Rhetoricia

Echo, Echo, Echo

2010-09-01T11:19:00.001-07:00

Who has time to manage all these channels separately? No one. So you choose a few and then, as Emily Dickinson would have you, "close the door." Leave the others alone. I'm sure the serene among us can do that, "Oh, I choose Facebook because that's where all my friends are..." But why must I do that? So ping and posterous and hootsuite are finding me easy prey -- integrate them all into one experience, they say. Oh, and then each of the channels starts to offer internal integration, and so on and so on.

Well, this is a long apology for the echo echo echo that I inadvertently create among all the channels when I lose track of which channel I cross linked among all the others. And it's a test -- I think this will only post once, but let's find out!

And here's my advice to people like me who want to find ways to make cross connections simpler -- take out your notebook or your iPhone when you cross link and WRITE IT DOWN. It's a lot easier to unravel if you have a scrap of documentation...

Posted via email from Knowledge Management Online

Most complicated promo ever

2010-08-18T12:20:00.001-07:00

Others who get this Best Buy promo page invite -- did you get invited here after clicking on Best Buy in Shopkick iphone app? Just curious. Also, are you ready to read the conditions of play? Wow. I don't think anyone with a full time job and a hobby can keep track of their standing against this offer...or maybe there's an automated updater that get sent to your email. Anyhow, it's clear that retailers have figured out that the gaming impulse may as well be used to their benefit, not just left laying around idle...

in reference to: Free $1,000 Best Buy Gift Card (view on Google Sidewiki)

Winky Dink and You - Back to the roots of interacting with the electronic crowd.

2010-07-30T13:27:00.001-07:00

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Winky Dink And You was a CBS television children's show that aired from 1953 to 1957, on Saturday mornings at 10:30 a.m./9:30 central. It was hosted by Jack Barry, and featured the exploits of a cartoon character named Winky Dink (voiced by Mae Questel) and his dog Woofer. The show, created by Harry Prichett, Sr. and Ed Wyckoff, featured Barry and his sidekick, the incompetent Mr. Bungle (Dayton Allen), introducing clips of Winky Dink, noted for his plaid pants, tousled hair, and large eyes.

Praised by Microsoft mogul Bill Gates as "the first interactive TV show," the show's central gimmick was the use of a "magic drawing screen", which was a large piece of vinyl plastic which stuck to the television screen via static electricity. A kit containing the screen and various Winky Dink crayons could be purchased for 50 cents. At a climactic scene in every Winky Dink short, Winky would arrive upon a scene which contained a connect the dots picture. He would then prompt the children at home to complete the picture, and the finished result would help him continue the story. Examples include drawing a bridge to cross a river, an axe to chop down a tree, or a cage to trap a dangerous lion. Many children would omit the Magic Screen and draw on the television screen itself, to the annoyance of their parents. Conversely, children would often forget to remove the screen, which would remain on the TV until someone realized the picture was not very bright and had a gray-green tinge.

Another use of the interactive screen was to decode messages. An image would be displayed, showing only the vertical lines of the letters of the secret message, which viewers at home would quickly trace onto their magic screen. A second image would then display the horizontal lines, completing the text.

A final use of the screen was to create the outline of a character with whom Jack Barry would have a conversation. It would seem meaningless to viewers without the screen, further encouraging its purchase.

The program was wildly successful because of its pioneering interactive marketing scheme, and Winky Dink became one of television's most popular characters of the 1950s. However, the show's production was halted despite its modest popularity due to concerns about radiation in television sets affecting children and because of parents' complaints about children drawing on the screen.

The show was revived in syndication for 65 episodes beginning in 1969 and ending in 1973. In the 1990s, a new "Winky Dink Kit" emerged on the market, containing a magic screen, crayons, and all-new digitized Winky Dink and You episodes.

[edit] External links

I Remember JFK: Winky Dink and You

Winky-Dink and You (1953) at the Internet Movie Database

Winky Dink and You (1969) at the Internet Movie Database

Retrieved from "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winky_Dink_and_You"

Categories: CBS network shows | American children's television series | Television series by Barry & Enright Productions | 1953 television series debuts | 1957 television series endings | 1969 television series debuts | 1973 television series endings | Television series with missing episodes

via en.wikipedia.org

I'm working on mobile applications and mobile interfaces for standard applications now, and it's started a new part of my brain fizzing into connections with very interesting material. Interesting to me, anyway...

I was thinking about the history of interaction (or perhaps my history of interaction) and Winky Dink returned to me with a thump. Interaction is a concept, not a technology, and Winky Dink proved it. I probably remember it so vividly because I got quite a thump when my Dad saw my crayon drawing of a ladder on the TV set screen. Memorable. Maybe even PTSD memorable...I awake screaming from Star-Headed Alien nightmares...not really.

There are so few barriers to possibility in this new mobile universe (except for the 64x960 screen size). I'm reflecting on how very limiting technology capabilities have been on the ideas that we execute -- especially within a big corporate infrastructure. And shouldn't we be teaching classes on how constraining in-place corporate infrastructure can be in university CSEE programs? -- otherwise you only learn about it as your heart breaks professionally.

But mobile puts me outside of this pale -- I step away from the millstone. It also puts a lot more pressure on actual Web Services (documented and packaged, not just sketched and then embedded in a single use, or is that just us?).

But there is such freedom in this moment. Back to Winky Dink and the faceless millions who might be persuaded to draw the ladder on the screen. I think also of the cell phone symphonies. What can we do together across these devices? Wow.

Most things, the deeper you get into the minutia, the more mundane the affect, the more prosaic the whole thing becomes, but this is having the opposite effect on me. Even the nay-saying that comes from FUD doesn't extinguish the excitement. Wow.

Posted via email from Knowledge Management Online

State Farm acting on Allstate agent angst - Chicago Tribune

2010-07-22T12:08:00.001-07:00

The memo said State Farm is offering agents near Allstate office closings a "50 percent co-op" reimbursement on certain print, radio and billboard ads appealing to prospective customers who like being represented by an agent.
So if a State Farm agent located near an affected Allstate agency spends $1,000 in approved advertising, State Farm will reimburse them $500 of the expense.
"Who can blame State Farm or any other insurer for taking advantage of Allstate's misstep?" said Jim Fish, executive director of the National Association of Professional Allstate Agents.
He said State Farm's move is occurring as Allstate seems to be reconsidering its agency cuts.
Allstate recently announced plans to seek new agency owners in a number of states, including more than 290 for Oklahoma, Nevada, Texas, Missouri and Colorado.
"The problem is that they have alienated the agency force and are frantically trying to stem the bleeding by attempting to hire replacement agents for those who are departing," Fish said.
In an e-mailed statement, Allstate said its goal is to increase the number of offices in local communities.
"We're doing that, in part, by continuing to actively recruit new agency owners to ensure we maintain a strong local presence and provide our customers the superior service they deserve," the company said.
New deals: The pace of deals to buy banks, not just ones that have been seized by the government, will likely pick up in the next 12 to 18 months, according to Keefe Bruyette Woods.
The investment bank said market fragmentation — the Chicago area is the most fragmented banking market among the 10 biggest cities — and management age will fuel some deals.
Also, the banking industry's recovery is likely to be "slow and arduous," with "higher capital requirements likely to spark conversations by bank managements about whether to maintain independence," the report said.
Potential buyers include PNC, FirstMerit and U.S. Bank.
"Potential buyers who could become sellers," or banks that will make acquisitions in the short term but eventually could be bought by larger institutions that like their franchise value, include Itasca-based First Midwest and Chicago-based MB Financial, the report said.
Contact Becky Yerak at byerak@tribune.com or 312-222-4283, and follow her at twitter.com/beckyyerak

via articles.chicagotribune.com

When will these strategies start to include locally oriented online advertising options as well? Facebook local ads, Linkedin Local ads, Civic website banner ads, Google AdWords pointed at specific geo-tags? It's odd to me that the "online" marketing economy continues to run separately and not even very much in parallel with traditional media. With tools like "Scanlife" offering device integration for print ads and printed documents and links to websites, landing pages, ads, offers, coupons, Whatever, I just don't see the barrier to integrating the two types of campaigns. My purse is smaller -- it holds my iPhone. If Delta can manage an iPhone boarding pass, surely our enormous insurance companies can start to absorb the fact that news comes in through the mobile screen, so ad strategies should follow them there...Hey, State Farm -- Give me a call: we can chat.

Posted via email from Knowledge Management Online

Your Ticket to the Mobile Shakedown Cruise: Sites vs. Apps

2010-03-23T10:56:00.001-07:00

Stop obsessing about apps, go back to optimizing sites for mobile -- Google message, repeated at DEMO yesterday. Here's what I say to that -- OKAY, let's do that. It's less expensive, it's inevitable, and it is really no different from packaging the "whateveritis" for delivery as a mobile app -- whoops, we seem to have come full circle. I think it's all the same thing, when you apply the advice to the actual real world.

Looking out at my domain of content and interactions available to handling in either way, every single one that I see would start with the same ten tasks, whether aiming at app or access. Here again is another example of the developers of demos and the visionaries creating philosophical discussions that are not very useful for those of us standing in the trench next to the broken pipe.

It's all esoteric development skill sets and it looks like there's a lot of overlap, if you look for it and plan for it. In the real world, I'd rather not choose between them -- I'd rather build the new presentation skin for all this legacy "whateveritis" using the techniques that optimize a platform-straddling stance. I need it available to both as the debate boils on.

It's under the skin that the work needs to be done -- a mobile app, a mobile access are all looking for a clarity of UI that I still need to develop. I'd better get us started on that.

You guys can keep arguing about apps vs. sites. We have a business to run.

Posted via web from Knowledge Management Online

Managing channels is sooo much easier than managing knowledge: very tempting distraction

2010-03-22T19:15:00.001-07:00

People usually ask for the channel, and hope the strategy comes along with it. "We need a Facebook page," is a great example -- It's sincere, but not as descriptive as it may sound. Last time I faced "We need a Facebook page," it turned out that maybe a mobile app would fill the need instead.

The culprit here is our collective feeling that "this stuff" cannot be fully understood, that the ordinary rules of business somehow don't apply...but that's nonsense. Of course they apply. It doesn't matter if you call the online service "spitwad" or "curlylocks" --- it's all still subject to the same rules of business that all the in-place decision-makers should find familiar. There's a customer with money and there's a company with something to sell. "This stuff" tends to remove the barriers between them, but the basic moves are the same.

It's time to get those iron-jawed executives back to their "show me" position -- or you are going to have a mess on your hands.

First basic move: Unless it moves you towards your objective, don't waste time on it. Don't rush into a channel before connect it up with how it's going to add value to your business. It doesn't need to be analyzed to death, but you do need to have a purpose in mind, or else you'll just flail around. And you might get hurt. No one would mount even a small ad campaign without a creative brief -- follow the same model for social media.

Second basic move: Use your objective to trim down your scope of effort. This is a massive, seductive world: it's training on the hoof, hot and cold running knowledge management on demand, business associates reaching out to -- well, to sell to you, also. Keep your focus on your purpose as you design your use of these channels. For instance, I increasingly find I don't need a blog in the mix, when the actual objectives are examined. You might be best served via Twitter by itself (are you fly-fishing for topical interest? Poke a tweet out there every other hour; keep it moving), or a Facebook page by itself (does your content stay still and wait for be found? You might focus your effort on a Facebook page and Adwords) -- Hoard your energy reserves, trim your channel use according to the campaign.

Third basic move: Call it a campaign, and pull all the channels under the campaign. Keep the scope under control, but don't miss out on the power of using the same effort to feed multiple channels in different ways. Be expansive as you design your campaign, but then be hardnosed in chosing which elements to use. Put the metrics under the campaign -- measure what will show progress towards the campaign's objectives, and nothing else. (or keep that distracting stuff for your own late-night examination).

Fourth basic move: Communicate and reinforce your campaign-oriented approach to social media amongst all your stakeholders. Once you've got this approach moving along, crush all directionless channel usage -- or slap a "pilot" label on it asap and set an end date by which the business objectives must have been documented. I pine for an R&D area, but the real moves are out in the real world where there are real risks and real costs, so a minimal justification for the company's use of the channel is not unreasonable. Use eager employees as trial balloons, but don't attach your logo to anything that's not under the banner of a campaign.

Maybe crush is too harsh a term. The employees who can help you best with these new channels are those with experience using them. Here's a caution, however -- personal use of these channels has a different weight of consequence than use by a company, however, and these employees are going to need to retrain their sense of what is "okay" -- until they do, best to make sure what's done is done for a reason, just to minimize stupid and unnecessary mistakes -- the stuff on the Fail Blog, You Tube, Facebook Page takeovers, Twitter dustups, unexpected impact on bottom line (Yikes!)

Posted via email from Knowledge Management Online

Crowdsourcing the Reputation Economy

2010-03-22T13:58:00.001-07:00

People buy things because other people recommend them. Seems like the DEMO sessions have suddenly noticed Amazon sitting over there looking well fed. Straighten, shorten, and grease the pipeline of opinion connecting up the dollars and the object -- set up a sturdy margin- catcher underneath the pipe (gravity will pull down a percentage if you set it up right) and watch closely for competitors .... Make it easy, fun, and stand back.

Posted via email from Knowledge Management Online

2010-03-02T17:06:00.001-08:00

I found Ping again! I'm using it again. But after this one, that's all for today.

People helping people with phone trees

2010-02-03T22:38:00.000-08:00

Financial Services - Insurance Customer service information, phone numbers and contact details

Gander the link above -- my jaw dropped as my paradigm shifted. Yes! Customer service contact info belongs to the people, not the actual line owners -- here's the blossoming of the crowd moving through the three stages of Friendship in one fell swoop.

Didn't know there were three stages? Aristotle wrote about it pretty clearly in books 8 and 9 and I guess 10 of the Nichomachean Ethics.

I am finding that almost everything he wrote about the nature, source, and behavior of friendship beautifully cross-applies to the better class of social media. Now really, put down that "Art of War" and consider these rules laid down by a contemporary of that author --rules not of conflict but of attachment and affinity. How can you argue with such ideas? 1. Goodwill (not friendship, but the start of friendship) 2. Concord (not 100% agreement, but a general alignment of views), and 2. Benificence (You are bettered by the friendship).

And here we have a case of a site that races through all three, even when a stranger approaches. First, Goodwill is demonstrated by the fact that the message, the layout, the design, and the visual style of the site are all effective at separating the site from the "corporate" entities that have such support desks -- it's Them, not Us (and the visitor is included in Us). Second, Concord is achieved by that lightbulb of alignment that snaps on as soon as you realize the purpose of the site -- how to find a person to talk to in a corporate entity for help with the corporate -- thing, product, service, relationship. This point of view -- I need to find a person -- is so universal that I don't think we need go any further to find concordance. Third, my goodness, follow the links -- they actually have the numbers and the advice. I wonder if this is an iPhone app yet...by god, it will be.

I ran across it while I was working with the marvelous tool Google Squared -- it's a smart mashup tool that takes all the content on the web simmering in its context as its data source. If you know your stuff, you can steer it gently and it's a powerhouse resource. But in looking for missing info, I ran across this lovely little illustration of ancient Greek philosophy.

Social Media and Microblogging for Those WITHIN the Corporation

2010-01-17T10:15:00.000-08:00

Just an alert that I'm immersed in the options relating to this topic --mostly popping up in my Twitter feed, which must be a giant yawn for people reading my tweets for coffeeshop and family news. Sorry, guys -- it's my handy dandy notetaker. Speaking of which, I'm needing to refresher ma (mon? I HATE the gendrifrication of helpless nouns...) francais to comprenner les posts du Yoolink. Argh. Clearly, les cool jaunes de Paris ne encounter jamais YooHoo, the chocolately beverage that sickens as it sweetens. or maybe it's a press plea: You'll Ink, dammit...enough of that...Quando te habra dolido accustombrarte a mi (as they say in the labs of YooHoo.) Basta!

But here's the real-eo deal-eo. What's really being asked for here is a secure WAVE. It's a convergence of business case: we have the leaders laudably wishing to share their leadership thoughts on an ongoing and ongoing and interesting basis. Leadership by electronically wandering around. (Like the poor, the one-minute manager will always be with us, no?) We have a "communications culture" business objective looming intagibly above -- these two together create a call-and-respond model for the executive microblog. Like 80% more call than respond, but still...man up, you guys -- respond! or not: it's an **ahem** job market.

But how can the leaders talk openly via the cloud? How can their followers justify time away from the smoking griddle of revenue of email inbox? Well, these are the underlying requirements. How do we collect all the yammer yammer with the dollar signs of communication channels that actually support revenue generation? It's an integration issue because we actually only have limited attention and our networks have even more limited bandwidth. So the message options need to be integrated within the desktop. Also, we have limited resources on the valuable content creation front -- so it would be best all around if we could have message options integrated with respect to role-oriented online platforms...tricky, but best.

So...Here's where the lovely ESME comes in. I see that Google Wavers have integrated ESME -- though it looks recent -- seems like maybe someone said, "Wait, there's an open source messaging standard that supports Twitter and Wave isn't set up to make use of that?" Then someone else says, "H'm, that MAY be evil, I dunno." So there it went. I'm asking Microsoft about their ESME intentions...but know nothing yet except that it's DISCUSSED all over the place, but more as if Sharepoint is able to submit to the integration than than Sharepoint is participating in it...closing her eyes and thinking of England, so to speak.

If Corporate Amerika weren't allergic to free stuff, I see I can use Drupal and/or Joomla to build a tidy little microblog module that we could house internally. Why is life so complicated?

The concept is released to the users, however, so it's a matter of steering the sled at this point. If you can help me with any of this, I am all ears (interesting picture of star-ward facing array of dish receivers...)-- no, still mostly mouth, but some ear activity is promised on this topic....

Love,
Abby

Slacker Mom

2009-11-29T00:15:00.000-08:00

OOOkay. I TRY to be a good IT department to my children. It's like finding worms for Robins or something. But OKAY I failed with daughter one, Alison. Her Dell Latitude (gift from Dad's business) faltered and fell today. I could not catch up on the un-caught virus definitions. and the Microsoft updates. I took hold of her computer and learned of -- 8 months of unupdated virus definitions -- and six months of unupdated windows security system updates. The two convocated and crashed the system, robust enough for business six mos ago, but now, just meat for careless frosh riots. She must learn to accept and allow for updates. Strangers poking changes into her agenda. Enable updates, oh, my love. I cannot help you through the chaos of life.

Women, Corporate Hierarchy, Authority and Influence

2009-10-19T05:38:00.001-07:00

It's been an interesting fortnight for me re: job-related insights. I'm writing today about a flash of interconnectedness that I experienced while reading this excellent article: Talent Management - It's a Man's World. Read it all. I don't know if this mag is on your Google Reader, but I recommend it for unvarnished insights into, well, Talent Management.

Last week, my boss insisted that our whole group read an HBR paper on Self-Directed Teams, specifically focused on Gore-Tex. I read the paper with attention and wrote him a note that pointed out that what might seem radical in the context of an insurance company is not uncommon in a partnership or a playground. Or a woman-owned business (Though I confess I did not say that last one.)

I used to be in charge of a company, so I have a lot of confidence about my business methods, work processes. I know I get things done. I've hired and partnered with people, men, who have very different work methods, and I respect those methods as they respected mine. But they're not the same. And our company was stronger because it included both styles.

"How are you at influence management?" was the first question in my first interview here ten years ago, and I went home and told my husband that it looked like I'd be having responsibility without authority.

I accomplish a great deal, even here. And I do it through an informal network of people (now that I think about it, mostly women and broad-minded men). who get things done. Frenemies. Associates. Emotional bank account customers. We bitch about the injustice of it all, the cage of hierarchy, but we can leverage it because the people who don't participate in this type of working method have no idea what's going on with it. They can't see what you're doing. I'm often told I need to communicate about what I'm going more, yet it does seem like everyone already knows what I'm doing. So what is meant here? Create more powerpoints?

No, I don't want to communicate more into channels that will shut me down. I need to choose who knows what I'm doing. I steal labor to get things done -- maybe I should be stopped.

I used to consult for these companies -- I always wondered why they suffered such "just do it" blockages. Now I understand it all so much better.

When I came to my first year-end, I was told to write up my performance against my goals. I said, "What goals?" and my colleague looked aghast -- "shame on you for not having goals!" he said (He actually said that. I'm very fond of him, even now). I know he knew about my accomplishments over that year, but apparently, those didn't matter as much as the matching of them with the previously approved goals. Of course, that makes a lot of sense -- but it doesn't diminish the accomplishments. Well, apparently it does. What did they think I did? Tripped over my successes? Found them in the woods?

Women who do get stripes, well, that's a whole other interesting story. When I was in communications, I was several times sent to newly promoted female vice presidents (well, twice, but that's a big percentage of the times it happened, like 100%) to provide executive coaching in communications. With both, I said, "I don't know how you did it, but my communications advice is this -- keep it up." In both cases, I was given private instructions by HR to help them "soften their edge," or some such odd instruction that looked like, "Tell them not to be so bitchy." I told them that I had been asked to pass the message along and then we would spend the next hour talking about communications situations and laughing. It's a whole other world, guys.

When readership of our Company Newsletter fell off, the editor asked me to write a sassy anonymous column to attract readers. I wrote about the things we're not supposed to talk about, like how limiting it is to have to work with nice but ineffective people, providing advice as to how to do it without damaging your deliverables. How to sidestep time-wasting meetings, etc. etc. There was always a lot to write about (see the tag "Raven Maven" for some samples). Here's the thing -- I was writing about the other work universe, the influence side -- saying what anyone who accomplishes things without stripes already knows. Oh, and it infuriated some top executives -- they would call the VP of the organization that published the newsletter -- at his home, late at night, after reading the latest column and insist that all copies of the newsletters be rounded up and destroyed. Huge passion. There were three guys in particular who bullied him to cut it out. However, the column succeeded at its objectives and he got more credit for that than the late-night apoplexy cases could cause him damage. Mostly because they couldn't quite explain what was wrong with the point of view of the column. It just made them mad.

"Need to know" orientated people really freak out when you toss around "maybe's" -- I've learned to see the signs in a meeting and to stop as soon as I see it. These people get so uncomfortable -- they see the hideous risks, they are sure that you intend to start in on this big scary idea right away, they start scrambling to create distance, seeing a disaster looming. I get labeled as someone who creates unnecessary complexity, and I think it's mostly because I like to talk through a lot of possibilities before we make a final decision and get started. A lot of people like this approach, but others, not so much. And since the environment supports their point of view and not mine, it's really unlikely that they'll ever see the value of the discussion. So okay. I keep my mouth shut around them.

My husband hates it when we run into colleagues because they always seem to say something like, "I really like working with Abby -- she's always so honest, she always says what she's thinking, she doesn't hesitate to do what she knows is right." and he's terrified. I sound like an idiot savant, a holy fool. And I have to spend the rest of the weekend assuring him that I'm not actively trying to get fired.

Oh, and I love the stuff that says that women don't get raises and promotions because they don't ask for them. I ask you. A womanly orientation to work would find out what the answer was going to be before spending the emotional capital in asking. So maybe they don't ask because they know the answer will be "No" rather than the other way around. I certainly ask a lot and I've never heard anything but "No." But I do it to tease, I'm afraid. I've made my peace with it. I tell my boss that the situation offers great scope for spiritual growth. But really, women doesn't get promoted as much because they'll still get the work done without the authority -- and everyone knows this, even if it's not conscious knowledge. The company would be fiscally irresponsible to pay more money for labor when it didn't have to. But really, it isn't fair. And I do think and know that women leave the workforce or suffer anguish or anger because of it. It costs. It just doesn't cost the company.

I encourage all high-performing women to look into Buddhism. It really helps ease the sting.

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Logocloud Polle de Maagt

2009-10-12T08:46:00.001-07:00

Logocloud Polle de Maagt,
originally uploaded by Café del Marketing.

A great Commons image resource when you're explaining the absolute necessity of developing an integrated strategy for social media commercial use...

2009-09-04T13:10:00.001-07:00

Duh! We need an XML sitemap! (http://ping.fm/mzbu0)

2009-09-04T13:08:00.001-07:00

Website Analyzer -- Simple and smart (http://ping.fm/8QSPm)

2009-09-04T12:29:00.001-07:00

Upload & Share PowerPoint presentations and documents (http://ping.fm/jx2uV)

2009-09-03T19:47:00.001-07:00

I am summoned home. The one child has a toothache, the other is melting on her homework and my husband has lost his sense of fun

2009-09-03T19:15:00.001-07:00

I'm blocked from TweetDeck, but maybe this ping thing will do the same for me...

2009-09-03T19:13:00.001-07:00

Okay, so here's ping on AlertThingy

2009-09-03T19:11:00.001-07:00

Whoa. Trying out ping on air. This is breaking down the walls...

Social Media for the Enterprise

2009-06-10T08:24:00.000-07:00

Well, it's been a lot of fun poking around and gathering info and thinking my thoughts, but now it's time to deliver. Below I draft a white paper on the implications of Social Media for the Enterprise. You won't get to see the final version here.

Social Media has changed the nature of the conversation a company has with its constituents. All of them. Even people who do not, will never use a social media tool or site have new and different expectations of their interactions with any commercial enterprise. People expect to be listened to, treated with respect as individuals, and they have a positive expectation that the commercial interaction will be easy for them -- both easy to do and easy to understand, and also, easy to ask for help when the expectation of ease of use is not met.

As a B to B enterprise, we have delegated sales conversations to our distribution partners, so the sales face of Social Media is not our concern (though we'd miss an opportunity if we did not help our distribution channel understand the power of promotion through Social Media.) This discussion concerns itself with the impact of Social Media on:

Communication and messaging
Brand value, risks and rewards
Reputation risk and the power of recommendations

First, some definitions. Social Media is the collection of tools and sites and resources that enable online conversations, and increasingly support the intertwining of these conversations across different platforms. Social media may be open to the world, restricted by password, limited to those admitted, limited within a company's intranet, or limited to those the author chooses to address.

It is a mistake to assume that Social Media is necessarily public. There is great power in a limited, selective community, and the impact of conversations within such a group is intensified. A company's intranet news site is social media of a sort, and if it supports reader comments and responses, it is a true social site.

For Social Media, the key attribute that must be present is that the message communicated offers a way for the reader or listener to respond. If the possibility of conversation is not offered, the medium is publishing, not social. In the past few years, many new ways to publish messages widely are available to individuals and companies, and in the midst of message overload, it's the messages that allow a response that turn out to be the most engaging. The same message is measurably more interesting if it comes along with published comments and responses. The value of comment is widely recognized: news sites offer news articles ranked by number of comments, for instance.

It would be an empty exercise to try to catalogue all Social Media sites -- new tools and sites are introduced daily. What is useful, however, is to identify the categories of social media options. These different categories are useful to companies in different ways. As you review these categories, keep in mind that the messaging ecology that we live and work in has already been irrevocably changed by Social Media concepts. Our company messages live in the Social Media world -- we can ignore the impact of widely published comments, but we can't prevent it. We must incorporate the intellegent use of these resources into our planning whether we want to or not.

Categories of Social Media

This is June of 2009 and at any time a new category will emerge and catch on fire, first because of novelty and it may hang on beyond novelty because it is a great extention of the concept of Social Media. Google's concept introduction of Wave this month underscores the current big movement, which is the consolidation, merger, and general entangling of one category with another. We are moving towards a generally integrated suite of Social Media options. Now, however, these categories can be handled separately.

Blogs

This category is one of the earliest types of social media (we're passing quickly by the prehistory of news groups, bulletin boards, and email).

The word blog is a concatenation of "web log." The format of a blog is always serial posting, with the most recent shown first. All postings ever made in a blog are generally maintained for review in an annual archive. It is useful to think of a blog as a long, long scroll.

Blogs enable reader comments and blogger's responses to comments. This feature can be turned off, but doing so is contrary to the reader's expectations.

Entries are "tagged" with keywords so that related topics can be assembled together easily.

The blog is based on a person's voice and usually a person's profile. The messages published are personal opinions or expressions of personal expertise. "Company blogs" will be regarded as just another format of company web page unless the messages are coming from an individual (photo preferred) with a conversational tone. It goes without saying that the caution called for in the spokesperson role pulls against and undermines the interesting aspects of a blog. While company executives and company experts can publish successful blogs, the company's media group will need to remain always alert to the potential exposures and backlash of this personal style in a commercial world.

The quality of a blog (not the content, but the blog as communication channel) is measured by the number of followers (those who subscribe to new posts), the traffic to the blog, the duration of the blog, and the reliability of the cycle of new posts. High traffic blogs are celebrated by blog aggregator sites and search engines. Blogs may or may not be interesting because of the community of commenters -- some are, some aren't.

Blog software is free. Anyone can blog. Blogs can be secured to a limited group or they can be public. Middle school students are now submitting their homework to their teachers on their school-sponsored blogs. The number of blogs active at any given time is astounding.

Comments on sites where articles are published are also very popular. Several industry studies have concluded that of a total audience for most sites that offer commenting, about 20% will comment, while about 80% will read at least some of the comments. Interestingly, older people are more likely to comment. These findings were reported in 2007 and 2008, so they may be obsolete, but it is important to remember that there are readers and there are participants and they are not the same group of visitors.

My Page-centric Sites

MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn are the early trinity of these types of sites. These resources offer a way to present yourself to the world (or the world you've identified as "your friends"). These sites flourish on new features. How many new things can you add to a page? Facebook applications are numberless and always increasing. And they don't always work very well. This community is very accepting of bad code -- it's free, after all. The world is anti-polish in all ways. Postings use poor grammar, photos are blurry, value is found in volume and activity, not in the worth of the content.

It's established that a person gets a jolt of Seritonin when they see a reply to their message -- a letter in the mailbox, a comment on their blog. These sites are Seratonin pumping machines. The typical user motivation is exactly the same seen in early IM users who would have tens of IM sessions running at once. People of all ages spend hours on these sites, enjoying themselves greatly. Traffic watchers note that working hours are secondary peak hours for these sites. (This is an important trend to understand for employee communications.)

The flexibility of these free channels has attracted other uses as well, however. "The Facebook Era" by Clara Shin, who brings a sales conversation perspective to the use of Facebook resources, is an excellent summary of these commercial uses.

Linked In is a little different from Facebook and MySpace, which are primarily frothy social sites where one communicates with friends (though as noted above, Facebook is increasingly used for commercial conversations.) Linked In serves as a sort of online rolodex and white page directory for individuals in business. It's an incredibly convenient resource to consult or publish on in order to aquaint yourself with a new colleague without having to interact with him or her. Linked In has also been developing features that enable communities to share questions and answers and to vote on the quality of answers from an individual.

LinkedIn participation depends on the trading of "recommendations" among members. This is specifically prohibited by our current company policy.

There are many other sites like these, with a user profile or page at the center of a conversation. Friendster was an early success and is still with us. For youngsters, Club Penguin is popular -- where you need not even use words to communicate: for those too young to write, the interface offers a slate of emoticons for your avatar penguin to share [(:o) ]. (See also Avatars and Virtual Worlds) There are at least 100 different sites that offer this type of interaction.

Communities and Groups

Similar to these sites, online communities differ by focusing attention on the discussion or the content, rather than the profile or page of the user. The primary interface is a screenful of give and take. Weight Watchers offers online members access to a robust community -- or, as is the way with these resources, a series of communities, all focused on a very specific topic. The most useful interactions are specific and the tone of these discussions reflects that drive to specifics.

One key value of Communities is the fact that the members will refine and evolve the structure of the site, and it's extremely important for the administrator to allow this to happen. Beyond not getting in the way of new sections, the administrator needs to actively participate in calving off discussion threads that have wandered into a new, specific topic, and setting it up as a new section of the community -- otherwise people looking for the topic won't find it.

The consequence of this evolution is that communities and groups always look messy and under-maintained. Some groups are waxing and others are waning. Groups should be left up for a while before they're shut down as "unused". The welcome screens are full of messages about what has been moved where. If presentation polish is needed, the standard issue community is not a good solution.

The positive side of this ferment is that the users of an active community will generate the "right" topics and labels for the topics -- and they will be far more useful than the most brilliant marketer could have dreamed up on their own. For instance, in the Weight Watchers community, the most successful division of postings turns out to be not who lives in your area (which Weight Watchers had assumed), but how much weight do you need to lose: 10 lbs, 20, over 100? These labels had the most value for the community users.

Most successful communities are for limited audiences -- limits can be established by password security or membership (sometimes paid) or simply by affinity and level of interest. You're not likely to visit a scrapbooking community unless you own a pair of pinking shears (BTW[by the way] Scrapbooking products and services represented a $2 billion industry in 2006, and scrapbookers are served by a multitude of online communities).

Our target customers are members of online communities. We need to find them so we can help our distribution partners speak to them -- either through ads or through content.

Microblogs (Twitter)

Twitter and Yammer are microblogs. Twitter is an incredibly valuable and successful communication and publishing channel. By opening a free account, you can share comments limited to 140 characters (aka Tweets). There are millions of Twitterers now and although we are probably in the middle of a plain, old-fashioned media-fueled bump of popularity, Twitter's commercial value is secure. Many professionals are using Twitter communications for an astonishing array of specific professional purposes. It seems that 140 characters is all that's needed or wanted. Note that you can also include a url to a much longer message or resource in your small tweet. You can also tweet pictures, audio files, video files, and GPS coordinates.

TweetBeep is a service that searches the Twittersphere for keywords, and it is a must-have for any media group concerned about a company's reputation. At a minimum, Twitter comments that will affect reputation should be responded to.

In addition, unbeknownst to HR, a company's employees may be twittering away and releasing proprietary or regulated information that could harm the company, or damage its reputation. Our Supply Management group, for instance, TweetBeeps any vendor under consideration to get a feeling for the way their employees and customers discuss their performance.

The foundation of Twitter is the concept of following -- one decides to follow interesting twitterers so you can read their ongoingly interesting tweets. You need to find people to follow them, which is one reason for the proliferations of twitter addresses on presentation title slides (looks like this: "@abbyshaw") -- by providing your twitter address, you invite people to follow you. Once you have their address, you can find their Twitter account either by searching or by entering "www.twitter.com/abbyshaw"which allows you to view the tweetstream without requiring that you register for a Twitter account.

Twitter is a universe of opportunity and risk all by itself.

Bookmarking Services

Some smart person was looking at their browser bookmarks one day and said to themself one of these two things. Either "Gee, I wish I could see all my bookmarks from any of my computers" or "Gee, what great bookmarks these are, I wish I could share them all with my friends. I wonder what their bookmarks are..." Services like Delicious (with periods scattered through the name) are free bookmarketing services that offer both of these wishes. There are at least 20 others -- you can find many of them by checking out the links offered when you see the option "Share" on an online article. You can publish, tag, annotate your bookmarks as you wander around the web and you can share them with the public or with people you choose.

IBM created a version of this tool for internal company audiences, originally engagingly called "Dog-ear." It was IBM's first wildly successful internal social media service. Everyone wanted to know what everyone else was bookmarking.

Bookmarking has not yet reached its full potential. If you combine the power of shared bookmarks with the the finding power of tags, you have a very inexpensive, lightweight, flexible solution to many of our hardest knowledge management puzzles. (Much of Twitter's success is due to its usefulness in sharing links to interesting things, for instance.)

The value of an expert's accumulation of useful bookmarks is easy to see. One service that offers a different value is "StumbleUpon" which presents interesting things more randomly. On the input side, StumbleUpon is much like other bookmarking services: you link an interesting site to your StumbleUpon button, you offer a description of the site and some tags. You can see later a linear list of all your marked sites. The other side of StumbleUpon is as a browsing user. You can choose to push the Stumble button at any time, and the service presents you with one of the sites marked by others. You can create settings that narrow your Stumbles to specific topics, or you can just leave it wide open to any random thing that someone else has admired. It is a wonderful way to shake off a mindset -- you're presented with sites you would never have found on your own. You can give the site a thumbs up or a thumbs down, and StumbleUpon does learn what types of sites you prefer and starts to lean its selections towards your preferences.

The same concept around online music can be seen in LastFM, where whatever you've played on your computer can be subscribed to by another user as "Abbyshaw's Station." It's a wonderful way to develop your musical education in the hands of another person's sensibilities.

As with all of these Social Media services, the buyer must beware -- you really don't know if the person you think you're dealing with is in fact that person. Unknown to me, a work colleague of mine was following my station on LastFM, but what they didn't know is that my teenaged daughter (who is very fond of cutting edge music) shared my computer when she did her homework. He had the entirely incorrect impression that I was deeply knowledgeable about the club scene. It took a few "huh's?" over a few months before we figured out what had happened. So beware.

Wikis

Wikipedia is the grand-daddy of all public wikis, though they're proliferating in specific subject matter areas as well. A wiki is an excellent tool for the proper purpose.

The name wiki comes from the polynesian word for "quick," and it's named for the speed with which the tool allows a group to collectively review, edit, and publish content. A wiki includes user accounts and contribution/editing permissions granted by the wiki's administrator(s). Once authorized, any number of contributors can add or modify content on the multi-page wiki. A wiki tracks the trail of content revisions for later review. And enables the easy rollback of unapproved additions or edits.

Wiki's are also characterized by an organizing taxonomy -- in order for multiple contributors to contribute to the same site, the structure of the site must be carefully managed -- where an item ought to go should be as clear as possible to everyone contributing to the site. You'll see many outline-like attributes to a wiki's presentation.

Our Domino Content Management System (DCMS) tool enabled us to create a large scale wiki seven years ago: Our intranet and our distributed publishing model are examples of a wiki. It's useful to note that the issue most often raised around our intranet is the need for a firmer enforcement of structure (and taxonomy).

Another name for the wiki publishing process is "collaboration" and that's the space where companies should look at wiki's for internal use. A wiki is also an excellent way to share expertise in an open way -- more sharing and inclusive than simple publishing, for instance. Errors can be spotted and marked right away with a wiki model.

Wikis create value through publishing, not through commenting. If commentary is a large part of the value of a idea, a wiki is not the right platform.

Shared media

YouTube, Flickr, PhotoBucket, Shutterfly, and so on all provide free services that allow people and companies to store and share their media assets. And, of course, comment on others' pictures and videos. These sites offer public accounts, closed accounts, community accounts (also called "groups"). You can share some images with some people and others with others. Many sites offer users the option of embedding media streams (or "channels") into other social media, such as one's blog or one's Facebook page. Shared media sites offer many ways of embedding the media somewhere else. These sites are evolving into repositories for other types of social media, rather than standalone sites (though there are always exceptions).

Internet television (such as Joost or CurrentTV) also offers accounts and comment/recommendation capabilities. It is likely (if it hasn't already happened) that an internet TV channel will offer to host a personal and private channel for videos as well, merging the two platforms.

Avatars and virtual worlds

An avatar is a representation that you interact through. In Club Penguin (a social networking site for small children, which charges parents' credit cards $5 per month), the avatars are identical looking penguins who differ only by the name hanging over their heads or by the garments and accessories the players earn. Other avatars, such as those in Second Life, can be constructed of offered body parts or completely created from scratch, if you have the skill. Second Life is worth visiting just to see these custom avatars and the objects created by these skillful players.

Avatars are finding their place in the commercial world, but adoption has been slow, probably because the concept feels too play-like to be taken seriously by non-participants.

Beyond games, the uses of an avatar to channel user contributions is best understood in specific examples.

Lands End offers its online customers an avatar of the old-fashioned fitting dummy: you enter around 10 measurements (with an animated image showing you exactly where on your body to measure), and the software creates a "virtual you." You can email your virtual you to yourself or your friends (it's modestly dressed in lots of underwear). The real utility of this neat-o concept is only seen when the shopper starts browsing through clothes in the catalog. Most offer to show you the garmet on your avatar. If you select the option, your fitting avatar shows up in the clothing you're looking at, but as you would look in it -- and it tells you which size you should order. And this is where the magic becomes a business case: if an online customer orders an item that either doesn't fit or doesn't look as anticipated, Lands End is going to suffer a cost -- either in processing returned items or in absorbing the sales cost and reputational risk of a disappointed customer. Lands End has enabled the avatar view on almost all of its online offerings, so chances are good that the business case for the cost of doing so is positive.

Second Life is the iconic virtual world, where users (I can't help but thing of them as players, as the interactions are fun) travel around an invented world in the form of avatars, encountering other people's avatars and communicating with them, or not.

Second Life is full of commercial use poster children, such as IBM's many pavilions displaying products on huge, imaginary screens. Many large technology companies use Second Life as an appealing and cost effective recruiting zone for Gen Y prospective employees. For a cost, a company can sell insurance to Second Lifers using Linden Dollars for currency, but how this type of storefront translates to actual U.S. dollars is hard to assess. The cost of a Second Life presence varies greatly, but we've been told to think of $100,000 as a starting point, and that's an expensive play in a world where most tactics are free.

The concept of enabling a user to present a customized face to an interaction (whether it's a hat or a waist size) makes a lot of sense for some types of interactions. Many smart people believed that Second Life would overtake first life in popularity right away, but they were wrong -- probably because it's too hard to learn to make your avatar walk around. And by example, we can see that Second Life's disadvantage is that it's too general, striving to offer a virtual world experience to anyone for any purpose. The best uses of virtual worlds are extremely specific, such as using a similuation to show how to turn off the gas in the event of an earthquake. In addition, the placement of the avatar is important to its value to a commercial interaction -- Lands End needs to put the avatar link right in the clothing catalog, or it would not be used. Who would travel to Second Life to try on hiking shorts? That's too complicated.

It's valuable to separate the uses of avatars from their insulated virtual worlds for commercial purposes.

On the other hand, there seems little doubt that both avatars and virtual worlds are here to stay, if only because they are so much fun for games. The ultimate commercial value of these still up in the air, though many companies have invested in a presence in these worlds and some are seeing benefits.

For us, a person's house might be represented as a virtual world with an avatar of a risk management consulting touring the visitor around, identifying risks and pointing out ways to qualify for premium discounts. For our distribution strategy, it would make sense if the tour guide was "from" the policyholder's agency, rather than us.

2009-04-16T08:22:00.001-07:00

I now seem to work standing up, anywhere I find a friendly wireless node. In scanning for networks, I have determined that AT+T owns the netspace in my environs. Is it paranoid to feel targeted?

social mapping and pointed content

2009-03-31T14:46:00.000-07:00

In the RealBranding session, social network brand management is driven by a detailed view of the audience overlaid with the social media channels they engage in (and in what way) -- then populated with the content that you have available that is also trustworthy and likely to be shared.

programmable web: the open supply chain

2009-03-31T10:33:00.000-07:00

Open APIs drive traffic to y0u -- Ebay, Twitter, Amazon, Facebook's bump--go to your customers with your APIs

Leverage existing investments == reduce rework in design and architecture
Protect intellectual property around propriatary capabilities
Choose API models that work

viz YouTube's design decision to include the "embed code" changed their distribution model and invoked Jacob''s Law. Accounts for abt 1/3 of daily web traffic. New distribution strategies are available if you know h0w the web works.

Workshop on Enterprise 2.0 as cost-cutting tool

2009-03-31T10:13:00.000-07:00

Great data on adoption rates and ROIs seen in large company use of e 2.0. Not a site, but an eco-system. Some unexpected things seen -- rapid adoption, for one, and of the problems anticipated, not so many. People behaved themselves, were community-literate, and adopted the knowledge-sharing model. What a surprise. Dion Hinchcliffe puts on a great show. Well worth a review of the slides. Enterprise 2.0 is not the same as Web 2.0 -- requires infrastructure changes to even seem to work the same way. Also, one change the new tools make possible process automation deeper in the workflow. Customer Service? Check out "get satisfaction" for an example. Handling the detection and creation of cataloged product knowledge -- needs the SLATES tools. See slides f0r details

unbelievably excited about conference this week

2009-03-30T07:08:00.000-07:00

Practicing on the eee pc keyboard -- I can't wait to find out the web 2.0 personality this year. Each year it's different -- waggles back and forth between Ruby and KM justifications. Last year, every presentation genuflected to Sharepoint. Mash ups before that. And through it all runs the political, nearly religious belief in the wisdom of the crowd. Fantastic -- it's just the same in insurance, only we call it the law of large numbers. I don't know how Americans can deny this manifest truth...

How would you change this project description -- and what would you expect it to cost?

2008-12-11T15:46:00.000-08:00

Online Services Roadmap Project

Overview

Web Channel Management (WCM) and the office of the Chief Administrative Officer endorse the Company’s new focus on the benefits of online services to support business activities at all levels and among all audiences.

This focus represents a significant change in the role of web services. Because the high-priority work-streams now in development depend on a more robust web capability that we now provide, WCM must move quickly to identify the immediate and long-term web services requirements.

To provide our company with a realistic roadmap and timeline for needed enhancements, WCM will engage a qualified third-party consulting company to provide the deliverables listed below.

One important qualification for the candidate companies is that they have successfully provided large companies with this enterprise planning and advice, as well as providing top-notch project management and development resources. Ideally, the company will be in the business of providing ongoing support for web-facing development projects for a limited number of large companies.

Project Purpose

The Online Services Roadmap Project has two parts:

1. Develop online services roadmap with priority project plans
2. Evaluate, scope and bid on at least two “Identified Projects”

WCM continuously evaluates business requirements for web support. This project provides us with speedy supplemental expertise. We expect that the selected vendor will be able to use our current expertise, research and analysis to develop a first iteration of a new web services roadmap.

This iteration is expected to be an eight-week project (from the date of contract.) The roadmap and plans delivered should include additional analysis and planning tasks, and should include the “Identified Projects” as elements in the overall roadmap.

The vendor responding can propose an alternate timeline for the project if necessary, along with a justification for the change.

Detailed information on Goals and Objectives, Current Online Channels, Business Processes, Current Environment, and Market Research is provided in an appendix.

Detailed information is provided on “Identified Projects” listed in Part Two in an appendix.

Customer and agent research, both raw data and analyses, will be available to the project team. WCM participants are familiar with past research projects.

Project Deliverables

Part One: Online Services Roadmap

A. Strategy Review
Validate goals and objectives (in discussion with stakeholders)
Recommend revisions and reasons
Provide recommended priority weighting for revised objectives
Deliver Online Strategy Roadmap

B. Technology Review
Document standard set of online functions to support our business model.
Provide examples of each function.
Compare our current environment’s functions.
Identify important functional gaps.
Evaluate additional web requirements imposed by in-progress work-streams.
Evaluate infrastructure’s capability to support standard online services.
Identify important infrastructure gaps.
Provide recommended priority weighting for functional and infrastructure gaps.

C. Planning
Update Strategy and Technology recommendations after our review.
Align Technology priorities with Strategic priorities.
Create multi-year Roadmap of Web Services enhancement projects.
Create simulation of web presence after roadmap is finished.
Develop project plans with resource requirements for first year.
Identify ongoing third-party role.

Part Two: List of Identified Projects

Overview

For each project listed, see appendix for information on:
Scenario description(s)
Personas or roles involved
Stakeholder groups
Process overview (current)
Current technology basis
Functional requirements (high level)
Business Benefit
Known Challenges

Identified Projects

List removed for confidentiality reasons -- sixteen items are on the list, including tool and gadget creation, online campaign framework, SEO work, etc.

Deliverables

For at least two Projects, provide detailed proposals, including Tasks, Timeframe and Cost (We will provide additional information as requested).

Provide a general evaluation of all Identified Projects: general evaluation, which may include comments on project focus, feasibility, business value, likely cost range, technology options and issues, dependencies, and examples now in use.

Group related projects into categories.

Rank all Identified Projects (or categories) in order, from highest likely ROI to lowest. (We will provide additional information as requested)

Resources to be provided

Internal Roles available to support analysis project:
Web Channel Management: Channel Manager, Abby Shaw
Customer Research and Strategies
Marketing
Communications
Media
Multimedia
IT Architecture
IT Web
ASP representatives as needed

Appendix of relevant information

Appendix Contents
Contact names provided for each item, for clarifying questions

Goals and Objectives
Company Goals:
Web Channel Management Goals:
Vision
Goals and Top Objectives
Key Milestones
Known Challenges
Success Metrics
Impact of project(s) not being done (targeted ROI)

Our Online Channels
Overview diagram
For each Web Channel (four large, many small):
Site maps for large sites
Site key stakeholders (business owners)
Site future vision (if documented)
Site personas
Technology platform
Known challenges
Work in progress (if any)

Our Business Processes
The Insurance business model
Our competitors on the web
“Life of a Policy” process diagram (for Commercial Insurance)
High Value Scenarios by persona type
(Dan Moore’s Claims process diagram)
Key interaction: Types of agency visits

Our Current Environment

Online delivery:
Digital Design Standards (Parent Company standards and local exceptions for us)
Digital Standards Committee: purpose and process
Usability Methodology
Inventory of web-facing business applications (Capabilities Inventory)

Infrastructure
Web-related Technical Architecture: diagrams and description
Overview of DCMS
Overview of our current Websphere Portal environment
Collection of technical standards with known gaps identified (web NFR, for instance)
Other?

Identified Projects: Detail
For each project listed, information on:
Scenario description(s)
Personas or roles involved
Stakeholder groups
Process overview (current)
Current technology basis
Functional requirements (high level)
Business Benefit
Known Challenges

Audience Research (Summaries, transcripts, DVDs)

Personal Brand and Company Rights

2008-12-09T10:03:00.000-08:00

This post is triggered by Mr. Owyang's comments this morning on How Companies Respond to the Risks of Personal Brands. I am in a Company, and, having just reviewed and responded to some early materials on my company's policy around social networking sites and personal blogging, I have done some deep thinking about this topic in the last few weeks.

But I first must mention that these opinions are my own and neither reflect nor argue with my Company's policies and practices in this area. In the same vein, I have worked for several large companies and consulted for many more, and my observations here apply across the board for the standard American corporate environment. This is an environment that culturally allows for departmental exceptions -- and in many cases, celebrates departmental diversity. I am speaking of corporate culture in general, not the free-wheeling, creative groups within most corporations (incidentally, typically under the protection of a valued, but squirrelly executive.)

Mr. Owyang describes the risks and the responses he's observed, and recommends some approaches over others. The comments on this post are wide-ranging and in general agreement with each other. I also agree with most of them. What I want to contribute is a set of observations about corporate practices that affect this situation.

Okay, enough pompous stuff.

What we're talking about here is a genuine conflict between different philosophies: you can call them property rights philosophies, at will philosophies, work philosophies, personal freedom philosophies, reputation philosophies, or brand philosophies. There's a genuine clash. My belief is that this essential conflict cannot be "solutioned" around -- it's not that some people understand and some people don't. There is actual, legitimate disagreement here -- with truth on both sides. Corporations don't talk about their side of it for two reasons: 1. they don't have to, and 2. a thing can't actually talk.

That may be funny, but it's not a joke. Ten years ago, I handed out the Cluetrain Manifesto to all the internal web publishers I trained (dozens), but the basic message is still un-used: Only people can connect on the web. Or let's go back to The Medium is the Message -- the web is hot: social networks are white-hot (just south of sex for intimacy, one finds), while the Corporate voice (aka Brand messages) is cool, cooler, cold. As most brand managers would say it should be. And that's why Corporate Blogs are like congealed gravy, because they in fact are.

Okay, a sandbag here -- even the lively brands that splash on the fuschia are cold in media terms: I love the iPod silhouettes -- it's a picture of a person, not a person, and the brand is what surrounds the person, not the person -- it's both true and insightful and completely consistent with my point. A brand is not a person. If a brand, like Aunt Jemima, or Hannah Montana, steps out of the freeze frame and enters personhood, the "brand" collapses into a baggy wrapping of "reputation" around that person. And actually, when that happens, we (the people) usually get mad. It doesn't make sense, but we get mad at that person. A brand is far grander than a person -- we hold a brand to a very high standard of behavior, one that an actual person could never meet. Miley, Britney, Madonna, Princess Di, Col. Sanders, Paris, Bill Clinton, all the politicians brought down by events that we'd find odd but okay among our co-workers -- as long as it's on their personal time... Google learns the hazards of brand in China -- a good business move (opening a tight market) is a horrible breach of trust for a brand.

The only way the Corporate side of this conversation gets out there is for a person inside the corporation to decide to represent the monolith's point of view. And some of the commenters do describe their personal experiences with these issues vis-a-vis their monoliths.

Now I channel the Corporation (note the right justification):

First of all, about what indivuals do to enhance their networks -- we're not talking about Brand here -- we're talking about reputation.

By its nature, brand belongs to a non-person. Companies can also have reputations, and that has an effect on their brand value, of course, but it's not the same thing. Once a person has a brand, they aren't a person anymore -- they're a non-person, an entity, a concept. Personal brand is a similar concept to sole-proprieter. A person, but also an entity.

Many corporations have policies that forbid employees from taking a second job, or from serving on another company's board of directors (without written permission from legal). This may have caused problems for some individuals, but the reason for the policy is well understood and accepted (and endorsed by case law). A Corporation has a reasonable right to insist that their employees not put themselves in positions where they might have a conflict of interest: whether in a decision or how they spend their extra working time when it's needed by both employers -- or in 2.0 terms, this policy states and enforces the fact that your professional brain space, energy, and attention are all exclusively dedicated to the Company. Just like all your team members -- you are to focus on your teams' success when you are working. That's really the point of exempt and non-exempt employee classifications -- in one, the company is buying time, in the other, the company is buying your full attention. In several comments, people point out that in a 70 hour work week, they find it hard to distinguish personal time from professional time. Okay. Employers can't actually prevent you from taking care of personal business on work time, if you are salaried. (They can insist that you not take care of your business using Company equipment however -- for many good and bad reasons.) So go ahead.

Let's be clear in our definitions, however: spending time on private matters is very different from engaging in activities that might create a conflict of interest.

What Corporations are wrestling with right now is the large and tangled question of whether these new opportunities for external self-aggrandizement (or personal brand development activities) pose the same risks of conflict of interest as a second job with a different employer.

This is the advanced point of view: other Corporations are still being distracted by internet porn policies -- thinking that the risk of employees' external publishing is in the area of morality and the risks of inappropriate sexual conduct. They're putting it in the same box as sexual harrassment, thought it's not said -- the concept is that there is too much risk of our employees publically misbehaving and embarassing us to permit them to play in this space. This will pass. And by the way, it will only pass when people start acting online in a way they would act in the lobby of their offices.

What's ended along with privacy is the ability to distinguish between a work self and a personal self. For people who are what they work (like Mr. Owyang, god bless him), this has happened without their noticing. For people who find expression in a self that isn't really the same as their work self, it's going to be an issue. It's an issue for them and it's also going to be an issue for their employers, once they figure out what's going on. I think it's more in the nature of a rocky transition coming than a "first amendment issue" (C'mon -- if you don't know that the first amendment doesn't apply when you're at work, you're seriously out of touch -- in the eyes of the law, your speech at work is "commercial speech" and it belongs to your employer -- you don't really get a say in it, so to speak.)

The rocky transition is going to go both ways -- shouldn't everyone work for an employer who appreciates them for their real self? Isn't it crippling to have to spend your professional life pretending to be a person you are not? Most people would agree that that is true I think -- though many (most? Who knows?) corporate workers do show a different face to their employer than their true one.

And by doing that, we've created unmeetable expectations on the part of our employers -- the employers will have to adjust their expectations to embrace the fallible, foolishness that we're going to be showing in our online photo galleries or there will be few qualified candidates for the big white collar factories.

It's going to force us all to be more honest. As transparency does.

But don't miss this fact: the question of whether an employee can be forbidden from engaging in activities that might create a conflict of interest has already been answered: and the ansswer is Yes.

If you are salaried, you work for your company in a much more comprehensive way than you might think. Like it or not, you are a company man. If that agreement doesn't work for you, and you are a very valuable employee, you might look at consulting to your current employer to remove the uncomfortable constraint. Of course, benefits... If you're not a valuable employee, you'd better decide which is more important to you. And even if you're valuable, you should know that you are always at risk of making a mis-step. There is no net if you are building a personal brand that conflicts with your employer's commercial interests.

And don' t get me started on intellectual capital, the investment of training, and how far into my brain does my employer's ownership extend? Seriously, don't.

Random asides:
Some people find it easier to talk about the conflict as if it were generational, a fiction that Dan Schwabel and Adam Singer tussle over in the comments.

Have you experienced this? In a lively and irreverent phone conversation with a vendor developer, we talked about some of my requirements, including an interface that approximates TwitterDeck. "I love Twitter" the developer said. "Me too," I said, "I'm abbyshaw -- who are you?" Long silence -- "Well, it's not really business-appropriate" he finally said. "Okay," I said, "mine isn't either, really." But here's the consequence: I really admire this developer, but all of a sudden, I felt like he was presenting a fake front to me in our dealings -- and that he didn't want me to see his real side. It really hurt my feelings. But maybe that's okay.

I should also mention that I am a deep believer in the inevitability of the commercial reputation web. But that commerce is different from the business of my Company.

I can't believe I can post this to my blog...

2008-12-09T00:34:00.001-08:00

Here you go: the first episode of the season of Dexter now underway on Showtime. First a little startled to find it available for free viewing on Sho.com, but now even more intrigued by the offer to embed the code where ever I want....

Palin Fights Dead Turkeys for Media Attention

2008-12-04T13:01:00.000-08:00

Okay, I was working on finding a way to provide an outside company with a sort of index to resources that are a mix of documents and links -- so I thought h'm maybe a blog that's restricted to those who are invited might work. So I looked at WordPress (sorry, Blogger, I need more flexibility for this purpose, though I love your integrated simplicity for my own privative needs). Okay, always exciting to see the ferment of plug-ins, add-ons, and fanatical user ideas at WordPress (new version just released!), so I was enjoying that, but then my eye fell on this link to a site that is evidently dedicated to celebrating failure in signage, videos, and juxtaposition. It's called the Fail Blog. So, even though I was working (really), I took a look at it. The signs like this one, for example are very funny, especially the fractured English ones. So I was looking and laughing and sort of monitoring why I was laughing and feeling pretty horrible about laughing at a video of a poor broken-headed gymnast, when I browsed to an item labeled "Interview Location Fail".

And it's the lovely Sarah Palin, chattin' away about Alaskan politics, and "awl," and finance in front of a cage of what turn out to be white turkeys getting their affairs in order. And between the doomed turkeys and Gov. Palin was a workmanlike workman fiddling around with a farm implement on a table -- it was hard to see what exactly he was doing, which made it all the more fascinating, but as you squint at the screen, you can make out a pair of enormous chicken feet protruding from the cone-shaped sleeve suspended above a sort of wooden table or trough, and as you note that the workman is attending to the bottom of that cone -- where, if those are feet, then what's there ought to be a head, and what is he doing with it? Then you notice that the wooden bench below the plastic? fabric? cone is "painted" bright red. The video is grainy, but that red looks sort of -- liquid. You have plenty of time to work this out, because Gov. Palin goes on and on and on, while the workman behind her first listens politely, facing her, and holding what turn out to be the turkey feet above what we now know to be the cone of death, and then, as politely as he can, the fellow turns away and back to his work at the cone -- he projects an air of "well, I haven't any more time to give to this stuff: I've got work to do." Having completed the task -- whatever it is that he did to that white turkey while it was quietly upside down in the cone -- he gets to the point where it's obvious to all watching (and I can't imagine anyone watching this who would not be fixated on the workman at this point)that he would now normally lift the turkey out of the cone and carry it away. He glances at the camera, apparently the only one present who considers that perhaps his activities might not be just right for the five o'clock news to broadcast, and you can tell that the poor fellow is just trapped there. He wants to go get another turkey and keep things moving, but it just goes against his grain to show the world what will show when he lifts the turkey. There's a pause. The workman gathers his resolution -- you can see him doing it -- and he lifts the turkey out of the cone, shielding it from our view with his body. So we still don't know what's really going on in that cone. Gov. Palin talks on and on, and a little while later, the workman sidles back into the frame, holding (I presume) another turkey upside down by the feet (they do all look alike), and now he looks like he's a little fed up with how this is going on and on and on and interfering with his work. He turns his back on the camera, lifts the turkey and stuffs it head-first into the sleeve. Well. This turkey is not having any of this -- the sleeve sort of billows and the alarmingly large feet thrash around so the workman has to concentrate to get a good grip on them. Then, once the turkey is subdued, he turns his attention to the bottom of the cone again. What is he doing? We still don't know. We're peering at the screen, looking for clues -- is that blood? Will the head still be on when he lifts the turkey out of the cone? And oh, yeah, there's Sarah Palin still goin' on and on. Even she has noticed the turkey activity out of the corner of her eye by now, and she's got that sort of fixed smile that you see on a person who is wishing they were elsewhere. The interviewer continues to ask questions, so Sarah Palin takes the situation in hand and starts to slowly move away, though she continues to talk; she's sort of pivoting, trying to get the camera to move its angle out of the line of sight of the workman's activities. The cameraman does not cooperate. At this point, I realize that the cameraman probably does not like Sarah Palin very much. And I have to say that here's a Democrat who saw his chance and took it. And took it. It's with a sense of real civic pride that I celebrate an American who can use the media to take a stand. Off camera.

Here's the clip:

Okay, something I learned after watching the clip is that this was an interview immediately following the Governor's ceremonial "pardoning of the turkey" -- presumably that specific turkey had been released from the pen and was not actually watching the dispatch of all his or her friends and relations. Actually, I lived near a turkey farm for a while (thank god, not too near -- there's a lot of guano involved in turkey cultivation.)Apparantly, one of the hazards of turkey farming is to make sure they're tucked in for the night in cages because otherwise, they'll fly up to the tree limbs and lay their eggs into the air: splat, splat, splat.

Watch for the reporter's "on the chopping block" question around 1 min 20 seconds. Also, Gov. Palin's characterization of this event as an opportunity for "a little bit of levity." is a stopper -- but I suppose...no, I have nothing, it's still death.

Where are the candles?

2008-12-01T18:09:00.001-08:00

A reminder that today is the first day of Advent. I've searched for Advent candles for the past four days -- got the wreath, got the green stuff, but the candles? No. Three purple, one pink. I live in Berkeley: I went to the many spiritual stores, I went to Elephant Pharmacy, I went to Longs, I went to Safeway. No no no no. Chakras, toe rings, budda heads, incense, menorah's galore'ahs, but no Advent candles. Has catholicism become a cult before my eyes? Am I going to be deprogrammed by Bill Maher? I just want to start Advent properly!

I've decided to take four white candles that I have in my candle drawer and paint them with my acrylic paints.

But what really impressed me was the number of clerks who had no clue what I was talking about. And the ones who did were the sharp ones -- it's almost like a litmus test, a sort of Diogenes lamp (who?) for those who live in the entire world -- the one with all the different religions. I also enjoyed the kind lady who suggested that I buy a set of Mehorah candles and just use four of them. Now that's an interesting idea.

Addendum:
Leslie took me in hand and provided me with this link for next year.

Feeling Fizzy

2008-11-24T15:08:00.000-08:00

For four days now, I've been trying all out to find a solid recommendation for a small local company that is just over the top brilliant at web strategy and has the chops to hold our collective hand as we put their brilliant concept into place. I have two names, and they both look good. But, really, only two...? I was aiming at ten. More on this soon.

Half a Person

2008-11-17T17:06:00.000-08:00

Just finished talking to two of our lovely lawyers about the legal -- um -- issues surrounding the the cluster of activities that seem to all fall under the label "blogging." Should the company CEO blog? Ought an employee to blog? If so, then what? What are the rules of engagemement? There are oceans of examples to be found by a simple google, but it's the underlying juices that are interesting.

It's a lovely example of the split: "I work for you on work time" people vs. the "I work for you all the time" people. Now, really, which is a better value? People who work for you all the time don't understand why you should mind if they also play all the time. I am my doctor's patient all the time, even when I'm at work.

People who "work for you on work time" are selling you time, not self. And they feel justified in hiding things from their employers as a result. It's none of their business, after all, quite literally, if they didn't pay for that time.

On the other hand, we're talking about people who are neither punching a clock nor protected by law in their working hours. What is working time, anymore? I do so much work at home that the concept of "workers comp" (because it's an injury sustained "at work") is getting funny. Certainly weird, legally. It's all getting weird. Years ago, I made my peace with being paid for reaching goals, and made a practice of explaining that to each supervisor in turn. And as long as I kept reaching the goals, no one seemed to mind my disregard for routine.

But what about the people who do hold on to this notion of "work time" -- which is being bought and paid for and "my time" which is sacrosanct, private, personal, and hidden?

About thirty years ago, I wrote a paper on Privacy. A senior thesis, very bulky and full of references. What I learned from my work is that at that time, our "privacy" rested on the very thin support of the general inconvenience of paperwork. We had privacy because no one could be bothered to take the time and trouble to connect everything up. We'd already provided all the info needed to x-ray our lives, open to all in government files -- but the info was not integrated.

For years, I relaxed into the protection of process inconvenience. But that was then. Now it's not inconvenient, it's easy. If you think you have "Privacy" -- well, if you do it's now resting on the support of the honor and honesty of the people who have all your info at their fingertips. I'm okay with that, actually. I've been thinking about it for 30 years.

But about those people who have sold half their lives and think they can retain the other half...I suppose it can work if you're lucky. Lucky enough for no supervisor to order you to do something you can't in honor do -- but you now must because you've accepted this sort of gentleman's slavery. "I am not myself when I am at work -- I am the person they want to pay for my time..." I see those people around me. Heck, I did that once -- but really, never again. What a cost it was to fire a person when I would not have done it myself.

And what about the half of the life that isn't sold? Do they think the company won't notice what they do? Will the company have a point of view about it? You betcha. So it's no freedom anywhere if you try to sell your time rather than your commitment.

It seems like HR lags a bit in understanding this, but hey, they're probably doing something else with their time...

2008-11-11T11:43:00.000-08:00

This is an attempt to embed an xls file into an html field:

Well, it's gone now because I sent the expiration date to one day and hey presto, it expired...

Wowie kazowie, it works!!!! Okay, now to tackle the question of acceptable security for internal docs of this nature....

Yammer : field: Field

2008-11-05T10:36:00.000-08:00

Yammer : field: Field okay, what the heck is this? I'm trying to figure out how to set up a feed using two thumbs and some tape. Twitter I know, how about Yammer?

Guest Post- Measuring Shared Engagement

2008-10-03T06:26:00.001-07:00

Guest Post- Measuring Shared Engagement

Posted using ShareThis

Culture Makes Me Think of Yogurt

2008-09-24T15:00:00.000-07:00

I'm at KMWorld in San Jose, and I'm back in the virtual world of tightly focused conferences. We are all amalgamating, mindsharing, groupthinking, groking, and otherwise wrapping ourselves to each other with shoelaces. It's a warm, not to say sweaty, experience. BUT, though shared language can create shared culture, one, single irritating point of disagreement can stand in the way of the whole cult experience. And I'm stumbling over one. An irritation, I mean.

"Oh, that's culture," a speaker will say, dismissing any idea of being able to help with the problem.

"I'm here to figure out what to recommend, but I guess it's all culture, after all," a participant will sigh.

I'm starting to hear a door slamming shut whenever a speaker or questioner invokes the name of culture. And here's my problem. Well, first I need to say that I agree with what's being said -- it is all culture. But that's not the door closing -- that's the actual assignment: Change the Culture, or nurse the change along, at least. If it were just setting up programs, creating policies, implementing software, it would not need a person of your caliber to drive. Are you a change agent or a potted plant?

Culture is also not a good word for "it". It suggests that culture is a type of disease (or a yeast, perhaps) that some companies catch and others don't. They all have a culture. They are all different, so it's not black or white -- and in any culture, there are ways to accomplish tasks of value to the company -- or the company will be very short-lived.

So I don't think of the question as whether or not the company's culture is receptive to user-contributed content (for instance), but I think of it as "How does the company handle new ideas?" because that's the question that's worth answering -- and the answer will show you what you need to do to be successful.

Even the most hide-bound, heirarchical, military-industrial, old school company has a way to process new ideas. In some, the digestion process can take longer than you want to remain an employee, but believe me, inertia is such that even after you leave, the idea will continue to percolate along. For this kind of timescale, a speedy, realtime, knowledge capture system may be over-engineering. Maybe a nice wooden box next to all the North side elevators would better serve the purpose.

But it's not a shut door -- more like a long road.

Twitter Hits Max -- Snuck Up on You, Didn't It?

2008-07-21T12:59:00.000-07:00

Twitter, my darling, my jo -- has maxed out its capacity. Clearly, the zoobs are becoming adopted for all their many uses. I think Twitter is like a shopping bag -- it can be used for anything that needs a holder for transportation - but the thing transported can't be bigger than the shopping bag -- well, duh. And I enjoy hearing that the character limit is too small. It's a perfect size for an efficient blast of update -- a small haiku, a greeting, a show of emotion, a tiny short story. Its size makes it quite perfect, like a bonsai tree. It must be created without sludge or puff or bows or any of the other politesse of prose -- it's been interesting to find that most news items contain about a Tweet's worth of actual information. We all do a lot of wading through material that's only there to establish the writer or to validate the form in order to get to the actual material of interest. Do you remember the newsletter/broadside called The Bottom Line? It was early print Twitter. I gotta find a copy just to show you -- it was riviting reading, and it took about a, well, a couple of minutes to read. I love Twitter, and mostly watch and follow (and track, when it's working) -- I went through some withdrawal when through a churn in my handhelds, I lost the ability to send tweets -- also hampered by my company's (happily) short lived ban on Twitter on company machines. Twitter actually subs for blogging for me much of the time. and Thank God for that...

(Later) Full disclosure -- Twitter returns and offers this status message:

But, Twitter, shouldn't your status updates also comply with the 300 chr limit?

Checking Out Twine

2008-07-21T12:47:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to figure out how to link a tagger to an aggregator. I've been trying with Twine, but it's no good because the feed isn't exposing items to the reader -- I'm trying Grazr. Of course, I've also tried the standard one...I'm sure I'm being silly -- I should just use the tagger interface, but I'm not seeing what I need from the ones I've been trying...Let's try this: http://www.twine.com/twine/11b3y6x7k-1bs/internal-twine#

Web 2 announcements

2008-04-24T09:56:00.000-07:00

Okay
Microsoft announces Mesh - a peer to peer data and media sharing network pitched to households - though Gates vision ... (Oddly IBMish) Mozilla announces mobile meets web platform a new type of fox. Everyone announces ubiquitous APIs. Yahoo announces social elements on all services - and open strategy - opening all google services to developers. A sandbox with rules. The unification of all social user profiles (Finally). Standardizing API behavior. Yahoo is great, but it's the execution of last year's vision. Depending on developers to build the world. Oh, wait, now he's announcing the social embedding. Rewiring Yahoo? That is news.

Back from holiday

2008-04-21T17:20:00.000-07:00

I took about six months off from the whirlygig of comments and absorbtion and such, and a strongly recommend it to anyone feeling, well, whirly. I'm going to Web 2.0 Expo later this week and I anticipate that I will have some new posts as a result.

The mistake

2007-11-24T10:20:00.000-08:00

I'm showing my Touch to one of my brothers in law and he plays around with it and then tells all about the Nokia similcrum that's waiting for him in a package at home. Yeah,it's bigger but it has all these other things you can add on. He seems to lose interest in my toy when I tell h that that's all there is, no addons in view. He isn't the same kind of user as me. He's buying devices. He has seven mp3 players that he sorts different types of content among. He's generous in accommodating design flaws. I'm not. My 16 year old played with the touch for a few minutes in a Starbucks and she understood the package immediately-- and somewhat offensively said that I wasnt really the target market (she was, she sez). Like iPod and iTunes from the start, the product is a designed experience. So, she sez, with that trademarked heavy-lidded incredulity, "They just made guesses?? They just guessed what people would want to do with it??! That is so random!"

But that is exactly it. Its a nice package of supremely confident guesses. And for me anyway so far all the guesses are correct.

So what's the mistake? It's in evaluating the objects in terms of technology rather than the integrated package of process and tool and use.

Community Landscape

2007-11-01T12:39:00.000-07:00

There's a confusion rolling around right now about the difference between a community (as a group distinguished by a shared interest) and the software that supports the current style of online community tools. Communities have made use of a wide variety of communications channels since the year dot. We're just adding to the channel options right now. And like the telephone, some of these tools and tricks are profoundly changing the behavior of communities. But I don't think they're changing what a community is.

I've been involved in online communities for more than 15 years now, since when your email address was a string of numbers (remember CompuServe?).

Anyone involved in a discipline requiring audience analysis and the analysis of communication channels develops a keen understanding of the attributes of a community.

Here are some examples of different styles of online communities for later discussion:

A forum for experts on hot button topics
A reference resource for specific types of business advice
A user group
A group of employees of a single company
A working group
A national sales organization, out in the field
A team of catastrophe adjusters in the field
The admins in a large company
Wine collectors
Yacht owners
Bentley owners
The members of a family trust
Usability experts

It's a mixed bag, but each has its distinct online channels.

Next: More on each and the difference and similarities.

Twitter meets Corporate America

2007-09-29T13:55:00.000-07:00

I'm posting this to find people working on cracking the same nut -- I need to share ideas and I need to share my pain.

I work for the Man.

I'm selling Twitter internally as a solution to some enterprise channel needs and it's a slog. First, it's free -- very hard to sell. Second, it's outside -- what if it stops? Third, it's hard to understand -- what are you talking about? or worse, they listen hard and still don't get it but think they do and start talking about it in a way that just won't be successful. But god bless em, they're trying.

Underlying these small barriers is the big, intransigent one: the people I need to persuade don't understand the concept of Channels.

Oh, BTW, here's a magnificent discussion of Twitter on the threshold -- if you're interested in Twitter, you should not miss this. I am a big Blue Whale Labs fan. But, hey, Stowe and Greg, your wonderful PDF White Papers do me more harm than good in the corner offices. I need less truth and elegance and more "ROI solutioning." (I kid you not - When I hear it, I imagine the speaker slowly dissolving entirely into a liquid medium: I took Chemistry at Berkeley and I know what a v.t. form of "solution" is likely to mean. I took Linguistics there also. )

I'm telling open-minded people to think of Twitter as a kit of Zoobs. It's a bundle of tubes that can be connected to many types of junction (one to one, broadcast, many to many, back and forth, etc.), ending up at most types of communication hatches (phone, web, SMS, RSS). And it's pretty non-denominational.

It's too open and too free for the corporate person, however smart, to grok -- at least right away. There must be a catch. It's clearly something that IT should approve, but if they don' t need to be involved...or do they. People get fearful.

Anyone else trying to do this?

A Fabulous Thread: Parts is Parts

2007-09-28T14:48:00.000-07:00

I'm about to give you a link to a magnificant discussion now underway -- you can actually hear the egg cracking open. Thank you, Leslie Elledge, for the alert.

Watch him challenge entrenched concepts and categories: and watch him be right. It's rare and it's great. Here he is: JeffCroft.com and "the new layers of web development"

-- if you're not technical, hang in there anyway because this discussion provides you with a nicely compact tutorial on the component parts of a working web site -- and you do need to understand that model if you're going to work here.

I remember opening a copy of InfoWeek and having a folded up poster tumble out into my lap -- it was an illustration for an article outlining the ISO layers: what they were called, what they were for, what the alternatives within each were. I grabbed it like a shipwrecked moviestar grabs a piece of floating furniture. I tacked it on the wall. I studied it often. I cribbed from it. I put my lunch in front of it every day as an offering.

When my husband started selling training programs to network hub companies and their neighbors in Silicon Valley (business training, not technical training), I gave him a tour of my wall poster and ceremonially handed it over to him. He tacked it on his wall. He's been using it to amaze his routerhead clients with his astonishing grasp of their business environment.

Sometimes you find the one perspective that makes everything easier -- and I think this is another one.

Newsletters in the Inbox

2007-09-28T00:17:00.000-07:00

I was editing a "real" magazine when the tidal wave of desktop publishing hit the consumer market. The newsletter as we know it was born. Early ancestors of the blog, the newsletter suffered from that most hideous of curses -- design flexibility. And believe me, it was flexed. Until its spine broke. Okay, so newsletters got a bad reputation as a result. Like one notch above the mass-produced Christmas letter in terms of egotistical editorial endeavor -- and that Christmas letter had suddenly become -- what? -- the Rognar Family Newsletter!

My editorial co-conspiritor at that time, Les Cowan, actually went on to be editor of a magazine called -- oh so self-referential! -- "Desktop Publishing." (With the editorial stance of: "We do this so you don't have to" I suppose.) Here's a newsflash: novelty happily wears off pretty soon.

But newsletters remain. And I found myself sucked into a project that required me to puzzle out this question: where does the newsletter end and the email marketing begin? What exactly is a subscription when I'm more incented to send it to you than you are to read it? Seems like a fruitful topic for examination. After three years of practicing and testing, I'm still examining it.

So I met a fellow online (properly introduced) who has the right stuff and has some experience with the magazine/newsletter/email/subscription nexus, and we got into a conversation about it. His name is Vince Golla, and I'm still waiting for his next comment, but I wanted to talk about it here a bit.

Here's what I said to Vince:

"I'm interested in finding a better way to present a "magazine" style experience via a web browser -- or something that takes the essence of that special experience and improves upon it - have you done any thinking about this? Our solution was to handle each issue as a standalone microsite, to minimize distractions from the key messages that were most important at that moment in time -- using a stripped down web format to really suppress the interconnectivity of the web presesntation and force it into a more focused box -- it made for a 10 minute monthly bite of info for the audience (which helped with repeat visits), and the glories of cross-links were right under the surface -- one link down. (See, I don't think a website is the same animal as a magazine -- and I see the same sort of thinking in your online magazines). I'm pleased with how that worked, but am still interested in other approaches.

I've also been thinking about the interesting interface bumptop (bumptop.com) -- which is presented as a desktop, of course -- but what about if it wasn't used for a desktop (I already have a desktop that works pretty well right in front of me) but was used instead as a form of magazine presentation? I'm really interested in this -- I'm sure you've been at editorial meetings where the issue's articles are being sorted, sequenced, rearranged, deferred to next issues -- needs for sidebars are uncovered in these discussions, and in general the group does a mashup on the issue's projected content.

How about if the online magazine offered this type of "push it around and arrange it as you like" interface, in addition to the more formal serial interface? For a very conservative model, I've been interested in the eBook concept for digital magazines for years, but SO clunky and prioprietary -- have you seen the web site: http://www.websitemagazine.com/ look on the low left side for the "sample digital issue" -- they've applied the eBook model to a flash presentation -- one big drawback, though -- could it possibly load more slowly?

And what about offering both interfaces for the same magazine and letting the reader choose? Why not?"

Why not, indeed? But Vince is busy right now, so I'm waiting for his next comment. In the meantime, I decided that it was time to look at the face of the world beyond my own inbox. I sent out a call for help via LinkedIn's new question feature:

Constructing a list of very good and very bad online magazines/newsletters/subscription sends -- do you have any examples to share?

I got 17 direct replies and about 150 examples sent to my inbox. All the examples sent were in the good category -- I can say categorically that no one remembers the name of a bad email newsletter. It's kind of the opposite of the Anna Karanina definition of families (remember? All good families are the same, all bad families are different?) In this case, all the good ones were very different from each other in any way you can think of, and the bad ones were all the same: "They were bad -- I don't remember them."

I'm still paging through the examples, but I promise an analysis at some point soon -- Oh, and in a tidy coincidence, a v. smilar topic has just popped up in Ask E.T: Recommended Magazine Layouts...

Oh, and I can tell all question-responders to knock it off on the "it depends" answer, designed to show off your own excellent analytic skills. Of course it depends, you nitwits, why do you think I'm asking for concrete examples? I bet their spouses are delighted that they're addicted to the internet. I can hear them now: "Honey, do you think we should talk to Sara's teacher about her appalling grades?" "Well, now..." pause for puff on pipe "I think it really depends, dear." rich chuckle "You have to consider what the teacher is trying to tell us when she sends those grades home -- of course our response would depend on our understanding her motivations." He'd be killed if it were me the mother of Sara -- but no, she's taken the easy way out and pushed him out of bed and towards his computer in the family room and here he is answering my question with the same kind of self-insulating, conditional, nonsense.

This passion has roots in that primal self-loathing -- it's the preening type of answer I was guilty of before I caught myself in a little self-examination. The answer you should be writing is to "tell" not to "show."

More on newsletters soon.

Online Ephemera

2007-09-17T13:12:00.000-07:00

Darryl Siry writes about a wish for exploding emails in his blog, Marketing 2.0. I started thinking about how very limited our settings are for the email communication channel, and also how rigid the walls are between different types of online communication channels. I started writing about this in a response to his post, and just to be really annoying, I'm going to copy it here:

"You're talking about establishing a set of "types" for email, I think, and the one you describe is the "ephemeral" or perhaps "touchback" email -- yeah, I wish they would just dissolve after a day or so -- I'd put subscriptions that arrive in email in the same type.

LinkedIn has recognized the issue of time value in a communication by offering the sender the option of withdrawing a message -- but you know they're not digging into someone's email inbox to extract a sent message.

It's an information architecture for electronic messages -- you're asking for type-specific features: Dissolve, for instance, or I can add, file or strip attachment or announce yourself in red -- some of these are built in to email clients now, but they're all receiver-set. Your innovation here is to recognize that this is a mature enough medium to drive some standards that we can all agree on and so can set up some new sender-set categories (aside from URGENT and DO NOT FORWARD)that help us all with inbox overload.

My husband teaches this stuff day in and day out so it's a nearby concept for me. Yeah, it's a great idea -- I'm sending you an email and I know because I'm smart that the message is ephemeral and should fade if not read in an hour, so I have that setting on my email client -- and the mail will disappear if not read in that time.

I'm sure there are other useful categories that we can all agree on -- and here's the inevitable question -- Is it technology or training? or a combination? Maybe this is finally the time for the etiquette of electronic messaging.

The messages you describe probably ought to be delivered in an IM type interface, rather than the lockbox of email -- or twitter perhaps. Isn't it time for all our messaging systems to start to integrate with each other based on our communications intentions rather than the type of application interface I happen to have open at the moment?

I send a lot of IMs into email inboxes, and I send messages that should be leaving an audit trail into an IM conversation, just because that's where the conversation started...I think this is a cresting issue."

I'm still thinking about this. I spend some minutes each week explaining to some colleague what Twitter is. I've come to decide that it's just a pipe with a very small diameter -- and you can set up the pipe to send from or receive to a wide variety of -- what? -- sinks? clients? It's so fun because it's like Legos or Hot Wheels tracks or Zoobs. For a while,you can amuse yourself just setting it up and taking it down again. (Reminds me of the ancient Kliban cartoon that was captioned, "Henry could amuse himself for hours with a pencil," and it showed a dazed looking fellow standing up and holding out a pencil for inspection.)

But the concept that sticks in my head is this: we're very hide-bound about the ways things work right now when it comes to communication channels, very conservative.

The phone rings, you answer it. People tell my husband all the time that they'll be fired if they don't answer all their e-mail. (It's probably for a different reason, BTW) I've watched my pre-teen daughter try to juggle tens of IM sessions at the same time, growing increasingly frantic as I hear the dings and the doors. When I looked over her shoulder, every single one of them was dull to the point of absurdity -- to me at least. She did not seem to enjoy the experience much, but she never turned a chat away that I ever saw. You poke me,I answer?

Surely one of the things that will change as we move towards universal instantaneous connection is this one: At some point, the receiver gets to say, "No, Thank You." I think manners is going to have this one turned around: It will be rude to get all snitty when you don't get an immediate reply.

My godmother, Mary, is like that, and I love her very much for her understanding. "Oh, heavens!" She says, "I don't know how you young people manage these days. But do stay in touch."

Why Can't You Start Building the Web Site?

2007-09-16T13:05:00.000-07:00

For any site, basic target audience definitions (personas), content goals, and site-specific content categories mark a starting point for the development of content strategies, information architecture, and a site’s content plan.

Are all these things necessary? No, they are not necessary to build a site.

But they are necessary to build a successful site.

Without these elements, the site has no defined role in the business strategy. There is nothing material to measure that would demonstrate the success of the site. The task of collecting content for the site will always be an exhausting and demoralizing scramble.

The first step in planning for a web content strategy (or any web strategy), is to invest in the development of these elements in sequence:

Business goals with respect to the target audience,
Target audience definitions (personas),
Content goals that support the business goals, and
The content categories that will create a connection between the voice of the web site and the person who represents the target audience for the site.

These elements are also the first step in assessing a site’s ROI, both for investment in content development and all other investments in the site.

The most crippling gap in this sequence of planning elements is this: Specific business objectives.

If the site’s sponsors have not identified specific enough business objectives, it will not be possible to determine how they relate to the target audience – and that connection must be clear before anyone can create clear and specific content goals for the site. As a result, the site will fail.

Some Specific Examples

Chances are good that your subject matter experts already have a good idea of the audience persona (keep in mind that their assumptions ought to be tested with some validating research.

For instance, a starting point might be:

Real Estate Product Persona

Real estate owners and property managers who control a medium to small portfolio of non-habitational real estate. Their primary concerns are maximizing revenue, minimizing expenses and providing services to tenants. They make the buying decision or have significant input.

We assume that this person really knows the business.
This person is over-extended, always responding to emergencies.
They are managing staff in several locations and may frequently face the loss of a key employee, like a building manager.
They choose the timing of maintenance and renovation investments.
They may not have the daily structure to schedule maintenance and inspections as systematically as they would like.
They are concerned about interest rates, the quality of their tenants, their contracts and changes in laws that affect them.
If they report to investors, they spend time developing these reports.

(And now you have something you can really work with as you think about how to build and populate the site)

Once the persona is defined, you must develop one or more specific business goals with respect to this target audience. “They will buy our product again” is not specific enough to drive a content strategy. “They will buy again out of loyalty” is an example of a specific enough business goal (though it's pretty minimal) – to support this business goal we can develop a content goal like:

“The Real Estate Tycoon will strongly identify with the voice of the site and will see and come to trust that the site’s voice is always sympathetic to his primary worries and that the site’s content will provide an immediate, usable action plan against his primary worries so that he can sleep better that night.”

Loyalty is an emotional quality, so the responsive content goal is likewise oriented to an emotional response.

A content goal that clearly states the nature of the connection between the specific business goal and the audience’s actual reality will permit the creation of a site content strategy and content development plan that is likely to succeed.

For instance, in the example above, the resulting content plan might call for the creation of an industry team persona (a sort of real estate Betty Crocker) who speaks to the site visitor as a person talking to another person. This is not hard to do, and if it is likely to create a sense of personal loyalty at the time of renewal, then it’s an idea worth testing. The content plan will include many such ideas:

The tone of the article headlines and intros is sympathetic rather than matter-of-fact.
Loss Control content for this site must include immediately usable action plans and must not include long-term maintenance advice.
Content must be focused on the top of the mind worries of this person, and must not include content that he would consider trivial (even if our Loss Control experts disagree).
Since we’re assuming he’s plagued with worries, we don’t want to publish the “gotcha!” Lessons Learned on this site – these are the stories of tiny errors creating large losses.

The selection or commissioning of content itself should be easy with an adequate content plan.

A more business-like example of a persona-specific business goal that can feed a useful content goal is: “They will renew because they know that the loss-control tools that this vendors has supplied have saved them money in the past year and they expect the savings to continue.” This goal is not emotional – the responsive content goals will feature cost savings in the lead position.

What I refer to as content goals here are closely related to High Value Scenarios (HVS) in the world of interaction design.

For a site to be successful, its developers must see at least one specific business goal with respect to the target audience that can be accomplished, supported, or influenced by the intelligent use of web content or a web-based application. Further investment in content for a site for which we cannot articulate this connection does not make any sense.

Oh, and without the objective or goal, how in the world will anyone even know if it's been successful?

The Emotional Appeal: Bambi

2007-08-20T16:25:00.000-07:00

Contextual note: Pathos, Ethos, Logos, the trinity of types of suasion.

And for today, Pathos. The appeal to the emotions.

Once upon a time, when I was consulting in communications strategies, I had a client, a very nice organization, a non-profit who hired my company to provide advice and training for their directors in their pursuit of money, the annual capital campaign. They already had enough money to pay us, happily. They knew they could do better in these annual campaigns, so they were looking to tap into our expertise.

So the first thing we did was arrange to tour around their many sites in the greater San Francisco area, to get an idea of what they were asking for money to actually support. They were wonderful about the tour, very friendly, knowledgable, clearly passionate about their work -- and here's a surprise -- they were all friendly knowledgable and passionate. I began to wonder about their fabulous recruiting process -- usually there are a few clinkers. So we met tens and twenties of friendly, knowledgable and passionate staff members, and toured tens and twenties of sites, centers, and programs.

And what they did there, what they did for each community they became part of -- well, it was what was needed, whatever was needed. Childcare, preschool, after school teen basketball leagues, esl classes, temporary housing, a subsidized lunch, a safe place to meet up with your kids, parenting classes, swimming classes, summer school, elder outreach, social dancing, bridge tournaments, whatever.

Okay, so I'm ready to write a check at this point.

We go talk to the program directors -- the people who needed training in how best to ask for money in this capital campaign. We asked, "Who are you asking?" and it turned out to be foundations, big local companies, civic organizations, whatever, whereever. They had all the speaking dates and appointments, they just weren't sure what to say.

So, a little non-plussed (seemed obvious to us, but then, we're the experts...), we arranged for a three day training session and wrote the curriculum. And the day dawned, we all showed up and got to work on helping these kind people learn to ask for money by tugging on heart strings.

And it was really hard. They really didn't want to. They were hoping we'd give them charts, a cost benefit analysis, a way to reach the cynical and hard-bitten on their own terms. So, we also did that, but never swerved from our recommendation -- use pathos, not logos. Or if you just can't bring yourself to use emotion, then at least use ethos -- speak from your own authority as a person.

There wasn't any solid logic available to them, but they had a powerfully compelling case. They were just uncomfortable about presenting it that way.

We had twelve people to train, and they all felt this way -- it just didn't seem fair. It felt manipulative, it felt undignified. We showed them the video tapes of their arguments based on emotion -- they were good -- they'd work! And yes, they agreed that this was so...but still. And that was the end of the first day.

We went back to the office, puzzling over how to rehabilitate the argument to the emotions, how to make it professionally respectable.

The next day, we showed up with a newly edited tape for the group and we started off with a quiz: "We're going to show you an argument and you're going to tell us if it's to the emotions, to logic or based on a person's authority." Okay, they all agreed, as nice as ever. And we rolled the tape.

A minute later we stopped the tape and said, "Well?" The hands shot up, and we had an excited discussion. We rolled the tape again, stopping it after thirty seconds: another lively discussion. A minute, 30 seconds, a minute, a minute, 15 seconds. More discussion, more excitement.

By the first break, the group had figured it all out. After the break, we had them do their presentations again, leaning on the emotional appeal, as we'd taught the day before -- and they were GREAT! Dignified, professional, and very heart-rending. They told tales about specific children and how their organization's services had made a difference in their lives, specific seniors, people ill unto death, new immigrants, a whole collection of specific faces came out in their presentations, and it was great. They added on -- going to places we couldn't lead them (after all, we're not altruists, and can only think along those lines so far...). They talked about how grateful they were personally to be able to put their life's work into these types of meaningful programs -- they turned the corner on the pathos and brought it back to ethos. Very elegant.

And what unlocked them? We showed them commercials. Commercial after commercial and asked them to apply the concepts of persuasion that we'd taught them the day before -- how is this company trying to persuade you? What type of appeal? Did it work? Why did it work? How could they have made it work?

All the participants jumped in to this fascinating parlor game -- not just watching commercials, but evaluating them. And they saw that the argument to emotions is very powerful, very commercial, and it can be very dignified.

Somehow, the commercials gave their own campaign for donations a sort of commercial validity, and they saw that to fail to use all the tools that capitalism uses to sell a sponge would be no service to their noble organization.

They had a very successful annual campaign that year, and for years after.

Rhetoric and IA: I see no differences

2007-08-20T11:02:00.000-07:00

Okay -- that's why I called it Rhetoric - IA. I actually have a university degree in Rhetoric -- it's right there on the diploma -- from Berkeley, no less. I really like the idea of becoming expert in rhetoric in the city that deplores its use. But it's okay, I'm a Berkeley native, so I guess whatever I do anywhere is a reflection on my home town.

I had a point to make, however -- I wanted to illustrate the complete overlap between the two disciplines, and it's a celebration of sorts because it looks like there's finally a real job that goes right to the heart of what I love. AND OH YES I love rhetoric -- it's engineering with words. I was an exhausted engineering student when I stumbled into my first rhetoric class: Rhetoric 30, taught by Dan Melia -- and I was a deer caught in the headlights after that.

It was an article of faith that half of the class (which was the introduction to the basic principles of rhetoric) did not stick around to the end, but I really didn't notice. I moved my seat from the back to the front row and came early and stayed late. It was amazing to me that people, other people, really thought this way, and I'd been hiding my bizarre compulsion to analyze communications all these years...and now I could get A's with it. After the first passion, I noticed that my former engineering classmates thought my new discipline was ridiculously difficult -- and yes, it's not for anyone who isn't just fine generating reams of prose. (et tu blogosphere?)

And people were passionate about it, too. Dan hated the deconstructionists -- and he thought I should too, but I was actually blown away by the ideas -- and I'm still deferring my judgment on this philosophy...maybe it's the way communication is indeed mediated by the web...maybe the writer disappears into the text...maybe the reader is the one doing the writing. That's what's going on in user experience one-on-ones, after all. But Dan was all about the page and the podium, not the web. And the medium is the message after all.

The deconstructed web is the coldest place of all (in media terms) -- particularly the web environment of an anonymous corporate site.

So the curriculum lead the little student sheep along the path of the classics -- We actually studied Aristotle in the same way a mechanic would study a Merck's Manual. Here's the piston, here's the camshaft, here's the pathetic trope, here's the catharsis, now you do it. Then we looked at Plato -- not all of him, just a few dialogues, but what dialogues they were: Gorgias!!! My darling Gorgias, gorgeous Gorgias.

Okay, now this is reealy important in today's evil world: Plato held that no one could be allowed to take up the hideously powerful tools of rhetoric unless they had first been grounded in and ground down by the puffing, strutting strictures of Ethics. Like handing a gun to a -- what? an evil person, I suppose. Here's a digression: long long before Jesus and his Good News, Plato was the earliest person I've read who clearly believed in the transforming power of having something explained to you. So, he didn't say that only good people should get to use rhetoric -- his desire was far more mechanical -- only people who had been lectured to about Ethics should get to use rhetoric. I hear and obey, master.

But, you know, Berkeley is always conservative and obedient, so, in tune with the Platonic stricture, we sheep were also dipped in the bath of Ethics before we were turned loose with our weapons. Now, this was in the early 80's, when Greed was Good -- in fact, it was at Berkeley, just across campus, in that same window of time, that Mr. Boesky was busy telling a B-School class that very thing. The rise of the faceless giant corporation -- what are one's moral obligations with respect to non-human entities? That wasn't covered.

Next time: Bambi, the pathetic.

The Cult of the Amateur

2007-07-25T18:01:00.000-07:00

I'm going to have to buy this book. I don't even know if the author is just noting the trend or deploring it or celebrating it. Here's my one-line bias: we're all amateurs -- it's just a matter of degree. The rhotoric training keeps me unable to draw that line between expert and know-nothing. In a deconstructionist way, it's the quest for expertise that itself creates the expert, the student who creates the teacher, just as the reader creates the text.

So, Wikipedia has always seemed to me to be a fine place to find a "fact." But that's because I don't actually believe that a "fact" can make it intact through its negotiation with language and all its variants, colors, and degrees of lister inattention. So, this current view of the demise of expertise has me puzzled -- did it ever really exist? Surely we've always needed to be careful not to be taken in by the plausible blowhard.

Web 2.0 Expo: Stowe Boyd on Building Social Applications

2007-07-20T15:21:00.000-07:00

Attendee Notes: Abby Shaw (abbyshaw@earthlink.net)

This 3 hour workshop provided a walkthrough of the current state of “social applications.” There were about 700 people in attendance and the discussion was lively.

A Social Application is one designed to guide human behavior into paths and patterns, to counter prevailing ways of interaction. These can also be called Social Tools and can be defined as software intended to shape culture. In the “post everything” world, the environment of the social application can be called the ‘new third place.’

The individual is the new group. Social tools speak to the perspective of “me first.” The sequence goes: Me to Mine to Market (see drawing below)
In this case, Market is not just buying and selling, but “something” that is being exchanged. The goal of social applications is to make that sharing more liquid.
While the standard computer interaction is as a large central service dictating the terms of the interaction, the social tool, in order to be successful, must operate differently. This difference can be called “bottom-up belonging.” “The edge dissolves the center.” The dominance of the person and the person’s needs in the market success of a social application leads to a situation where the traditional “large central service” can no longer dictate the terms of the interaction. Only the person’s satisfaction with the interaction can drive success. In this sphere, usability is not just a good idea, it is an absolute requirement.

Satisfy the person’s needs first, then get to the market, then get to the payoff. These edge-in approaches to markets are degrading the power of the center (e.g., the death of newspapers, the decay in television viewing).

“Belonging” comes from a person-to-person relationship, not from an organizational affiliation. Formal affiliations are declining (see Robert Putnam’s book, has “bowling league” in the title.); fewer people are becoming Kiwanis. What’s taken the place of these organizational affiliations are “ad hoc affiliations,” in which people join together to accomplish a shared objective and then disengage. This distinction calls for some defined terms:

• Groups are defined, have boundaries, may have rules, are “symmetric”(?)
• Groupings are assemblages of people with similar interests.

Social tools provide mechanisms to enable groups, groupings, affiliations, etc.

(See notes for more on comparison between traditional “domain” oriented applications and those oriented to serve the needs of the individual.)

Many popular web tools are semi-social or asocial. iTunes, for instance, is a big, impersonal database. Aside from the ability to create compilations, there is no person-to-person interaction. (One workshop exercise was to imagine what a social version of iTunes would be like.) Other asocial or less social sites are Best Buy, and Pandora (now adding changes), and other sites that have added social elements after the fact are: eBay, Amazon, Netflix, and BaseCamp.

These add-ons are ineffective, as the social aspects are not core to the tool’s value, and additional social features are hard to continue to add as needed. It is better to build for the social needs from the ground up.

When developing a social tool, keep in mind that the desktop environment is the world that instant messaging has made. For many, their workstyle is based on a new type of interruptive collaboration. The model is one of being available to help move the whole group’s work along, rather than sticking to being personally productive. This difference in workstyle is creating some generational and cross-industry conflict right now. Is it better to give up some personal productivity to move the network’s productivity forward? Group productivity is a new target: called (by fans) “the 21st century paradigm.”

In this model, the value of the network is the number of connections (? Not sure I agree…?). IM and mobile IM (texting + Twitter) have replaced email for some workers – people under 25 regard email as a tool used by parents and schools – a medium of authority, not collaboration. In fact, kids, always on their cell phones, tend to ignore their voice mail. Ray Lane, COO of Oracle, asked about the requirements for the success of a collaboration product, once said, “Sometimes an entire generation needs to die off before change can happen.”

NOTE: Social tools do not replace the need for or urge towards off-line meat-space interactions. (Personal note: among the mobile, I’ve noticed that texting is replacing IMing for some people – the power of mobility is very strong.)

The social architecture described is completely different from the standard domain architecture now in use, which is mostly based on and centered in the design of the central database, with functions radiating outward. Now, the user experience needs to be the basis. For instance, people don’t want to run a database query, but they do want to ask a question – what they want is to temper the query through a social interaction.

The “mine to market” interaction can contain the payoff: the recommender can be paid for the recommendation. (As is an insurance agent.)

Audience Question: What about the perception of corruption, of co-opting if the advice is paid for?

If the payment is transparent and the value is honest, then there seems to actually be more weight given to the recommendation – the recommender is a professional, with a stake in the game. A key requirement is that the recommender be known to the community, able to stand by statements, proven out in history – open, open, open. Reputation is fragile, and it is an attribute of a person, not an organization.
Another positive example of this is the Amazon affiliation payment – this is not seen as a corrupt business relationship. A negative example of this is a campaign where a corporation is pretending to be a person – as with the Toyota Tahoe campaign (see notes on later presentation.)

What is the abiding motivator?

The wish for “Things” is a red herring (as is the generic “Content”). “Places” and the “People” who fill the places are indicators, but not motivators. “Discovery of self” is the central, dependable motivator – the self is the “still point at the center of the turning world.” Validated by the Franciscan nun who runs the highly popular Vatican web site.

People are trying to discover themselves and you can’t do that without people, so people aggregate themselves into “groupings” (ad hoc assemblages) to engage in discovery.

Chicken and Egg

We’ve got this functionality and no people – how do we get them to come? (Persistent question across the conference – no brainer to me: if the functionality fills a need, they will come – if you need recommenders to jump start the functionality, pay ‘em.)

When does the network join you, instead of you joining the network? (koan, but very important question.)

A key concept: flow networks. Flow networks are those you set up so that things flow to you rather than your continually going to them. Twitter is a (weak) example. RSS news feeds is another example – and older example is any type of workflow automation (as ours for governance) or white collar factories automated paper and form processing workflows. We’re all familiar with being in the midst of a flow network – this concept differs in that, with the “me” at the center, it’s you inserting yourself into a flow network – a flow network that serves your needs, rather than extracting step-wise work from you.

The inexorable power laws

Boyd posts a critical comment in his (popular) blog and within a few hours gets a call from the CEO of the company discussed (Mark Andressohn, Bradley Horowitz). This is power. There will always be more popular people and this popularity (esp with flow networks) can translate into power. (The reach of an opinion is much greater due to social networks.)

Vox populi is always vox humana. And what’s wrong with this type of power?
There will be gaming, people will always try to game the system – but systems will emerge that counter the cheating, if it’s not wanted. You can Digg it out, for instance. Don’t feed the troll is a good technique. Delete the abusers. But the best defense is the mechanism of reputation and “swarmth.” (Swarmth is the reputational warmth an individual gets from the swarm.)

How do you measure swarmth? How do you reward it? (unanswered question – except for earlier note about using reputation to earn money for recommendations, which applies here – also see below.) Harnessing nets: using swarm intelligence (digression to define, using old tale of jar of beans and fair guessing game.) Boyd points out that all nets are not the same in value – and asks the question: Is swarm fungible? No, it is not. Research shows (wish I had citation) that your reputation in one system does not carry over into another. (NOTE: Very Important for Thought Leadership advisor qualifications – should be respected IN INSURANCE.)

When the power of influential people grows, they want money. There is a 10,000 hour rule (wish I had citation): across all human endeavor, it requires 10,000 hours to gain real expertise in something (about nine years of professional time, btw). And people should be paid for their contributions when they have invested in that expertise.

The next section of the workshop focused on walkthroughs of examples of applications and tools that were more or less social, with evaluations of the success of their design.

Last.fm

This is a social application that lurks and captures. You join and you are introduced into a musical neighborhood, first based on what you say you like, but ultimately based on what you are playing on your computer and your iPod. Boyd found out that his musical tastes are those of a 23 year old British woman in Manchester. He finds no overlap with the people he knows and associates with in other communities. This is a true ad hoc grouping.

Purpose is to find new music that you are likely to enjoy and to provide a place for you to review music for a receptive community. Two layers: people participate by doing what they came to do (play music, look for related music) and people participate by creating content that is judged by standing in the community. (See later discussion of view only and creator visitors, ratios, etc.)

On the Chicken and Egg question, they did this right from the start. First created interesting groupings, then let the participants drive the ongoing shaping – the participants define what is a “musical neighborhood.” Compare to the rigidity of iTunes categories. This is an example of an emergent taxonomy – and since it is outside of a hierarchy (using tags), it is an emergent ontology.

This is a social motif, with an underlying domain application. For instance, if you write about a band in your last.fm blog, the site checks the spelling and creates a link to the band page or the actual song. There’s a back and forth in the way the social tool is used. Network effect is created.

But even a winner makes mistakes: Why aren’t the tags the source of the groupings? (That’s what tags are for). Instead, the site uses old-style groups. And, frustratingly, you can’t search for groups that you know you would be interested in. There are some groups with exclusionary rules (have to be invited? Don’t allow anyone who likes Madonna to see this group?)

Upcoming.org

Who is going to this event? (West coast phenom) As a participant in this site, you can ask: Which of my friends/associates are going to this event? You can view events by people attending, you can see a discussion thread about a specific event. The site is focused on one thing: Events, and it is oriented around the social dimension. (Note: it satisfies the needs of all the visitors around event-oriented information.)

Facebook.com

This is the most interesting large-scale social connection site (compare to Myspace and LinkedIn). In this application, you have many rich options that the others don’t offer: you can stream content from Facebook to an RSS feed, you can push updates to those interested and more and more. (LinkedIn is more limited – no stream, no blog, no pictures). Allows you to create layers of “mine” here in one place.

Photos, you can share things you find on the web.

Boyd used social networks to find more work in Europe – nothing from myspace, but 2 nibbles from Facebook and both well-defined groups that lead to new assignments.
(First mention of need to integrate all these multiple memberships, different instances of Me, different aspects of Mine. Call to Google to integrate what they buy. Also note Yahoo 360 as attempt to do this.)
Thisnext.com
Here is the social dimension of recommending cool stuff that people might want to buy. The role of being a recommender drives the whole site – this is not a catalog with a sidebar of recommendations as other sites are. Everything is tagged: people as recommenders, categories, things. The site drives you to participate by recommending. Individuals can become featured content by the richness of their contributions – which are voted on. (Voting is very important element of web 2.0 – Swarm intelligence )

You can see list aggregations automatically because of tagging.

Bad examples

Basecamp and federation of work

Federation of work is great idea – this is a bad site to support the concept. Why can’t I see all my Basecamp projects in one view? Independent of account. (work is an attribute of person, not project owner is his point.) I need a separate login for each project. This is stupid. This uses a pervasive static model, with hardly any flow.

I have no dashboard – and that’s stupid because a dashboard is obviously what I want. I can’t link to other projects – I must cut and paste. This is oppressive security. (what is a boundary case in this context?)

Identity issues

The real problem is in how do we share identities across tools? Multiple logins is an absolute barrier to the integration of the user experience. We need a more fine-grained control of identity, and we need to understand identity issues better: not just identity in the sense of permissions, but also in the control of identify exposure. Who knows what about who?

1. Trusted authority where you can register your identity
2. Being able to control your own identify exposure

Work is going on now with OpenID, which is a unique url that represents you and you alone. If adopted, this would provide a trusted ID authority where you can register your identity. (Many of the apps and tools shown at the conference and expo offered an OpenID registration option along with their native registration.).

Some discussion of the role of anonymity in the online world. Oddly, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (a group fanatical about openness) suggests in its guidelines that if you are employed by a company that will be sensitive (skittish was the actual word) about your expression of your opinions openly, then you should use an anonymous identity for open discussions. The use of an anonymous identity will undercut a key element of this social dynamic – your value as a recommender is evaluated according to the value of your opinions, and, unless your whole online life is through the avatar of your single anonymous identity, you will not be able to partake of this “halo effect.” (and even then, it would be tough to get speaking or consulting engagements.) It’s uncertain how meaningful and valuable recommendations are when they come from an anonymous source.

The halo effect is also called “personal bank building” (note, this concept is in opposition to the idea that reputation is not fungible.)

However, the problem of a single identity registration is necessary for the integration of flow applications. Once the id problem is solved, look for the flow applications to knit all this together.

Once there is a way to knit the whole together, you will see the collapse and the falling together of the different worlds. Except for the little, specific apps, you’ll see no more than 20 or 30 large social apps left. (To me, this is not yet clear)

Outsidein.com

This failure is an illustration of the need to get the tool past the tipping point. Outsidein was designed to be a hyper-localized social networking system. The need filled was “Who are the cool people who actually live near me and what do they recommend locally?” The site was launched too early. You could register, but the experience was: “Here’s Me, where’re the other people?” Don’t race to the market before you get the social dimension right – you will just have to relaunch and you’ll have taken a hit to your reputation that you may never recover from.

Wait for both the social features to be ready and for the concept to be fully functional. Without the social features, the site will die, because it will not have a way to spread. (Very relevant to plan for Thought Leadership)

It is a mistake to see content as static object that people will come to view: High Value Scenarios encompass all types of things, but there’s nothing that just sits there that satisfies a visitor’s need.

Last note on Yahoo: Yahoo provides a host of small-scale examples. Where’s the integration? Where’s the grand synthesis? Brad Horowitz asks Boyd to hang on and wait and see. What is the role of Yahoo and the larger companies in driving this integration?

Blinksale.com

The case of the missing market. Another try at the federated work environment: you put invoices in and send them via email: the recipient can log in and see a list of invoices. Very good for tracking, good for small businesses and freelancers.
But where is the market? You can see the “me” and the “mine.” The owners of the site had day jobs running a design agency, so they couldn’t help the site evolve and enrich – they didn’t have time to listen to the community’s feedback.
Why not charge a small percentage in exchange for acting as an online bank for the online payment of these invoices? That’s the linkage between “mine” and “market.”
Now a new site: lessaccounting.com has recently emerged, and its functionality eclipses blinksale’s. But still missing the underlying market. (Maybe it is all just ad revenue…?)

(book: Everything Bad is Good for You – Who is Steven Johnson?)

Stray Notes:

Place is an on/off affiliation marker.
Examples: Smalltalk (closed community) Message: Tech Writing, Slash ambivalence.
Dopplar (what is?) application: limited alpha, is a simple, does one little thing, whips passing in the night

Emergence and maturity of Tags as an indicator in a 3D taxonomy –aka Ontology: Who is David Weinberger? Community of tags idea.

Who is Andrew Keene? Book reference: “The Great Good Place” by Ray Oldenbury. Who is J.D. Lassika?
Who is Z. Frank? Who is Mike Arronton? TechCrunch

“Community” is a concept that refers to groups? Not groupings?
What’s the relationship here?

Building Social Applications
Stowe Boyd, the /Messenger of /Message, /Message
Conference description of session: Despite the widespread adoption of social applications –- social networking, file sharing, instant messaging, and blogs, to name only the most well-known—creating applications that foster social interaction is hard. It is altogether too easy to approach application development from an information management mindset and miss the greater social context: people interacting to accomplish personal aims, exploring their identity through social groups, and working in online marketplaces.
It is these three contexts—personal, group, and market – that form three complementary and distinct tiers of social applications. Users may opt to use an application for very personal reasons – signing up for a web filing sharing service to transfer a file to a colleague – but they become consistent users, and invite others to use the application, because of the social dimension: how well does the application support the users’ needs for social integration?
Effective social applications bring people into the foreground by making the social dimension intuitive and natural, and integrating information flow into the social. Information architecture must take a back seat to social architecture.
The workshop explores the principles of successful social applications, and presents a Social Architecture approach to model new—or remodel existing—applications. Examples of well-designed and successful social applications—including Flickr, Last.fm, Facebook, and Upcoming.org – are explored in the search for general characteristics and recurring design motifs. A number of badly designed sites are contrasted with “well-socialized” alternatives.
The workshop includes two group activities to explore the application of the approach in small team settings.
Creating social applications is hard. It's easy to miss social interplay and build information-centered applications instead. This workshop explores the key factors of successful social applications, and presents an approach to building them: Social Architecture. The workshop also includes group activities to explore Social Architecture in a team setting.
Conference description of presenter: Stowe Boyd: I am fascinated with social tools, and their impact on business, media, and society. I coined the term "social tools" in 1999, only a few months before I started blogging, and I have never looked back. Since that time we have witnessed the rise of social media, social networks, and all things tagged "social."
I spend most of my work life with companies that are building social applications, with specific focus on design, marketing, and strategic planning. I have a particular affection for start-ups, but I share my love with larger, more well-established companies, as well. The rest of my time is split between writing at /Message and speaking at various events, such as Reboot, Lift, Shift, Mesh, Enterprise 2.0, Office 2.0, Under The Radar, and Web 2.0 Expo, to name just a few from 2006 and 2007.

Wearing Cranky Pants

2007-07-06T12:03:00.000-07:00

February 20 was National Mean Mommy Day -- I heard it on the radio. Pro or Con? I wondered. Well, Pro, obviously -- aren't we all better people because our mommies were a little bit mean now and then? Actually, it's when my kid mutters about how mean I am that I am most confident that I am dispensing "deluxe" parenting. I was all for Mean Mommy Day because we don't seem to understand the benefits of crankiness.

Isn't crankiness the inevitable by-product of high standards? When your high standards aren't met, what are you supposed to do? Be sympathetic? Offer chocolate? Cry? Certainly not -- any response other than crankiness would be a betrayal of those high standards.

There's a real up-tick in the crankiness factor at our company lately. When you communicate with your team and colleagues, keep this in mind. I think we're all anxious to display our high standards. And this is a good thing, but it certainly changes the atmosphere of communication. More of us are wearing cranky pants and we expect our standards to be taken seriously.

There is a track to success in some large companies that consists of floating along, staying invisible, putting the time in. When I first came here, I seemed to stumble over these floaters on a regular basis. I came from a career track that required a need for speed, a built-in urgency, as do so many of our new hires. I still remember my reaction to finding that the proper response to the smallest barrier to meeting a deadline was a rueful shrug, a bland acceptance of delay, and a uninterruptable flow towards the car, the freeway, and home.

Well, I remember thinking, as I sank cozily into this comfy view of things, this is something beyond family friendly -- this is downright leisurely, and I tried on a new, slow pace gratefully. Everyone seemed so nice. If someone on a team didn't deliver, we didn't confront, but we carefully, sensitively, found a way around this person's limitations. How very nice.

But after a few weeks of relaxation, I began to chafe at this slo-mo mode. My work is me, not some chore to be evaded, but part of my life-affirming journey. I really did expect other people on my team to do their work -- I was getting fed up with being sensitive instead of successful.

I was in yet another meeting when I heard an employee whose work I admired mutter "GPS" with a disappointed shake of her head. GPS turns out to mean "Glacial Pace Syndrome," and I learned that others among us are cranky about our more leisurely colleagues' casual view of their work.

It was then that I realized that there is a cranky movement afoot. There are people who really want to do something meaningful with that enormous chunk of time we have sold to our employer. So here's my idea: If you are uncomfortable with GPS, identify yourself to the people you work with so we'll know who we are.

Let's all get cranky about the barriers we encounter. Let's wince in meetings when something stupid and obstructionist comes up. An then let's speak with one voice and vote the stupidity down.

It's honest. And it's irritability that produces the oyster's pearl, after all.

Think Again

2007-07-06T12:00:00.000-07:00

Enough already! I am flooded with requests to write about irritations, rudeness, ridiculous timewasters. Everyone has his or her own rules about proper communications and is busy getting huffy about violators. As you know if you've ever been in marriage counseling, the prime cause of sour relationships is thoughtlessness, and the same is true here. The real problem is the absence of Clear Thinking, guys.

Tangled Strings

The highest volume sinner against clear thinking is e-mail. As we plow through our red inboxes we are vulnerable to the sort of thoughtlessness that is caused by a fear of becoming a bottleneck. Rush, rush with the response -- move it along. But really, if you look over your own e-mail inbox, you'll see that what is needed here is often not more hustle, but more deliberation.
I enjoy a good, juicy e-mail string the way other people like a soap opera. Here is drama, power, suspense! I've started collecting them.

I was privileged recently to review a lovely e-mail string that perfectly illustrates this problem. It started as a simple request by an employee for permission to revise an obsolete brochure posted on our intranet. The employee sent her request by e-mail to the person she was told to. The request was denied, the reason having to do with a "new policy." The employee wondered if there's a new policy to support the posting of obsolete information. So she wrote back, very politely, clarifying her request. She got the same answer back, but now the recipient's fairly rude response was copied to others, above and sideways.

Well, from then on, the whole thing ballooned. By the time the dust settled, two months later, the message passed through 18 mailboxes, scaled five organization levels, confused a vice president and two directors, and crossed and re-crossed into five different units.

Standing outside the issue, you can see where the simple attempt to communicate broke down: worries about "policy" expanded the distribution list beyond what was necessary because the recipient read the e-mail too fast and responded thoughtlessly. There are rules that help avoid time-wasters like this one:

Don't extend an e-mail string beyond three responses
Summarize the issue
Seek to resolve the issue, not just pass it along
Consider the distribution list carefully
Pick up the phone when you don't understand someone's e-mail

None of these rules of thumb, however, will protect our company against your failure to think clearly about what is going on right in front of you. Read and respond to e-mail with clear thinking firmly engaged.

The "Because" Factor

2007-07-06T11:58:00.000-07:00

Maybe it's a sign of our times -- the victim mentality and all. What's wrong with communications at our company (I hear) isn't our ability to talk -- it's everyone else's ability to listen! Hmmm. Does it seem like you are writing memos to the void? Are your requests for support and assistance falling on deaf ears? Are your most heartfelt comments routinely ignored? Well, certainly, we are not as good at listening as we might be. In the press of business, we forget, lose sight of, and sometimes ignore what we've been told.

But the answer is not to complain about the quality of the listening around here; it's to learn how to communicate so that your words are heeded. People listen differently to different kinds of messages. So if you're being ignored, it says something about the way that you are communicating, and it's not good.

Here's an easy and effective tip: when you ask a person to do something, include the word "because" somewhere in your request. Stanford University invested a lot of time and money in an experiment that proved that people are far more likely to do what they are asked when they are told why. Even if the reason given is silly, circular or meaningless, it makes a big difference.

Stanford tested the response rates of people paying their bills when the bill had "Please pay your bill promptly" printed at the bottom. Then it compared this to response rates for bills that had "Please pay your bill promptly because it is due" printed at the bottom. People paid their bills promptly seven times more often when the word "because" was added to the statement. Seven times! Now that's an effective communications strategy!

And here's some extra logic: if you're asking for help, explaining why you need the help ("because") will engage your listener's intelligence and participation. Our last Pulse survey told us that our employees value collaboration, and want us all to do a better job of it. Well, that begins with the simple act of adding "because" to your requests for assistance.

The Honor of your Presence is Requested...

2007-07-06T11:57:00.001-07:00

So your e-mail dings at you and you go look at what your net has caught, and there you see it: an invitation. It's nice to be invited: It means someone is thinking about you, doesn't it? But do you want to go to yet another meeting? Who is it this time, you wonder, and open it up. And there's nothing there, no purpose, no agenda, only a time and place and a list of your fellow sufferers: the hapless invitees. Or else there's only a trace of a comment, a scrap of justification for this person's casually ripping an hour out of your life.

Here's my pay-back fantasy: first, reserve a large conference room. Then write an invitation to a large group of random people -- just an invitation with a time and a location, nothing else. Then send it.

The day of the meeting arrives. You stand at the door and watch everyone file in. When everyone is settled, announce that this is a training class on "How to Attend Meetings." It a very short training: don't go to meetings unless you know why you're there.

Yes, I know, the fault is with the meeting inviters, not the meeting attendees. Yes, I know that the person who calls the meeting should set an agenda make it clear to you how you will be contributing, maybe even describe the goal of the meeting. All these things are true. However, one way to improve our meeting culture from the ground up is for you, the meeting attendees, to insist on these marks of courtesy. And to vote with your feet (or the "decline" button) if you don't get them.

And this is what you are responsible for: your use of your limited time. Professionally minded people keep an eye on the value that they are producing for the Company. Whenever you attend a meeting without first thinking about why you should be going, you are risking the Company's money.

And how much money is at stake here? Say you're at a one-hour meeting. Take an hour of salary for each attendee, then double that to account for benefits, desks, light and heat. That's a lot already, but there's an even more important cost: The lost opportunity to be working on other tasks that contribute to the company's goals. You can't do other work when you are sitting in a meeting. It's this lost productivity that is the highest cost of casually accepting meeting invitations. And you know how frustrating that is for you personally, as well.

Part of our ongoing commitment to employees is to encourage them to take responsibility for identifying and removing barriers to their most important work. Too many meetings form a very common barrier, so stand firm! Protect your precious time!

SPL PDQ or Else!

2007-07-06T11:54:00.000-07:00

Excuse the twirling eyeballs -- I've just come from a small windowless room where twelve earnest people were all discussing our EVA under GAAP as a function of our NPW in AY vs. CY with a side dish of PEs for ECs, UW discipline, and the CID/PID SSCs' SP framework. Then we talked about ETS, LBMS, and the new IT SAS. "No wait, isn't SAS a kind of software?" one person asked, "Yes, so they changed the name to IT SA to avoid confusion," another person replied.

To avoid confusion. What a lovely goal. As I was leaving the meeting, one person noticed that I was looking disoriented and suggested that I call HR's EAP. ("EEP!" I thought.) But before I called for a therapist, I decided to sit down in a nearby cube for a moment. I saw a small plaque on the wall: "ACRONYM-FREE ZONE" -- and I relaxed.

We do it without thinking. We fall into the habit of this alphabet shorthand for common things. The problem is, when we do it without thinking, these mysterious codes can doom our attempt to communicate efficiently -- our listeners haven't a clue what we're talking about. And when we fail to think clearly in this way, we force our long-suffering listeners to ask, "What does SSEB (or PIR, or BRM, or EE, or ASA) mean?" And that may require more courage or energy (or interest) than they have.

Acronyms are okay if you think before you use them: graceless, ugly, hard to remember, but okay. If you aren't thinking about your audience when you use them, they drive a stake through the heart of communication. And they can intimidate, create resentment, make you look pompous and condescending, and cause tooth decay. Well, they won't really cause tooth decay. But the arrogant disregard for your listener's ability to understand what you are saying is a kind of relationship rot that you should keep an eye on.

And besides, what are you doing with all this efficiency? It's the time you take to speak your words that gives your listener the time to think about what you are saying. What are you aiming at here: less thought?

Oh, and acronyms on the page! Is there anything less inviting than a paragraph chock-a-block with sterile symbols rather than actual language? An invitation to turn the page!

So, here's a call to clear thinking! Eschew obscure codes! Walk in the sunlight!

QED*

*QED stands for "Quod erat demonstrandum." These three letters (meaning "so it is proven") appear at the end of Euclid's mathematical proofs. This has to be one of the oldest acronyms still in use.

Lead with Your Chin

2007-07-06T11:47:00.000-07:00

I have a very earnest friend who has advised me to avoid a certain brand of pet food because she's heard "they're doing animal testing." Hmmm. But that may be a good thing, I think, looking at my stubborn cats. I wouldn't mention it to her, though, because she's full of passion about it -- I just hide the cans when she visits.

Here's the thing: My friend may be a crackpot, but she's doing her best to lead the charge.

This got me thinking -- how do we lead at our company? How do we draw other people into our visions?It is an article of faith that anyone can lead. In my early days here, I expressed frustration to a manager. I was told that I should "lead from below." (Pause for interesting mental picture...) Well, okay.

I've overheard a seminar leader, discussing this "anyone-can-lead" concept: "Yes, she said, "anyone can lead, but will they? Do they know how?"

That's the question, of course. Leadership, especially when it's outside the org. chart's line of sight, requires heaping portions of courage. Yes, you're pretty exposed when you decide to lead the charge. Naked, it feels, if you're not an org. chart-approved "leader."

Someone might think you're an animal-testing fanatic, after all.

But add some clear thinking, action, teamwork and another heaping serving of courage, and you too could find yourself in front of a parade of committed people, marching towards a common goal! Of course, you've got to have a vision to lead. But even that isn't enough.

People who have visions in isolation are not leaders. Even saints (not noticeably practical people) only achieve results when they start to talk about their solitary visions. Leadership is, to paraphrase Edison, "One percent vision, 99 percent evangelism."Here's one common path people take to avoid asking for help: I'll do it myself! See me lift this big rock all by myself.

Good job! But it's not leadership. You can lift a rock, but we can build an empire -- by collaborating.

Collaboration is a big topic right now, but it's getting confused with "consensus." Everyone in the room thinks they get to make the decision (that's our consensus bias), but actually, they don't. It's the leader who makes the decision, communicates it, smoothes over the ruffled feathers, and then has the gall to ask the dissenters for help in executing it! And that's where collaboration comes in. It takes courage to make the unpopular decision and to ask for collaboration to support it -- but without this little step, we are all paralyzed in our consensus stew.

So to lead you need help from others to achieve your vision. Better take a deep breath and get ready to immerse yourself in other people. You'll need to talk to them, write to them, present to them, beg for help, nag for budget, jump through hoops, unblushingly show your passion to impassive strangers, beat the stragglers with a stick, shrug over the lost lambs. Just do whatever it takes to get this ragtag-and-bobtail group to head in the same direction.

It's all about communicating your excitement. Create a contagion of passion, and stop worrying about getting your hair mussed.

Or, if you are lucky enough to work in the orbit of someone with the vision and energy and courage to lead, then grab the brass ring and enjoy the ride. Just be glad it's not about pet food.

Courage & Conflict

2007-07-06T11:40:00.000-07:00

It is eighteen months down the turnaround road and we are hitting some walls. A recent employee poll pointed to 'inefficient processes' as the primary barrier to employees' success. But few have the courage to step forward and say out loud, "This is an inefficient process!" We're really worried about what would happen if we did.

Let's talk about how we talk about conflict, which is the dark side of collaboration, of course. Sometimes we get to agree to disagree - but that's really a luxury, isn't it? Most of the time, when two people disagree about something important, guess what? Someone's gonna get their way, and the other one isn't. Employee, sibling, parent, manager, friend -- Everyone has experienced the pain of I'm right and you're wrong and someone pays and someone gets paid. Someone walks away feeling burned, but everyone lives on.

It's the great wheel of life: sometimes you're up and sometimes you're down, but it always moves forward.

Why then is it so hard for us to find useful ways to disagree with each other? In his first big corporate meeting, our CEO directed us to "Consult with all the qualified smart people, get their opinions, make the decision, and then move on." Oh, what a lovely vision! Let's talk about the habits we need to break to get to that point.

Saints on the Payroll

First, no one is getting paid to be perfect and universally loved. We get paid to solve problems. Sometimes we have a good day and the problem gets solved in a tidy way. Sometimes, it gets messy. Now, 'messy' is a subjective quality. For many of our employees, the mere possibility of conflict or controversy is enough for them to break a sweat. No actual communication needs to take place to create the intolerable worry. They analyze their audience: "They'll hate this. They'll disagree. They'll create barriers. Those unreasonable villains, they will sabotage all our good work."

Hmm. I haven't met anyone whose job it is to prevent me from being successful. Perhaps it's time to worry about this a little less. Hey, instead of worrying about out positioning, I say: Let's get back to work.

Any psychologist can tell you that the best way to get used to the discomfort of conflict is to expose yourself to more of it. Don't fear it, go to it - talk about it. If you can, make a joke about it. Think of it as useful tension, a signpost that something needs to be resolved. We need to get less tender about conflict in order to get the "qualified smart people" into the room.

Finding the Smart People

And here we are, back at collaboration. Schedule a meeting as soon as you know it's inevitable, and make sure you invite all the people who have a qualified opinion, or whose work you will be depending on to sew up the solution, so they understand the whole context of the decision. Make the meeting work for all involved - even if you disagree with their point of view. Prepare an agenda and send out any pertinent background material.

Go ahead and embarrass any participants who haven't read the background material. They won't neglect to read it next time.

You see, all that pre-made communications advice about "always have an agenda," is just so much blah, blah, blah, unless you want the meeting to get to a real destination. If you do, the agenda, the pre-work, all these tricks and devices, will help keep your meeting participants on track. But the key ingredient is your personal commitment to run the meeting so you really do get all the smart points of view on your problem.

If you do, you'll start the meeting on time, you'll interrupt the boring anecdote, you'll quash the nay-sayer, you'll do what it takes to get to the decision you need.

Find the smart people, get them to talk, make sure they all agree that you get to make this decision, and then thank them for their input.

I've participated in many meetings where all my smart participants agreed absolutely on the right thing to do and then asserted that such a result would never come about.

Agreement from all qualified stakeholders is critical to produce needed change. We need to take more confidence from these agreements - include the stakeholders in next-stage communications so they can add their endorsements - in public. It's time we all had as much courage in public as we do among ourselves in the wind-down of our meetings with other smart people.

The Killing Fields

With agreement all that is left to do is to make the decision. Well, it's yours to make, isn't it? The word "decide" comes from a Latin root that means, "to kill the alternatives." I see many decisions made here that are rendered null and void by a small slip: the communicator forgets to be clear about the doors that this decision closes. A decision is something that happens when you are presented with alternatives: in choosing one, you are eliminating the others.

The actual point of any communication is the slaying of the alternatives. If, on the company's behalf, you've decided on a vendor for McGuffins, it's important to be clear that no other vendor may be used. Any variance to this undermines your decision. I think we suffered through two years of this nonsense around cell phone contracts, for instance. But you could pick ten examples of the same from your own experience.

Chosen Battles

A job that puts the hard issues into cold storage gets dull pretty fast. It's frustrating, because the hard issues, the ones that generate conflict, also point the direction for the future. We're just marking time if we can't find ways to raise the questions that generate discussion, disagreement, and yes, conflict. I look at the charge before us in the next eighteen months, and I see so many tough issues that need to be resolved right away.

Here's my suggestion: don't worry about the conflict generated in the discussion. That's just noise. Dive in. Make a difference. Manage change. We will all be better for it.

Clobber-ate or How I Learned to Share

2007-07-06T11:35:00.000-07:00

Okay, okay, we've all heard there's a new way of life out there: one that involves crossing lines, building bridges across silos, sharing knowledge and information with those outside our fragment of the org. chart. But so what? Do we have time for this nonsense?

I remember when a collaborator was a bad guy: one who had dropped the struggle for freedom and sold his soul to the enemy. Now he's the good guy and rewarded for crossing boundaries. Now it's the American way.

A Cynical View

Collaboration as a concept seems very touchy-feely, very time consuming and hard to find the immediate reward -- it just seems above and beyond the commitments we make to get our own jobs done. Do we get a raise for helping "that other division" meet its targets? Well, that's management's' challenge, but I think we're reasonable in expecting that we'll be recognized and rewarded for doing this collaboration stuff.

In the meantime, I suppose there is a sort of visceral reward that we can give ourselves: collaborating across silos is more interesting and gives our work a wider impact -- I feel bigger and more powerful when my work is bigger and more powerful. I get a real charge out of it. When I've sniffed out a solution in use by that nameless group in St. Louis, I get a charge out of using it.

Perhaps efficiency is its own reward.

Or how about the pain of having your suggestion dropped like a used sweatsock because you didn't take the time to gather support beforehand -- there's a humiliation that collaboration can prevent. Suggestions from a unified group of twelve are just more likely to fly than your own precious and private visions. As painful as it may be to compromise your vision, it's a lot more rewarding to get the job done with the help of others than to be rejected all by yourself. (That's why I collaborate, by the way -- it's the cynic's justification, but it works for me.)

And then there's the candy of getting to know as many interesting and effective people around the Company as you can -- seeking opportunities for collaboration is a lovely excuse for mingling with the best people. These are the folks who give the best parties, tell the best jokes, and have the prettiest children, aren't they? Why work for a big company if you don't get to mix it up with the whole village now and then?

Sickeningly virtuous as it sounds, the real reason to collaborate is found in the person of our customer -- you know, the one who pays the bills. We offer a confusing array of products: we can save the poor guy some steps if we can help him buy it easily and all from us. Cross-sell, up-sell, fight, fight, fight!

Or, if your view of the Company is out the window of the back office, you can participate in this push by looking outside your own silo now and then: What are you doing that our brothers and sisters in other divisions can borrow from you to save a few bucks? Pride takes many forms. Be proud of sharing, rather than standing alone. (I think this is the evolution that takes place between nursery school and kindergarten, but never mind.)

Do we have time for this nonsense? What do you think?

Biting the Bullet

2007-07-06T11:31:00.000-07:00

Did you know that, according to Newsweek, the Pentagon is urging its staffers to knock it off on the PowerPoint? Hmmm. PowerPoint as a threat to our military posture? No, I wouldn't go that far. But PowerPoint has certainly changed the face of presentations at our company. I've enjoyed hearing people tell me that they're going to "send me a presentation." No, you're not -- you're going to send me a file. You make a presentation, you send a file.

Here's the essence of what makes everyone tired of PowerPoint: a graphics file is not the same as a presentation. Full communication is not achieved by sending me a collection of bullets. So, stop it. Stop it right now. It's just upsetting everyone.

A presentation is a public speaking event, not the visual aids that accompany it. It's the speaker and his smiling face in from of you. It's an event dreaded by most people more than spiders or an IRS audit. It takes courage. It's the hammy joke on the wry observation. It's you with your ideas in front of me with my brain. It's my chance to ask the public question and your chance to answer me -- or not. Here's an identification tip: people generally stand up when they give a presentation. Sitting down, crawling through PowerPoint pages as we listen to you read the bullets to us doesn't really compare to the raw exposure of a presentation.

Hey, here's a sensitivity tip: I can read, buddy.

You know, you probably don't really need a hand-out. You can just say things. I will hear you and I will remember. If I don't remember, then you probably didn't make me care enough about it to remember. Maybe you should spend your time figuring out how to make me care about your ideas, rather than grooming your speaking outline for show-and tell. I don't think animation brings anything extra to the moment, aside from the fleeting thought, "Doesn't this guy have anything else to do with his time?"

It's the bullet points that have a kind of weird immortality. What is it with these PowerPoint files? It's like some electronic form of gum on your shoe.

Don't they teach verbs at school anymore? I don't know what you mean by "project schedule and business objectives" -- I need a verb! Develop? Align? Test? Discontinue? Object to? Execute? Laugh about maniacally? Get out the last PowerPoint someone sent you and open it up. Do you see any verbs? Wouldn't verbs help a lot?

Okay, okay, enough ranting. Here's a suggestion. After you make your presentation and listen to the feedback, make time to go back to your desk and create a new document. You can even use PowerPoint. Create a new document that would make sense to a reader who wasn't at the presentation. Add the verbs in, add some explanations in smaller type, or use the speaker notes (find them and use them) to flesh out your ideas, remove the animations that look horrible when printed.

Then you can send me the file and I won't complain.

Battle-Hardened Veterans

2007-07-06T11:22:00.000-07:00

I was browsing in the CareerCenter on my company's intranet the other day (never mind why) and I ran across a job listing that gave me pause. It was my own job. The one I have right now, I mean. Well, not exactly the same. I quickly looked at the "hiring manager" and exhaled in relief.

Not my manager, so I stopped worrying about that, but started wondering about something else. Why is the Company hiring someone to do what I already do? This is not good. Am I not doing it well enough? No one had talked to me about this. I get good reviews, but still...I printed out the listing and took it to my manager, and she was as puzzled as I was. She made a few calls that reassured me, "It was just a mix-up." A week later, the posting remained.

I thought about applying for it, offering to do my job and this one at a discounted rate: I'd take a pay cut on the second job (maybe 20% less). I also wondered why there had evidently been no takers -- is my job so awful? Am I the only one dumb enough to do this for a living? Mostly, I just stewed on it. It seemed so clueless, to have two jobs that did the same thing.

I got cranky.

"More politics!" I groused. "If they really wanted to cut costs...," I harrumphed.Then out of the blue, I was asked to help interview the candidates for this other, duplicate job -- "my evil twin." I said yes, of course.I imagined asking the hiring manager why we would employ my evil twin.

In my fantasy, he says, "Our people need to be tough. Our employees are battle-hardened veterans of bruising internal battles. We don't let anyone have access to the customer unless they've successfully run the gauntlet of internal politics. Only the toughest survive to make it to you, the customer."

He'd pause to wipe the blood out of his eyes.

"Yes, this development model does cause a lot of attrition, but it's worth it. Our customers tell us that they like best to work with the bitter and cynical products of mindless turf wars." I had a hard time seeing this as a deliberate policy.

I decided that most likely the whole thing was an oversight. I went to a few interviews. I still wasn't sure why I was helping interview for my own job, so I didn't have much to say. They seemed like nice people (and you all know how I feel about "nice").

In the middle of all this, our CEO gave a speech that struck a chord with me: "Let's not waste our resources, fighting among ourselves," he said. "We have no enemies here: the competition is outside. Focus your attention on the competition, not on the other employees here." This focused my thoughts remarkably.

We're like kids fighting in the backseat of the car while nuclear war rages outside. I decided to stop sulking. I was able to see that including me in the interviewing process was a wise and generous act. My evil twin was hired recently -- and at the same time our functions are being pulled together into the same unit: like a lot of people, I'm having to learn to collaborate whether I want to or not. I guess we're hard-wired for competitive behavior: the trick is to point all that energy at our competitors, not the guy in the next cubicle.

Pigeon Point Lighthouse

2007-03-21T17:46:00.001-07:00

Pigeon Point Lighthouse, originally uploaded by abigaildshaw.

Friends on Saturday

2007-03-21T17:37:00.001-07:00

Friends on Saturday, originally uploaded by abigaildshaw.