Before you watch it, write down these transformations:

• Change ‘drawing’ to ‘story’
• Change ‘mathematician’ to ‘sales person’
• Change ‘excel’ to ‘powerpoint’
• Change ‘Adobe Illustrator’ to ‘Microsoft Word’
• Change ‘write code’ to ‘create demo’

Now watch the video:

Drawing Dynamic Visualizations from Bret Victor on Vimeo.

And, here’s the problem in field enablement. Sales people are trying to externalize a story that articulates value. Field enablement gives 3 tools — long word documents, long powerpoints, and product demos. It’s as limiting to our story-telling as using excel, illustrator, or custom code to draw visualizations.

Salespeople need context and relationships to form meaning, to internalize the meaning so that they can connect authentically with customers and prospects. It’s just like the problem with math education in the video (within the video)… children are taught using symbolism that’s hardly used by the top 100 creative mathematic thinkers. Our sales people are taught using a symbolism that’s simply not practically useful.

Earlier this week I had to fax something (aren’t landlords hip?). Downloaded an app, and away I faxed.

The other day I saw some Captain Obvious at, I think Barclays, write something about how phones are replacing cameras (uh, Kodak fell off the planet years ago). So the topic of mobile phones replacing other things has been on my mind.

Here are all the things my phone has replaced (or prevented me from needing):

1. home phone
2. newspaper
3. alarm clock
4. wrist watch
5. auto GPS
6. pay phones
7. paper diary
8. camera
9. many books
10. heavy briefcase full of files
11. radio/iPod
12. video camera
13. audio recorder
14. fax machine
15. scanner
16. pocket subway maps, including for places I travel
17. bunch of membership cards, like Starbucks, United, and Marriott

Just think. Before smartphones there where whole economies around these things.

Anyone who dials a company is faced with a maddening tree of choices before finally getting where you need to go. I’m one of those who just hits 0 until I get a person, and while many systems prevent that, they don’t create a positive experience.

I mean, most of the companies I call… calling them is the only time I actually interact with them. Wouldn’t you think they’d want it to be a delightful experience?

How about this for a voice response system app? Let me open the app, pick the destination I want, and dial. Since it knows what I want, it can either automatically hit the right sequence of numbers, or just connect me to the right place directly. My call would be dramatically shorter (I check, it often takes 90 seconds just to get to where you want to be, at which point you enter the hold queue) and everyone would be much happier (people would no longer hit the first sequence that gets them through to a person).

What do you say? Can you please write this app. Not just for me, but for humanity.

In my opinion, it’s not even the thing that matters most for the modest individual investor.

Dividend performance and the resulting income you receive from your portfolio is a critical perspective to take as a long-term investor. Let me share an example.

The Wall Street Journal wrote an article yesterday comparing the stock market performance returns of Microsoft and Apple for the past 10 years. Had you invested $10,000 in each 10 years ago, you’d have about $13,000 in Microsoft today but $700,000 in Apple.

I saw the article late at night and tried to figure out which 10 year span they used to show the gain in Microsoft! I looked at Yahoo! Finance for a few dates in the last month, and compared to 10 years ago Microsoft’s stock price was quite close to even or slightly down.

But, the thought in my head wouldn’t go away.

That thought was to compare dividend performance of Apple and Microsoft over that same time period.

Since author Brett Arends didn’t tell us what dates he used, I’m going to do a quick “back-of-the-napkin” analysis that should be quite valid.

$13,000 of Microsoft stock at yesterday’s close of $26.95 would imply that we own about 482 shares. Let’s say 500 shares — notice I’m rounding UP.

$700,000 of Apple stock at yesterday’s close of $589.36 would imply that we own about 1,187 shares. Let’s say 1,150 — notice I’m rounding DOWN.

While at the time of the original purchase 10 years ago, neither company had a dividend, both pay dividends today. Microsoft paid some dividends in 2003 & 2004, and started regular payments in 2004. They also paid a $3.00 special dividend in 2004. Apple started a dividend this past August.

Had you made the purchases Brett describes you’d receive the following annual paychecks from your portfolio:

Microsoft’s dividend is $0.92 per year (per share). 500 shares of Microsoft would give you a paycheck from Microsoft of $443.44 per year.

Apple’s dividend is $10.60 per year (per share). 1,150 Apple shares would give you a paycheck from Apple of over $12,500! That’s right, you’d get 25% more than your original investment back EACH YEAR.

Let me say this differently. As of today, Microsoft is returning 4.4% as a dividend this year based on the original $10,000 investment. Apple is returning %125 on that same original investment (this year).

Heres’ a short quiz, just to make sure you’re following along:

Which is a better return 4.4% or 125%¹?

Next, let’s consider dividend increases. Apple has no history of doing so since this is their first year having a dividend (in a long time). Microsoft increased their dividend 15% in 2012 (compared to 2011). If they increase another 15% next year, our Microsoft shareholder would earn an addition $66.51 next year, pumping next year’s return to 5.1% on the initial investment.

As Apple shareholders, let’s hope/pray they increase their dividend just 5% compared to Microsoft’s 15% raise. That 5% increase gives our Apple shareholder an extra $625 in income next year (an increase more than the total Microsoft return). That’s a 131+% return on the original investment next year alone².

And, this whole “back-of-the-napkin” analysis doesn’t even account for the stock market performance impact on the overall portfolio. I mean, you’d have roughly $700,000 more Apple than you would Microsoft (see that, I made the whole value of the Microsoft purchase a rounding error compared to Apple’s value!)

I was going to actually build a table of all the Microsoft dividend payments since 2003 to compare the extra 9 years of dividend payments compared to Apple, but now realize I don’t even have to to prove my point. Even if we assume our Microsoft investor received $450/year³ from 2003–2011 they’d still have less than $5,550 in dividends total for the prior 9 years combined⁴. Notice that even according to Brett’s results, Microsoft’s stock market performance results were heavily disproportioned towards their dividend return, and not portfolio growth.

Make sense? I hope so, this is really important to you (if you care about your financial future, the financial safety of your family, or being responsible). Especially as a modest investor.

Of course, we have to consider the opposite position. One could argue that Apple is worse for investors because the fiscal cliff will cause Apple shareholders to have a way larger dividend tax increase than it will Microsoft shareholders⁵.

If you found this interesting, please connect to the Elephant’s Paycheck Blueprint using Twitter or Facebook (I prefer Facebook for now if it’s the same to you). In the couple of weeks or so, I’ll be releasing a sample portfolio that incorporates these ideas and a description of The Blueprint for people who are switching jobs and have a 401k rollover to invest.

(disclosure: long Apple)

1. 125%
2. I’ll leave the math of the fantasy of a 15% raise to you guys
3. The dividends started smaller and have grown over time, so they got much less in the earlier years with the exception of the $3/share special dividend in 2004.
4. $450/year for 9 years, plus about $1,500 in special dividend in 2004.
5. This is a joke.

Personally, I love to read. Love to stay on top of things. At the same time, I’m growing increasingly frustrated at sucky journalism. Looks like there’s a light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m going to do what I can to support it.

Just read the article.

As you might imagine from an opinionated loud-mouth (fast-typer?) like me, I’m blogging to help get this effort off the ground. In fact, I’m proud to see that my two posts have so far been the most popular!

You all might recognize one of the pieces, a piece on the opportunity in the enterprise integration space, as previously published here. There’s a second piece on Mobile First Integration that you should definitely check out too.

As a general rule, I’ll be posting Software AG related topics on Reality Check first and then copying them here when I can. I want a copy here so I can keep a portfolio of my own. I also want people to explore Reality Check and the best way to do that is to post the content there first. I’ll continue to post here on content not relevant or appropriate for the corporate blog.

Do me a favor & add my Reality Check RSS feed to your readers. I don’t think you can just subscribe to my posts via email, and I’m finding that because it’s a group blog you’ll get an email every day or so. If you don’t mind that, email subscription is available too.

Finally, to help us get things going, thoughtful comments (on Reality Check), trackbacks, and post sharing via Twitter & LinkedIn would be extra welcome in these early days.

So, I looked at his favorites. There were 3. All 3 were Software AG executives (if I may call myself that).

One copy/paste later, I was looking at his LinkedIn profile.

He’s been at a competitor for 12 years. Hmmm.

I sent him a connect, and wrote the following:

“I looked at your favorites on Twitter, and either you’re stalking Software AG… or interviewing with us.

Nice to meet you, and glad you liked my tweet.”

Update: Turns out he’s already joined us, but hasn’t updated his LinkedIn profile. I’m going to leave this post here as an example of how valuable social profiles are, and how they can be used (yes, there are a lot of people for whom this wouldn’t be obvious).

Just finished delivering a webinar. Went great. Someone commented that the audio was going in-and-out. I expressed my sympathy and explained that we had worked very hard to make sure everyone speaking was on a landline and off speaker/headset. She responded something like “I have very bad headphones and my neighbors are being noisy.”

Chalk another one up for “shared space” working, right?

Then it occurred to me why she was having a problem, and the solution is simple.

Her phone was probably cutting in and out because it was picking up the background noise and thinking she was talking. It would cut out the audio, then realize she wasn’t talking, and put it back in. I’m sure there’s a more technically accurate way of describing this (and I’m sure it depends on her phone system / mobile phone), but I’m convinced this was the source of the problems that only she was experiencing.

In any case, many people don’t think to mute their phone while on a webinar — it gets muted centrally. However, if your audio is cutting out, why not try muting your end? Your phone will stop trying to cut you in, and you shouldn’t experience the ins-and-outs.

Want another great phone tip? Here’s how to create meeting invites that makes joining conference calls painfully simple.

1. What else can this spirit of volunteerism accomplish?
2. Do we have to wait for another disaster to find out?