Now they are offering HD video streaming  capabilities for your wordpress blog or site via VideoPress.
They also have VideoPress available as an open source framework for large WordPress MU installs (check it out here). This will allow entrepreneurial publishers an own end to end HD video solution. There have been other solutions available for Wordpress for a while, but I am excited to see a powerful video solution coming from the creators of Wordpress.

The Revenue that can be created as a publishing platform with VideoPress and Wordpress MU is huge for those big thinking entrepreneurs. Wordpress is such a powerful platform with NO COSTS.

Now for a prediction…

With all the goodness coming from Wordpress and the newspaper industry in the toilette, I believe that it’s only a matter of time that some young savvy entrepreneur will use the WPMU platform to create “Newspaper 2.0″ (a type of community news company for a digital generation) with the potential of rivaling a Ginette or McClatchy. Ultimately driving newspapers further into the grave.

Why do I believe Wordpress will start replacing the traditional newspaper companies?

1. Scalability – you can deploy infinite sites from one install (i.e. – sf.new-site.com, ny.news-site.com, etc.).
2. Cost – Their are no costs for the technology, except for hosting or you hire designers/devs to do major customization (with all the amazing premium themes these days major customization can be greatly reduced).
3. Automation – you can automate the author process and hire contributors from any city or country in the world.
4. Features – It up to date with tech trends of our digital generation and almost any kind of plugin can be found for sms, twitter, digg, video, social this and that and so on…
5. Time to market – with such a huge open source community of contributors you can deploy sites with all the features you could want within hours to days.
6. Overall mindset – Those who would work with wordpress and develop savvy ideas with the technology tend to be young connected individuals vs. current conglomerate news companies who tend to be old school thinkers who struggle to understand todays pace of trends.
7. I could continue with more examples, but thats all the time for today.

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Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

One of the ways I told her she could get the word out on her blog was by sharing it with all the folks that came to her booth at the many trade shows she does each year. Her immediate response – “how should I best do that?”

To me this is a perfect example of usability. If she can efficiently collect email addresses and give them a simple handout that effectively communicates the benefits of going to her blog she will build a loyal audience base that will greatly increase her annual revenue streams.

Most people would approach this suggestion by handing out a flier with tons of other info on and the URL to the blog buried somewhere in flier. Not an effective approach to usability.

Usability (to me) means persuading others. By implementing some key fundamentals, usability becomes highly effective and efficient.

Whether your implementing usability in web design, presentations, fund raising or anything requiring action you have to effectively lead someone from point A to point B, and land them at the place where they are eager to follow your call to action.

Without core fundamentals and a standardized framework (process) to implement usability, you will not be very persuasive.

Let’s look at the core fundamentals of usability that I work with.

1. Keep it simple – people don’t like to think so keep it simple stupid (kiss).
2. Keep it focused – if you want people to get from point A to point B, DO NOT distract them with anything else till they have finished your call to action.
3. Create in your audience an eager want – how do you do this? Simple! See things from your audiences perspective and answer the question what is it THEY want? If you answer this and blend it with your proposition you will become very persuasive.
4. Ask for it – you won’t get anyone to take action if you don’t ask. In addition to asking, make sure your call to action is clear and in no way ambiguous. (Let’s put this into practice right now – for more tips like this sign up here to automatically receive my future blog posts by email)

These four points will ensure that the person has only two options -  yes! or not at this time (to me a delayed yes).

Remember, great usability includes these core fundamentals. It does not matter what your doing -  If you need to persuade someone you must have great usability.

Let’s have a look at an article on web interface usability from a site that I love to read (smashing magazine). Keep an eye on their examples and how through good usability the user is lead from the proposition to the call to action. Click here for the article.

Now go and persuade the world through greater usability!

Did you like this post? Please click the TWEET button at the top of this post and SIGN-UP below to automatically receive my future blog posts by email.

Thanks for stopping by! ~ Devin Day

I have done a lot of hiring as CEO of JellyBarn, Inc. and I can tell you that it is not an easy task. Finding the right fit for a position has been my achilles heel. I can tell you that I have made a lot of expensive mistakes when hiring. It wasn’t from a lack of education, skill, or experience on the new hires part, it was from a lack of the hires behavioral fit (or my lack of a better hiring process). The new hires just didn’t fit the position because their personality behaviors were different from the behaviors required. This can be the case when hiring for any position – developers, sales, marketing, exec staff, etc. 

Most hiring is done based on three criteria, education, experience, and skill.  I knew there had to be a better way. A systematic approach that would give more visibility into wether or not the candidate was a good fit behaviorally for the required role and not just a good hire based on education, experience, and skill. I needed a way to find out if the candidates would be a good fit for both the position and the company culture.

What I found after some detailed research was a behavioral test, called a DISC test. This test (see mine below) will give you a ton of information on the candidates behavioral traits and characteristics. This is indispensable information for hiring. For best results the DISC process is broken into three parts:

1. An RBA test (Role Behavior Analysis – this lets you define what you need in the required role)
2. A General characteristics test (this test allows you to profile the candidate)
3. The third step is a cross reference of the first two tests and spits out a report that allows you to see how well your candidate fits the defined role

This is also a great way to find those future young superstars that would have slipped through the cracks because they don’t have a resume with a lot of experience. I do want to note that this is not a silver bullet for hiring, but a systematic approach that can be incorporated into the hiring process to help reduce employee turnover. 

There are two companies that offer DISC personality tests that I recommend looking at: (each with there own pros and cons)

1. Target-Teams - target-teams.com

• Pros – Great detailed information, good for larger orgs
• Cons – $400 per test

1. Epic DISC – intesiresources.com

• Pros – $15-50 per test (cost effective), good information, supplement reports, good for start-ups
• Cons – A little less detailed than target-teams

In Summary, if your firm is hiring (especially smaller firms) I highly recommend incorporating a fourth behavioral criteria into your hiring process.

Lets take a look at two tests so you can see the granular visibility that is included in a behavioral test. For me they have been spooky accurate. Recently all the executives at JellyBarn took the test to help us further understand our strengths and weaknesses and be even better as a cohesive/progressive/communicating team.

Thanks for viewing this post! Best of luck with all your hiring.

Devin Day Intesiprofile

Devin Day Intesiprofile