I was honored to have spent yesterday in Portland, Oregon where I witnessed one of the coolest events in my professional career (which includes five years in Training & Development). I left the offices with this feeling that most people who use the internet (and I admit I am in this bucket), do not fully appreciate the engineering, programming, logic and testing that goes into making a successful product. But I am a changed man. The men and women who write the code to manage, update, develop and maintain the best in social media analytics are just freakin’ brilliant not to mention humble, funny and genuinely nice people. If you haven’t already done so after reading these last few lines, hug a programmer today, won’t you?

Mission @ 2nd St, Obama was within walking distance on 5th!

Back in San Francisco today, I played my game of Commuters Roulette. Each morning I board the Marina Express (30x) and decide 30 minutes later whether it is worth it to catch the Townsend 12 which would take me to front door of Crowd Factory or stay on the 30x two more stops and walk 9 minutes. Today I won the battle and walked along the somewhat chilly and brisk streets on San Francisco only to realize that most of the downtown south of Market Street is CLOSED due to President Obama having a breakfast at the Inter Continental on Mission.

It occurred to me that in order for an event like that to happen, there are other types of engineers staff, programmers and what not – in the end their job is similar to Engineers in Portland: they make the finished product work effectively and efficiently. No I am not comparing President Obama’s staff to Crowd Factory or any other political innuendos. My point is that genius will always have a genesis.

When we arrived in our Portland offices ~9am yesterday I was summoned to come into an area where there some open space large enough for 15 people to stand in a circle, where the following events occurred, which had a really positive impact on me, the daily stand up review, I thought maybe we’re having a comedy show? Nope…even better.

Everyone stood in a circle in a large meeting space, no laptops, no iPhones, no pagers, nothing in the hands and no distractions and everyone looking up at everyone else, straight in the eye and told everyone what they are going to work on today and what they need help with from others in the group.

Brilliant. Team Work.

Later in the afternoon I had a chance to sit around the conference table and field questions from the group about my role at Crowd Factory. The conversation was very interesting. We started to talk about our customers and I threw out a question: do you think that Traditional Marketing and Social Media have folded into one. Some said yes, some said …not really. But then I put this out there:

If your work is related to marketing, sales and/or communications – is there an option to leave out social media all together? No, of course not you would be crazy not to include social media in anything related to promoting “something”. There are some of us here at Crowd Factory that know of companies that will spend $10,000 or even $100,000 (in one case close to $300,000) in order to reach 100,000 “Likes” on Facebook. OK…now what? What do you do with those LIKES? Can you sell them as bus tickets on the 30x, will it get me my coffee at Starbucks?

As I walked down 2^nd Street here in San Francisco noticing all of these cars piled up as President Obama was getting ready to speak at a $30,000 a plate breakfast I realized that it is necessary for him to do this order to have the funds to go out and speak to the people, give a grassroots effort and leverage the same tools that elected him in 2008. Nobody can argue that certain “social media tools” have changed the world as we know it.

We all have this POWERFUL tool to voice opinions, products, ideas, but how do you capture that activity in order to make sense of it all? The group in Portland may not have the Marketing expertise that I have or the sales Expertise of our VP of Sales Diane Updyke (and vice versa) – but they understand the process and the steps it takes for one person, consumer or someone to make a decision. With that said, if you work in a company that relies on the logic of an engineer or programmer, go over and thank them, send them a quick email, give them a hug – without them, your ideas will just be that…ideas.