The non-glocalization of Web 2.0 (updated)

Glocalisation* is a fun contraction of a word: producing a product or service for a global market but customising it for each of the local markets it reaches. Trying to manage my son's Under 6 soccer team using teamcowboy.com once again reminds me how many Web 2.0 companies do a lousy job of glocalisation, and how they miss out on so many benefits as a result.

In manufacturing industries, it's relatively tough to glocalise your product - it costs time and money to move a steering wheel from the left to the right hand side of a car for right-hand drive markets like Australia (one of many reasons why I'll never own a Bugatti Veyron!). For Web 2.o companies, glocalising is usually as simple as pushing a few bits around.

Web 2.0 companies must rely on doing glocalisation well because revenues-per-customer are slim and must be drawn from a broader base of customers. Companies posing for buyout are valued partly on installed base and user growth rates. More fundamentally, Web 2.0 businesses grow through network effects, and in a crowded marketplace with many competitors in every tiny vertical, it's the best-glocalised service that will grow fastest and reach more markets.

When I signed up for Teamcowboy last night, from the first signup page it was apparent that nobody in the business was thinking much about the world outside of the US.

The signup page makes a common mistake - it requires you to choose a 'region' for your team and includes a list of US states and Canada's provinces only. You can't progress beyond this page, so my son's Australian under six soccer team is now pretending to be located in Guam, since that's the US protectorate closest to the same timezone as Sydney, Australia.

When it's easier to register a team in the Federated States of Micronesia (sporting population: tiny) than Australia (sporting population: just about all 20 million of us) you know it can't be a deliberate policy, it's just near-sighted web development and business strategy.

For one soccer team, that's not a big deal, though it's likely to dissuade a lot of soccer mums from signing up. They're likely to assume the rest of the site's going to require them to fake other US-only information, and at some stage their investment in time for registration will be wasted.

Where it could become a bigger problem down the track is when TeamCowboy begins to monetise its online sports community, with advertisers unhappy about having geo-targeted ads served to audiences in the wrong country, and sports ecommerce merchants left to deal with customers who've ordered goods that can't be delivered. This kind of mistake can be difficult to undo - once you've forced someone to pretend they're in Guam, it can be hard to convince them it's worth correcting the information later.

Other common mistakes in unglocalised user registration pages include forcing users to choose a 9 digit US zipcode, US city or state. Unless there's a very good reason to restrict your userbase to domestic US territory (if, say, your content licensing has geographic restrictions) you're just encouraging your users to lie to you in their very first interaction with your business. Nearly as bad: you're actively corrupting your crown jewels - the data you can use later to monetize your audience, attract investors and find new users.

This is all the easy end of glocalisation. Things get progressively more challenging - but pay increasing dividends - when you start to consider offering versions of your website and your customer service in languages other than English, when you ensure that your terms of service, customer data and privacy policies are adapted to local legal requirements, and when you attempt to cater to fine-grained details such as different names for the same sport in different countries.

Some Web 2.0 services, such as tagging and media storage, require relatively less glocalisation to get adoption in overseas markets. Others, such as merchant review content and ecommerce, require intensive glocalisation. Glocalise well and you may find your biggest market is not in the US, and it may not even speak English. Social network Orkut started as a small in-crowd network for Google employees and their friends, but was dramatically 'hi-jacked' but a large, communicative and active worldwide community of Portuguese-speaking Brazilians. I was an early Orkut user, and it was not unlike being in a bar with a couple of friends having a quiet drink and suddenly being enveloped by a large crowd of friendly, outgoing, gregarious Brazilians - loads of fun!

Knowing Google's ability to glocalise (it offers international versions of many of its products already and is gradually opening international offices not just to sell ads but to develop locally-relevant products) Orkut will one day be a big earner for the company.

What does all this mean to TeamCowboy? FIFA estimates nearly 250 million people play soccer regularly, in about 200 countries worldwide. TeamCowboy's only doing a good job of reaching two of those countries right now, and simultaneously making a mess of its own customer intelligence and market valuation.

*In the US, it's "glocalization" with a "z" instead of an "s" - providing local English spellings are a simple but important element of a truly glocalised business.

Update: I got an email from Travis at TeamCowboy this morning, not because of this blog post, but because he'd noticed that the team I'd registered overnight appeared to be based in Australia, not in Guam. He wanted to let me know that he'd added the ability to register a team in countries outside the US now.

The greatest strength of an internet startup is its ability to re-engineer overnight, and here it is in action. And his closing question gives me great hope for the future of Travis and TeamCowboy - "If there are any other changes to the site that you feel would help your user experience, please let me know. And of course, if you have any questions about anything at any time, just let me know." I'll definitely do that! Web 2.0 startups are able to engage in dialogue with their early customers. Those who choose to, and those who respond, will succeed.

Does "DRM" stand for "Didn't Really Mean it"?

The "Truth Serum Doping Scandal" continues to spread through the online music industry unabated. When will the FBI act? Check these apparent coincidences:

Feb 6th: Steve Jobs at Apple comes out with a communique saying Apple "would drop DRM in a heartbeat" if the major labels would let them.

Feb 12th: Dave Goldberg, head of Yahoo! Music, predicts in USA Today that Yahoo! Music's music catalogue would be DRM-free by the end of this year.

Feb 13th: Yahoo! confirms that Goldberg and his wingman Bob Roback, have resigned effective immediately.

Don't tell me that series of events weren't related!

Not when the same USA Today story quoted sources within EMI saying they were in talks to licence their entire music library DRM-free in return for upfront licence fees from online retailers including iTunes Store.

Of course, Goldberg was probably telling the truth, in many respects, Jobs probably was too, as were the sources USA Today spoke to. But that doesn't mean you just go out and speak to a journalist about it! You wait for the deals to be done, the contracts to be filed, the spin strategy to be agreed upon, the announcement date to be finalised: it all needs to look like a triumphant step forward for the industry and a win for the consumer, not an unexpected breach in the wall through which everyone in the industry is rushing to be the first to squeeze through!

People: check your morning coffee! If you work in the online music industry, beware! Someone's been spiking drinks with truth serum and Goldberg and Roback will not be the last casualties!

Jobs admits: DRM doesn't work for music

Either someone's been slipping truth serum into Steve Job's herbal tea, or he's hugely frustrated at being caught between the record labels and the European courts over their moves to bust open Apple's FairPlay Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology. Possibly both. Why else would the great man of mystery come out with a lengthy essay on the Apple website titled "Thoughts on Music" detailing what he sees as three possible scenarios for the future of online music?

To paraphrase, according to Jobs;

1. The major labels won't license music to Apple unless it is sold with DRM protection.

2. DRM doesn't work very well and won't work at all if Apple is forced to licence its DRM technology to other vendors.

2. The music industry is the primary source of pirated music, not online stores, since a CD carries no DRM and CD sales still dwarf online music sales.

3. It's unfair of the major labels to require Apple to include DRM protection, and Apple should be allowed to sell music unprotected.

I couldn't agree more with Jobs. In fact, the major labels are experimenting with selling unprotected music on other sites, such as Yahoo!, already. Even the dinosaurs of the music industry might be able to see that the time to wind DRM back is coming.

But in addition to the three alternatives Jobs offers for the future of online music, I'd like to offer a fourth:

Apple should consider the leverage it now enjoys in online music sales. What would happen if Apple decided to drop the major labels' catalogues from iTunes altogether until they agree to let Apple sell their content DRM-free? I think Apple underestimates the loyalty of iPod and iTunes owners. I think the majority of customers would side with Apple in a battle with the labels over banning DRM-protected music. And with Apple's help, independent music would flourish in the interim, with consumers encouraged to try and buy music from outside the major labels' marketing aura.

Apple could free the music industry from the dead brake hand of the major labels, turning the industry on its head and setting artists, consumers and Apple free for an open, flexible future where it's the quality of the music, not the amount spent promoting it, that determines its success.

Ah, I can dream, can't I?...







Technorati Tags: apple, DRM, fairplay, steve jobs

"You are coming to a sad realisation, cancel or allow?"

Until today I've maintained my silence on Apple's 'Mac and PC' TV ad campaigns, figuring anyone who reads my blog is capable of finding them on their own. They've been making me chuckle all along, and while I doubt they do much to convert existing Windows users, as an Apple customer they've reinforced my decision to go Mac and reminded me of why I should think twice about ever going back to Windows.

The latest series, highlighting the challenges of upgrading a PC to Vista, are just as funny, but my vote for the best-ever so far is the ad titled 'Security', featuring an annoying bodyguard representing Vista's security features. It's certainly a realistic portrayal of Microsoft's style of security - keep peppering the user with jargon-laden decision points they don't understand the cause or ramifications of, until the user is driven to switch off security altogether.

Microsoft's problem with security, Vista, Windows and software in general is that it really doesn't understand regular people. By 'regular' I mean people who don't work in IT or have technology as a hobby; people who lack the jargon vocabulary and the commitment to figure out what Microsoft's software is trying to tell them.Microsoft's Redmond campus is a giant technology black hole that attracts like-minded technologists who design and build software primarily for themselves and people like them. If you're not a geek when you start at Microsoft, the culture will eventually get to you.

A good friend of mine working for the company says, in his experience, that Microsoft is great at producing large, hugely complex, challenging software products that take many years to architect and require massive and lengthy licensing fees to recoup on. But when it comes to understanding regular, ordinary people, Microsoft just doesn't get it. Certainly history suggests that Microsoft products typically have a large footprint, a lot of features, and they cost a lot (unless they're free, when Microsoft wants to collapse a market it wants to dominate in.)

Anyway, watch the ad (requires QuickTime). The last line is priceless; "You are coming to a sad realisation: cancel or allow?"


Technorati Tags: apple, vista, mac, TVC

GizmoCall takes VOIP startup on a wild ride to where, exactly?

I think GizmoCall.com is an intercontinental ballistic missile that SIPphone has strapped itself to - the company will go stratospheric very quickly on the back of this, but will it achieve a stable orbit or crash back to earth?



If like me you've used SIPphone's GizmoProject VOIP/IM client, you've probably been grateful for the flexibility it offers - the ability to do IM and VOIP in one client, the ability to reach users on a variety of IM networks, and all the Skype-like premium voice features, such as call-in numbers, caller ID, voicemail, etc.

However, like me, you've probably also gotten lost in the massive user interface that SIP finds necessary to manage this gordian knot of different communication types and features. Often I give up and go back to Skype and Adium, just to have something clean and simple to use.

I would never introduce my mother-in-law to GizmoProject - it's too complex.

Which is a shame, as because she's a time-rich, money-saving pensioner with a Mac in her bedroom and many relatives and friends in the UK, she's the perfect customer for VOIP.

But GizmoCall.com, on the other hand, could become my mother-in-law's most-visited internet destination, overnight. It's so easy, and it's free.

I can handle installing the Flash plug-in for her (rather weighty at about 6Mb, one of the first apps I've seen built using Adobe's Flex 2) and then help her register for an account. And I'll add a bookmark for her in her Safari toolbar. Then she's one click and a phone number away from being able to call to almost any landline and almost any mobile number worldwide, for up to ten minutes a day, for free.

There's a massive usability advantage for Gizmo while they remain the only VOIP service you can use right in your web browser. That will pay off in much faster user growth.

So what's this all got to do with intercontinental ballistic missiles? Well, by offering free calls directly in the browser, I think Gizmo is in for a period of stupendous growth in new users, downloads, server traffic, VOIP-to-carrier connections, customer service issues, new staff... all good stuff, as long as it doesn't happen so quickly that it affects the product, the service, the company's working environment and the way the business is managed.

In other words, stupendous growth is not always a good thing.

The great part of stupendous growth is that it gives you more leverage when you sit down at the bargaining table with a bigger company that wants to acquire you. Nobody can say how much you'll be worth in a year's time, but a betting man would say it'll be a lot more. Somebody in an acquiring frame of mind will have to get their best offer on the table while they can still afford you. You have leverage.

But valuing stupendous growth can be particularly risky when you decide to fund the growth through advertising. Gizmo plans to display advertising on the same browser page you'll be looking at as you place your call.

SIP founder Michael Robertson talks about offering in-context advertising in the GizmoCall interface on his blog:

"...Because Gizmo Call is written in flash we can insert advertisements into the experience in a helpful manner. If you call 1-800-FLOWERS we can tell you about the great San Diego-based company ProFlowers which is running Valentine's Day specials starting at $29.95 and offer to connect you to them... f you need a plumber or a pizza just dial those words and we'll pop up a list of vendors you can talk to for those services. Not everyone will want advertising in and around their calls, but Google has proved that targeted advertising is actually useful and that's what we will strive for. There's no advertising yet on Gizmo Call which is why free calls are limited to just 10 minutes. Eventually we'll have text, audio and video advertising - let your mind run with that one!"

Seems like a no-brainer at first, right? Huge new audience of users worldwide, all guaranteed to be starting at the browser for the duration of the call, the opportunity to target the ad, and you've got acres of interface around the Flash plug-in to display text, graphic or animated advertising, right?

Well, maybe not. The history of ad-supported free internet access showed in the late '90s that not everybody thinks the exchange of access for ad exposure is one worth making. Typically, anytime you offer a free, ad-supported service in any market, you attract people who have more time than average, and less disposable income than average - the elderly, those on social security, and kids too young to work.

There are marketers who want to reach the elderly, the poor, and young children, but SIP must compete with an abundance of other media that are already proven to work for those demographics, such as daytime TV, direct mail, and radio. Unlike advertising on GizmoCall, those media are proven, stable, and their results and costs are known. It's no risk.

What GizmoCall needs is a lot of marketers used to very conservative, traditional advertising, that are ready to take their first step into something unproven, rapidly growing, and a little risky. And that's not a very big market. Very few of the creative, risk-friendly, outside-the-box marketers work in direct marketing, daytime TV and direct (despite what your annual direct marketing industry awards would have you believe.)

There are more significant challenges in pitching GizmoCall to marketers.

As Robertson suggests, perhaps there are opportunities to serve in-context ads, but as all it takes is an email address and a browser to register for GizmoCall, there are no demographics to offer marketers other than an IP address - SIP can't offer you 10,000 impressions to female professionals 35-45.

Even Robertson's own example of in-context advertising is a little flawed - showing the customer an ad for a competing flower delivery service only really works if you display the ad to the user before they initiate their call. I don't know about my mother-in-law, but personally I'd start to have a real problem with GizmoCall if I just wanted to call my local florist but kept getting interrupted with offers to connect me to another service that had paid to be there.

As I run a business with companies for clients, I'm going to lose my patience with GizmoCall if they offer to connect me to my client's competitor every time I ring in for a weekly conference call with my client.

I don't have any data to back this hunch up but I'd wager that more than 95% of calls placed on GizmoCall in the first year of operation won't be appropriate for in-context advertising. The majority of calls will be to/from friends and family, where SIP won't have any context on which to serve an ad. The remainder will be calls like mine above, where although I'm ringing a business number, I'm not in the market for a competitor's service or product.

Finally, ads served prior to and during a GizmoCall call will suffer from the same low click-thrus seen on any media where the audience has a task to complete and won't be distracted by an ad - just as we already see in free webmail and IM clients such as Hotmail and MSN Messenger.

They can work for branding, or they can work for call-to-action at CPA or extremely low CPM rates, but they are not what any online marketer would describe as desirable. Usually they're thrown in for free with a broader network media buy. But SIP doesn't have a media network, which brings us back to the future: the point at which SIP wants to be acquired by someone with a network, an experienced media salesforce, and a trading history with big brands.

If SIP is riding the ballistic growth of the easiest-to-use, free VOIP client on the market, while trying to fund that growth on the back of an advertising medium that may not set records for its high profit margins... well, let's just say that it might change who has what leverage at the bargaining table.

Meanwhile, I'm off to show my mother-in-law what a great son-in-law I can be when I really try...

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Note: you may have noticed a lot of blockquote formatting in this blog post. Seems like everyone else is doing it these days to help readers get to the nub of a lengthy post. I'd be interested in your feedback on whether it works for you or not.

Technorati Tags: gizmocall, VOIP, SIPphone, gizmo project

ka-ching!

Next month: retire and live off royalty cheques...

Follow-up: using your Mac's webcam with Splashcast

It turns out that it is possible to record video from your Mac's built-in webcam, and the way to do it is to click on the 'Flash settings' link in the Show menu, then change your camera setting from 'built-in' to 'USB camera'.

Well, I'll be a monkey's uncle! thanks folks from Splashcast for that handy hint.

And NOW you now why I don't do videocasts!

Australian Google Maps gets yellow

"Happy, Jan!" The Australian version of Google Maps has gone live with a local version of the 'local search' feature (think: Yellow Pages, only built on details parsed from Google's web data, not from the Sensis telephone salesforce screwing you royally for a display ad in a dead tree directory every year.)

Adding local search ability to Google Maps is a great example of 'network effect'. Not only does Google Maps get more useful as Google's search indexes more Australian businesses, but the local search feature leverages the other features already in Google Maps, such as geocoding, map rendering, geocoding, driving directions, and of course, a good search engine. It also makes Google Maps for Mobile a more worthy proposition, since being able to search for, say, a restaurant from your phone is a real benefit when you're out and about.

In my testing, Google's depth of local business data still has a way to go to match the Sensis product in detail and accuracy but it's still very usable, and if you think there are no errors and ommissions in the Sensis product, think again! If you want to improve the quality yourself, then add your street address details to your business' website and also submit your business' details directly to Google Local Search today - it's free.

update: Since first posting this, I've read that the core business listings data is provided by truelocal.com.au and this may be part of a broader strategic alliance with News Digital Media here.

Certainly Google Maps wins hands down for speed of loading and clean, tidy interface (sometimes you'd think www.yellowpages.com.au was a display advertising business rather than a business directory it carries so many banner ads).

There are two other local contenders of note. Yahoo! Local Search suffers greatly from being buried at the bottom of a list of marketing priorities at the entertainment and television-focussed Yahoo7, despite being quite a useful product. If I hadn't worked at Yahoo! in the past I wouldn't know it existed. It lacks driving directions, its bitmap image graphs aren't as clear as vector graphic maps, but it has good categorisation (a Yahoo! traditional strength) and it's fast to use.

Truelocal.com.au, the other main local contender, was a startup acquired by News Ltd's News Digital Media. It is doing the heavy lifting of building a directory from scratch while relying on a telephone salesforce selling the listings in competition against Sensis' dominant product. It also has poor mapping interface and display and wastes too many Kb by stating that it is "powered by" several free local newspapers of the type most of us see only on the short walk from the front lawn to the paper recycling bin.

Because Google Local Search integrates with what Google knows about a business' own website rather than solely paid directory listings, it is also potentially a competitor to lifestyle guides such as Citysearch and Eatability.com.au. At the end of the day, more competition in the online business directory market is a good thing for us, the consumer, though in years to come it might be tough for those competitors grown fat and inefficient on their lengthy market dominance... Yes, Sensis, I'm talking about you...

Sony's top of the line video recorder is a lame duck

I can remain silent no longer: this is less a product review, more a desperate cry for help. Sony, longtime champion of the home entertainment enthusiast, has produced a stinker in the form of its top-of-the-line SVR-HD900 hard-disk video recorder.

On paper, the specs (and the $1,199.00 retail price) are very impressive: twin high-def digital tuners, massive 250GB hard drive, picture-in-picture, and all the features that make a true twin tuner machine so useful - chase play, pause live TV, watch a recording while taping another show. Add HDMI, Component, Composite and S-Video video outputs and both PCM and Dolby Digital audio output and you walk out the store thinking you've achieved TV nirvana.

But in everyday use with Australian free-to-air digital TV, the HD900 is so let down by some basic interface problems that it is almost too frustrating to use. It's particularly shocking to read this about a product from Sony, a company long associated with good interface design, but it's sadly true. Unless you really can't find another twin HD tuner product out there to buy, I would strongly recommend you steer clear of the HD900. It will drive you nuts, for a few simple but significant reasons:

The remote buttons don't repeat!
When you hold down a cursor key on a remote control button, you expect the cursor to keep scrolling in the direction you've selected, through, for instance, a long list of programs recorded on a 250GB hard drive. Not so on the HD900. To scroll down through a list of 10 shows, you must press the 'down' cursor key ten times. If you want to type in the name of a recording, you can't whizz across a row of letters on the on-screen keyboard, you have to keep pressing the left or right cursor key until you get the letter you want.

You can't remove or reorder channels from the station list!
When are too many SBS Radio stations too many? When they and a lengthy list of parliamentary debate channels and channel guides stand between you and the channel you want when you're repeatedly jamming the up or down cursor keys on the HD900's remote.

True, you can add any stations you like to one of four Favourite Channels lists. But even after your favourites are setup, it makes going from Channel Nine to Channel Ten at least a two key press operation, when it should just be one press of the cursor key. And those Favourite Channels lists are only accessible when you're browsing live TV. If you're setting up a recording, you're stuck with the full list of channels, including all the identical SD and HD channels for each station.

The channel guide is glacially slow!
The only thing slower than using the remote control on the HD900 is waiting for it to load the channel guide information. The artic icecaps will be long gone and all the polar bears extinct before you've programmed the night's viewing with the HD900. You will have read the TV guide section of the paper for the entire week before you've managed to scroll through an hour's Australian digital channel guide on the HD900.

The channel guide is pointless anyway. To be fair, this isn't Sony's fault, but Australian networks (with the exception of the ABC) only publish the information for the currently-screening program and the following program in their channel guides. Presumably in more enlightened nations, stations publish the rest of the week too, as the HD900 is designed presuming that you will schedule all your recordings via the channel guide. But unless the show you want to watch has already begun or is next in the schedule, it won't appear in the guide, meaning you can't use the guide for most of your recordings. Which brings us to...

Timer recordings can't be named in advance!
You've abandoned the channel guide method of recording in frustration, you decide to use the timer function to record a show the 'good, old-fashioned way' using the incredibly slow remote control. Now you discover that you cannot name a timer recording when you schedule it.

You read that right: recordings scheduled with the timer function are automatically saved with a filename including channel, date and time, and you can't change the file name until after the program has been recorded. That means your week's TV viewings appear in the (incredibly slowly scrolling) file navigator as "ABC HD, Sunday 22 January 2007, 21:30PM" and the like. Unless you are blessed with a photographic memory, the only way to remember what was recorded is to begin watching it, or to turn to the newspaper's TV guide. You'll also need to do refer to your paper guide when it comes time to modify your (incredibly slowly scrolling) list of recording schedules. This is an extraordinary failing in such a high-end device - why not allow me to save the name of the show when I set up the timer recording?

Conclusion
Fortunately, all these would appear to be software problems that a user interface-aware company like Sony could rectify with a quick software patch or two. I've contacted Sony customer support about this review and since the HD900 does have an RS-232 port for service upgrades, perhaps these shortcomings can be rectified. Until they are, however, keep your $1200 in your trousers, as the temptation to blow the lot by throwing your new Sony SVR HD900 out the nearest window will be almost overwhelming inside a week, and we can't have innocent bystanders getting hurt over interface issues.

More heat than light in Australian alternative energy policy

update: I can now disclose the identity of the small Australian alternative energy startup relocating to Silicon Valley and being courted by major US VCs and internet companies: it's Solar Heat & Power. Paul Sheehan in a Sydney Morning Herald editorial reports that SH&P have announced their plans to relocate and reports the initial round of VC funding is AUD42m.

Don't be put off by SH&P's rather lame website - their solar technology is world-class. While Sydney's news this week is full of alarming reports that the government's nuclear power generation rollout will be unfeasibly slow and unpopular, and the Federal government insists nuclear is the only option without ever commissioning an inquiry into the feasibility of alternative energy generation, it's clear who really has the Prime Minister's ear - the mining industry which has made Australia the world's largest exporter of coal.

Meanwhile, SH&P, which has had a successful pilot of its solar concentration technology running attached to a coal-fired power station in Singleton, NSW since 2004, is in the process of relocating to California because it's been able to secure ongoing support from the Australian government and local investors.

Oh, my mistake, Federal industry minister Ian McFarlane says the government has been supporting SH&P - yeah, right... it supported the initial pilot to the grand total of AUD3.2M ;-) Right, a massive lot of difference that will make when upscaling to a commercial scale project - it would hardly cover the site landscaping costs!

One day Australia will be licensing SH&P's technology from the US company at great expense and I'll have absolutely no satisfaction in the massive "I told you so!" I'll get to exercise.

Good luck and bon voyage, SH&P, prove the bastards were wrong!

The Powerpoint effect

My new favourite blog is Jessica Hagy's Indexed.blogspot.com where she expresses her thoughts in graphs and venn diagrams, hand-drawn on index cards. I often have these moments but don't have the patience with a scanner (or neat enough handwriting) to blog them. Thanks Jessica!

Source: indexed.blogspot.com: December 2006, "And as the tenth bullet states..."

I'm writing some whitepapers for a client at the moment, and I'm unsure whether to just deliver the whitepapers (which they'll never read and remember) or summarise the key facts in some Powerpoint slides (which they'll never stay awake through.) And it's not the subject matter!