Molecular Voices » Dirk Reckerman

Dirk Reckerman

As a senior program manager for Molecular, and am currently working on the adidas miCoach program which allows me to incorporate my passion for technology into my everyday life. To me, technology is an enabler, rather than a solution unto itself.

XMPP/Jabber: dreckerman

Posts written by Dirk Reckerman

June 16

Tangible Communities – online meets offline

by Dirk Reckerman

Over the weekend I ran my first 10K race. It was pouring rain, the course was very hilly but it was all worth it at the finish line. The event was terrifically well organized and it was for a good cause – to benefit the Cape Ann YMCA and the Wellspring House. I had my trusty miCoach with me – this time collecting data on my first real long distance race outing.

So what does this race have to do with communities? Well, as I thought about it during my commute into work this morning, it was a great example of the fusion of online and offline communities. More importantly it was a great example of what makes online communities successful.

My wife had heard about the event at the local YMCA and had signed me up after she had found the ability to register for the event online. She was able to submit my information through the North Shore YMCA website. I turned up to the race and was able to simply pick up my race bib number and warm-up for the event.

The event itself was a great example of a real-world community where the participants created a melting pot of regulars, newcomers and one-timers. The inclement weather and the occasion (Fathers Day) all made for a lot of discussion and information sharing – about the course, about warming up in cooler conditions, about race strategy and about motivation.

At the end of the race, I was very impressed to see the results being immediately entered into a computer by the race organizers. By the time I had changed and made my way to find out about results, the complete roster of participants and times were already posted on a wall. Little did I know that these same results were also being posted to the CoolRunning.com website. Offline goes online!

This morning I checked out the results of the race and was surprised to discover how robust the online community around running actually was. Within hours, the results from hundreds of events and thousands of participants across the country were posted to CoolRunnings.com. As I browsed the online community I was able to find a wealth of information on upcoming events, tips on running, nutrition, schedules and injury recovery. So I signed up for Active.com where I was able to complete a comprehensive online profile that also allowed me to register associate the results of my recent run.

Suffice to say that within 36 hours I have become part of a community that transcends the offline and online paradigms. It occurred to me that a key characteristic of communities is the this trait. Attempting to create online only communities is in fact foolhardy. The most successfully online communities are successful because they are inextricably part of our offline world. Think about Facebook, Flickr, LinkedIn etc. Without direct correlation and information being generated from the offline world, these communities will become stagnant… or even worse – will die.

So as we think about how to take advantage of social media and online communities, we must attempt to thing of them in light of how users interact with their offline communities. The ability to port and enhance offline communities into the online rhelm is what creates vibrant interaction, discussion and value to those who use participate in these communities. It is critical for us to divorce ourselves from the technologies and techniques that focus primarily on the online because without our offline daily lives, there will be nothing to take online.

Cool Runnings!!

posted to: Digital Strategy, Molecular News, Web 2.0 & Social Media | 1 Comment »

April 14

Simplicity and Complexity – better together

by Dirk Reckerman

Word for word, I think I just completed reading a book that in my opinion packs a very impactful punch. The book is – The Laws of Simplicity by John Maeda. Many of your are likely familiar with his work, and for those of you who are not – might I recommend an investment of 4 hours in reading this 100 page book. I was personally introduced to it by a designer here at Molecular and how thankful I am that he did. I found that the book put a ‘finer point’ on many of my own thoughts around the utility of technology and helped accelerate their evolution in my mind.

I read the book as I navigate a complex project – from the solution, to the dynamics of the team, and the user experience we were engineering. As I began to internalize the laws of the book I began to very clearly see the fifth law in play – simplicity and complexity need each other. I also realized that it can play a very central role in enhancing a users experience in the rich web experiences we are trying to create for users.

Law 5: Differences. Simplicity and complexity need each other.

The most successful way in which to highlight the complex is to pair it effectively with simplicity. It is human nature to want to be challenged by complexity. If we are not, we become bored and move on. Interestingly however, we do not want to be bothered with complexity if the result is not worth the effort. (more…)

posted to: Digital Strategy, Experience Design | 2 Comments »

April 10

Coaching made personal, effortless and accessible…

by Dirk Reckerman

So why is a Molecular program manager talking about coaching you ask? Well, Molecular is part of an amazing team that conceived and delivered the Adidas miCoach personal training system. I was fortunate enough to be part of this team and the experience has been and will be a highlight in my working life.

To me, it is the meeting of my passions – sports, technology and marketing. More over, it is the fact that this product is not technology for the sake of technology, but rather technology as an enabler in allowing a user to achieve their goals.

The system itself consists of a phone, heart rate monitor, foot pod (to measure your stride length and rate) and a web application (www.micoach.com). In conjunction, the system offers you an unprecedented training experience without tying you to a gym, location, or a real life coach with whom you need to make an appointment. miCoach allows you to set your own schedule, run where ever you want, when ever you want and provides you with coaching, motivation and purpose. (more…)

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy, Experience Design | No Comments »

February 7

Digital communities… not just a pretty ‘face’

by Dirk Reckerman

It is so easy to get caught up in the astronomic growth of online and offline communities – both social and business oriented. Of course I am referring to the Facebook’s, the Linked-In’s and the iPod communities of this digital world. There are a myriad of others of course, but they all have one thing in common – coverage and user volume. This is to say that these communities have proliferated our daily lives and while we as consumers may take them for granted these digital facades cover tremendous untapped value – data.

Community Rainbow

The key advantage to digitally based communities is measure-ability. If the ‘owners’ of these communities have in fact structured themselves in this manner, they are holders of a tremendous amount of knowledge – even if this knowledge is diluted in millions of pieces of data.Stay with me here… Lets take the iPod community as an example. By tracking the types of music that its customers download and mapping this data to basic geographic and demographic data which they have about their customers, Apple is able to provide amazing insights into music trends globally. This information can then be used to influence investment in various types of artists and marketing initiatives. In addition, Apple has an amazing ability to derive product requirements for their physical and digital products – such as the iPod and iTunes. As it finds that the average size of a users iTunes library grows to be 40 gigs, they can preempt this by developing a device that can easily support this amount of music and media.

More powerful yet are ‘open’ communities like Facebook where users have free reign to create their own content. By mining the behavior of users, Facebook ought to be able to provide authoritative data on a huge number of trends across the world – from the political inclinations of ‘tweens’ to travel habbits, Election music tastes, food tastes and clothing. Privacy concerns are raised with this type of data mining – but the pros and cons of this topic are better addressed in a separate blog. Companies ought to be able to make informed decisions on things like their marketing and advertising strategies, product strategies and even investment strategies globally.

Getting to a place where a company is effectively able to do this requires investment in both infrastructure and manpower – data warehousing does not come cheap. But I would wager that a ’smart’ investment in data analytics to uncover the behavioral patterns of your community will provide the company with a significant competitive advantage over its competitors both direct and indirect. While I have picked global names, I strongly believe this principle can be effectively implemented on a smaller scale. Knowledge is power!

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy | No Comments »

February 5

Corporate websites as products? Really?

by Dirk Reckerman

For years, companies have spent money to develop one-off brochure-ware websites to represent their organization on the web. The web has now become the leading medium through which customers and potential customers interact with product and service providers.

Organizations must reconsider their approach to developing their online channel more thoughtfully than ever before. The old approach of putting together a one-off project team to conjure up an approach to gather requirements, build and then deploy a corporate website is quickly dwindling. The web is a strategic channel which can impact the perception that customers have of your brand, product or service offerings and can material impact revenue.

Product development as a discipline has existed for years. In fact, there are books, courses and processes developed specifically to develop products in the high tech industry. This however has inserted itself specifically for ‘website’ development. Yet. By web I mean corporate websites as opposed to ’software as a service’ applications. However, it is plainly clear that the gap between the former and the later needs to be closed.

Why you ask? It is because in order to offer the ‘correct’ experience to your end consumer, you must adopt a product mentality. Fundamental steps in adopting this mentality are to -

Satisfy a need that the user has;
Brand that experience uniquely to your company;
Invest in developing the users web experience with your company;
Assign ownership of this web experience to an defined long term owner – the product manager;
Develop a strategy for the web experience that mirrors the guiding principles of your business;
Continually add to and enhance the user’s experience with your website;
Carry out research around the user’s needs and what of these can be met online;
Differentiate your experience from that of your competitors;
Evaluate ways to monetize your web experience – directly or indirectly;
Establish metrics and performance indicators associated with your web experience;

Adopting this approach will help ensure that the web experience that you offer to your end consumer is relevant. Your website will no longer be a ‘me-too’ site, but rather an integrated channel that highlights why your company is different from your competitors. Further, you will be creating reasons why users should do business with your company rather than your competitors – a competitive advantage.

In the long run, the net result will be a shift that will embrace the web as a tangible way for your company to do business with your customers. You will avoid the apathy associated with the web and its ability to fundamentally affect your business.

posted to: Digital Marketing, Digital Strategy | No Comments »