Richter Scale^® Articles

(First published in the CAD++ Newsletter in early 1995)

In my many years of being an entrepreneur, I find one area of my business repeatedly being the most important - Schmoozing. I'm not sure where that word originated, but it does seem like it's a blend of "Smooching" and "Oozing", which is what Schmoozing looks and feels like if done by an insincere, shallow person. In the last few years, however "schmoozing" has fallen out of vogue, and been replaced by the more politically correct "networking" (but that's just too 90's for me).

So, why's schmoozing important? Simply said, it's not what you know, but who you know. Case in point: Several acquaintances of mine have been trying to get funding for a new graphics chip they wanted to develop and sell, but for some reason could never get the financing they desired. Then, they stumbled across Mister X, a former President of a major computer peripherals company. He took a liking to the technology, talked to a few friends, and Poof!, the company had its financing (several million dollars worth), and Mister X became President of the new company. The product these guys wanted to develop was the same before and after, but it took the magic of knowing someone (who knew someone else) to seal the deal.

Schmoozing Basics

First, in order to schmooze successfully, you need to be an extrovert. In other words, you can't be afraid of starting a conversation with a complete stranger. Of course, it helps to be in a place where there are people who it makes sense to schmooze with, and who won't be horribly offended by your striking up a conversation with them.

That brings us to Schmooze requirement number two - go to places and events where there are good people to schmooze with. You need to determine what type of schmoozing you're looking for, of course, such as customers, fellow entrepreneurs, financiers, etc. For each type of target schmoozee, there's bound to be a place to schmooze with them.

In my case, for example, my biggest potential customers are companies that make graphics hardware. So, if I wanted to meet new customers, I would go to conferences, trade shows, or parties where I'd be most likely to bump into such people. It's always possible to schmooze by phone instead, but that makes it more like cold-calling on a sales call, something neither party necessarily appreciates. Face to face schmoozing is far more personal, and generally provides much better results.

Schmoozing is not limited to just customers and people that you want to give you money. Schmoozing is an art form involving making contacts and maintaining them. The "you scratch my back, and I'll scratch yours" applies liberally to schmoozing, as people you schmooze with need to derive some benefit from schmoozing with you. Your stellar personality will only take you so far.

In event, never schmooze insincerely. Sincerity, honesty, and honor are all traits that others tend to appreciate, and unless you're a really good actor, you'll not get away with insincerity, dishonesty, and dishonorable actions during or after schmoozing.

Schmoozing With Peers

Your peers, and even your competitors, are great people to schmooze with. Peers can help you out when you encounter problems that they have already hit and resolved, and you might be able to do the same for them. Again, in my case, I'm the co-chair of the New Hampshire Software Presidents' Forum, a roundtable of CEOs and COOs of regional software companies. We meet once a month, over dinner, to discuss various aspects of running a software company, what sort of problems we're having, how we've solved other problems that had cropped up, and just generally helping one another out. None of us are even remotely close to competing with one another, and many of the participating companies don't even target the same user markets - some are PC, some UNIX, some military, etc. But all of us have some level of experience and are willing to share that experience, in exchange for getting help when we need it. Groups similar to this one exist all over the nation, and if there's not an appropriate group in your area, start one. It's a great way to schmooze.

Schmoozing With Competitors

With competitors, or even better, with the customers of competitors, you can glean inside information that might not be available through any other source. Granted, you may have to reveal some information yourself, but it's a fun game, seeing who can verbally (and socially) out-strategize the other. With some competitors, it's real easy. For example, one particular set of competitors we have are really uptight. When I have a drink with them after a show or something, I remain sincere and honest. They, on the other hand think I'm trying to snooker them and as a result, get themselves all tied up in knots trying to figure out what I really mean, and in the process let slip some things that might not otherwise come out. Either way, schmoozing with your competitors is always better than snubbing them. Who knows, someday you may end up working together on something.

What Every Schmoozer Should Carry

Business cards - never leave home or office without them. Part of the ritual of schmoozing is the transfer of business cards. In addition to containing vital business information, the business card is very symbolic, as it contains an implied invitation to call the giver of the card for a follow-up. People who claim they don't have any cards with them are either not born schmoozers, or don't want you to contact them, or both. Your business card should contain all your necessary contact information, including company name, company tag line (i.e. what does your company do?), your name (preferably the way you want to be addressed instead of that formal name with middle initial that only your mother addresses you by), your title, address, phone number, FAX number, and e-mail address. Some people put more detailed information about their company's services on the back of their card so that the card can act as both a brochure and a contact medium.

Business cards also have another incredibly useful purpose - note pads. If someone at a show asks me to send them something (information, a t-shirt, whatever), I first ask them for a card (even if I already have their card from a previous run-in) and then jot down what I need to do for them on the back of their card. In the lingo, this is also referred to as a "tickler", as it tickles your memory to do something, but in this case everything you'd need to fulfill the request is right there. I frequently sort such requests on business cards, and then hand the various stacks to people at my company to take care of. The moral is to always leave a little bit of blank space on your business cards, and don't make the back a color that can't be legibly written on (in case you're into two-tone cards).

In addition to business cards, you may want to carry around a small, compact brochure of your business services, which provides the recipient with a quick overview of how you might be useful to them. Again, some people just make their business card fold over to accomplish this, and avoid having to carry large brochures around. Either way, make sure that you create a lasting, positive impression on the people you schmooze with, as well as giving them a way to back in touch with you if they need to do so.

Never Lose That Name

While collecting business cards is a fun hobby, the purpose of schmoozing is not to see who can collect the most business cards (I've got about 12,000 in my collection), but to be able to put those contact to use. That means that you have to be able to access all the information quickly. Fortunately, seeing as we're all in the computer business, we have access to database software. Use it. A well set-up database is worth many times its weight in gold - it can become your company's biggest asset, but you have to keep it up to date. I consider my database so valuable that I don't even let anyone else modify it in any way. Only I get to add, change, or remove names from it. After every show, I enter all the data from the business cards I collected into my database. If the person on the card already exists in my database, I update their information if necessary. If someone at the show told me that someone in my database no longer works for their company, or has moved on to another one, I make those changes as well.

To further keep my database up to date, I also make sure that any large mailings I make to a group of people in my database includes the phrase "Forward and Address Correction Requested" near the mailing label. This tell's the U.S. Post Offices (and many others) to forward the mail to the proper address, and notify me of the change in address if the person has moved. Note that the post office does charge around 35 cents a piece for this service. I should also point out that this doesn't always work, especially at large companies where the post office doesn't know a person is no longer employed there.

My database has the following basic fields: Last Name, First Name, Title, Company, Street Address (2 lines), City, State, Zip, Country, Home Phone, 2 Business Phone numbers, a FAX number, Internet E-mail address, Comment field, a whole bunch of True/False fields to help me categorize people as press, close friends, members of a given organization, etc., and a date of last change. My personal database currently has about 3700 active names and addresses, by the way.

All those fields are important for being able to quickly retrieve information, especially the last name and company fields. The comment field is vital for putting notes in about a person. I use the comment field to record my impressions of a person, as well as more info about their company and them, including the names of spouses and children, birthdays, whatever. This is a valuable field, because it helps me figure out who someone is when they call me for the first time in 3 years, and I don't remember who they are, or if I need to prepare for a meeting with several people, and don't necessarily recall all the basic information I should.

Remember, the sweetest sound anyone hears is the sound of their own name being spoken by someone else. The next sweetest sound is that of someone who knows and remembers something about them. I can usually recall, with very good accuracy (and no referencing of my database) when I first or last met someone, and under what conditions. I sometimes have a harder time remembering their full name, but there are all sorts of easy ways around, including being honest and saying that while you remember meeting, you just can't bring their name to mind at the moment. I've yet to meet anyone who was offended by my not remembering everything about them.

Degrees of Separation

All the schmoozing I've described so far has been first-person schmoozing - you talking with someone else. But, never forget that the greatest power in schmoozing is knowing someone who knows someone else (who in turn might know someone else, and so on). Use this to your advantage, just as others will take advantage of your contacts. For example, if I needed to speak with the president of a major software or hardware company regarding something reasonably important, I now know enough people to be able to pull that off. But I also know not to abuse such contacts frivolously, as it reflects poorly on both my judgement, and the judgement of my contacts for having permitted me to waste the time of a person who doesn't have enough to go around. The current theory is that no more than four people are needed to make contact between you and anyone else in the world. In my experience, that has definitely proven true.

Conclusion

In conclusion, here are my 10 rules of schmoozing, most of which have been covered above:

1. Be ready to strike up a conversation with anyone.
2. Go to places where schmoozing makes sense for your goals.
3. Schmoozing works only if it's a reciprocal arrangement.
4. Be friendly, sincere, honest, and honorable.
5. Don't be afraid to schmooze with competitors.
6. Always carry spare business cards and a pen.
7. Keep meticulous records of who you've schmoozed with.
8. Don't burn your bridges.
9. Make yourself accessible to those you've schmoozed with.
10. Always go to after-show parties and events.

Go forth and Schmooze!

(This column first appeared in the March 28, 1995 issue of PC Graphics Report)

Two years ago, I left WinHEC '93 (Windows Hardware Engineering Conference), vowing not to return for as long as it was us (as attendees) paying to hear the advermercials of presenters. I skipped WinHEC '94, and felt remorse after numerous people asked me where I had been during the week, as they hadn't seen me. So, this year I decided to give the conference another shot, and I must admit I actually learned something at WinHEC '95, although it certainly wasn't what I expected.

WinHEC Presentations

The first thing I learned is that the presenters had nothing new to present, and while the commercialism had certainly been toned down from a couple of years ago, it was still present - heavily in some sessions. As soon as any presenter started talking about anything remotely interesting, one of three things got inserted into the presentation, followed by a subject change:

1) We were referred to the Computer Game Developer's Conference in Santa Clara as being the place when all would be revealed. Oh joy! Another conference we can spend more money at (and probably be referred to SIGGRAPH for the unveiling of the real information). Never mind that CGDC overlaps completely with Spring COMDEX... That, combined with the fact that VESA is apparently not having its Spring COMDEX meeting, has caused me to cancel my COMDEX plans and come out to Santa Clara for CGDC instead, and I'd recommend anyone looking to sell their graphics hardware to users of the next killer app (it'll be a game) bag COMDEX and go to CGDC as well. CGDC can be reached at 415-948-2432, FAX: 415-948-2744. Conference fee is $650, and make sure to stay through Wednesday, since that's the day Microsoft is presenting its Game SDK. Call now, as space is really limited.

2) We were referred to a number to call to register to receive a copy of the specification, or to obtain more information on the topic. I guess that what we paid for the conference wasn't enough to allow us to receive the information while we were actually at WinHEC.

3) We were referred to an e-mail address for the same purpose as listed in #2 above.

Additionally, while Microsoft spoke frequently about the new Windows 95 M8-Beta release that had gone out the prior week, that was not a CD-ROM we found in our albeit very chic and sturdy WinHEC bags. One good thing that those bags did contain were the complete slides of all the presentations, in both hardcopy and on CD-ROM. That works out to about $55/pound (rough estimate) of material (not including the food we were fed) for the WinHEC conference fee. One real bonus, I've been informed, is that the WinHEC CD contains a DOC file with the 3D-DDI specification - a real boon for all of us who have been attempting to print spurious 3D-DDI related Help pages out of the new DDK.HLP file located on the WinSpeed NT v3.51 Beta CD.

Do It Their Way

Another thing I observed during WinHEC was how hard certain companies were trying to convince attendees that their world view was a do or die proposition. It seems that what used to be called "evangelism" has now become the issuance of commandments, with the fervor of technological religion behind it. Being that this was a Microsoft conference, I guess it's understandable that Microsoft was one of the companies suffering from hubris, dictating to the hardware industry what form, shape, and capabilities their new products must take in order to be worthy (of a logo). The other company pushing a new religion appeared to be Intel, with its "new" NSP technology.

NSP, or Native Signal Processing (or Numerous Sales of Pentiums), is an amazing marketing ploy, exceeding even the peddling the DX4 label for a clock-TRIPLED CPU. For those of you who've not been reading your weekly industry journals, NSP is designed to replace all your custom function silicon with software running on a Pentium driving a generic device. For example, the NSP audio solution is to generate sound by using the Pentium's processing cycles on a simple audio DAC, instead of having dedicated sound silicon or DSPs or silicon. The same applies to codecs, with Intel stating that a hardware decompression engine is no longer necessary, and I even overheard someone seriously suggest that graphics hardware doesn't need acceleration hardware anymore - a dumb frame buffer along with Pentium processing power will give users all the performance they need.

Now, with a little introspection, it seems obvious to me that what Intel is doing here is trying to justify to users everywhere that they absolutely need a Pentium processor, and basically nothing else in the form of advanced peripherals. If NSP is successful, it will certainly increase Pentium sales, as well as decrease sales of new audio and video hardware. But what happens when all those other applications and latest generation operating systems use the extra bandwidth a Pentium provides? The answer is simple - it's called a P6. Now, Intel is claiming that the P6 is not meant for desk top use. Yeah, right. How many times have we heard this before? I recall that the IBM PC/AT (based on an 8Mhz 286) was supposed to be solely a multi-user system, and similar rhetoric preceded the 386, 486, and Pentium. Overall, NSP is a real clever strategy. It increases Pentium sales, decreases the value of competitors' 486 technologies, diminishes sales of intelligent peripherals, and will lead to increased desire for P6-based desktops because the Pentium will not be able to support the bandwidth necessary to support bulkier, slower 32-bit applications, and provide smooth NSP support in parallel much beyond next year. The thing that saddens me most is that NSP will probably be successful, even though people will be paying more to get less. As several fellow WinHEC attendees put it: "Gosh, I can spend $1000 more for a Pentium system, or just a few hundred dollars for good peripherals for my 486 PC. I guess the larger expense must be better, right?"

Thinking back to the early days of PCs, one of the main reasons a PC was slower than a mini computer was because it used the then-equivalent of NSP, but not by choice. Mini-computers offered much better overall performance because they used intelligent peripherals to perform distributed processing operations. PCs have finally gotten to the point where they have this distributed processing ability, in the form of caching controllers, great display processors, new caching DSP audio technology, and more, and Intel says it's not important. Go figure.

Where Intel should be focusing NSP technology is on areas where hardware is currently insufficient, as they appear to be doing with 3DR, their 3D interface. 3DR, contrary to rumor, is not dead, but doing surprisingly well, by the way.

Another Benchmark!?

While at WinHEC, I had the opportunity to tag along on a meeting to discuss the development of yet another benchmark, this one having to deal with Multimedia performance. While a small firm from Washington was marketing such a benchmark, the initiator of this meeting, Ron Wilson, Senior Technology Editor of Electronic Engineering Times, appeared to be looking for something more industry wide, and not sponsored by a single, potentially biased, entity. The official goal of the new group formed by this initial meeting is to establish a mechanism for comparing multimedia systems, and Windows 95 appears to be the first target platform. Participation is open to all industry members, and is strongly encouraged. In the words of one attendee, "if we don't do something and do it soon, we'll be doomed to have to live with whatever Ziff-Davis whips up...". To both get more information and provide input on what you'd like to see in a Multimedia Performance Analysis Tool, contact Ron Wilson at EE Times - rwilson@eet.cmp.com, Voice: 415-525-4498, FAX: 415-525-4406.

WinHEC Exhibits

Perhaps the most exciting things at WinHEC could be found in the exhibit area, both in exhibitor's booths as well as by talking to other attendees.

Chances are that you've already read about Martin Marietta's Real 3D unveiling at WinHEC in these pages, as well as a few other goodies, but here are a few things I bet that you probably did not read about:

SafePlay by Vired, Inc.
Vired, a new company based in Waco, Texas, was offering a unique new anti-virus tool for Windows 95, called SafePlay. What makes this tool extra special is that it's the first one being offered to counter AutoPlay-based virii. For those of you not up on the latest Windows 95 offerings, AutoPlay is a feature that allows CD-ROMs to be automatically run upon being inserted into the system's CD-ROM drive, without any user action (other than inserting the disc). The Windows 95 AutoPlay feature, combined with the ever-plummeting prices of writable CD-ROM technology, opens the door to the introduction of a whole new range of CD-ROM based viruses, and prior to SafePlay, there's been no way to protect against them. SafePlay will ship around the same time that Windows 95 finally ships, with a suggested retail price of $69.

RemoteOSBoot by NTTS, Inc.
Apparently, an increasing number of OS/2 and Windows 95 Beta users have been griping about the length of the boot process for these advanced operating systems (commonly running a minimum of several minutes on normal systems (i.e. 486/DX2 systems). NTTS (which apparently stands for "No Time To Spare" previewed their new RemoteOSBoot hardware product to eliminate the boot process. RemoteOSBoot comes with a device that plugs into a phone jack and power outlet, and has a regular three-prong electrical outlet on the top. This is where you plug in your system's power strip. Once installed, you can just call the RemoteOSBoot device, from your car phone perhaps, while on your way to the office, and when you get there, your computer will be booted and waiting to serve you. An advanced model of the device also incorporates the same sort of remote sensor that the stationary part of a garage door opener, and you can use a remote control with a range of 500' (through concrete, no less) to remotely boot your system. End user pricing was unavailable, but they indicated that OEM quantities would place the phone-only device at under $100. HTTS implied that they believed that RemoteOSBoot would be really well accepted by large PC companies.

The Bill Action Figure
Perhaps the most bizarre item being promoted (albeit without much fanfare) could be found at the Microsoft Store (up on the upper level where they were selling Microsoft t-shirts and other stuff). It was the Bill Gates Action Figure, allegedly anatomically correct (but no one would verify that, and I certainly wasn't going to check). The Bill figure has posable arms and legs, several different sweaters and dockers, and also comes with a pair of Bill glasses to finish off that Bill Gates looks. The woman selling the doll told me that WinHEC was the first time these action figures have been offered to non-Microsoft staff, but that all senior Microsoft executives have them in their offices to remind them of who their higher authority really is. I couldn't bring myself to spend the $49 for the Bill doll, but if you call Microsoft, they should be able to sell you one. Someone I was with when we saw the Bill doll suggested that the figure should come with a set of voodoo pins. I found the whole thing very strange, to say the least.

Unplugger, by Vired
Vired also had another interesting Windows 95 utility on hand at WinHEC, namely the unplugger. Apparently, current Plug and Play (PnP) support has some interesting side effects on certain peripherals. With some PnP modem boards, Windows 95 likes to reconfigure them for different COM port addresses, even when the user tries to override the settings to a permanent location. The net result is that non-PnP aware software (which is a label that applies to virtual all software in the world) doesn't know that the modem it's been configured to use can't be found where it expects it to be. Similar to how MacOS ties individual files to certain applications, Unplugger ties applications to certain devices. Then when the application is run, it locates the specific devices the application has been associated with and fakes out the application, making it see the device where it thinks it should be, instead of where PnP code has placed it. A bonus feature of Unplugger also aids in the support of devices that have their BIOSes in non-volatile RAM. Under Windows 95 some devices are reconfigured to not run initialization code from ROM, since Windows 95 provides a superset of that initialization. This works great for as long as you continue using only Windows 95. However, if you boot into DOS, the device no longer initializes, since its ROM code has been disabled. Big time disappointment. Unplugger has a DOS utility which fixes this problem too. (I asked someone at Microsoft about this problem, and his reply was "Why would you want to boot anything other than Windows 95?". Sigh.)

NU-RAM, by Speicher GmBH
Up until I ran across Speicher (pronounched Shpy-kher), I was not aware that there were any silicon manufacturers in Germany. Started by a pair of former East German scientists with West German VC funding, Speicher staff hinted at a revolutionary breakthrough in RAM technology. Now, I'm still regularily confused by all the various new RAM acronyms, so I'll try to relate as much information as I was able to glean from this Gerhardt Kraftig, a technical marketing manager at Speicher.

A few key features before I describe how this patent pending technology works. First, NU-RAM, based loosely around a VRAM core, promises to cost only one-third the price of traditional VRAM. This makes NU-RAM just about the least expensive graphics RAM technology on the market. Bandwidth is comparable with that of normal VRAM. The chip interface is close enough to that of VRAM that using NU-RAM should not require silicon changes for graphics chip companies. The only real downside is that NU-RAM is targetted only at video and game applications, and can't be easily integrated into more general purpose applications, such as system RAM.

NU-RAM stands for Neural (as in Network) RAM. The really neat thing about NU-RAM is that it uses a new form of fuzzy logic, blended with something akin to the branch prediction techology of the Pentium and P6 processors to predict graphical information as it's being shifted out to the display, in order to come up with a visually accurate display. The prediction technology works by using internal pattern storage to build probability tables of how surrounding pixels relate to an interior pixel value, based on the complete data passed in by the controller. Such data is perpetually being sampled in order to refine the probability tables. Where the cost savings comes in is that NU-RAM really only has one-quarter the amount of RAM a traditional RAM architecture needs, with the missing RAM emulated via the fuzzy logic generated probability tables.

The RAM is laid out in a matrix format, with the fuzzy logic looking at an array of 8x8 bytes at a time. This byte granularity means that 8 bit per pixel modes must operate in a 3:3:2 RGB or YUV format instead of being palettized. Direct color and true color modes of operation are also viable for use with NU-RAM. I went to a private suite and saw a digital video playback demo based on NU-RAM technology, and it was comparable with the best I had seen on the WinHEC show floor. The prediction logic is ideally suited for video and game graphics, since these output forms require decent image representation, but without individual pixel accuracy. On the other hand, NU-RAM is not suited to DTP, CAD, and "non-regional" graphics applications. It'll be interesting to see what the market does with NU-RAM.

Conclusion

At WinHEC, as before, politics and private agendas ran rampant, and the real information to be had was not in the sessions. And even though next year will be more of the same, I'll probably still feel like I need to attend, just like everyone else, in the hopes that we might actually learn something. As a final note, I should point out that the five new products/technologies I mentioned above will all, by some odd coincidence, be officially announced to the market on April 1, 1995. Hmmmm.

(First published in the CAD++ Newsletter in early 1995)

The best advertising for your business is basically free. Ask any established company if they've found that paid advertising outperforms good editorial coverage of their product and services, and you'll find that they'll either burst out laughing hysterically, or just give you a resounding NO!

That's because readers of publications tend to have a lot more faith in the words of writers and editors than they do in advertising (even if that faith might occasionally be misplaced). Some PC editors/writers, like John Dvorak and Jerry Pournelle, have even achieved cult status. Readers respect writers who are vocal about their likes and dislikes of various products and features, and that respect carries over to virtually all other writers as well. All this means that if you can get a publication to write about your product or service, you're almost guaranteed to get more reader interest than any ad you'd place would elicit.

So, the $64,000 question is: How do I get magazines to write about my company, product, or service?

The answer is simple - Press Releases.

However simple the answer is, though, writing a good press release is not easy. It requires insight, creativity, and something newsworthy.

Make It Newsworthy

Don't bother sending out a release unless you really have something newsworthy. This means that you've released a new product, bought out your competitor, shipped a noteworthy update, or licensed some technology. It's not newsworthy if you've hired an unknown person, nor if you have increased the size of your office space, or if you're just trying to see your name in print. Editors have long memories, and if you get a reputation for wasting their time with trivial releases, they'll ignore your real news.

Use Insight and Creativity

As with any presentation, it's vital that you put yourself in the place of your audience, which in the case of a press release is a swarm of editors and writers, all of whom have different backgrounds and levels of understanding of what you might be trying to tell them. As if that weren't bad enough, all of these editors and writers also receive hundreds, if not thousands, of press releases a month, meaning that any single press release they receive is likely to be filed and never used unless they find it to be of immediate interest. This means you face two basic issues in trying to address your audience: limited time to grasp your presentation, and vastly variable understanding of what you're presenting.

The first issue, that of getting the editor/writer to even look at your message is where a good part of creativity in press releases comes into play. The first step is to get the editor to open the envelope containing the press release (assuming you mail it - if you FAX it or e-mail it, that's not an issue, but more on that later). Unless the editor is known to despise your company, make sure that your press release envelope has your company's name on the outside, possibly a tag line indicating what your company does, and if possible, a label or line of text that says something like "PRESS RELEASE ENCLOSED". The reason all this is important is because you don't want the editor to throw away your press release because they either think it's a brochure or because they think it's not something they care to look at. If you follow these rules and you've done a reasonable job picking the right editor(s) at a publication to send the release to, there should be no problem getting the editor to open the envelope. However, some companies don't like to even leave this process to chance, and use all sorts of gimmicks to help increase their overall odds. In one particular case, a press release had a realistic, but simulated, bullet hole in it (it was something unrelated to the product - just a gimmick). Others are more to the point, and include free copies of software, t-shirts, Silly Putty, and countless other giveaways to help stimulate interest in the release.

Anyhow, assuming the editor has opened the envelope, you next need to stimulate the editor's interest quickly so that he/she is encouraged to actually read the release, and in turn, use the information in it in a news piece, review, or some other fashion. Unless you're Microsoft or IBM, your only shot at getting "ink", as it's called, is via the headline on the release. Writing good headlines is pure art. The headline needs to, in just a few words, convey the full value and importance of your news, without using ambiguous terms or jargon. If you can't fit your killer headline in one line of large text, it's okay to use a smaller sub-head to help add a little background. Here are some examples of bad and good headlines:

Bad:

Widgets Inc. Makes An Announcement

This one makes an editor say, "so what" as he tosses it into the garbage. The headline should say what the announcement is, and why it's newsworthy.

Frobo Ltd. Releases New Product

Another "so what" headline. You need to indicate what your product is and why it's important. It's not even necessary to name your product in the headline - just highlight its benefits.

Widgets Inc.'s WingBat Software Is Better

Better than what? What does WingBat Software do?

Frobo Ltd. Hires New Office Manager

This might get some play in your 10-page hometown newspaper, but it isn't going to do much else.

Good:

3D Rendering Patent Awarded to Widgets Inc.

This headline implies that significant technology is now the property of Widgets Inc., inviting the reader to find out the details of what's covered by the patent.

DemoCAD Bugs Can Now Be Fixed with Frobo Ltd.'s New Software

This headline is gripping to anyone who writes about the leading DemoCAD package because it implies DemoCAD has bugs, and that Widgets Inc. has the solution. Anyone reading this headline is going to want to know what those bugs are, and how your software can do what the originators of DemoCAD can't, and will therefore read the rest of your release.

So, in summary, the key elements of a good headline are:

1. Show an immediate value or benefit of the subject of the announcement.
2. Ride the coattails of a well-known company or product.
3. Tempt the reader into reading more of the press release by releasing a tantalizing tidbit.
4. Don't be arrogant enough to assume that just because you or your company have made an announcement, everyone will flock to read the release even if you have a lousy headline.
5. Keep it simple and informative.
6. Distinguish the headline from the body of the release using a larger point size, and bolding it.

The Meat Of The Release

Once you have a good headline, you should be able to ensure that you'll get the reader to continue reading at least some of the rest of the release.

Your next challenge is writing the body of the press release. What makes it challenging is that you have to make sure your press release doesn't insult the more knowledgeable members of the press, and at the same time, you can't make it so technical that you alienate the less informed press. The best way to handle this is what's known as the "inverse triangle", which is how the best news articles in newspapers and magazines are written. The inverse triangle represents the breadth of useful and vital information presented in the article (or in this case, the release) as you continue to read through it. With an inverted triangle approach, all the important information is at the top of the release, as you continue reading, the remainder becomes less important and pertinent. Using an inverted triangle is especially appropriate for news items because it allows readers to read the headline, and then as far into the article as they feel they need to get the information without having to read the whole thing.

Your press release can address both sophisticated readers and mildly ignorant ones via the inverse triangle. You put the core of your information, in the first, and possibly second, paragraphs, put a supporting quote in your third paragraph, and wrap it up in the fourth with background information pertinent to the announcement. You may have heard that there are rules about double spacing the press releasing and making sure it's not too long. The double spacing is no longer a real requirement in this age of computers (the extra space used to be for editors to write notes between the lines - no computer publication editor I know does this anymore). The length issue is a real one. Outside of bringing on boredom, a long press release is a waste of paper, and in these environmentally conscious times, that's a big no-no. Limit your release to 1 sheet of paper, double sided (single sided is even better), using 12-point type.

Your first paragraph should start with the date of the announcement (which can be at some point in the future, since many magazines have 2-3 month lead times) and a city of origination of the announcement. I frequently see releases with no date on them, which makes me wonder if this is old news worth worrying about. A date helps determine if the announcement is timely, whereas a lack of a date raises suspicions. The first paragraph also should provide a greater view of the news than the headline did. An example:

ANYTOWN, CA -- February 1, 1995 -- Widgets Inc. today announced that it had successfully acquired its largest competitor, Frobo Ltd., which makes Widgets Inc. the single largest manufacturer of DemoCAD add-on software in the world. This move will permit Widgets Inc. to start offering products which combine Frobo's award winning TattooVision add-on for DemoCAD with its own AggieCAD farming software add-on. The new combined product will be called BrandAVision, allowing cattle farmers worldwide, for the first time ever, to use DemoCAD to brand their cattle using portable penplotters.

The second paragraph should help explain why the news in the first paragraph was so important. What are the alternatives to what was announced? Why is the new announcement more beneficial? Are there any technical terms that need better explanation?

The third paragraph generally includes a very powerful quote by an industry figure, partner, well known user, or at least the company president, about why this announcement is so monumental.

The fourth paragraph wraps up all the loose ends.

The best way to know that you've written an understandable, powerful press release is by having people who understand your market marginally read the press release, and if they get excited, you've probably done a good job. This will help make sure that you haven't written a hard to understand, overly technical, boring press release that is full of gaps.

Offering Contact

No matter how informative and exciting you make your release, it's likely that some editor will read it and have questions. So, always make sure to put contact information in your release. There are two types of contact information to include. The first is the editorial contact. Traditionally, this goes in the upper right hand corner of the front page of the release, as in:

Company Letterhead

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Contact: Fred Smith
Your Company, Inc.
Phone Number
E-Mail address

YOUR RELEASE HEADLINE

The second contact point is the one that the editor will use in his or her article to inform readers how to get hold of your company. This contact information is contained in the last paragraph (ideally the 5th paragraph) of your press release. This paragraph is normally called the press release boilerplate (or as one friend in Canada called it, the "Motherhood Statement". The boilerplate provides a tag line for your company, information on where your company is located, and how to contact your company. Here's my company's boilerplate, as an example of a real-life boilerplate statement:

Panacea Inc. is the world's leading provider of commercial and OEM display drivers and software-only accelerators for graphics-intensive applications. Panacea specializes in PC-based software for graphics processors and graphics boards. Corporate headquarters are located at 24 Orchard View Drive, Londonderry, New Hampshire 03053, U.S.A. Phone: (800) 729-7420 or (603) 437-5022. FAX: (603) 434-2461. Panacea's sales department can also be reached as sales@panacea.com via the Internet.

It's very likely that your first press releases will still be a little awkward, but have no fear, with time you should be able to produce something every editor will want to read. One way to get an idea of what works and what doesn't is to read other companies' press releases and see what you like and don't like (i.e. put yourself in the shoes of an editor). However, unless you're an editor, you won't generally receive other companies' press releases. So, for some examples, look in the Business Wire section of CompuServe, as well as the ACAD Forum (look in the uploads for files ending in ".RLS". This will help give you an idea of what other companies do to promote themselves to the editorial community.

Making Contact & Measuring Success

The best press release in the world won't get you any publicity if it doesn't get in the hands of editors and writers. The simplest method of obtaining the names of editors is to go through all the magazines you read that pertain to your market, look for the masthead (usually near the front of the publication, or near the editorial page(s)). The masthead contains the list of all the editorial staff of the magazine. Don't limit your press releases to just a single member of the staff either. It's always important to include the news editor and the managing editor or editor in chief. While the latter two may never actually read the release themselves, their assistants very well might, and if they think it's of interest, they'll pass it on to the correct department at the publication. If you feel uncomfortable mailing lots of the same release to many people at a publication, just call them and ask who the best person to send your releases to might be (I believe it's better to send too many than too little press releases to a publication - after all, the only cost is a stamp and the cost of the paper - a mere pittance in exchange for a shot at an article).

If you don't read a lot of magazines, you may want to talk to your peers or customers and find out what they read, and maybe even having them provide you with back issues so you can look at the mastheads. That's an excellent way of building your press mailing list.

Some editors prefer FAXes or E-Mail press releases, but I wouldn't just go and use that form of contact without first clearing it with the editor.

Finally, if you're targeting the general PC market, you can get costly but worthwhile subscriptions to a couple of different services that actually track editors and publications. One of these is Press Access of Cambridge, MA. They charge as much as a couple of thousand dollars for their databases, but that's a very worthwhile investment. You get complete editorial biographies, and since there's a lot of changeover in the editorial community, they provide a valuable service in helping update you when editors move to other publications.

Measuring Success

After all this, it's still possible, and even likely, that most magazines won't publish any information on your announcement. As an example, my company is pretty well known, but even when we send out a press release to 600 different editors (about 300 different publications), we still generally only get anywhere from 1 to 5 mentions (usually on the lower side), if we get a mention at all. However, that shouldn't cause you despair - if you frequently make interesting announcements and send them to the presses, you will sooner or later get noticed as a company that makes news. Keep in mind that even one editorial mention will easily pay for a mailing or three, and these things have a way of gaining momentum as well, all for a lot less than traditional print advertising.