Disqus - Latest Comments for Sally Church

Re: Nokia N810 Giveaway

Sally Church — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 09:13:56 -0000

Given their current scaling problems, it may well take that long to build a more robust system that doesn't entice the Fail Whale to appear.

I'm assuming that the scalability issues will be fixed by ten and we will have no problems with @replies, track in IM, IM in general (my GTalk still doesn't work with Twitter) etc.

This is going to be a challenge for them as more users come on aboard, more API requests come in from Twitter clients etc and the scalability issue gets bigger each time.

That said, what I would really like to see in terms of flexibility of use (assuming all of the above is fixed) is the ability to be able to send voice instructions to my Twitter account, thereby saving myself a lot of time. I currently use Jott a lot to send messages to self on my iPhone. It would be cool to be able to say "Twitter. @gcal metting with X on Y date from A to B time" or "Twitter. share this website Body text: whatever" and be able to do it quickly.

Currently, I have to dictate those sort of messages to self in Jott or write in my Moleskin and do them manually later, which is time consuming. I love automating simple tasks so having a voice input function direct in Twitter or a client such as Jott would be fabulous for GTD.

There again, in 24 months if Twitter doesn't fix their scalability problems or runs out of VC funding, they may not be still here, in which case the above ideas would be moot and irrelevant!

Just my 2c worth: simple but effective ways of becoming more effiicient and using Twitter as an effective business rather than social media tool.

Re: Troubled, Some Pharmaceuticals Turn a Blind Eye to the Blogosphere

Sally Church — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 14:43:51 -0000

The thing with adverse event reporting is a moot one. Where we came across some worrying events, we simply had the clinical department contact the centre concerned and encourage reporting it both while it was in the trials and also post market approval. This kind of transparency is good for the industry.

Where I, and others, erred on the side of caution was jumping in commenting or interacting. A person cannot be the voice of the company, nor can they offer advice. Concerns about the FDA seeing comments as promotional are real and taken seriously.

The balance though, is that those companies who take it to extremes and ban even reading of material for fear of what might happen, is perhaps an unreasonable one in my view. Sensible people will use the information in creative ways internally for the greater good, rather than getting the company in hot water.

It's fear of what might happen that drives the finance and pharma industries, not what good might come of it.

Re: Troubled, Some Pharmaceuticals Turn a Blind Eye to the Blogosphere

Sally Church — Sat, 14 Jun 2008 09:32:58 -0000

Not all pharma companies are so draconian in their practices.

While I was working on a cancer blockbuster, we tracked opinions and thoughts of a group of patients on Yahoo groups. The trials were in phase II and III before the drug went to market. We often knew what side effects were emerging before the doctors reported then in the investigator meetings. This gave the clinical team time to prepare for the news and develop advice for managing them, eg steroid cream for rash etc. It also gives marketing an opportunity to develop materials ahead of time.

As a marketing person, I used to put together a weekly series of "The Good, Bad and The Ugly" for the team based on the patient feedback. If there were complaints, I put them in and the team would strategise would could be done to improve things. The good news about their treatment and the company would motivate those working on the project no end.

Did monitoring the patient feedback from a variety of sources (including blogs) help? You betcha! It was considered a novel idea at the time and the power of the web is immense.

That said, I have done consulting work at companies who have clearly blocked access to common blog platforms because they did not want their employees distracted from work. My pharma friends therefore read my blog at home on their own computers and send any comments by email rather than on the blog.

Re: An Open Letter to my Two Mortgage Companies

Sally Church — Fri, 06 Feb 2009 16:33:44 -0000

What an incredible story, Francine, and you most certainly are not the only one in the same boat. Many of my friends are experiencing the very same pain too.

My Ex and I have a joint condo in South Beach and we're stuck with it for now, unable to sell in a declining market and unable to remortgage either. Thankfully, it is rented out at a small loss and we're hoping the market will have improved by the end of the year when the 5-arm finishes; some chance of that and the market price likely will have declined further.

There are huge consequences bearing this burden though, since neither of us can move on and purchase property elsewhere. The annual stress of finding a new renter isn't fun either.

I sincerely feel for you, you have my best wishes for an amicable solution with the banks.

Re: Workflow- Social Media for Marketers

Sally Church — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:22:55 -0000

Great article, nicely done Chris!

I wrote up a synopsis on Ecademy and linked back to the article here.

Sometimes all people need is a little imagination and creativity to apply new tools to their situation.

Re: 50 Ways to Take Your Blog to the Next Level

Sally Church — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 10:37:01 -0000

Great blog, Chris. I shared it here with acknowledgement :)
http://www.ecademy.com/node.php?id=112070

Re: Google Mail Outage

Sally Church — Tue, 24 Feb 2009 11:19:08 -0000

Actually, Gmail was still working fine on my iPhone and from POP mail so it was clearly only the web browser that was the problem.

That's the neat thing with POP and IMAP though; if one service goes down you can still POP a service through alternatives such as Thunderbird, Eudora or Mac Mail and stay up and running.