Tuesday, July 30, 2024

Deep Dive into Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn - Class starts August 6th

Class Revised for 2024

Deep Dive Into Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn – 5W24

Taught By: Karl W. Palachuk

Five Tuesdays

  • August 6 - September 3 
  • Register Now
  • All classes start a 9:00 AM Pacific

Part of the "Social Media Super-Charge" Series for Small Business

This course covers three of the largest and most important social media in great detail. In all cases, we present a thorough training on getting the most of these applications. And, for each, we talk about how that specific medium fits into your overall sales and marketing strategy.

This course takes each of the platforms in turn, but constantly reminds you to create an overall approach to branding and social media. Each platform has "secrets" and best practices that most casual users never see. We provide these secrets and best practices as a series of checklists. Some are specific to individual postings; some are based on a weekly or monthly schedule; and some have a larger, strategic approach.

Most small businesses "use" social media, but don't really have a strategy for using social media effectively. That strategy starts with understanding the strengths and weaknesses of various platforms. And it culminates with a unified approach to branding and how your company presents itself across a variety of platforms.

This course is taught by Karl W. Palachuk, a social media influencer who "touches" over one million people per month. Karl has been using these social media for more than ten years, and has demonstrated mastery across all of the major social media that small businesses need to be successful.

Here are the specifics of what you'll learn, week by week:

Unit 1: YouTube - Setup and Optimizing for Marketing

  • “Google Properties” And Webmaster Tools
  • Planning Your YouTube Strategy
  • One Email; Multiple Brands
  • Graphics and Branding
  • Creator Studio
  • Channel Settings
  • Next-Level Branding
  • Social Media Link
  • Custom URLs
  • Paid Membership Channel?
  • Monetizing


Unit 2: YouTube - Video Upload and Tagging

  • Video Uploading Checklist
  • End Screens and iCards
  • Thumbnails
  • Tags/Keywords
  • Scheduling, Captions, and Chapter Headings
  • Longer Videos
  • Link to Adwords Account
  • Analytics and Reports
  • YouTube in the Big Strategy


Unit 3: Facebook - Setup and Maximizing Results

  • Facebook Personal and Business
  • Graphics Revisited
  • Pages and Groups
  • Rules for Group Management
  • Successful Posting / Cross-Posting
  • YouTube in the Big Strategy


Unit 4: LinkedIn - Setup and Effective Use

  • LinkedIn Basics
  • Three Levels of Connections
  • The Greatest Profile Opportunity in Social Media
  • Details and Options
  • Overwhelm, Minimalist, or Super Niche?
  • Sharing
  • Fake Profiles Can Teach You a Lot
  • Graphics and Branding
  • Custom URL
  • Premium Options


Unit 5: LinkedIn - Optimizing for Sales

  • Email Marketing – and Abuse
  • Recommendations – Giving and Getting
  • Posts, Articles, “Blogging” and Syndicating
  • Groups
  • Activities and Notifications
  • All-Star Status
  • Super Search
  • LinkedIn in the Big Strategy

-- -- --

Delivered by Karl W. Palachuk, blogger and author of the very popular Relax Focus Succeed blog at www.relaxfocussucceed.com.

Includes five weeks of webinars with related handouts, assignments, and "office hours" with the instructor. All classes are recorded for download. All classes include suggested "homework" that is totally action-focused and intended to move your company's marketing forward.

This course is intended for business owners and managers. It is particularly useful for Sales Managers and Marketing Managers.

Only $399

Register Now

A Few Details . . .

  • Each course will be five one-hour webinars
  • There will be handouts and "homework" assignments
  • If you wish to receive feedback on your assignments, there will be instructor office hours
  • Class webinars will be recorded and made available to paid attendees only.
  • All calls start at 9:00 AM Pacific Time

:-)



Saturday, July 27, 2024

It's Okay to be a Very Small small Business - In Fact, It's GREAT!

Do you describe your company as a "small" business? How does that sit with you?

Business trends ebb and flow. Every once in a while, a big enterprise business realizes that they are ignoring eighty or ninety percent of the market, and they make a big push for "small business." Microsoft did this for about ten years and had spectacular success with their partner program small-business-focused products. Amex and Visa still have small business programs, though much reduced from their peak a dozen years ago.

Today the trend is all about bigger and bigger. After all, a vendor who has hundreds of millions in revenue and is looking for 20-40% growth per year will have great difficulty reaching those targets 1,000 licenses (or endpoints) at a time. There's a quick-win with going after larger MSPs. And when your entire future is measures by the next three months, that's good enough!

But the reality is - It's okay if you're not the focus of the enterprise companies and enterprise-wanna-bes. I'll get into that a bit more in the next blog post. For now, let's look at . . .


The Power of Small Business 

Forbes does a great annual roundup on Small Business stats.[1] Here are some important take-aways.

You are not alone! Quite the contrary. Small business runs the world! Let's look at recent US stats.

  • The U.S. Small Business Administration reports that there 33.3 million businesses in the United States qualify as small businesses. That's roughly 99.9% of all U.S. businesses![2] As you can imagine, all other countries have a higher percentage of small businesses compared to enterprise businesses.

  • Over 80% of businesses operate without any staff. That is: These are one-person shops. Forbes refers to these businesses variably as "solo ventures" or "solo founders." This raises the question we look at next time: What do you call yourself?
  • U.S. small businesses employ roughly 62 million people. That's about 46% of the entire U.S. workforce.[2] About 16% of small businesses have between one and nineteen (1-19) employees. That's about 5.4 million businesses. I hope you don't feel alone now. 
  • As Forbes reports, "The average salary of a small business owner is just 16% above the annual mean wage in the U.S. Business owners and entrepreneurs may make up some of the wealthiest people in the world." Of course, this does not include the financial and non-financial benefits of being a business owner. And, of course, the best-run IT consulting businesses are on the high end of these numbers.[3] 


Evolving Demographics

  • Millennials own 13% of small businesses in the U.S. Of course, Baby Boomers and Gen X own most businesses, but this is largely due to the fact that the average age for starting a business is 35 years old. This gives us great clarity on who will be starting the new businesses in the next ten years. Welcome them. Engage with them. After all, they're about to take over the world. [4]
  • Males have always owned most businesses. But women are certainly starting more and more companies. Currently, 43% of businesses are woman-owned. And this number is growing. Again, take a look at your future and welcome it.[1]
  • The U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy reports that just over twenty percent of small businesses owned by racial minorities (non-whites). And, as you might expect, this number is growing as well. Look at your future and welcome it.[1]


Business Failures

Two key facts here. 

I hope every one of you has read The Emyth Revisiteed by Michael Gerber. If not, today is a great day to start that. For decades, his numbers have been correct. Today we have a bit more detail, but the fundamental truth remains: One in five businesses fail within the first year.

Key Fact #1 - About half of all new businesses fail within the first five years. That breaks down as follows.  [5]

  • 20% of businesses fail in the first year
  • 30% fail in the second year 
  • and a total of 50% by the end of year five.

This highlights a fact that "everyone knows" but few people do anything about. Watching your finances and managing your cash is absolutely critical, especially as a new business. The need never goes away, but we learn by experience what we could be learning from training, books, and self-education. Do not put off this education, no matter where you are in your business.

Key Fact #2 - The most common cause of overall business failure is running out of cash. About 38% of businesses fail due to bad cash flow (or failure to get a loan they can pay off). Again, the sooner you pay attention to finances and financial management the better!

Note that I said overall business failure. For those that fail in the first five years, 42% fail because they did not find or engage a target market.[6] Either they think "everyone" is the target market, or they did not effectively identify and sell an actual target market. Again, everyone hears the advice to focus your attention. But many pay the ultimate price for ignoring this advice.

Note: It is critically important that you understand what we mean by cash flow. This is not the same as profit. You can be profitable and simply not have the cash on hand when you need it. Education can come from training or painful personal experience. You get to decide.

- - -

I know that's a lot of stats. Take is as a starting place. The most important thing you should know is that you're not alone - and there's nothing wrong with being a small small business! You're in great company!

In the next blog post, I want to talk about what you call yourself. Forbes uses two terms above. They're not common phrases I hear among small business owners. So I'd love to have your feedback. How to you describe yourself or your business - in or or two words?

All comments welcome.

- - -

Forbes Advisor has a lot of great collections of statistics here: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/statistics/. Other sources cited:

[1] See https://www.forbes.com/advisor/business/small-business-statistics/. And Forbes Advisor has a lot of great collections of statistics here: https://www.forbes.com/advisor/statistics/.

[2] U.S. Small Business Administration Office of Advocacy 

[3] Guidant Financial

[4] Bloomberg

[5] Fundera  

[6] CBInsights

:-) 


Friday, July 26, 2024

NSITSP Elections - File for Office in August

The National Society of IT Service Providers is going strong - and we'll be stronger with YOU.

We are pleased to announce the 2024 NSITSP elections for all positions. This is our THIRD year of holding elections. We have one totally new committee this year – Professional Development. Plus, we have openings on the Board of Directors and all other committees.

It is truly amazing how far the NSITSP has come in just three years. We were founded in 2021 and spent a lot of time putting together our structure and committees. Our first elections were held in 2022, and we continue electing officers each year. Our system is designed so about half of all posts are up for election each year. That means that we have elections for the Board and all committees in September! See details below.

Vote Nsitsp

Our By-Laws provide that all vacancies are filled by appointment. Appointees serve until the next election. And that is now. Everyone standing for election this year will run for a full two-year term.

This blog post describes our election calendar and what you can expect. Please feel free to contact me or the admin staff at NSITSP.org.

Who can run for office? All paid members.
Not a member? Today's a good day to join!

Who can vote for officers? All paid members.
Not a member? Today's a good day to join!

Election Timeline:

Here’s the basic timeline for our election “season.”

NOW: Announce elections. Educate membership.

August 2024: Filing period. Paid members can submit forms to file for office. This will create a customized campaign profile page. Filing closes August 31st.

September 1-13: Campaign for office. Use our forums to answer questions and promote your candidacy.

September 13-21: Voting online!

September 22: Results announced.

Note – You can start preparing now by writing your candidate statement and collecting a list of your associations, social media links, etc. Basically, we’re looking for the kind of stuff you probably have on your LinkedIn profile. We recommend you compile your information in a Word or text document and then copy/paste into the application.

Please post any questions here or in our forums.


You can view the results of last year’s election in this blog post:
https://nsitsp.org/elections/nsitsp-2023-election-results/

Here’s a summary of the open positions. PLEASE consider running – and encourage others to do so as well.

Board of Directors: 4 slots open

Finance Committee: 6 slots open

Governance Committee: 4 slots open

Legislative Committee: 4 slots open

Marketing Committee: 5 slots open

New Professional Development Committee: 7 slots open

Thank you to everyone who has served and to everyone who runs for office. Your participation means everything to this organization!

Help us transform the industry into a profession.

:-)


Monday, July 22, 2024

The Great Managed Service Triple Play

Do you need the ultimate Managed Services Starter Kit? Well, we happen to have it. We call it the Managed Service Triple Play:

Managed Services + Cloud Services + Service Agreements

We've bundled these three great books together at one low price. Retail value is $119.85. This includes:


Managed Services in a Month

Cloud Services in a Month

Service Agreements for SMB Consultants

Check out the bundle in our store at https://store.smallbizthoughts.com/product/managed-services-cloud-services-triple-play/.


Why is this such a great resource? That's easy - these books each have a massive amount of great information and advice.  

Over 880 pages of content. Plus hundreds of pages of downloads, checklists, sample documents, and more and more!

Available in paperback or ebook. Now only $89.99 for the bundle! That ALL these resources for less than one hour’s paid labor! This might just be the best deal you’ll find for your business this year.


Here's a bit of information on each of these resources.

Managed Services in a Month, 3rd ed., is the best selling book ever on managed services! This is literally the book used by thousands of companies to move from break/fix to managed services. It's also a great primer and introduction to our industry for total newbies.

  • 270 pages
  • Dozens of downloads, including calculators, forms, checklists, and spreadsheets

Table of Contents, list of downloads, and more information on the dedicated page at

https://managedservicesinamonth.com/


Cloud Services in a Month, has been a best seller since the day it was released! It digs deep into creating bundles that sell - and are easy to sell. Includes hundreds of pages of downloads, including some great "best practice" forms and checklists for analyzing client environments and use "Zero Downtime" strategies to move those clients to hosted services. 

  • 390 pages
  • Dozens of downloads, including calculators, forms, checklists, and spreadsheets

Table of Contents, list of downloads, and more information on the dedicated page at

https://cloudservicesinamonth.com/


Service Agreements for SMB Consultants, revised edition, holds the distinction as the first book ever with "Managed Services" in the title. The subtitle of this book is A Quick-Start Guide to Managed Services. Of course it's been updated since then. 

Of course, everyone needs a contract. But you should never just grab someone else's contract and start using it. This book walks you through model contracts one paragraph at a time so you understand what they really mean for YOUR business and the way you run your business. Remember: Service agreements are not about the services you provide. Service agreements are about the relationship between you and the client!

  • 220 pages
  • Dozens of downloads, including calculators, forms, checklists, and spreadsheets

Table of Contents, list of downloads, and more information on the dedicated page at

https://serviceagreementscomputer.com/


If you're ready to get started in managed services - or ready to do a major tune-up of your existing business - then this might be the best investment you can make today. Check it out!

:-)




Thursday, July 18, 2024

One Piece of Your Security Strategy is Different - and More Important - Than All the Rest!

In the "before time" - way back before my MSP days - I learned the absolute requirement to have one piece in place before anything else. And even today, 30+ years later, it's still true. That piece: Testing backups.

If you're not testing backups,
You are not doing your job!

Nothing is ever more important than testing backups. Why? Because backups fail. And if you test backups, you know at least three things:

1. You have a backup system

2. The backup is working

3. You know how to get data from the backup to live usage (database, storage, etc.)

And here's where people get it wrong: They set it and forget it. You can set it, but you can never forget it.

In my last "real job," we had a hard drive fail on an HP-3000 mini (some folks would call it a mainframe). The backup was on tape, and the restore took nine hours. There was a bit of data loss, but it was less than one day's worth of data entry.

As I recall, the company lost just over $20 million in that incident (which lasted roughly ten hours in total). But the system worked as well as it could at the time. It was a bad day for me, and a bad week for the folks in the customer service department. But the business was back in business when everyone showed up for work at 8:00 AM.

Everyone learned: 1) We have a backup that works; and 2) the corporate overlords suddenly had a budget to improve the backup, if it could shorten the downtime if there's another incident like this.

Things fail. Your backup will fail. On average, a daily full backup will be "less than perfect" about once per month - no matter what system you have. Three times per month is quite normal for the best systems available today. Stuff happens. Updates. Hardware. Human error. Software. Electrical problems. Configuration changes. Unknown. Stuff happens. Wrong media. Bad media. etc.

If you don't believe those numbers, you are not checking your backups often enough. Period.

Having an imperfect backup happens. That's why you can never set it and forget it. 

Here are two facts you should take with you on your sales calls:

  • If you have a good, working backup, you can avoid data loss from any crypto virus, human error, or anything in between. (This obviously does not include phishing attacks, but it does cover a lot  of other stupidity.)
  • It IS possible to have such a backup in a small business. The larger a business grows, the less likely it is to have a good, working backup.
What does this mean to the business owner? It means that you can secure their business more reliably than the large businesses they read about in the news. Large businesses cannot even keep track of all the devices on their networks. Some think they can. Some are quite adamant about it. But they cannot.

The larger a business is, the more complicated, sophisticated, and less successful their backup is. This seems intuitively wrong, but it's true. Complexity changes the nature of backups.

And that's why, conversely, small networks CAN be completely documented and can be backed up reliably. And best of all, small networks can be backed up reliably at a reasonable price.


Backup is the Center of Your Security

Your "big picture" of you security is made up of a lot of puzzle pieces. But one piece is always at the center, and it's more important that all the others put together. Your backup is, ultimately, the only guarantee you have that you can get a client back into business when catastrophe strikes. The event might be ransomware. But it might also be a hazmat spill, a fire, a failed storage array, sabotage, or many other things. 

Similarly, the backup might be a BDR. Or it might be disc-to-disc-to-cloud strategy. It might even be tape. Google, Microsoft, and Amazon (among many others) still use tape for archiving, which provides their ultimate air-gapped backup.

If you do nothing else in your managed service business, you should test every backup at every client at least once per month. "Test" does not mean to look at a monitor. It does not mean to read a report or count the green lights on a dashboard. Testing a backup means mounting the media (BDR, disc, or whatever) and restoring data from all key components (email, databases, file store, etc.).

This is literally the single most important thing you do. If you cannot restore a client's systems after a catastrophe, you are not a managed IT company. Clients may be more worried about their internet speed, the transaction costs, viruses, or even whether the monitors are bright enough. But on the after the "stuff" hits the fan, they should be able to rely on you to get them back in business. And if you can't do that, you have failed the most important thing you should be doing for that client.

Sadly, almost no MSPs that I talk to even attempt to verify backups once per month. This is a major failing of our industry. Lots of companies are paying lots of money to turn over their technology management and trust that it's being taken care. But if you're not taking care of the single most important thing, then you are not giving them what they are paying for.


The Never-Changing Statistic:

Fifty percent of all prospects do not have a working backup, whether they know it or not. This was true thirty years ago, and it's true today.

If you make examining the backup part of your sales strategy, you'll see this immediately. The saddest part is, there were no MSPs thirty years ago. Now, almost all prospects have someone who calls themselves an MSP. And yet, fifty percent of the clients they serve do not have a working backup.

What's your standard operating procedure for testing backups?

:-)

Thursday, July 11, 2024

The Challenges of Improving Your Team: Time and Money

Here's a challenge many larger MSPs have. Let me see if it rings true for you.


  • You want your entire team to understand the managed service business model.
  • You want to do some team building.
  • You want them to grow as a group, but also grow their understanding of their specific job, where it fits in the big picture, etc.

You want some training, but that requires requires two really big things. 1) It requires time off task. In other words, they have to take time away from their job  so they can get better at their job. That's a standard challenge everybody faces.

And, 2) It takes money. There are a lot of programs that seem to think that just because you have the "MSP" name, that you have essentially all the money in the world and you're willing to give it to them!

At Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community, we understand what it actually takes to build a managed service business.

It starts with building a great team. 

Today, I want to talk to you about the benefits of a team membership with the Small Biz Thoughts technology community. (If you want to view the video version of this, go here.)

Time - The biggest thing is we have a program that allows you to work at your pace. It's like coaching light without the big expense. Trust me, if you want to do coaching and you want to pay a bunch of money, I will be happy to help you out.

Money But if what you need is to spend a reasonable amount of money and you want to be able to take your time. A one-year team membership right now is only $3,599. And that gets you up to 10 memberships in the Small Biz Thoughts Technology Community.

It gives you lots of access to free classes over at IT Service Provider University. And it allows you to work at your own pace. 

One of the real benefits of a team membership is that you get a little extra of my time. Several companies have gone through a program that we have where they sign up six eight or sometimes ten members of their staff to go through an entire class together at ITSPU.

And so they'll go through the class and then meet with me for an hour, have some deep dive discussion about how the class material fits within their specific job title. This is great because you have different levels of technicians, you have service managers, you have front office people, sales people. They all need to understand what's going on inside your managed service business, but they look at it from different angles, obviously.

So this allows your entire team to sit together, go through these classes together, talk to each other about it, go through that experience together.  

Best of all, you do all of this at a pace that doesn't take them out of their job for a week, or take them out of their job for three days in a row. 

This is a great price for improving your entire each. 

If you have a member who wants to go wild and take all the classes, they can do that. We had somebody do that last year. The boss bought a team membership, and one guy just said, "I'm taking everything." I think he took twenty of the twenty-five courses we offer. And he got certified in them, so he's got specialist certifications left and right.

Every once in a while, you get somebody who's super ambitious and has the time to do that, but not everybody does. So quite realistically, if you don't have time or you can't afford to have somebody out of the office for three or four days to go to a big conference in another part of the country, this is a great way to give them the education that they need and to do it together as a team, if you choose to.

You certainly don't have to do that.

It great to know that this small investment allows:

  • The salesperson can go take three or four classes on sales
  • The front office people can take three or four classes on front office (on finance and QuickBooks and so forth)
  • The technical people can take about twenty classes regarding their job
  • And the managers can take classes that are about leadership and strategy and running the service board

Everybody in your team can benefit from a team membership!

All it takes is a one-time commitment. And if you choose to renew in a year, the price is locked in for life. With this program, YOU get to manage the team memberships. For example, let's say you have twenty people in your business.

You pick the ten who you want to have access to the community and you manage that. You add people and remove them whenever you want. Six months, three months in, whatever, you can take these people out, add other people in. Then,  send the salespeople off to get training. Then you can switch them out and add in front office people go get training. Then you can focus on managers. Whatever you choose to do, you manage which people have access at any time.

We are not here to dig deep, deep, deep into your wallet, take all the money we can find, and leave you without help. Every single thing we do in the classes and at the community is designed around my motto:

Nothing happens by itself

You have to take action. 

That's why the classes have homework. That's why we are so focused on checklists, worksheets, calculators, and Excel spreadsheets. We want you to have tools that allow you to make changes today to improve your business.

It's great to have a grand scheme and a grand plan, and I want you to have those things. I want you to have a mission, vision, and values. I want you to go through that process, and I'll help you with that if you need it.

But you also need to improve every single process in your business - every day! And if every single thing works one percent better, and then one percent better, and one percent better, you literally can improve every single piece of your business, year after year after year.

I know that's a lot of grand promises, but I'm just telling you: Everybody who goes through this program has loved it. And we have people who are renewing time and again because their team still continues to improve and get value from their team's membership.

I got this note earlier this week from a Community Team member:

"Karl and his team absolutely understand how to run and scale an MSP.  The five-week classes on Service Board management and SOPs established a foundation to transform our service delivery.  Our group of technicians now function as a coherent team with everyone working from the same playbook.  We now talk about consistency of service in a way that simply wasn’t possible before we started working with Karl."

-- Greg Baker, CMA Augusta

And like everything Anything else that's out there, if you buy it and you don't use it, well, that's on you. But if you buy it and you dig in, I will help your team get absolutely amazing value from this.

The Investment - If you just had the classes, that would be 25 classes at $399 each. That's about $10,000 worth of value. Okay, great. Then you add 25 certifications at $200 each. That's almost $5,000 more. Then you add all of the books, all of the training all of the videos, everything inside the community, and the value just goes up and up and up.

I know for a fact is all of that is literally just a fire hose, and you cannot stick it in your mouth and turn it on. That is not going to work. (At least it won't have a good outcome.)

Bottom line: We've designed a program where you can take the time as you need it, as you are able to dedicate the time, and we only require a minimal amount of money because our hope is that you will get so much value out of it that you will renew again and again and again.

If you're ready to take your team to the next level, join my team membership, and I promise you, you will love it.

 If you have any questions, check out all of the Q&A at smallbizthoughts.org, or send us a note on that site. 

 I'm here to help you be as successful as possible in everything you do!

Learn More. Sign Up Today.


:-)


Friday, July 05, 2024

Salvador Dali and the Most Important Thing You Need to Know about Artificial Intelligence

 Not long ago, the Salvador Dali Museum announced a fun AI project. They fed all of Dali's written and recorded words, including audio and video from every source they could find, into a big "large language model" program and created a cool device: A lobster-shaped telephone that allows you to have a conversation with AI Dali.

Visitors to the museum can pick up the phone and ask anything they want. The voice of Dali then answers their question and proceeds to have an AI-generated conversation with them. The voice was trained on recordings of Dali, so the result both sounds like his voice and the content is drawn from his thoughts.

My first reaction is: Very Cool!

But some people get the description of this wrong. And as we see more projects like this with famous dead people, we need to be careful about how we describe it. 

This is not Salvador Dali. The answers one might get are not the answers Dali would give. They are in his "voice" and use phrases he might use. But the answers are not what Dali would say if he were here today. How do we know that? Read on.

You may have seen that the voice of Al Michaels will be used for the AI bot that will be commenting on the Summer Olympics. The NBC network has been very careful to walk the line. They try to be super clear that this is the voice of Al Michaels, but the words of generative AI. Going forward, as artificial intelligence and video/audio generation get better, we will see this kind of thing everywhere.

Note: You should never believe that having a conversation with the Dali phone is just like having a conversation with Salvador Dali. And watching "AI Al" Michaels will not be the same as having the real Al Michaels in the broadcast booth. 

The big difference is the human spark of creativity. An AI program might sound exactly like Salvador Dali, but it will always lack the one quality that leads one to talk to Dali: His genius. Dali became famous by using his artwork and commentary to show the world a different way of looking at itself. His artwork was his form of social commentary.

Dali passed away in 1989. Imagine all the commentary he might have about the Internet, smart phones, streaming media, digital artworks, pandemics, politics, . . . and generative AI creating artwork inspired by his creations. The best guess you can make about his commentary should be, "I have no idea what he'd say." He might love or hate where society has gone. He might approve or disapprove. But his actual response will be new, original, and unpredictable. 

The one area where AI excels is being predictable. So, you might be able to work hard enough to get an AI model to figure out how Dali might have reacted in the 1970's or 1950's. But it could never create the unique, inciteful, and unpredictable commentary that only the human Salvador Dali could come up with!

Keep this in mind when people are tempted to say, "It's just like talking to the real . . .."

-- -- -- 

For more information on the project, see this articles:

1. https://www.npr.org/2024/04/21/1246117954/salvador-dali-artificial-intelligence-lobster-telephone-museum

2. https://www.entrepreneur.com/business-news/ai-tech-to-replicate-al-michaels-voice-for-summer-olympics/476282

:-)