The social graph of the mountainboard community

Roger on 25/02/2017

I’ve always believed that the mountainboarding community follows the laws of networks and so benefits and suffers from network effects. Networks are made up of nodes (people in the mountainboarding community) and edges (the social connections and relationships between those people). Understanding this helps us understand how the connections between people in the community work and what effect changes have on the entire network.

Understanding the problem

There aren’t enough people mountainboarding often enough. That is the problem. Looking at the problem from the perspective of the social graph of the mountainboard community, we have people (nodes) who are either active (riding regularly) in the community (network) which means that they have existing connections which are continually renewed and reinforced, or inactive (not riding regularly) which means that those preexisting relationships have lapsed. There are also dormant nodes but for the purposes of this we would say that they have dropped off the graph.

If a node becomes inactive it weakens the edges and has a knock on effect on the other nodes. If a node is active it can affect the activity of nearby nodes but may not be sufficient on its own to keep them active.

The social graph of the mountainboard community

If node A in the diagram above becomes inactive, nodes C and D become disconnected from the rest of the graph, and the connection between node B and the rest of the graph is weakened and so weakens the connection of nodes E, F and J to the rest of the graph.

That’s why understanding the mountainboarding community as a network is important, because it shows us what happens when a single rider stops and how it takes more than a single rider to build up the community. We can use this understanding in order to help keep the active mountainboarders riding and reactivate the inactive riders. This will follow the same network effect rules as the weakening of the network and exponentially strengthen the community. So, how do we do it?

Towards a solution

We need a plan. If we want to solve this problem we need a plan, people, resources, etc. It’s not an easy problem to solve, but I think with the right things in place, and the right understanding, it is possible.

  • Identify active and inactive (and dormant) riders. Knowing this will be essential for targeting the right riders. Luckily the ATBA-UK has a database of mountainboarders across the UK. They could all be assigned an activity score (5 for most active, 1 for least active) and then their postcodes mapped onto Google Maps using TableFusion.
  • Focus on active nodes for retention. We want to keep the active riders riding as if they become inactive the network effects will multiply. So we look for areas on the map that have the highest concentration of active riders.
  • Then we establish regular scheduled meets in the areas where the active riders are, doing the type of riding they like to do. If there is a cluster around a centre (as we could expect) then we organise a meet at that centre. The meets need to be at least monthly and planned in advance so riders can know about them and plan to attend.
  • The meet-ups then need to be promoted across the community. This could be done using the ATBA-UK email newsletter, group chats on messenger (segmented by area), various websites and Facebook groups.
  • Doing this would require quite a commitment from someone, and probably some funding from the ATBA-UK, but it would help turnaround the decline of mountainboarding in the UK.

Weeknotes #29

Roger on 24/02/2017

What happened this week…

  • Thought about RMSP reporting.
  • Added product filters to the Cards pages to help customers find the right card for them.
  • SiteCore Training and Facebook Advertising Training so we can be more self-sufficient in our marketing.
  • Marketing Planning for email, social, and advertising for campaigns, events and weddings.
  • Qubit Training to learn about our new personalisation and behavioural targeting system.
  • Ecommerce Monthly Management Meeting to talk about projects, challenges, objectives, marketing, and vision.

Read this week…

Doing next week…

  • Getting ready to push MyMarathon.
  • Planning a Wedding Favours photo shoot.
  • Working with the Running and Walking Events teams to feature the Online Shop in their customer journeys.
  • Planning Social Media Marketing and Advertising.
  • Sending our Mother’s Day email to promote our range of gifts for Mother’s day.
  • Going to the Marketing & Engagement Directorate Away Day.Setting up lots of links to the main website to test assumptions about customer journeys and how to improve experience.
  • Meeting with our Logistics company.

Interesting stat of the week…

  • Dechox Sales over January and February this year are 51% up on the same period last year.

In the not too distant future….

  • Digitising pop-up shops.

Lesson 42: Staying put can be a challenge too

Roger on 22/02/2017

For my fortieth birthday I wrote about the 40 things I’d learned in life. Now, two years on it’s time to add my 42nd life lesson.

Staying put can be a challenge too

For most of my life I’ve considered challenge to come from moving on to something new. And I went after challenges. I changed jobs frequently to learn new skills and most importantly face new challenges. I did things I didn’t know how to do and just made it up as I went along. I said ‘yes’ to things I shouldn’t of. All in the name of seeking new challenges.

Over the last year I’ve come to realise that challenge doesn’t only come from newness. Sometimes staying put and working through what you set out to do can be more of a challenge. Sometimes sticking it out through difficult times, not giving up (and telling yourself that it’s not giving up it’s moving on), and fulfilling your responsibility to others is a far greater and more worthwhile challenge.

Using Trello for task and project management

Roger on 22/02/2017

We use Trello for all of our task and project management. It gives us a view of everything that we’re doing, have done, or need to do from big projects to the smallest task.

Flexibility beats consistency

The most important thing to understand and accept about Trello is the flexibility of what a card, a list and a board mean to you. There is a tendency to formalise Trello by, for example, making a board represent a team or business area, making lists represent projects that team is working on, and cards represent features or tasks that are part of the project. Or think to yourself that lists need to be steps in a process such as To Do, Doing, Done, and as each of those lists as representing a state that the cards step through as part of the workflow. This is wrong. Don’t do it.

The strength of Trello is that lists and cards can represent all kinds of things, even on the same board. One list could be for all outstanding tasks with the cards as each task, another list could be for all projects with the cards representing each project, and if you need to, you can create another list for a specific project, add cards to it whilst the project is live and delete the list once all the cards have been moved to the Completed list. This flexibility of what the various elements in Trello represent to you is it’s strength as a system. It allows something like a project to easily move between a micro and macro level depending on it’s complexity, how much of a priority it is for the team, or how diverse the work required will be. It’s important to accept this fluidity of what represents what in order to use Trello to its best.

Tools and Workflows

There are four parts to our workflow for using Trello. We have a single Trello board, use email to create cards, ifttt to create recurring cards, and butler bot to automate jobs.

Trello Boards, Lists and Cards

Trello Boards, Lists and Cards


We use a single Board so that everything is available to see in one place. We could have one board for tasks, another for projects, etc., etc., but that makes it difficult to see all of the work of the whole team, especially in Calendar view which only shows an individual board.

We only have a few Lists. One is a backlog of ideas we might do one day, another is all our tasks, and three others are Queued Projects, Current Projects, and then Completed, which is where all cards eventually end up.

We have lots and lots of Cards. As cards are easily moved between lists they have an easy flexibility about them, and we like flexibility. A card can represent an idea, a task, or an entire project. So, we might collect idea on separate cards and then find that a few of those cards are related and can be grouped together to make a piece of work, so then the details on all those cards might become a checklist on another card and those original idea cards get moved to the Completed list.

Each card has a Description, an area of text near the title of the card. We use the description to record anything that you might want to find again and again such as a link to the Google Doc of the project requirements.

Comments are a good way to keep track of the state of a project without having to write a formal status update. When something changes in whatever that card represents its easy to just add a quick note about it or copy and paste an email.

Checklists are another way of keeping track of and showing the current state of a card. If the list has ten items and six of them are ticked then it’s easy to see that the card is sixty percent complete. Again, the tendency to try to formalise Trello and say Checklists are for this and Comments are for that takes away the flexibility.

Using IFTTT to create recurring cards

Using IFTTT to create recurring cards


We have a number of tasks that have to be completed every day, week of month. We don’t want to have to manually create all of cards ahead of time or have to remember to create them when they are due. So, we use IFTTT and have a number of applets that creates cards on schedule, assign members and set a due date and time.

ButlerBot to automate jobs

ButlerBot to automate jobs


Butler bot does a few different things for us. If someone is mentioned in a card it adds them as a member. Every day it counts the number of cards in our task list to tell us how much work is outstanding. And when a card is moved to the completed list it changes the date to today. Using ButlerBot for these kinds of regularly occurring jobs that are part of administering any system says time and ensures consistency. ButlerBot doesn’t forget to do things.

Email to create cards

Email to create cards


Sometimes being able to send a quick email to your Trello board to create a card is easier than actually going to Trello to do it. Trello understands using @membersname in the subject and assigns the card to that member, but it requires everyone to remember everyone else’s user name. We get around this by using ButlerBot to look for cards with each team members name and then assign that member to that card. Adding labels works in a similar way, just include #reporting in the subject line of the email and Trello will assign that label to the card. Adding cards by email falls short of being about to assign a due date to the card but again this can be handled by asking ButlerBot to look for words like ‘today’ and changing to due date to today’s date.

This combination of using a really flexible tool like Trello, the usability of being able to and cards by sending an email, and simplicity of using services like IFTTT and ButlerBot to automate jobs makes Trello a great way to manage all kinds of tasks and projects, and provide an overview of everything in one place.

Thinking about retail reporting

Roger on 21/02/2017

Today I’ve been thinking about retail reporting and trying to conceptualise an approach that demonstrates how separate from the Product Catalogue the Reporting Suite should be, even though they may share a lot of the same data.

The fundamental unit of reporting is the transaction. Whereas the fundamental unit in the product catalogue is the product, which is a physical object, in reporting a transaction is ‘an action that occurred at a point in time’. Reports are a snapshot of a point in time that shows related transactions grouped together.

The product catalogue has a hierarchical structure of units of product with depth added to the structure via attributes. The reporting suite uses a network model with nodes and connections. Generating reports is a case of selecting the nodes for that report, e.g. Refunds and Area, and then defining the connection, e.g. Last trading week. The nodes are fixed and the connections are variable.

Nodes

Transaction Type

  • Purchase
  • Refund
  • Replacement/exchange
  • Return
  • Movement

Transaction Location

  • Display
  • Store
  • Facia
  • Area
  • Region

Transaction Content/Quantities

  • Product
  • Quantity
  • Value
  • Margin
  • Budget
  • Category
  • Department
  • Season

The more nodes selected the finer level of reporting is achieved, e.g. The margin achieved by a single product in a single area. And the fewer nodes selected the courser the report, e.g. All purchases in all departments.

Connections

Current time frame

  • Day
  • Week
  • Month
  • Year

Comparison time frame

  • This week vs. Last week.
  • This year to date vs. Last year to date.

Selecting the connection between the nodes provides the window through which to view the snapshot of the state of the system at the point the report was generated. A report with the same nodes and same connections generated at a different time could show a different view as the state may have changed through transactions such as returned items.

Ideas for improving Trello

Roger on 19/02/2017

Trello just keeps getting better and better, whilst remaining simple and easy to use. If I could make a few more improvements they’d be:

  • Select multiple boards when in calendar view to see scheduling conflicts and gaps.
  • Better print options to turn a board into a roadmap, comments into a newsfeed, etc.
  • Sub lists within lists to group cards together
  • Due dates on Checklist items to trigger a different level of notifications

Understanding customers for car washes

Roger on 18/02/2017

A Car Wash becomes successful by converting one-time customers into repeat customers who come back regularly. Cars continually get dirty but getting people to become your repeat customers rather than your competitors is the challenge. If you were in the business of washing cars there are a few things you might want to understand about your customers:

  • Buyer behaviour is closely linked with the value of the car so that is how you should segment your customers
  • People with more expensive cars are more likely to get their car washed than people with cheaper cars.
  • This is either because people with more expensive cars value their car more highly and so want to take better care of it, or/and people with more expensive cars associate positive self-image with having a clean car, or/and people with more expensive cars have more money to spend on non-essentials like car washes.
  • If it’s a question of how people equate the value of an object with how much time, money and effort to spend on looking after that object, then offering extra special service with more options/benefits reserved for people with more expensive cars would be a good way to keep them coming back.
  • If your customers are getting their cars washed because it fulfils some emotional need to be seen in a positive light (by driving an expensive and clean car) then offering something like a regularly booked timeslot where they were expected and greeted personally would help to fulfil those emotional needs.
  • If you wanted to expand into the lower value car market you would have to offer a reduced price service and clearly demonstrate the benefits of having a clean car.
  • If you compete with other car washes solely on price you are misunderstanding what motivates your customers and what problem you are solving for them, and you are undermining your profitability.
  • Differentiating yourself in tailored service that closely matches the needs of each customer segment would be a more successful strategy.