Corvus Consulting

A couple weeks ago I was ready to write a short reflection on customer relations gone super-sour, featuring Airbnb. Luckily, I have a black belt in procrastination, which gives these situations time to spin out some more and to make a more interesting story.

The background: a few weeks ago a woman named Emily in San Francisco rented her place through Airbnb and had it thoroughly trashed by a renter in what seems to be a fit of gleeful nihilism by a person bent on bringing as much destruction and pain into a home as possible. The victim had been working things through with Airbnb and decided to blog about her experience, cautioning others and, I think, just venting.

In the days that followed, Airbnb’s actions and lack of actions painted a picture of a company caught in a vortex of legal paranoia and public relations handling from the 6th circle of hell. Fast forward ten days and we find they’ve managed to really turn it around. The missteps as well as the fixes make a fantastic case study in how to do wrong, and then right, by your customers.
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I’ve been watching reviews of RIM’s Playbook keenly, not because I particularly want one but because I’m curious to see how this company faces what is now clearly a turning point in its life. Pressure has been building up on RIM to deliver something that reinvigorates its place in the market as an innovator and leader, having coasted for almost a decade on its early product language and culture.

The reviews are easy enough to find. The consensus: there’s real promise in the Playbook, but it’s been shipped half-baked, rushed out with a list of promises as long as its list of debut features. Taking a step back, the only question I’m left with is ‘why’?

Why did RIM feel it had to ship in April? In the tablet market there’s only one real entry so far: the Xoom is a flop, the PalmOS devices are still in development, and the Samsung Galaxy Tab offerings are amusing snoozers as well. Nobody gives a hoot about any of the iPad’s competitors; so, RIM, what was the hurry?

Had RIM’s executives stopped hyperventilating in the press, they could have seen that they were racing to a party that’s really still getting under way. Apple’s lead is too far for Playbook 1 to come close to catching. By spending a a couple more months, maybe even just a few more weeks, they could have shipped a far stronger debut tablet and come out a strong first-among-second-place entries.

There’s a big chunk of the market that iPad is not right for: corporate types who trust and are invested with the Blackberry brand, people who want a smaller tablet, and nerds who want to hack around on the high-horsepower QNX operating system. It would still be there, not embracing the iPad, in say June or July. Instead of doing their best to serve that market with a complete product, RIM has been spooked into releasing early with something confusing and far less than it could be, getting them nothing but a fumbled launch and scattered, halting applause from a press desperate for a tablet worth talking about that doesn’t start with an i.

Whenever Apple releases something, there’s a column of comment-thread critics pointing out that Apple didn’t invent the technologies behind the new product. Invention is rarely part of the value proposition that Apple makes in its products, preferring to pull together ideas in novel and refined ways.

While they clearly built on what was learned in building the iOS store, Apple was not the first to have an app store for their own platform. Well over a year ago, Bodega had launched just that. While innovative, their concept never really caught on and I didn’t hear much about Bodega after that.

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It didn’t take long to do the math as Steve Jobs unveiled Ping, the social music recommendation engine baked into iTunes 10. In one deft move, Apple brought itself into the social networking market with a near-instant enrollment of up to 160 million. And did you catch that they also have credit cards and a history of trusted purchasing with those members?

You could almost hear the gasp in Palo Alto.

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This spring I offered a coworking desk in our shared office as something of an experiment. I got to spend some time working alongside people I know, and interest had started to filter in from people I didn’t know just as the sub-lease on that desk expired. It was hard to give up that growing seed, so when some extra space came up in the same office this month I grabbed it.

The upshot is that I have more space to work with people I contract to help out on larger jobs, which is happening more often, AND I can offer the coworking desk as a permanent feature.

So if you need a place to hang your hat and set down your laptop for a day, the desk is back and it would be great to see you. More information is available on the coworking desk page.

People in the tech world are a-talking, and the words on their lips are straight from a hot headline: WHOA: Google Android Outsells Apple iPhone in US. Like a lot of people, my first thought was that this took a lot less time than I would have thought.

There’s no doubt that mobile is shaping up as a two-horse race between Android and iPhoneOS while RIM dithers in front of a mirror trying to figure out what it wants to be. But figuring out just where each horse is on the track requires a depth of reporting that the tech press isn’t inclined to provide. To help them out, here are a few simple questions about the Android vs. iPhone numbers:

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Starting tomorrow, I’ll be offering a coworking desk to the Vancouver tech community for the next few months. The details are written up on their own page, and I’m keen to see how it goes and to see some old friends from around town and to make some new ones.