By Guest Interviewer Matt Scherer

Bill Leake will be speaking at Innotech Austin on October 16th at the Austin Convention Center. A former McKinsey consultant and Dell veteran, Bill Leake draws on a deep expertise in both business and marketing to help increase revenues for a wide range of clients. He has been involved in driving provable revenues through Internet marketing techniques since the early 1990s when, as part of the management team at Power Computing, he built the first company to sell $1 million of product over the internet. Bill has guided Apogee Search from inception to its current position as the largest search engine marketing firm in the Southwest, and one of the 20 largest in North America.

Q: You have one of the most difficult jobs in Austin as the program chair for the eMarketing summit of this year’s Austin Innotech. After all, there are a lot of local and national marketing agencies who do excellent work in this space. How did you pick the speakers for this year’s panel?
Well, I don’t know that I’d call it one of the hardest jobs. We’ve got a great team that works on the eMarketing Summit, and I’m just one of many folks dedicated to bringing some of the best minds out there across the marketing landscape to Austin. The tough challenge is often how best to balance advanced material with basic information so that everyone can benefit from this program.

Q: How much has eMarketing changed in the past year?
Quite a bit. The fundamentals have stayed the same, but the marketing opportunities keep expanding. Over the last year, we’ve seen an explosion on things that can be done with video online, serious growth in mobile platforms, and ever-moving development across search, display ads, and email, the three “biggies” of eMarketing.

Q: How do you see the changes in eMarketing for the year ahead?
We’re going to see more search, more video, better tools, and of course, more integration of social media with the “traditional” eMarketing channels.

Q: There are a lot of traditional public relations and marketing professionals who don’t understand eMarketing. How can communications dinosaurs like me embrace the change in the communication process available with eMarketing channels?
For those dinosaurs out there, here are my five steps to successfully evolve:

Step one: Turn off the TV and go out on the internet for content.
Step two: Put down your print magazines and read them online instead.
Step three: Start commenting on blogs.
Step four: Play with Facebook.
Step five: Find things with Google.

Q: You mentioned to me when we set up this interview that this program is more tactical in its approach by saying you hoped that attendees would get three to five points from this event. If I am an experienced social marketing professional, what would be some of the take away messages that I would get in this program. And, if I am somewhat new to the process, what would make my participation worthwhile?
One key takeaway I’d hope that everyone gets is several actionable things that we all can do to help prosper despite the down economy. This digital universe has a huge advantage over traditional marketing in that it’s very measurable, for the most part. And in a time when every penny counts, this is even more important than usual. Also, this year is somewhat more geared toward the new tactics, as opposed to covering the basics, so this conference can not only help the attendees match the competition, but leapfrog ahead of others who didn’t make it.

by Guest Interviewer Matt Scherer

Raven Zachary helps people create, develop, and launch iPhone products and services. He also is a Contributing Analyst with The 451 Group. Raven is Program Co-Chair for the O’Reilly Media conference iPhoneLive, and is the founder of iPhoneDevCamp, a not-for-profit iPhone developer conference. He is currently advising a number of companies on iPhone strategy and product development. Raven recently lead Platial’s launch of their native iPhone application, Nearby, which was a top 20 free application in the App Store during July 2008. He is regularly quoted by the press about the iPhone and is a frequent conference speaker on the topic. Raven’s iPhone pursuits can be viewed at www.raven.me and he can be followed on Twitter, @ravenme. He’s scheduled to give two presentations at the Austin Innotech, Oct. 16, Austin Convention Center.

Q: How did you get started in the wireless application industry?
I’ve been focused on open source technology for the past six years as an end user, journalist, consultant, and most recently as a technology industry analyst writing about open source and advising companies on this topic. I’ve always been a fan of Apple, having previous written for MacWeek magazine. I managed some of the Macintosh software development projects for Excite while living in Austin in the late 90s. I was at Macworld in January 2007 when Steve Jobs first unveiled the iPhone. The following summer, I organized iPhoneDevCamp, a not-for-profit iPhone developers conference. With the launch of the iPhone software development kit (SDK) in March of this year and the release of the iPhone 3G in July, I decided to make the iPhone my full-time endeavor. I have been advising companies on iPhone strategy and managing product development efforts. I still have an affiliation with The 451 Group as a contributing technology analyst, and at InnoTech I’ll be doing talks on both open source and the iPhone.

Q: From reading about your work, I noted that you’re a big proponent of the Commercial Adoption of Open Source or CAOS. How will this research service help development in the wireless sector?
There’s not much overlap right now between open source and the iPhone. This may change over time. I suspect that the values and benefits of open source as they exist for software infrastructure technologies can be applied to the iPhone market. Jonathan Wight, my friend and former co-worker, has a number of open source project for the iPhone on his TouchCode repository. These projects are all infrastructure-like, such as data parsers and a web server. WordPress released their iPhone client under an open source license for developers to review the code and offer improvements.

Q: What will be some of the biggest challenges as well as opportunities for those software application developers for the iPhone and other wireless devices?
I believe that 2008 will be known as the year that mobile computing changed forever. We are witnessing the birth of a new class of technology – pocket-sized devices with always-on broadband that understand who you are and where you are. This new class of devices is redefining mobile computing. The iPhone is the best example of this new class of devices and has a significant head start in the market, one that may be difficult for others to catch up to effectively.

There’s a lot of talk about Google Android right now, but the reality is that the Android platform is entering a market with already an estimated 20 million iPhone OS devices (iPhone + iPod touch) being sold globally while Android is launching in October on a single carrier in a single country on a single device. It’s going to take a major push by Google for Android to rival the iPhone. I’m not wholly skeptical of Android, I just think it’s an uphill climb. I think a vocal minority coupled with media hype has given proportionally too much attention to Android.

Neal Boudette has been the acting bureau chief for the Wall Street Journal’s global auto industry group in Detroit since 2004. His coverage focuses on the European automotive industry, as well as Chrysler and other suppliers. As a bureau chief for the world’s leading business publication, Boudette coordinates overall coverage for the reporters. Neal is a panelist at the upcoming The World at Your Fingertips event, produced by Lois Paul & Partners. The first 2 people to post a thoughtful comment to this blog entry will win a free pass to the event.

Q. We tend to have a very US-centric view of American auto manufacturers. Can you catch us up on what the auto companies are doing globally? Any unexpected pockets of success?
It increasingly looks like the global auto industry is in a slump, not just the US market. European auto sales are now declining sharply and the Japanese market is stagnant. For the last few years auto makers have been able to soften the blow of weaker sales in the mature markets by racking up rapid growth in huge emerging markets like China, India., Russia and Brazil. But in China higher gas prices and government curbs on the economy, to keep it from overheating, are now slowing growth. Chinese auto sales in August actually declined – the first monthly decline in 2 years.

At this point no auto maker is immune. BMW, Toyota and Mercedes are all hurting right now, and Hyundai, Renault and Nissan are struggling, although they are still much better off than the Big Three. Honda and Volkswagen seem to be the exceptions to the misery right now.

Q. How are the auto makers tuning their communications for the global marketplace these days?
I think a number of auto makers could be doing much better in terms of PR. The Big Three are reeling and often employ a kind of defend-and-deny strategy. GM for example just created a gmfactsandfiction.com web site, where they dispel “myths” about the company. I’m very dubious about its effectiveness. One of the “myths” is that GM isn’t moving fast enough. The company claims that’s wrong, this it is moving rapidly. But the reality doesn’t match up. They just lost $15.5 billion in the second quarter. Any knowledgeable person is likely to dismiss the web site as pure spin. Chrysler is in a similar position. The company keeps saying it is hitting its financial targets, but their sales have plummeted (down 34.5% in August, a staggering drop for a car company). So it’s very hard to imagine them hitting targets unless the targets are very low.

Q. Are things that bad in the US auto industry, or do they just need some better PR?
Both. The industry is in the midst of wrenching permanent change. This is not just a down cycle from which it will bounce back as it has in the past. There’s a very real chance at least one of the Detroit auto makers will not be an independent company in a few years. If the US economy goes into a recession, all three will face more serious trouble. This is not a challenge that PR can spin or manage. I think the best approach would be to own up to the facts – admit you’re in a life and death struggle, acknowledge you’ve made mistakes. I think that would win respect from the media. But there’s a disconnect when a company says it’s making great progress on its turnaround but then goes to the government for billions in loans. Which is it? Either you’re on the road to recovery or you need government help.

And complaining about negative coverage and claiming things are actually going pretty well when you’re losing billions of dollars only fuels the skepticism of reporters.

Q. What is your top piece of advice for an Austin-based emerging technology company to consider when crafting their global communications plan?
Be honest. Don’t tell people your technology will change the world if really won’t. You can be passionate about your company or technology, but don’t inflate your story, don’t over sell it. In the same sense, think of your company and how it fits into the big, broad trends that are re-shaping the US economy as we know it. The biggest mistake PR people make is they suggest I or my reporters do a story about their company, or their CEO or their product. We rarely do stories like that unless it’s Apple or the iPhone or Steve Jobs.

If you pitch your company or product to reporters as a piece of a bigger trend, a reflection of something playing out on a bigger stage, you’ll have a better shot at success.