreneurship program in Cambridge, blogged his advice about how educated employees should approach employment offers.

Any and every term on an employment agreement is theoretically negotiable. If a company tells you it isn’t, they are almost certainly yanking your chain. Don’t believe the hype.

Lots of employees (and statistically speaking, this set includes you) make the unfortunate mistake of not seeing the terms of their employment until after they’ve started. At that point, terms are not negotiable because you’ve [messed] up. Negotiate terms while you’re negotiating your offer.

The first push-back you’re going to get as an educated prospective employee is “we don’t change those forms’’ or “that’s just the way we do it’’ or “those terms aren’t negotiable.’’ It’s bunk. They most certainly can change these terms.

Companies negotiate a ton of contractual things . . . Leases (for example) get negotiated ad nauseam. If the company is offering you a senior engineering job for $100,000 per year, is it not unreasonable to expect negotiations? Of course it’s reasonable. What signal should it send to you if they are not even willing to have such a conversation?

All that said, be sure to understand how valuable you are to the company. Not all employees are critical to a company. If you’ve gotten an offer to sweep the floors (no offense to floor sweepers), it’s likely the employer can quickly find five other folks who’ll take the job with no discussion of any terms. If you’re one of the top [Ruby on Rails programming] guys in Boston, you can negotiate until the cows come home. Like any negotiation, you need to know how much leverage you have.

Is the goal here for every employee to make a stink with every potential employer about negotiating every term in an employment contract? Absolutely not. The hope is that an educated employee base will quickly cause employers to tone down those employment terms that are problematic so that their default template of terms is hyper-reasonable for all employees.
broderick.wordpress.com

The “Best Customers’’ List. Forrester Research analyst Josh Bernoff argues that to generate positive buzz about your company, it’s crucial to know who your best customers are.

Here’s a conversation I often have with marketers:

Josh: Who are your best customers?

Marketer: Women with a child under four. [Or “People with assets of at least $1 million.’’ Or some such.]

Josh: No, I really mean: “Who are your best customers? What are their names?’’

Marketer: [No response].

If you’re seeking word-of-mouth, you should know who your best customers are . . . by name. You should be feeding them previews of new products, asking their opinion on features you’re considering, and finding out how they think to build marketing copy. You should get testimonials from them. And you should provide places where they can submit their own opinions and others can see those opinions - ratings and reviews, Facebook pages, community forums, or whatever it takes.

Now consider this. Some of your best customers are those who had a problem . . . but you reached out and found them and fixed it. There is no one more enthusiastic than a friend who used to hate you.

Are you reaching out like this? . . . Or do you still think about customers by the thousands, and not individually?
bernoff.com

Read Scott Kirsner’s Innovation Economy blog at www.boston.com/innovation.