Whitney Ransom

Yesterday I had the opportunity to attend a presentation by Guy Kawasaki. His presentation was titled: How To Innovate And Change The World, and it was great. Kawasaki was full of energy, bright and intelligent ideas, and humor. During his presentation he gave ten key points, and one bonus point, of how to be innovative with your products.

I was invited to attend this presentation at the last minute and by the time I got to West Jordan (the location of the presentation), I missed the first two points, did anyone get them?

How To Innovate And Change The World

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3. Jump Curve - Kawasaki said that great innovation occurs when you jump curve. If you want to innovate, it’s not about being better on this curve – it’s about advancing to the next curve. He gave the example of moving from the telegraph to the telephone.
4. Roll the DICEE – If you want to be innovative, your products need to be deep, intelligent, complete, elegant, and emotive.
a. Deep: Fanning Reef - This product is deep because one can wear their sandals and also hold 3 ounces of liquid in their shoes.
b. Intelligent: BF-104 Flashlight Panasonic - This product is intelligent because one can use three sizes of batteries.
c. Complete: LS (Lexus) - This product is complete because it offers total service, support, and infrastructure.
e. Elegant: Nano (Apple) - This product is just elegant and sleek.
f. Emotive: Harley Davidson – This product brings emotion, you either love it, or you don’t.
5. Don’t Worry, Be Crappy- Ship a product that is revolutionary, and then if it has some bad elements, it’s okay.
6. Polarize People - Create a product that people either love or hate. It’s much better than producing a product that no one cares about at all.
7. Let A Hundred Flowers Blossom - Sew a field of flowers, not just a window box.
Create a product where people who are not your customers use your product. Ask these people why they are buying your product, instead of asking your “customers” why they are not buying your product.
8. Churn, Baby, Churn - Kawasaki said that as you create an innovative product, people will tell you that it can’t be done. Ignore those people and expect that churn as part of the process.
9. Niche Thyself – Create a product that is high and to the right (unique piece of software that everyone loves and needs).
10. Follow The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoints – When your presenting your product, using a PowerPoint, use 10 slides, for 20 minutes, with 30 point font.
11. Don’t Let The Bozos Grind You Down - There will be others who will try to get you down when you tell them about your innovative ideas, don’t listen to them. Kawasaki said that he was invited to interview for the CEO position at YAHOO! His comment was, “It’s too far to drive (about 1 hour commute), and I don’t see how it can be a business.” This mistake cost him 2 billion dollars and he claims that this was one of his “bozo”city moments.

How Do These Items Correspond With World Vital Records, Inc., FamilyLink.com, and our new Facebook App (We’re Related)?
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3. Jump Curve –We are jumping curve with some of our products. For example, on FamilyLink.com you can type in a surname and find the names of everyone else who is searching for that surname. You can also find the locations of all of the people who are listed on FamilyLink.com who are researching in the same places you are.
4. Roll the DICEE –
a. Deep: We build applications that are adaptive, generative and scalable.
b. Intelligent: We hire great people for our team We continue to strategically partner with top genealogical and family history data providers from all over the world.
c. Complete: We offer the complete collection (60+years) of Everton’s Genealogical Helper.
e. Elegant: Our user interface on each web site gets better and better every week.
f. Emotive: People love us!
5. Don’t Worry, Be Crappy - Our We’re Related app and FamilyLink.com service are pretty new. FamilyLink.com is in beta, but we released it to get feedback from our users to make it the best product we can, as quickly as possible.
6. Polarize People - Create a product that people either love or hate. It’s much better than producing a product that no one cares about at all.
7. Let A Hundred Flowers Blossom - We currently have more than 500,000 members on We’re Related. Some of these people are genealogists, others care about their family, and some just like adding new apps.
8. Churn, Baby, Churn - Of course we get churn. Some people have told us it can’t be done, and we’re going to do it anyway!
9. Niche Thyself – High and to the right…well, to start off with FamilyLink.com and We’re Related are absolutely free. We add value to our records at WorldVitalRecords.com with our geocoded features, as well as our international communities.
10. Follow The 10/20/30 Rule of PowerPoints – Our target audience for WorldVitalRecords is ages 50+ and beyond. Of course we are using at least 30 point font in our presentations.
11. Don’t Let The Bozos Grind You Down - Again, there are always people who are going to try to get you down. However, we have so many people who are cheering wildly for our company and products. A positive comment can go a long way. We do get tons of feedback from our customers and we listen to them as well.

My master’s thesis within the Instructional Psychology & Technology Department at Brigham Young University is on contributing factors to improved teaching and learning. This is a topic that I feel is really important and also one that I feel will yield information and results that can benefit faculty and administrators, not only at BYU, but hopefully throughout the world.

Some of the individuals who have had the greatest impact on my life have been teachers. These are individuals who have mentored, encouraged, loved, and assisted me through the years. They have taught me about various types of subject matter, but usually I have learned more from them by their examples. Thank heaven for teachers!

My target audience for my study is a pool of more than 300 BYU faculty members who have made significant improvement in their teaching over a three-year period. I just sent out the initial survey on Friday, and will start doing some of the interviews next week!

I am excited to talk to the faculty about the things they have done to improve. I’m hoping that part of the results from the study will show that all faculty can become better in their teaching, regardless of their personality, the subject matter they teach, their class size, or any other factor.

Last Friday I was talking with Dr. Russ Osguthorpe, the Director at the Center for Teaching and Learning at BYU. He started telling me about an experience he had as a mission president. He said that sometimes he would have missionaries who would tell him that they just didn’t have the desire to serve. He told me he didn’t have the perfect solution for them at the time, but later he came up with the 3-D process. The three D’s are desire, decide, and determine.

Dr. Osguthorpe said that if individuals do not have the desire to accomplish something, they should skip past that step, and focus more on the decide step. Of course these three D’s work with all aspects of life. For example, say you are working on a paper, and you know you should add to it every day, but you just don’t feel like it. It’s more important to just decide that you are going to work on the paper, and then do it. As you are deciding and acting, the desire comes.

I have reflected on these words from Dr. Osguthrope and they really work. I go running Monday through Saturday. Some mornings, especially in the winter, I am not extremely excited about going outside to run in the freezing cold weather. However, I just skip past that desire part and move onto the decide step. I determine that I will run and put on my running shoes. Once I am out running, I am always happy that I made the decision to go.

So, the next time you are lacking desire on something that you know you should do, remember the three D’s: Desire, Decide, Determine.

We just launched a new company where I work called FamilyLink.com. It’s really awesome! The purpose of this site is to have a location where genealogists can connect with one another.

For example, suppose I am doing some genealogical research, and I am searching for a place in France. With FamilyLink.com, I can go to the City Pages and discover other people who are doing research in the same area, or who live in France. From this point, from their profile, I can see if they are willing to do lookups (i.e. - go and take a picture at the cemetery, go pick up a document, etc.) I think it’s a great idea.

FamilyLink also allows the user to share photos, post pages about your ancestor, etc. When you post a page about your ancestor, an individual who shares a common line can contribute to your page as well. This helps the genealogy work go much faster. I am really excited about this new site.

If I didn’t mention it, the site is free to access. Membership is free. Everything is free. Sweet deal!

Go to FamilyLink.com and check it out today. We’re trying to tell as many people about it as we can. So, if you like the site, please tell your friends and family members.

Okay, so I know it has been a little while since I have written. However, today is a big day because we launched FamilyLink.com this morning. I am really excited about this site, and the usefulness it will be for genealogists. If you haven’t signed up for an account, go to http://www.familylink.com. The account is FREE.

Here is the press release for the launch:

Genealogy Collaboration Web Site Rapidly “Links” People at a Whole New Level
Geographic and language barriers minimized to improve genealogy research with launch of FamilyLink

Provo, UT, April 18, 2007– FamilyLink, the newest social genealogy networking Web site created to rapidly link people across the world launched today.

“The recent surge in social networking sites demonstrates the need for people to connect around diverse types of interests” said Michael Tanne, Founder and CEO of Wink, a People Search Engine. FamilyLink provides a perfect venue for families, genealogists and family historians to share their common interests and heritage as they connect with one another and upload their photos, family tree, and family history.”

FamilyLink has been created to facilitate genealogists in working together in ways that have never been attempted before in the genealogy world with a tool that is easy to use and understand.

“During the early years of Ancestry and MyFamily, I could hardly sleep. I was so excited about what we were building. I feel the same way about FamilyLink,” said Paul Allen, CEO, WorldVitalRecords.com.

Using FamilyLink, geographic and language barriers are minimized as individuals connect with their loved ones, research their family history, and preserve memories.

“For the first time ever, if I’m looking for an ancestor in a particular part of the world, I’ll be a click away from the expert researchers who live there, and from others who have done research there,” Allen said.

FamilyLink users can view the profiles of other individuals, communicate with individuals who have researched or are currently researching in their area of interest through the City Link feature, meet new individuals who also participate in the service, share photos, genealogical information, and post comments.

“One thing that is really interesting right now is that there really is nothing out there on the Web to help someone who lived in a certain city gather information from another city, unless they fly there. The need for this type of social networking definitely exists. FamilyLink allows people who are in different cities to connect with each other in an amazing way,” said Jason McGowan, Product Manager, FamilyLink.com.

Additional features include a news feed system, Ancestor Pages, announcements pages, email features, shared connections between WorldVitalRecords.com and FamilyLink.com, and will soon include a family tree.

“Putting FamilyLink.com and WorldVitalRecords.com together is a great way to preserve, share, and grow your family tree,” said Barbara Renick, professional genealogist, nationally known lecturer, and author.

In the past genealogists were able to make connections with other genealogists. However to do so required a lot of time, and effort, two scarce resources for genealogists. FamilyLink is a tool that connects people in such a way that it makes everyone and everything more efficient, and will become even better as people join the site.

“As with other social networks, the more people that use FamilyLink, the more useful it will become to everyone else. So we invite you to join and encourage others to join as well, so that we will soon have members in all of the cities of the world–all helping each other to find and preserve their heritage,” Allen said.

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I must admit that this is the first time I have blogged about kidneys. However, I have been thinking about this kidney experience and decided to share it today. My aunt has had kidney problems for more than 15 years. For the past year or so, she has been in need of a kidney transplant. In December 2006, she had been on dialysis and her quality of life was very low. My family members and friends had been praying every single day that she might receive a kidney transplant. Near the middle of December her weight had dropped to under 100 pounds and she was very sick and frail.

On Christmas Eve, she received a phone call from the hospital, with the individual saying that they had located a kidney for her and she needed to go to the hospital as soon as possible. One of the neat things about this experience is that my aunt is adopted and finding a kidney that matches her kidney is rather difficult. In fact, there are six possible areas in which a kidney can match up. My aunt, and her husband and family rushed to the hospital. Amazingly, the kidney matched up in all six areas!

My aunt received the kidney from a 26-year old who had died in a car accident that evening and his family donated the kidney so that she could live. My aunt had the operation shortly after and is doing great. I know that these events happened as a result of many prayers. I am also so grateful to the kidney donor and to his family.

My mother has told me countless times that if she is dying and some of her body parts are needed to keep someone else alive, she wants them to be given to the individual(s). I feel the same way. I’m so happy for my aunt who can now live a happy and healthy life. We love her so much!

Thank you to those who donate kidneys!!!

I decided today that I would write down a few of my resolutions for this year. Of course I am just going to write some of them down and hold off on the ones that are personal (a little too personal for the World Wide Web!) Here goes! In the year 2007…

1. I will blog more often, and when I blog, I will write about topics that are really important to me and/or of great interest.
2. I will run a half marathon and a marathon this year.
3. I will make a conscientious effort each day to drink more water. (And who really drinks 8 cups a day without that effort.)
4. I will receive my master’s degree in Instructional Psychology and Technology.
5. I will start a doctoral program.
6. I will make time to ponder and reflect.
7. I will learn to play tennis.
8. I will continue to practice the piano and the guitar.
9. I will continue to stay up on my Romanian by reading at least once per week, writing to my friends in Romanian, and visiting Romanians who live here in the US.
10. I will make at least one person happy every day.
11. I will post these resolutions on my blog to fully commit myself.

We will open the book. Its pages are blank. We are going to put words on them ourselves. The book is called Opportunity and its first chapter is New Year’s Day.” - Edith Lovejoy Pierce

Today I attended one of Paul Allen’s Internet marketing classes at Brigham Young University. Each student reported on things they had learned from creating a personal blog, and also by working on a marketing project for WorldVitalRecords.com.

Here are some tips they mentioned about blogs and Internet marketing:

• Keep information above the fold on your site.
• Use focused ads.
• Appeal to the consumer.
• Submit entries to www.digg.com.
• Be consistent in your blogs.
• Be specific in the content of your blog.
• Offer something for FREE.
• Update, update, update.
• Write about interesting topics
• Build readership by commenting on blogs from others.
• Referent Power (viral marketing) is the best.
• Traffic doesn’t come to you – you must go get traffic.
• Keep it simple.
• Be able to quickly make changes to your site.
• Select good domain names.
• People like Top 10 Lists.
• Make good use of Internet shelf space.
• Choose content that is specific to your audience.
• If you change your template, make sure your Google analytics work with it.
• It’s never too late to get started.
• Add links to your blogs.
• Have a good landing page.
• Original content is king.
• Global topics are great.
• Word of mouth is powerful.
• State an opinion in your blog.
• Stay current with new technology.
• Checking analytics is a necessity.
• Test, test, test - Find out what works.
• Viral marketing can be inexpensive and very powerful
• Use personality in your blogs.
• Pay-Per-Click campaigns are very volatile.

I was uplifted and motivated to action by Dave Whetten’s presentation earlier this week in my scholarly publication class. Dave Whetten is the Director of the Faculty Center at Brigham Young University.