Did you know we have a conversation going on over here!

I didn’t!  How can we make this feed the comments through email?

June 25, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | 2 Comments 

NLabNetworks 5 of 5

Panel discussion

Chris Meade.  We haven’t been talking about the economy today?  How much time will we have to do ‘free’ things during the downturn?  It may become harder to sell the benefits of SM to the unconvinced.

Vijay Riyait.  The amplified individual.  Blogging about being a Microsoft Partner has changed their relationship.  Microsoft asked him to publish a casestudy and led in part [?] to becoming a “lead” partner in the UK . . .  What is the ROI?  It is a long term benefit but we have to put the work in to it.   . . . We need to learn to talk to people who don’t know very much about social media.  Qu/Ans: Creative Coffee Club

Roland Harwood.  We don’t own our reputation?  Web pages are more or less permanent and cement our reputations.

Andrea Saveri.  Distinguishing between the SM platform and the activities of social networking.  The activities have always been there.  We have been talking about new infrastructure for businesses.  There are new possibilities for relationships between small businesses and between big and small businesses.  And then we ask where is the payout? Grow knowledge.  Attract talent without hiring them. . . . Training . . . Trusted relationships  . . . new environment for doing this.  Next decade will be challenging for all businesses - climate change and oil (USD5 a gallon! - 2.5 quid! to our 6 quid! - more people on the trains).  Climate refugees.  Social media platform helps us develop new responses in this new envirionment. [**** seems a good phrase to me  . . . new responses]

Question: Bridging with inexperienced SM users?  Benefits to more people.  Regenerate communities.  Chris: exciting time - tougher economic times shows that SM tools are tools.  Time to get firmer on people who won’t use the tools and to be more political - we must share for the future of the planet.  [my rough precis]

Vijay - we need to get out there and connect to business groups - take the ideas to the [front].  Hard work and talking face-to-face.  No substitute for face-to-face.

Question:  Are  Microsoft etc. really interested in SME’s? Vijay: we need to take our experiences to them.

Question: CJ-if you could only keep 2 of your SM platforms - Roland - twitter and facebook - connects to lots of people - random interactions to people we barely know.   CJ Twitter and Second Life.  Chris - Twitter. CJ - clients can only keep 2 or 3.  Andrea - Delicious and news aggregator.  Vijay - Facebook connects with colleagues and friends - small business the two are mixed - twitter.

Question: Small business often say “show me the money” - haven’t got time.  i want to know the killer reason - profits and time.  Vijay - How do you get your business?  Social networking - another route and another avenue.  Chris - how it saves money - do things quicker.  . . . Can they survive without social networking?  Saving of time.  If you do SM for a living, which bits are people willing to pay for?  Roland - intractable problems on twitter, also the tailor blog mentioned by Steve Clayton.  Andrea - markets can be larger [the questioner needs a heuristic to explore the business owner's need unless this is 100% cold calling *** opportunity here? SMM]

Question:  DTerrar comments - identify tangible business benefits - killer feature is collaboration - must identify tangible business benefits.

Question: Saturation?  Consumers are savvy - we are still marketing.  Chris - pick one and do interesting things with it - don’t just participate.  Chris - selling must be authentic - useful advertising.  Vijay - blogs with an agenda behind it - transparency - impending regulations.  Roland - innovation and proliferation of competing technologies - comments that blogoshere lacks civility - txting can be obtuse and can misinterpreted.

Question: Dramatic shift in landscape - more graduates in India and China than we have kids - [social media allows us to move around the value chain] Andrea : collaborative, emergent.  China has the greatest no of bloggers - they will be players in the innovative space.  Transliteracy will be future work environment - open, social, user driven, bottom up - fundamental shift - ordinary people can make substantial impacts.  Roland - NESTA “webscience research foundation” we assume the web will be there for ever - money at stake is significant - the collaborative spirit could be damaged -  political interference.  Chris - Chinese website - unpublished novels are sold by subscription.  Web is also used by facists etc. Vijay - will businesses truly open up - just go use twitter - businesses like to have control.  SN requires us to give up control.  Enterprises will adopt it.  Will SME’s have the foresight to open it up and see where it leaves.

Question:  What is different? I have built 3 businesses on relationship marketing.  One sided conversation.  We sold, they bought.  Then we paid attn to customer expectations.  SM enhances relationships.  SM gets people to review their thinking.  Old businesses won’t change.  New businesses will do things differently.  SM platforms seem like kids’ things are kept out.  FSB - please get some case studies out - take it out of academia.  Start, do it like this.  The first movers will take a considerable lead.  SueThomas - Creative Coffee Club.  Question - have we got 6 months.

Words of Wisdom

Vijay - mystique about SMM - share experiences with people who are doing it.  FSB - try hard to get them to be engaged.

Andrea - you are not going to do it all.  Cases are meaningful because they are concrete.  Pick one small thing and experiment - eg. simple site - what should the next sauce be?  Not to be ignored.  Cautiously tracked and watched.

Roland - Napster, YouTube - case studies are out there. Forming relationships is what it is about.

Chris - The Blog - keep the blog - right to express ourselves - content - what we believe?  How the downtrodden get to be heard.

End -

Toby speaking tonight at dinner.

June 19, 2008 | Filed Under Jo Jordan | Leave a Comment 

NLabNetworks 4 of 5

Workshop time - choice of 6. I am going to David Terrar’s workshop on organizing accountants. Talk later.

June 19, 2008 | Filed Under Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

NLabNetworks 3 in 5

5 Bioteams: what can we learn from nature’s social networks? [Our swarm team]

Ken Thompson is talking about the broken model of “single leader teams” and the promise of what we can learn from biology.

1. Networked Enterprises

Helping small businesses form networks to win large contracts.

Collaborative skills for amplified enterpriees.

2. Swarmtribes

For fans to promote bands. Compliments Myspace and Twitter but less of a “broadcasting”. NESTA funding allows UK bands free funding until the end of 2008.

Organizing festivals.

Organizing around a cause.

Identify the top 50 fans and they will reach out to the rest of the community. All messages come from some one you know. If you like a message, we pass it on.

3. Mobile teams

a. Ask the network

b. When one knows all know.

c. ?

Experiment in the session

1. Text join swarmname username

2. Receive acknowledgment

3. Sent a message

Question from an audience: does twitter waste time?

1. Any group member can take the lead.

2. Short messages relevant to what we are doing makes for dynamic teams.

3. In a crowd, many people do the same thing to make a mexican wave. In a small group we all do different things to make something happen.

4. Reach many through the few.

Lifecylce

Founding stage

Ergonomic stage

Reproductive stage

Terminal stage

Humberto Maturana on Autopiesis : a living system its product is itself

Boundary

Processes

Nervous system

External Communications

Group membership - boundary

+

Build survival mass with swarm queen

Get VIP fans to recruit up to critical mass (increase engagemet from 1% to 100%)

Too fast to get details

6 Social Networking beyond the Dogma: Let’s make some money

Jim Benson from Seattle, urban planner by training, musician and evangelist is talking about how to get the most out of its social media.

SME’s have “stuff to do”. Social media is time sink.

To have a good business you need advice+customers+ . . .

Communities that create value help and you have a valuable community if you participate.

You invest social capital in and after a while you get something back.

Example twitter.

Some people tweat copiously. Small business owners don’t have time. What works for your business?

What intangibles are you seeking in this network? Not direct results. If you just take, you will no longer be welcome.

How do you pick what to participate in?

Know your limits. How much time do you invest and what will you get back?

Learn:

Your community

Your market

Your limit

Start:

now (feel around, test waters, participate)

small (start small and work your way up - social networks pull you in)

directed (fits your immediate needs, business, your personality)

Business relies on

Personality

Familiarity

Proximity (Social and Locational) Clients and Information

e.g. restaurants customers in walking distance, national wide restaurants for health regs.

Reduces:

transaction costs (lead acquisition, product improvement, opportunities, individual sales, expert information - later is important gain)

Social networks are like cities because they give you things you used to get in cities

by fostering

growth for economics, thought,innovation (spiky, low transaction costs for info exchange, vetting, advice)

coordiantion

affinity

voice

realization of the individual through groups

Question:

June 19, 2008 | Filed Under Jo Jordan, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment 

NLabNetworks 2 of 5

4 The Future of Work: Amplified Individuals, Amplified Organizations

Andrea Saveri is talking about the Institute of The Future - spun off the Rand Corporation - thinking beyond the 10-20 year horizon and looking at 2nd and 3rd term consequences.  Foresight - Insight - Action.  The purpose of their work is to develop foresight.

How do we make sense of the emerging future of social media  . . . .

Now to amplified individuals

Looking at a “landscape” future map.

Amplified individuals - new superheroes in organizations -using new tools - rewriting the narrative of what it means to be in an organization. They provide huge opportunities for SME’s.  They do what SME’s do well: personal, niche, agile, entrepreneurial.

AA make up for what small businesses lack: skills, breath, training, capital, negative perceptions about limits of depth and infrastrcuture.

Key characteristics:

1.  Highly social - filter overload - expand capacity to deal with abundant information - deal with signal to noise.  (e.g., social bookmarking - follow niche interests through delicious)

2.  Highly collective - tap intelligence of crowd - prototype - for SME - expand infrastructure and “staff” - engage in collaborative activity - do not have to “hire” people.   New apps for me: crowdspirit - find a team to develop a prototype - expand your design capacity.  Innocentive from Eli Lily is now an open platform.  Alternate Reality Games (e.g., I love bees).

3.  Improvisational - band together to solve tasks

4. Augmented - use systems, applications, hacks to help think and coordinate - enhance memory, attention and focus.  Really important in SME where we wear many hats (context switch).  Have a look at www.lifehacker.com.

New skills for an emerging business system: the super skills for super heros

Expand infrastructure, expand scope, filter, create conversation

1 Mobability - the knack for organizing and collaborating - learning to use the apps

2 Influence - how to be persuasive in multiple media spaces to achieve what you want to achieve

3 Ping quotient - how quickly do you respond to requests for engagement

4  ? Fearless innovation in rapid innovation cycles

5 Open authorship - creating content for public consumption and modification - let other people make it better

6 Multi capitalism - work fluently with financial capital, intellectual capital and social capital - reputation.

7 Lb - Can you rise about the steady stream of tweets to see the big picutre

8

9 C Cooperation rating - spot the best collaborators for the best task - spot the customers too!

Amplify your structures and processes to bypass traditional constraints.  Develop new relationships with big business and the markets.

Not economies of scale but economies of socialbility.  Scaffolding

Asymmetries of power

Responsive resilience

New market niches

Question:

Answer: plenty of ways of having conversations [opportunity here?].  Changes priorities in businesses.

[Don't have long questions when the audience cannot hear you!]

Answer: Show me concrete examples

Answer: Build social capital/reputation separately from monetization.  What can we give away to get paid for other side.  Don’t think of monetization alone - thing about all capitals and think of monetization [in a total system].

Answer: Qu- how much time should be spent on SM.  How much time can a manufacturing business spend on SM?  Ans- what is it that they are doing? discussing engineering problems - what is the activity?  why are you going out there [bravo!].  Where are the constraints that you want to get over?  If we get over the constraint, will we be more productive?

Some missing bits here!

June 19, 2008 | Filed Under Jo Jordan | Leave a Comment 

NLabNetworks 1 of 5

1 Opening

David Asch, DVC at DMU, asked about how social networking affects the “credence rules” of a purchase and particular to the purchase of services and experiences.

My question: Can we monitor our reputation in different communities?  Can we revolutionize our industry landscape through our relationships with our communites (aided and abetted by IT).

2 Social Networking for Small Businesses

Steve Clayton of Microsoft UK is talking about building relationships with customers (some my wording and some his)

Does your website convey your personality?  Does it connect?  Does it allow a two-way conversation?

The internet has allowed the long tail to take part.  The challenge in the long tail is to get your voice out.  The advantage of being in a niche, is that you can have a clear voice and a conversation about your product.

How do you have people connect to you to get up the list on Google search - have a conversation.

How can big businesses created trusted relationships?

And he is talking up “commoncraft” - they do incredibly cool videos!

3 Are Online Social Networks the New Cities”

Roland Harwood of NESTA (Roland - think I called him something else last time - sorry)  says 700 people registered for a breakout session on this title at a NESTA meeting.  He works on virtual clusters through NESTA.

Thesis: social networks are beginning to fulfill some of the functions of cities.

The essence of cities:

In cars you are isolated, in cities and pavements you have serendipity.  Cities themselves can be serendipitous with neighborhoods of like-minded people emerging on their own.

Social networks are more interesting to do with people you don’t know well (the people outside your 100 person tribe), the ‘weak ties’, the periphery.  They allow us to build relationships before we meet them.  They allow us to build trust.

Cities have ‘organizational memory’ - example of the textile are of Venice.

Diversity drives innovation.  Leicester is a diverse city.  We need to create space to cross fertilize ideas.

My question: To what extent is it important to understand the “purpose” of a community or network (wicked questions and boundaries - see Wirearchy of yesterday).

June 19, 2008 | Filed Under Jo Jordan | Leave a Comment 

NLabNetworks

The inside of Leicester Cathedral

Image via Wikipedia

I am going up to Leicester for NLabNetworks big showcase day.  I am looking forward to Toby Moores after dinner speech - he always has something fresh to say.

The line up is pretty packed: Steve Clayton from Microsoft Cambridge (I never really expect them to be here), Roland Harwood from Nesta, Andrea Saveri from the Institute for the Future (stateside), Ken Thompson of Bioteams from northern Ireland,  Jim Benson the colloboration guru from Seattle, and 8 workshops running in parallel.

CJ will be there, I think.  And Shani Lee, too.

The big question for me is whether the social media world is ready to ’schematize’ a heuristic.  How do we embed the tough questions in a step-wise approach to  understanding communities without oversimplifying things.

I’ll twitter a bit from Leicester (that’s Leicester Cathedral in the picture in case you wondered) and blog over the weekend.

Zemanta Pixie
June 18, 2008 | Filed Under Jo Jordan | Leave a Comment 

How does social media influence your life?

What forms of social media influence the way you work, and how?

Now that I’ve asked the question, let me try to answer it as well as I can, and then I hope to hear from some of you as well.

These are the main forms of social media I use: blogs (I write my own and read tons of others), microblogging (Twitter), wikis (but mainly to log in attendance at events so far, nothing much more than that - I think as a resource wikis are heavily underutilised and I am party to that state of affairs so far), and social networks (primarily Facebook). Other forms of social media that exist but that I don’t use much are virtual worlds (like Second Life), podcasts, and RSS feeds (if one can call that ’social’). I include comments as part of blogs.

Over the last couple of years, social media has increasingly taken over the way I live my life.

There, it’s out in the open. I communicate way more with friends I’ve made through social media and those that have an existence in the online world (like on Facebook) than I do with friends that don’t. I’m pretty sure it’s the same state of affairs for many people, but I may be wrong.

The reasons are pretty simple: I find social media engaging, and by communicating with likeminded people online, my need for socialising is adequately satisfied to a large extent. When that connection is continued offline, as with SMM sit-down lunches, for example, my quality of life is even better. (I guess that makes me a bonafide geek).

My thoughts are:

1. Isn’t everyone’s quality of life improved by connecting with people they share common interests with, with whom they can discuss topics and ideas of interest? If those connections originated in the online world, why should that make it any less social than otherwise?

2. I am constantly encouraged to think more about events which I largely hear of online, because of my presence and activity in social media. Therefore, it is a positive influence.

3. Social media has helped me connect with people I never would have met in the ordinary course of things. I’ve been greatly enriched by what they do - web entrepreneurs, for example.

Are these all valid arguments against critics of social media?

How does social media influence your life?

June 12, 2008 | Filed Under Anjali Ramachandran | 3 Comments 

Marketing SM in the Unis

Undoubtedly, the social is as important as the media in social media.  Like all marketing, knowing the punter is as important as knowing the product.  Just because of where I will be next week, I am thinking about social media services and universities.

Social Media School

I am still interested in social media school.   It promises a good bread-and-butter line for many people.   It is self-contained - you can see where it starts and finishes.   It is scalable across clients.   It allows self-development.  There is nothing like teaching to get your ideas organized.  We complement each other which is great value for clients.  We can also have redundant teams.   If someone has to go off to do something more lucrative, more fun, or more urgent,  someone else can probably step in at short notice without much damage.

At the moment, I am thinking about social media schools and the university outreach programs.  Not academia - that is a different ball game.  I am talking about straight training.  People who want to know and want you to show them how to do it.

What I need to know from you:

Another marketing idea for unis

I am comfortable in the university world.  British unis have constraints that are slightly different from other countries.  All academics though are under pressure to publish research.  All Vice Chancellors are under pressure to make money from research.

This is what we could do: Tout ourselves in universities to organize the social media for a research project.

I am comfortable around academics.  I understand the pressures on them.  And I understand why they swing from arrogance to shyness.  I am happy to handle finding research units we can work with and then finding people among us more familiar with the discipline to help communicate.

I also think that this could be a good market.  The academic world is dominated by US journals who are dominated by Americans for reasons that are obvious to anyone who understands communities.  Content is not key.  Conversation is key.  It could be fun to work with unis to lift the rank of a research unit just by helping them manage their conversations.  Because the academic world is international, this is exportable too!

Anyone?

June 12, 2008 | Filed Under Jo Jordan | Leave a Comment 

Trying to define the undefinable

What is social media? Famous first words.

Here I am, bravely trying to define a term which is so huge in what it encompasses and so nebulous in terms of meaning. But, as part of the Social Media Mafia, someone has to take those first steps, right?!!

It’s not a new term, of course. A quick Google for ‘what is social media’ throws up 679,000,000 results, no kidding. So I’m not going to try and rewrite what’s already been written about it, because there is more than enough already and that would only be stupid. I’m going to start by pointing to different places where there seems to be a coherent enough explanation of what social media is. (If you do want my two cents worth, then at its most simplistic, social media can probably be defined as forms of communication (media) that involve people, thereby making it ’social’).

1. The Wikipedia definition of social media.

2. The BuzzLogic definition of social media. This is useful because it clearly explains not just what social media is, but the various terms commonly associated with social media. It is also probably the most easily understandable to laymen: ‘Web content such as blogs and wikis, created by individuals or a collaboration of individuals. Often times, social media content is intended as the starting point for larger conversations.’

3. The iCrossing definition of social media, which is in the form of an entire eBook and is very detailed. It takes you through pretty much the A-Z of social media, from what wikis and blogs are to how to create a podcast.

Then of course, you have the viewpoints of different individuals on what social media is - just trawl through different blogs -as a starting point, you can go to the Social Media Wikispace, Social Media Club and Scobleizer.

The discussion is open. We at the Social Media Mafia can help bring more clarity to what is already out there, perhaps.

June 11, 2008 | Filed Under Anjali Ramachandran | Leave a Comment 

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