SoMaFusion :: travelogue

Snow Uploaded by SykoFantiS Bastoyni on 6 Jan 10, 12.36PM GMT

Greetings earthlings from frozen London.

I won’t lie to you we’ve been having challenging weather. So much so that I even had to stop riding the scooter for at least a week and that’s saying something.

What better way to fend off the cold than the amazing little gift I got today from one of our clients. We were gossiping about pies the other day – steak and ale being my favourite, chicken and mushroom his. He remembered and got me this precious book on pies today – the day that we completed phase 1 of our work with him (yes, yes I’ll be blogging about it soon)

Pies: A lovely gift Uploaded by SoMaFusion on 9 Feb 10, 2.13PM GMT

Needless to say I am now obligated to cook at least one pie (sigh).

As the above talk regarding a client would evidence we have not died even though we did take a long and well-deserved rest over Christmas, especially Manolis who managed to wind down and reconcile all of our client hotels’ systems for the winter.

A lot of systems updating has been happening but I will not bore you with the details – suffice it to say that all client software and hardware is ready for the new holiday season. (Yes, we do feel quite smug about it).

Oh, and when I do bake the pie (notice the ‘when’ rather than ‘if’) I promise at least a picture.

* I was this close to titling this “It’s high time for 3,14″. All this systems and numbers talk is getting to me.

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The lovely original photo is by milena mihaylova (Creative Commons) please consider supporting her work

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It certainly is that time of the year – even though in London, if we believed the lights and decorations it has been Christmas since round about August.

We are delighted to announce our Christmas give-away for this year (our first one ever as well). Just book your stay at the Golden Bay Hotel Apartments, for as long as you want, any time from the 1st of April 2010 to the 31st of October 2010 and you get a 15% discount (see how to do this below). As long as you book your stay for those dates you can actually do your booking from today.

Golden Bay is a delightful hotel in Crete, 28km east of Heraklion. Surrounding it are the resorts of Hersonissos, Stalis and Elounda – with the Malia beach just 10 minutes away. It’s actually a wonderful haunt if you are planning to combine sea and sand with a bit of sight-seeing (go to the Palace of Knossos, you’ll never forget it). Check it out when you do your booking, you can also choose to book some excursions at the same time.

It was our pleasure to kick off this year’s give-away (and our first one) via an announcement at the Greek website prosfor.es (which means ‘offers’ in Greek). prosfor.es is a new project started during the 2nd Athens Startup Weekend by Nikos Anagnostou and Thodoris Kargas - helped by Th. Sapountzis and D. Papadimitriou. The idea rocks and we hope it goes the distance.

HOW TO CLAIM YOUR DISCOUNT
To claim your discount please book via the Golden Bay online booking system and in the Special Requests / Remarks field just input “SoMaFusion prosfor.es”

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If you have any questions or issues please contact us on AllOfUs(at)SoMaFusion(dot)com
Disclaimer: Golden Bay is one of our projects (see here for more details)
If you book from any other service and not the Golden Bay online booking system this offer will not be valid.

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Being at the World Travel Market these days we were quite surprised at not seeing any of the digital comms companies and social media consultants we know from Greece. Our portfolio is obviously very much geared towards hoteliers and tourism when it comes to the Greek market (we have a different concentration in the British market) and many of our clients were at the exhibition so we did have to be there. Obviously it’s not just a client – thing, we were there for a variety of reasons but I’ll let Sofia explain that in another post.

What left me a bit flabbergasted was not seeing some of the best Greek digital comms companies there or any social media consultants- especially since most of them have been planning to work under the National Strategic Reference Framework (the EU structural funds) which would allow agencies to work closely with development projects – like for example e-travel solutions projects and get funding from the EU.

Let me be clear – and a bit blunt. The money is quite a lot. The level of investment that will be made into these projects will be quite significant and we have been following with interest all through the summer what the various Greek agencies have been offering in terms of e-booking solutions, communications and digital development projects. We saw such a high level of interest and services descriptions that it’s a bit of a shame that they were not at the World Travel Market to explore their options and ideas both with Greek hoteliers and travel people and with other countries that partake in the EU programme and where present at the exhibition.

For SoMaFusion, being there and discussing new developments and projects with the people concerned shows an interest and a desire for engagement and learning that is quite valuable. Our aim has always been to understand the need and provide the relevant solution and we find that these events help our understanding. And not only that. Our presence at an event that is key to any travel professionals calendar – especially at a time when the financial crisis has everyone worried – offers an opportunity to discuss within a potential clients’ own context. So we went to them rather than waiting for them to step out of their own market to come to us.

And boy was it useful! It’s quite astounding to see people from all over the world sharing similar concerns about world travel and the new expectations out there when it comes to travel destinations. It’s quite uplifting to realise that it’s not just our existing clients who look ahead and want to plan for a more engaged comms model but a lot more people, seasoned hoteliers from Greece and abroad are interested in what more they can do and how they can adapt new ways of doing things to their existing models.

It all certainly gave me a sense that we are going in the right direction.

Sofia will be writing soon about our upcoming projects with two travel solutions outlets in Northern Crete – their businesses involving travel, accomodation, activities etc. – as well as details of the discussions we had with some travel professionals from various countries.

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Manolis and I went to the World Travel Market today – met old friends and made some new ones. In my question “so, how did you find it this year” I heard a lot of “like last year“, “it’s going to be a tough year“, “we only come to maintain contacts anyway” and similar equally subdued comments.

There was a general worried stance that you could almost taste in the air – the financial crisis is making people nervous and nervous people tend to go back to their comfort zone – for seasoned travel destinations that sadly means playing the game based on price rather than quality and engagement.

Still you have some people – and it’s usually a people thing rather than on a company or country level – who look ahead beyond the financial crises and want to be ready and engaged. For them it’s not just a retention issue but rather a qualitative turn towards visitors who are engaged and demanding. Those visitors are the ones who will make a destination better through feedback and ideas.

For SoMaFusion I have to say that it was a good experience. We had some good meetings with existing clients from Crete (more on that later) and met some new people that we’d love to work with. I was quite impressed by some discussions we had with a truly visionary hotelier from Crete who is eager to engage with his customers and business contacts beyond the old ‘brochure and business card’ model towards a more interactive type of communication. These sort of discussions make these events truly worthwhile.

Work and business contacts aside it was a good exhibition I thought with a good mix of tour operators and booking/ travel systems with country and city presences as impressive as ever. Having said that it was as big and as chaotic as ever and I would have loved to see more tech tools to make navigating the exhibition easier – but hey, I’ll write a separate blog post on that one.

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Fight Club
Uploaded by Polina Sergeeva on 23 Nov 08, 7.01AM BST.

We have had a fight of EPIC proportions!

• When I say EPIC I mean World of Warcraft heroic dungeon level 70 in the Caverns of Time.
• When I say EPIC I mean Fight Club disturbing scenes where your girlfriend squeals.
• When I say EPIC I mean dirty mean kicks on the shin at your local football club (if you haven’t had one of those you don’t know how to fight).

And here is the juicy gossip for all of you: We fought because we both thought something was crap (yes, yes, crap) and we wouldn’t admit it to one another. EPIC FAIL I call that in the prevailing lingo.

It’s true. The website was CRAP. It’s still there if you want to check it out and it’s still CRAP. Go on, visit it. Learn. Submit your opinion (but it’s still crap).

Why was it so bad?
Because we subscribed to the prevailing logic of what a company website for a company *like ours* should be. Here is the low-down. There isn’t a company *like ours*. If it’s *like ours* there is no reason for us to be here. Go to the other guys. They were here first.

We managed to create something that was half ‘the other guys’ and half SoMaFusion. Bad idea. It should be ALL SoMaFusion. Even if it’s against prevailing logic. Even if it’s against all the rules.

Who makes these rules anyway?
Oh you know. Me, you, the wiz kid from California, my friend, the network, the community, the revolution. Here is something we forgot: Each and every single revolution contains the seeds of its own destruction.

Especially with Social Media we all act as if we discovered the secret to Eternal Life. (You do have that feeling, admit it!) And now we started codifying the knowledge, putting it in little boxes, making rules like ‘10 essential things to have on your blog’, ‘the absolute rules of self promotion’, ‘the True Path to internet stardom’ etc. Guess what. We are only making sure that the death of what is called Social Media experts will be quick and painless.

You think we’re wrong? Think back to the dot com bubble. Some good ideas caught on. Everybody jumped on the bandwagon. They analysed and over analysed the successes. They made charts. They found statistics. They put things in little boxes. And then it died. It had no space to breathe anymore. Nothing new was happening. Everyone was following the same recipe.

There is no spoon
We managed to talk so much about the rules that we forgot who we are and what we  want to do. Forget the rules. There is not spoon. For that matter there is no client. There is nothing.

There is only you!

We managed to forget that SoMaFusion is about projects that we want to do. It’s not about the money (as welcome as it is). It’s not about us against the other companies. There are no other companies that have us. There can be no comparison. Not because we are better (we are not). Because we are all different. And that’s exactly how it should be.

The web is not about us all being the same. Communications are not about all of us doing the same thing. It’s not about twitter, it’s not about blogs, it’s not about flickr. It’s about people and their conversations. It’s about what works for them.

How can I explain this?
(Seriously if you are under age stop reading now or get a parent/guardian to OK this before you go on. I’m just saying.)

You like sex right? (assuming you are a consenting adult etc.) Do you like all sex? Every time? No. Take two guys. Able bodied. Will the sex be the same? No.

Why?

Because it’s not about having all your tools in operation. You can have the best body in the world. You can have all the twitter accounts in the world. If you are not interesting, honest and engaging you are not satisfying – in sex or in anything.

We are NOT all the same

Equality and human rights aside we are not all the same.

We don’t want to play the same field. If you are a client and you like the field there are lovely companies out there who will do exactly what you want better than we ever could (I will even suggest one or two).

We want to play our field. With our customers. The ones who like us. The ones who DIG us. The ones who trust US.

And the only way to trust and like us is for us to be ourselves. The website was crap because we pretended to be someone else. OK fine, for one day but we still did. We were not different, interesting, honest or engaging.

So there you have it.

Lesson learned the old website remains as a stark reminder of how crap you can be when you are trying to be someone else.

Let’s see what horrors we will be unveiling now that we are ourselves.

The SoMaFusion website is live(ish).

I have been arguing (nicely) with Manolis for a few days now and I was finally convinced that it should go live even if it is not where we both want it (even though it’s pretty close).

The logic is simple. Since the company is new and we are now introducing ourselves it makes sense to expose people to our content early so that we get feedback before we settle.

So, be bold, be harsh, be honest. Do it here in the comments or you can e-mail me wordsmith(at)SoMaFusion(dot)com. Comments are preferable obviously but send your feedback any way you like.

We are live(ish) and we want to know what you think .

It feels a little bit like a dream come true. I’ve always been of the opinion that a logo needs to evoke emotion – trully great logos should inspire people to act. (Well, ours already inspired the Codesmith to act, he wrote his first blog post about it yesterday).

In my first post about it I said that designing the logo is a journey that your designer helps you take.

It is impossible to do justice to our designer Lefteris Koulonis who was with us every step of the way and nurtured our every idea (yes, even the really bad ones so that we would take them up to a point and see how bad they really were).

Myself, Manolis and Lefteris managed to swap a good number of e-mails, messages and telephone calls in the process. In one memorable occasion I interrupted a phone call to ask what that annoying sound in the background was. It was the cicadas. Lefteris was on holiday and he didn’t think it too important to mention when I called to discuss colour combinations.

That’s the kind of guy that he is. Check him out on flickr, tumblr, twitter and LinkedIn.(Kudos to Miss Konstantina Zoehrer for introducing him to us)

When we arrived at the final version (I was seriously dancing around) it felt like the end of a really enjoyable journey. We knew every curve, we knew every thought and we could stand behind the logo 100%

So – what do you think?

Our logo is ready and obviously we are more than excited.

(If you stumbled upon this page and are a bit lost check out how we started and what the name means and our principles).

Sofia will update later on in the day with more details of the history but I couldn’t resist uploading this.

Let us know what you think.

From the first moment we started talking about SoMaFusion and where we would like the company to go we realised that we shared some common values. One of them is our insistence on transparency and disclosure.

I have more complicated examples in mind but I think our position on disclosing our names sums up where we stand pretty neatly.

This is more or less how we see it – and I’ve got Manolis dropping in little comments as I write this.

SoMaFusion is effectively a service provider. We will tailor each product to the needs of the client and judge what is needed depending on the situation. Looking into some of the things we’ve done a client might not see something that is exactly what they are looking for. This is of course normal.

So, we sat down and we considered this. What would help a client decide if they would be willing to take a chance with us? And this is the list we came up with.

• Past projects (examples, examples, examples) (we uploaded some examples on flickr and more is coming on the website)
• Values and what we’re about (we blogged on this)
• Expertise
• Experience
• Reputation
• Visibility / tangibility

Obviously the four last ones are the hardest. If we haven’t worked together how can you tell? Well, it turns out you can up to a point. That’s why our names are right there. That’s why our LinkedIn profiles are right there. That’s why we sign our blog posts depending on who is writing them (even though admittedly we always agree on everything we write on here).

The decision was a no-brainer to us but we asked clients, and we asked people we trust as well. Everybody came back with the same thing: A name means you can search for us, our work, ask around. A name means that we actually stand by our work. A name means that we like what we do and we’re willing to put our name under it. But the best line came from a long standing client.

Seeing your names and your thoughts on the blog makes me think we share something, I know what you think and I can see how you work. From an uknown quantity you become less of a risk as time goes by.

We couldn’t have said it better if we tried.