So after two years of telling us "We need sexy...", providing said CEO with sexy materials and said CEO never getting anything off the ground, said CEO moved on.

And as I've written in Reading Virtual Minds Volume 1: Science and History (available in either The NextStage KnowledgeShop or Amazon), we once again learned a great deal about running a business.

This time we learned

1. that we couldn't do any worse and probably could do better than everyone who told us they could run the company and
2. to use our own tools to help us determine who should be running the company.

Do they know what they're doing? To be honest, the question seems kind of irrelevant. As one NextStage Advisor wrote us in March 2010, "You got more done in two weeks than ... did in two years!" Also, we've had steady and continued growth since we put some tools online. The Good and Wise Avinash Kaushik (if you don't know who he is, you should. His official title is "Google Analytics Evangelist") wrote "Solutions like OnSite, Sentiment Analysis, BlueSky etc are all innovative and highlight a new direction we might all be heading in when it comes to web tools."

Our interim look is sexy enough that sales are increasing every month and NextStage no longer needs me to be profitable, hence I'm off to do what I'm reasonably good at -- research. Shortly after this newsletter goes out I'll be announcing that I've been Critical Mass' NeuroMarketer-in-Residence for a while. My job is to help integrate NextStage tools and technologies into Critical Mass' work. I've been at it for over three months now and so far, so good.

We use to get "I don't know what you do" and "I don't understand what you do" a lot. I recently did a co-presentation for FutureM at the Hult School in Cambridge, MA, and one of my slides was about prospects back in 2003 politely (and some not so politely) tossing me out of their office, saying "Why would I want to know how our customers think?"

In fact, we still get that kind of reaction. Usually from people who fear...something.

But to communicate with someone fairly regularly and still not know what they do after five years?

There are lots of psychological reasons for this. "Cognitive dissonance" comes to mind -- this individual either can't create a psychological space for their concept of me that allows for co-existence of creating a technology that does what ET does, something like that. There's also the semantic confusion, "...I still don't know what you do" actually means "I don't understand how you do what you do", much easier to answer, that - Read the patents!

I also accept John L. Spalding's "What we love to do we find time to do." Take a look at your life activities. Whatever your prioritizing time-wise, regardless of what you express about that activity, said activity is what you love most. Workaholics who claim to hate their work are lying to themselves and perhaps others. Psychobehaviorally their statement isn't valid.

Thus if NextStage is still a mystery after five years, we're simply not a high enough priority -- we're not loved enough.

Sigh.

And the core reality is that I simply move on. Someone not understanding/knowing what NextStage does at this point? I've probably written over one-thousand online articles about NextStage and Evolution Technology between 1999 and today, published probably another 200 offline, done some 20 conference appearances, published a book, published peer-reviewed research, ...

So if someone doesn't know what NextStage does by now either they're not paying attention, not doing their homework, not asking questions (because I'll always answer an honest question), ...

This also means I'll be using this newsletter email list to ping you via LinkedIn and Facebook. Just letting you know should you get an invite and wonder "Joseph who?".

That noted, subscribing to The NextStage RSS feed  is probably a good way to keep informed. We tend to update it weekly rather than yearly, so if you can't get enough of us the RSS feed is the way to go.

We call our online low cost, high value tools NextStage Wonderments and we put these tools right at your fingertips so you can quickly and easily answer questions about author/audience sentiment and content performance.

All wonderments are format recognizing and based on Nextstage's patented and award winning Evolution Technology (ET). ET is the only patent (as far as we know) granted by the USPTO that "allows machines to understand and respond to human thought". Why format-recognizing? Because people respond to DOC files, web pages, emails, straight text, etc., differently even when the same information is contained in each item. ET knows that people will respond differently to a webpage and doc file even when they contain the same content so it reports different responses for each unique format.

Basic Information
Background

• What is the best placement, second best placement, ..., fifth best placement of the advertising material?
• What percentage of the target audience will each placement capture?
• What percentage will be most likely to act upon the ad in a given placement (experience impact or simply impact)?

Basic Information
Background
Related Research

• Will this material appeal to a specific age group or a broad age audience?
• By what percentages will the material appeal to different age groups?

Basic Information
Background

• Just how much "BlueSky" is hidden in this content?

Basic Information
Background
Related Research

• Will this material appeal more to a general male or female audience?
• To what degree will this material appeal to that gender?

Basic Information
Background
Related Research

• What are the ages and genders of my visitors?
• Are they interested in buying?
• Are my pages effective for my audience?
• How loyal are my visitors?
• And more...

Starts at US$500 per month with a one-time US$500 start-up fee.
See the NextStage OnSite page for pricing details.

Note that we're currently adding functionality to NextStage OnSite. We'll be announcing new functionality, etc., on the NextStage OnSite site itself and via our RSS feed  and the TriQuatroTriteCale blog.

Basic Information
Background

• How does the audience think and make decisions?
• How can the author frame their message to appeal to the audience persona?

Basic Information
Background

• Does the politician believe they will win?
• Do they have a vision?
• Are they a leader?

Basic Information
Background

• will be helpful in their job
• can work in or requires a group environment to be successful
• requires supervision
• is reliable
• is trustworthy
• is competent
• has confidence in their abilities
• HR Specific - Is Green Pile or Red Pile
• Applicant Specific - Whether or not the resume will get noticed

Basic Information
Background

• How memorable is the material and message?
• Does the author have confidence in their message?
• How viral is the content?
• And more...

• Small business issues at AllBusiness.com
• Adaptive Solution Methods at An Economy of Meaning (what was The Center for Semantic Excellence is now The Center for Adaptive Solutions. As mentioned in the Irregular#3, it rebranded itself. If you have a wicked problem you'd like solved, give us a ring)
• Whatever strikes my fancy and won't fit elsewhere at BizMediaScience
• Relationship issues on That Think You Do
• NextStageology and then some at TriQuatroTriteCale
• NextStage research and then some at The Analytics Ecology

TheFutureOf is dead. Oddly enough, it was killed without my being informed it was being killed off. So it goes, some times, I guess.

What does membership grant one? The most immediate is a 25% discount to everything in the KnowledgeShop. Depending on your needs, that can return the US$100 fairly quickly. Beyond that members get early looks at research and tools, and probably other things as people let us know what works and what doesn't for them.

The biggest thing, we think, is that sometime in 2011 ETv2 will be online. Reading Virtual Minds readers know this means ET will be "thinking" like a 5-7yo and into 2nd Stage Learning. One of the requirements for 2nd Stage Learning is having individuals -- humans -- that are not part of the "family" directly and intentionally interact with the "child".

Our method for doing this is to have individuals (again, we prefer humans) decide if they want to directly and intentionally interact with ET, hence Membership. Members will be able to directly and intentionally impress themselves onto ET's system, meaning people can directly enter images (so far, images. Not flash, not video, etc) and content and have ET respond basically as if all our tools were working simultaneously.

We hope this appeals to some. We also need to warn you that ET can be a precocious and forthright child. If ET thinks you're a daft ass and refuses further interaction with you, so it goes. There will be no refunds because Membership includes other premiums as listed above. On the other hand, ET may decide you're lots of fun and prefer your company over other members. Again, you'll need to demonstrate restraint to ET and let it know you're not going to play with it 24x7. ET has been remarkably adept at deciding who should work for NextStage, now it will be smart enough to pick its own friends (as it doesn't have a nose, we figure picking friends is enough).

It has been said that it takes a whole village to raise a child. When that child is a Symbiotic CyberSemiotic System, it takes a whole village and then some.

What we said all along is that we want someone to run a sister company, NextStage Analytics. NextStage Analytics will have sole rights to marketing Evolution Technology and tools, will help direct NextStage's tool development and research, all those good things. Neither NextStage Analytics nor the owners will own any part of NextStage Evolution or ET, Susan and I will own 51% of NextStage Analytics, and we can turn the faucet off should we or ET decide that's the thing to do.

Arrogant, obnoxious and disliked, ain't we? If you've read Reading Virtual Minds then you know what I mean.

Well, probably so. Fortunately we've learned to live with such things.

The real question is, do you think you or someone you know can live with such things? If so, have them contact us. We're always open to talking.

NextStage RSS feed 

• I'll be part of a panel on new marketing paradigms at the March 2011 AMA Boston
• NeuroAnalytics and NeuroMarketing at the 1-3 May 2011 IIR Chicago Conference
• NeuroAnalytics and NeuroMarketing as it applies to other analytics at the 17-18 May 2010 Text Analytics Conference, Boston, MA
• Presenting a paper on Koinophology at the ICA 26-30 May 2011 Boston Conference