Tonight’s focus group was amazing.  Nearly two dozen people gave up two hours of their day to discuss why they are members of an organization, what they like about the Web site, and what would make their jobs easier.   Some of the ideas were mind-blowingly simple, while others were flat out brilliant.  If half of the product ideas prove economically feasible, this organization has a product road map for the next year.

Speaking of product road maps, I am in the habit of calling a couple of customers after each release of our association management software, MatrixMaxx.  I call to check-in, get feedback on new features, and, most importantly, ask them for  the one thing they would like to see in a future release.  For the 9.1 release, the suggestions were all spot on, some were so easy to implement we wondered why we hadn’t done the work earlier, and some proved to be blockbusters.

But what do you do when you have zillions of customers and you get a flood of customer requests on a regular basis?  Google Moderator allows communities to post suggestions/questions and then vote on all ideas submitted.  President Obama used Google Moderator to accept questions for an electronic town hall meeting; citizens submitted and then ranked questions; the President answered the most popular questions.

Dell’s IdeaStorm allows customers to submit and rank suggestions to the company. The most popular idea as of tonight is to allow consumers to purchase a computer without an operating system.  Presumably, Dell will act on the most popular ideas.  Both IdeaStorm and Google Moderator are terrific ways to capture, validate and rank customer desires. I’m thinking of using Google Moderator to allow customers of MatrixMaxx to suggest and rank ideas for future releases.

How about you?  How do you solicit direct feedback from your customers? And how can you use a tool like Google Moderator to generate user feedback and validate the ideas via voting from the community?

It’s Election Day in Alexandria, VA.

Low voter turnout, especially for a non-Presidential race, is nothing new. Mid-term elections are notorious for having low voter turnout. Evidently, the millions who turned out for the 2008 Presidential race that elected President Obama have tuned out again and  are skipping local elections.

Know what I think?  Election Day needs a marketing plan. We market our meetings, conventions, products, and tradeshows.  I say that we need to deploy some of the tactics we use to get people to attend a tradeshow, register on a Web site or buy a product and get people to the polling stations!  Here are some of my ideas:

• Create a sweepstakes. Every person who votes is entered into a contest to win $10, $100, $10,000 or whatever amount is available.  The dollar value doesn’t matter; the excitement of a sweepstakes is what counts.

• Give out points for voting. We all love gold stars.  My polling station should have my voter record and give me a gold star for consistent voting.  A bell should ring when a longtime voter checks in.  I should get a $25 Starbucks card for a perfect voting record in the last 24 years.

• Voting should be fun. Let’s face it.  We all want to be entertained.  Why not have the local school bands perform at the polling stations?  We should have stand-up comics making fun of the candidates. Let’s have  magicians entertain the folks waiting in line.

• There should be food. I bring chocolate to every meeting.  Why?  Because food (especially chocolate) seems to make my meetings go more smoothly.  If I want staff to attend a seminar, I have lunch brought in.  Food works!  Even if you make me pay for it, let me buy hot dogs, coffee, hot chocolate, candy, donuts, whatever at the polling station.

• Make voting part of a quest. Can we make learning about the candidates and issues and voting be part of a large, game-like quest?  Let’s create candidate Web sites that have clues, hand out more clues at the voting booth, and give out rewards for completing the quest.

Ridiculous, you say?  Perhaps, but we deploy these types of tactics every day and they help companies and organizations market their products and services successfully.

Can we at least have food during the June primary?

I’ve been so happy to see that President Obama is being just as innovative and engaging online.

• Google Moderator gives participants a way to submit questions and vote for the ones they want answered.  The White House launched Open for Questions and used Google Moderator to field questions for the President during in online town hall meeting tonight.  92,934 people submitted 104,049 questions and cast 3,604,964 votes.
• The White House maintains a blog.  Imagine that, a White House blog.  The President himself is not blogging, but the blog does a terrific job of making visitors feel like a White House insider.  Here’s tonight’s post on Open for Questions.
• The White House has a YouTube channel that features press conferences, the President’s weekly address, briefings and other events.  Some of the videos are available in HD; check out this beautiful HD video of President Obama’s March 21, 2009 address.  If you don’t see the video in HD, click the HD link in the bottom right corner of the video.
• The President’s weekly addresses are also available on Vimeo, a niche video sharing site that features only user-generated content, and has stricter content requirements.
• Recovery.gov claims to be “the main vehicle to provide each and every citizen with the ability to monitor the progress of the recovery.”  The Web site features news, the full-text of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act, agency budgets, and more.  I especially like the share your story feature.
• I love the slideshows that give us glimpses into the President’s and First Lady’s meetings and visits.

How about you?  Are you participating in any of these online initiatives from the White House?

I’m excited and fascinated by next week’s Inauguration.

• I’m following the Presidential Inaugural Committee (PIC) (@obamainaugural) and loving the YouTube contest, the news about the inaugural activities, and the updates about various balls.
• I’m following the DC Government on Twitter (@Inauguration_DC) and appreciating the news about road closures, tips from the National Park Service, etc.
• I’m impressed with the Web site of the Presidential Inaugural Committee, especially the blog.    I have enjoyed reading about the rehearsal and the stand-ins, the concert at Lincoln Memorial is going to be fabulous, and the videos from Barack and Michelle Obama were a nice touch.
• The PIC’s Flickr account is full of beautiful photos of DC and the preparations for next week’s events.
• I plan to be part of the Facebook crowd watching the inauguration live and updating my status when the new President is sworn in.

For the first time ever, I feel like I’m getting an insider’s view of what goes into an inauguration and know about a lot of the activities.  The blog and photos especially are creating an intimacy to the event that I did not think possible, considering that hundreds of thousands (millions?) are going to be here next week.

However, I am more than disappointed, okay even angry, that Virginia will be virtually cut off from DC next week. With roads and bridges from Northern VA blocked, and metro sure to be in gridlock, how is someone like me supposed to participate in person next week?  I had hopes of attending a ball, but gave up after I heard that bridges would all be closed.  Come on, couldn’t the PIC have organized buses and car pools?

I guess I’ll participate in this inauguration virtually.  The few people working at Matrix Group on Tuesday will either watch the inauguration from outside City Hall in Alexandria or watch the inauguration live on CNN from our conference room.  Oh well.  At least we’ll be warm and we’ll have water and pizza, which is more than most people on the Mall will be able to say.

My Election Decision is aimed that the coveted undecided voters. You take a quiz and the system tells who your candidate should be.

I think the New York Times has the best election coverage of any of the major news outlets.

The Washington Post and CNN also have a good election centers.

Google has created a series of Google maps that chart the timeline of both candidates’ lives, map Twitter posts about the election, and show where the candidates are on the campaign trail. Be sure to reload this page a couple of times to see all of the possible maps.

The 270 To Win interactive electoral map lets you make your own predictions about how each state will swing.

If you are a poll junkie, you’ll love this Presidential Poll site, which aggregates polls announced by the newspapers and other media outlets.

Twitter has created an election page where anyone with a Twitter account can Tweet on the election. There is a new post every two seconds. Stay awhile and you’ll see some interesting posts.

7-Eleven lets you vote for your candidate with every coffee purchase because you get to pick your coffee cup: McCain vs. Obama. Nationally, 7-Eleven coffee drinkers are voting 58% for Obama vs. 42% for McCain. Get out there and vote and vote often!

If you want some historical perspective on the issues of the day, here’s a great PBS microsite that highlights different Presidents from the past century and their views on the economy, military service, the US role in the world, and other issues.

Why on earth would a presidential candidate follow every Tom, Dick and Harry who wants to follow him on Twitter?  And is some poor soul on his staff really assigned to monitor the Twitter posts?

And then it hit me.  Looking at Obama’s Twitter page, you’ll note that as of midnight on July 14, 2008, there are 46,535 people following him.  It’s not about the Twitter posts, it’s about showing how many people care about what Obama is doing, about showing the huge diversity of his supporters, and allowing his supporters to get connected.

All this aside, Obama’s team does a masterful job with the Twitter posts.  While most of us post mildly amusing notes about our daily lives, in 140 characters, Obama’s posts tell you about the candidate’s campaign stops, his latest videos, how you can get involved, his family events, etc.  Recent posts include:

“Announced we are opening the DNC acceptance speech to the public. Learn how you could be chosen to go…”

“Hosting a 4th of July family picnic in Butte, MT and celebrating Malia’s 10th Birthday! Watch it live…”

BTW, I have searched in vain for John McCain in Twitter. I wanted to compare strategies and styles, but no luck.  If he’s out there, would someone please send me a link.