Chris Goward

I just received an email from Canada's Minister of Foreign Affairs, Maxime Bernier, and can say I'm proud of our response and its results.

Below is the government's response to my original email.

Dear Chris Goward:

The Office of the Right Honourable Stephen Harper, Prime Minister, has forwarded to me on November 19, 2007, your email concerning the decision of a court in Saudi Arabia to sentence a rape victim to 200 lashes and six months in jail for being alone in a car with a man who was not a relative. I regret the delay in replying to you.

The promotion and protection of human rights is an integral part of Canadian foreign policy. Canada stands up for human rights and takes principled positions on important issues to ensure that freedom, democracy, human rights and the rule of law, values that define this country, are enjoyed around the world.

The Canadian government is appalled by the Saudi court decision. However, we welcome the decision of King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, announced December 18, 2007, to act against this miscarriage of justice and pardon the victims. My colleague the Honourable Josée Verner, Minister of Canadian Heritage, Status of Women and Official Languages, spoke for the Government of Canada and, I believe, all Canadians when she stated in the House of Commons, on November 19, 2007, that "it defies belief that a woman who had been raped would be further violated by such a barbaric sentence." Canada has formally expressed its condemnation of the ruling to the appropriate Saudi authorities.

The Canadian government remains deeply concerned about the unsatisfactory human rights situation in Saudi Arabia, both in general and with respect to women's rights. Canada continues to call on Saudi Arabia to live up to its international obligations, including under the Convention against Torture and Other Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment and the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women. I can assure you that the Government of Canada takes every opportunity to make its views on human rights known to Saudi authorities and the international community, and will continue to do so.

I personally raised Canada's concerns about human rights in Saudi Arabia, including this specific case, when I met with Prince Saud Al-Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Saudi Arabia, in Riyadh on January 9, 2008.

Thank you for taking the time to write and share your views.

Sincerely,

Maxime Bernier
Minister of Foreign Affairs

Go Canada!

Now Saudi Arabia's king has pardoned the rape victim.

Good work, Canada!

It is possible for your voice to influence the government. Here's an example.

I was personally affected when I read the story about the rape victim in Saudi Arabia being sentenced to prison and 200 lashes. If you haven't read the story yet, please re-read that last sentence. Yes, it was the victim that was sentenced.

Continue reading "I wrote a letter to the government - and it worked!" »

Bruce Freedman has a great post picked up at One Degree about his strategy personal Google Adwords marketing strategy targeting a single person, in this case, Oprah.

Great use of Google's new Local Search, Bruce, that can be adapted to any large prospect that you know enough information about.

Jeremiah Owyang's Web Strategy blog is a great read, if you can keep up with him. He published multiple posts per day, after all, and they're all worth reading.

One of his recent entries explains a little about how he's so productive. “Pay yourself first” and “One thing leads to another” was an excellent reminder to me about the importance of doing the important things first.

As I commented back to him, it's too easy to let the urgent distract from the important.

All it takes is a little thought for a small business to do a better job at CRM than many of the big guys. Compare this with my latest experience buying a swing set at Toys 'R Us and the contrast couldn't be more stark.

There could still be some improvement to the letter:
- The intro paragraph is too long
- The "We value both our new and existing customers.." sentence seemed a bit like a collection letter and made me briefly think back to make sure I'd paid them
- They should get to the offer much faster, and by that I mean in the first paragraph or earlier (ie. offer box)

Notwithstanding these recommendations, it's an impressive effort from a five person operation.

Spock.com has Beta-released a search engine for people, similar to Zoominfo (which seems to be very well indexed in Google).

These may become more useful than "Googling" people, once it's got more data accumulated, since all of the data about a person will be linked.

Useful and a little scary too.

The first and only known Canadian company focusing exclusively on website conversion optimization launched recently.

Founded by myself and Raquel Hirsch, WiderFunnel delivers Conversion Optimization strategy and professional services to Sales, Marketing and eCommerce executives in companies with high traffic volumes who are dissatisfied with the results of their demand-generation investments.

This is also where I will be posting my most interesting blog postings going forward, like this one about Microsoft's landing page mistakes, so you'll want to head over to the WiderFunnel Blog and take a look.

I think Larry Page, Sergey Brin, David Filo and Jerry Yang would all disagree with Brian Armstrong when he says Never Take on Business Partnerships.

A business partnership can bring complementary skills and, if you organize yourself properly, will allow you to be exponentially more productive.

Chris Lee's comment is spot on. Brian, businesses without partnership obviously can work, but a partner that has a vested interested in the business will commit the energy that a consultant or advisor simply can't.

Chris
WiderFunnel
Squeezing more value from your web traffic.

If lawyers ruled the world.