Category Archives: social media

Social Media is Already Inside Your Organization…

….you just might not know it. Sherry Heyl writes an insightful post, Social Media Affects Every Department Within Your Organization, which points to the ever-broadening reach of social media and its power as a resource for all disciplines within the modern corporation. I think this is an important observation, but the post also implies an issue that I think should be stated overtly: the social media contagion has already infiltrated your organization. Chances are, even in the most buttoned-down and security conscious corporate culture, that social media is gaining a foothold. Why? Because the vector for this infection is people. People recognizing the power of communication on their own terms, people increasingly aligning themselves to transparency and authenticity in their choice of community. People like the Generation Ys/Millennials who have made distributed communication their natural mode of interaction. You can try to shutdown the blogs, vlogs and podcasts, you can ban the IP addresses of every wiki, but you can’t change the fact that every day the people you hire, the people who are already in your organization, are becoming acclimated to a new set of communication tools and are hitting the reset button on their cultural expectations for integrity, immediacy and empowerment. I think the call for smart companies is to embrace this new connected, community-oriented, and empowered corporate citizen and do what is necessary to learn from the best of their skills, to nurture environments that will attract and retain the top talents, the most effective distributed thinkers. The challenge will be to adjust the top-down management styles and to educate this new employee on the ethics of corporate communication in a world where information is permanent.

Also posted in Branding Thoughts, change, commentary, trust | Tagged , , | Comments closed

You Can, SoCon

Just wanted to throw in a plug for a great conference coming up here in Atlanta:  SoCon08 February 8 – 9, 2008.  I attended SoCon07 and thought it was an awesome opportunity to meet progressive and innovative people shaping the social media landscape.  The “unconference” format attracted a broad array of practitioners, pundits, purists, theorists, and beginners to dialog on blogging, vlogging, virtual worlds, podcasting, and design for a connected world.  This year I would anticipate that the conversations will also include Enterprise 2.0 – issues surrounding the impact of social media technologies and culture on the corporate landscape, as well as plenty of discussions of best practices, anecdotes and lots of smart, community-oriented people to discuss them with.  I hope to see you there, but hurry registration is filling up fast.

Also posted in Live event, networking, Other Interests, socon | Tagged , , | Comments closed

Not-Live from Barcamp – Day 2 – Session 6 [for me] Future of Democracy – Social Media

Presenter: Tim Moenk

OK at this point I was getting tired — hitting the Barcamp ceiling for information absorption.  Also the room was packed and awkward for typing in so here’s a post-session recap:

Tim presents some thoughts on the quad-umverate of Social Software, Gaming, Law, and UI.  Basically he contends that the increasing wave of social media is causing fundamental changes in how we interact at a national and global level.  Game designers are becoming social architects, and that law is lagging behind the progress, but there are experiments to try and catch up in areas such as patents.  He also points out that we are capable of self-organizing in a reasonable manner as evidenced by events like Barcamp.

I personally think he raises some very interesting points and wish there had been room in the time allotted for some Q&A. It is a very meaty subject, but I do think Tim was stretching the term Law over not just laws, but also things like etiquette, and governance.  This made for some oversimplifications, IMHO, in some of his statements.  Nonetheless, I’d love the chance to follow up with Tim and talk more about how he sees these vectors impacting our collective futures.

Also posted in Barcamp Atlanta, commentary, futurism | Tagged , , , | Comments closed

mmmm Melty

Anyone who uses a grilled cheese sandwich as a metaphor is OK in my book.  Ed Van Herik does just that in his recent post entitled “Who Melted my Cheese?”  Ed gives us a nice reminder that social media web 2.0 is not really , about predictable algorithms, but about reinserting the the mutable (and powerful) human element.  No tool can substitute for having something interesting to say, nor can any program yet effectively substitute for the very human mission of building a community.  It is our idiosyncrasies and adaptability that are our best assets in this changing media landscape. We must put them to practice however, to sharpen our skills, yes, but also to nurture our own social web (social safety net?).  Much as I love a melty cheese sandwich, I like the metaphor of a garden:  you can’t expect to plant a single seed and grow a prize-winning bloom.  Nor can you control the weather.  What you can do is tend to your little patch of land, nurture it, plant seeds, feed it, weed it, and encourage a little cross-pollination.  Because it is a process not of automation, but of attention that will be resilient and adaptable as the seasons (and the fads) change.

Also posted in change, commentary | Tagged | Comments closed
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