So...What's Next?!?

Catching Up

Wow - come back for vacation and hit the ground running!

Monday I spent the day working on a video script for a new client. It is really something I would like to see more organizations doing. They have tasked me with taking the legalese language of their social media policies and guidelines and creating a fun video that will show the importance of thinking before posting. We shot the video yesterday and one of the producers was holding back his laughter at one point.

Tuesday I got to meet with a peer I have not connected with in awhile and told him about a new business model I was working on. He completely understood the concept and added so many new ideas and resources. I will discuss this new idea in more detail as we launch, but it is very exciting.

After that I had a great meeting with a potential new client and was then off to the Digitainment board meeting. The momentum of Digitainment is growing by leaps and bounds and I feel incredibly lucky to be involved in this early stage. I am the social media director for the group and right now I am working on designing our social media road map as well as recruiting interns, which we will need on an ongoing basis. From there I headed over to the TAG Enterprise 2.0 meeting that we partnered with the Workplace Learning Society for. It was a packed room with many people taking lots of notes on how social software can be used for ongoing knowledge transfer and collaboration. There was the standard question about the ROI of using social media which got me to thinking...people who ask that question are thinking about the wrong thing. The ROI is on the project or the goal and social media or social software is implemented as a way to effectively and efficiently reach that goal - if it is leveraged correctly.

Wednesday I found myself having coffee with another peer I have not connected with in a long time and then I went over to the offices of our newest client, Creative Loafing to discuss our project. From there I had a wonderful lunch with a gentlemen whose company develops software solutions in the Healthcare and Government space. We explored many various ways we could work together and then I headed down to StudioPlex for their monthly ArtWalk, which Daddy-O was Djing for. I met my friend "Cocktails", founder of STIR. We discussed his new gig at Big Brothers Big Sisters as well as the new business model I mentioned earlier.

Thursday I spent much of the day with Public Broadcasting of Atlanta and Friday my day was split between being in the studio shooting the video for Grizzard and hanging out at the Atlanta Children's Shelter working on their social media plan.

There are also a number of really exciting things coming up.

This Wednesday I am running a social media workshop for CRMA

The 24th through the 26th of this month I am going on a FAM tour with the ACVB which includes my own hotel room in town - a little vacation spot, and visits to the Georgia Terrace Hotel, Dinner at Dogwood, Drinks at Pitty Pat's Porch,  Breakfast at Highland Bakery, a Bicycle Tour of Atlanta, the Oakland and Civil War Tour,  Lunch at Livingston Atlanta, a visit to Stone Mountain including Antebellum Plantation and dinner at Miss Katies Sideboard Restaurant. Friday we will start with breakfast at Cafe Mims and then head over to the Margaret Mitchell House. We will also vist the Atlanta History Center, Tullie Smith Farm, and conclude with lunch at Swan Coach House.

I have been in Atlanta for over 10 years and have only experienced a few of these attractions so I am excited to be able to be part of this. During those days I will be posting on my blog at the ATL Insider and on the Forums over there as well as posting pictures in their photo gallery and posting on thier Twitter account.

On June 30th is the Digitainment Mixer and Mashup hosted by Concept Hub and Fuzebox. Daddy-O will be DJing and we will have lots of presentations as well as will be shooting video shout outs up at our studio.

Looking out a little further, I am going to be in Birmingham, AL for a 2 day IAEE conference I will be presenting at. I am also presenting to a group of executives on Aug 28th re: Mapping Corporate Goals with Social Media Technologies and Trends

So, yep - looking forward to a fun, productive and very busy summer.

Enterprise 2.0 Round Table

Every other month the TAG Enterprise 2.0 host  round table sessions, with an unconference format.

We had some great session leaders today! and about 45 people participating in the discussions.

Next month we will welcome Indusa for our key note presentation who will discuss new strategies for Enterprise content and knowledge sharing.

Thanks to the following discussion leaders who made today a great success:

Justin Rubner, The Content Factor for leading the discussion on Enterprise 2.0 Wikis, Promotion and Collaboration. As the former technology and energy reporter at Atlanta Business Chronicle, Justin Rubner has been delivering high-impact news, investigative reporting and features to some of the most successful corporate leaders in Georgia.  He has extensive experience covering the issues businesspeople face, whether they're running start-ups or Fortune 500s.  Justin is also one of the leaders behind Techpedia Atlanta: The wiki showcasing Atlanta's technology landscape. 

Dave Coustan, Independent Consultant for leading the discussion on Enterprise 2.0 Blogging –  Dave Coustan is a corporate blogging pioneer who helped make Earthlink a real participant in the consumer dialogue surrounding the company through "Earthling" – Earthlink's official blog.  Dave is active in Atlanta's technology and startup communities and has spoken on product blogging at numerous events including BlogSavannah, BarCamp Atlanta, BlogOrlando and BlogPhiladelphia.

Giff Gfroerer, President North America, i2SMS, LLC for leading the discussion on Enterprise 2.0 The Mobile Opportunity – Apart from his duties running the US division of i2SMS, a global leader in SMS marketing platforms, Giff Gfroerer is a frequent blogger on the University of Oxford Next Generation Mobile Applications Panel, a consultant and author for the ATMIA Mobile Phone Security Committee, and has taught both graduate and undergraduate marketing and business classes at AIU in Atlanta, Georgia. His expertise lies in creating and building business relationships in the exploding mobile and wireless industry. 

Gretchen Miller and Jason Anderson of  Vitrue, Inc. for leading the discussion on Enterprise 2.0 Video and Social Media –  Vitrue builds powerful video and social media solutions to allow corporations to interact and engage with their customers. They have executed successful social media solutions for a wide range of brands — from niche players to large global media enterprises, including Turner Broadcasting, Procter & Gamble and VH1.

What I Have Been Up To

As I had posted on Twitter, my house looks like I am back in college. I have so much going on that I have bought 12 spiral notebooks to track everything.

Notebook 1 -  Is for my personal coaching sessions - which are starting to find a groove. Tonight I listed opportunities for self improvement. The list is still growing. It is both humbling and hopeful. Nothing that I am listing is a surprise and in fact I could offer all kinds of hows and whys I have certain behavior habits. However the hopeful part is that with acknowledgment and willingness to work on improvement - life can only get better.

Notebook 2 - Business Finance - we are not thinking small with this company - never have. But now it is so important that I really wrap my hands around how to make this company financially healthy so that it can grow big and strong.

Notebooks 3 and 4 and 5 are our product offerings - we have listed out 11 unique offerings that can be offered ala carte or as part of a larger scope of work, not including consulting. I have defined each offering and written out the needs analysis and qualification stages for each offering, but now I am working on very specific project management steps for each project as well as roles and responsibilities for the team that would be involved.

Notebook 6 - Future offerings that we have identified

Notebook 7 - Community work such as Enterprise 2.0, AECF, and TAG's social network

Notebook 8 - Overall roles and responsibilities, policies and procedure, and overall guidelines for the company.

Notebook 9 - The 4 P's for Concept Hub and how we can improve in each area.

Notebooks 10 and 11 Notes for self improvement in areas such as sales, communications, and management/leadership.

Notebook 12 -  Family Activities - now that summer is coming up, there is a lot more to keep up with and the kids are so different now that it is hard to keep up with the goals and needs of them both as well as overall family activities.

Besides ALL of that I am working on a number of proposals, and ongoing client projects.

I am also still speaking quite a bit, though I have not been promoting those engagements as much. I recently spoke for the GA Department of HR and the Mac User Group. This week I am speaking for the National Volunteer Health Association as well as leading a discussion at the Enterprise 2.0 workshop. On April 9 I will be in South FL  running a workshop during the day and am the keynote dinner speaker for the Broward County Human Resource Association. I am speaking at Flourishing Forum on April 17, I believe I am slotted to speak at the North Fulton Chamber of Commerce on April 29 and I am teaching a class for the GA Center for Nonprofits on May 14th.

Alright - I am exhausted - going to bed now....but I leave you with a quote - because I know you have been missing them...and look it's a sports quote too!

If you are bored with life, if you don't get up every morning with a burning desire to do things - you don't have enough goals.

Lou Holtz - The only coach in NCAA history to ever lead six different colllege teams to postseason bowl games, and a man who also won a national championship and "coach of the year" honors

Enterprise 2.0 Executive Round Table

Society: Enterprise 2.0

Meeting Title: "Enterprise 2.0 Executive Round Table"

Date: April 2, 2008

Time: 7:30am - 9:30am

Location:  Centergy Building at Tech Square, Hodges Conference Room 75 5th Street, NW 3rd floor, Atlanta, GA 30308

Event Overview:

7:30am - 7:45am - Gather and networking time

7:45am - 7:50am - Introducing Enterprise 2.0 Society

7:50 - 8:35am - Round table discussions

8:35 - 8:40am - Switch tables

8:40 - 9:25am - Round table discussions II

9:25 - 9:30am - Closing remarks

Register Today!

 

Detailed Description:  We had a great first meeting last month introducing our speaker series.  Now Enterprise 2.0, would like to welcome you to the first of our executive round table sessions. This is your opportunity to participate directly in the discussion of the many different facets of Enterprise 2.0.

We will be following the "unconference" format.  Members of the TAG Enterprise 2.0 board will be facilitating tabletop discussions on the following topics:

Enterprise 2.0 Legal Issues - Discussion leader: Paul Arne, Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP.  Each new wave of innovation brings new test for the law. Evolving communication paradigms and social access must still respect copyright and responsibility.  Crowdsourcing, open sourcing, and mashups may require new interpretations of ownership and intellectual property.

Enterprise 2.0 Branding - Discussion leader: David Cohen, Equation Arts, LLC.
Your brand is now in the hands of an empowered community.  Findability is the great equalizer and brings with it a new demand for transparency and alignment of branding with values.

Enterprise 2.0 Reputation Management - Discussion leader: Sherry Heyl, Concept Hub, Inc. (Formerly What a Concept!) People are talking.  And they are doing that talking online for everyone to see.  What are they saying about you and your company?  How are the new tools a boon and a bane to maintaining corporate image?

Enterprise 2.0 Open Source Movement - Discussion leader: Rodney Fernandes, Optaros, Inc.  Community built tools,  creative commons licensing, even commercial open source - the software landscape is evolving.  Those building solutions have more options than ever before.  Can collaboration succeed as a business model?

Enterprise 2.0 Enterprise Solutions - Discussion leader: Bhupinder Chawla, PRIMUS Software Corp. From security to knowledge management there are a new wave of issues and solutions emerging under the header of social computing.  How do you make it work for your business?

Enterprise 2.0 PR and Marketing - Discussion leader: Dan Greenfield, Media Consultant.  The glory days of "yell and sell" are over.  Today companies must seek permission to market and to identify communities of interest.  How do you tell your story when you are just one of many voices in the chorus?

Please come prepared to ask questions and join the discussion.  We will be switching tables halfway through the session so that each attendee can sit in on two topic areas.

Connecting People and Ideas - Using Social Software to Turbo Charge Innovation

Puneet Gupta, CEO of ConnectBeam presenting at the first Enterprise 2.0 Society meeting.

ConnectBeam started before the term Enterprise 2.0 was coined.  The to solve a particular pain within a company which was accessing the vast amounts of information within an Enterprise.

Reasons for using Social Software (Survey by 451 group) - Improve employee communication and collaboration, is the number 1 answer.

Only 44% of business users can find what they want on their corporate Intranet. - Forrester Research

Yet, 87% of people saythey can find what they are looking for on the Internet most of the time. - Pew Internet & American Life Project

As information scales, control and predefined structures do not.

Metadata from users themselves (a.k.a. Folksonomy) is the catalyst which will enable search to become the center of usable information.

Metadata/Folksonomy - you, as human,  can bring information and insights to the computer that no algorithm can.

People are more forgiving of the search results when they are searching for information on the Internet, but when they are searching for information inside the companies that is needed to do a job, they are more critical and want more specific results. A person is very particular about the intent of the search.

Benefits of Social Search;

• Faster response time
• Insights that leads to innovation and increased productivity
• Consolidate duplicate efforts
• More connections to information and people.

Currently, many people are searching for the same information over and over again, but there is no way to connect those people.

Social Search enables users to connect with the most relevant people and top rated content.

The concept of bookmarking is as old as the browser and users know how to search, by adding the social layer people connect with each other while searching for and discovering  information.

Product Demo
Search Results is ranked by human activity to the content such as saving and tagging links. Tags are applied by the end user in regards to the context that the information is related to them.

The application is very similar to del.icio.us but designed for behind the firewall in the enterprise.

Note - Last night at the dinner we were talking about how users without this application was using del.icio.us which is compromising the organization's Intellectual Property.

The search results also connects the users of the information in a Facebook type of application.

A night out with the guys

I am totally bummed.

I just spent a fun-filled evening with 4 incredible men and I have this great picture of all of us together, but I can not find the cord to transfer the photo to the computer!

Tonight, Bhupinder Chawla of Primus Software, Paul Arne of Morris, Manning, and Martin, and I hosted a dinner at BluePointe restaurant for Chuck Pendell VP of Sales and Puneet Gupta CEO of ConnectBeam.

They flew in from CA to be our inaugural speakers for the TAG Enterprise 2.0 Society.

We truly had a blast  and I hope that they are awake and recovered enough for tomorrow's presentation. I hope I am wake and recovered enough for tomorrow's presentation. I do plan to Live Blog it.

So the first bit of information that I found interesting tonight was when Chuck informed me that he has one of my business cards on his desk and does not know where he got it from, how we met. Let me emphasis something...they are based in CA! I have never been to CA and they have not been to ATL recently. Apparently I am getting around...in a good way!

Puneet and I shared "battle stories" about launching a company in a space that even we did not quite understand. He launched ConnectBeam about the same time I launched What a Concept! Their first client was HoneyBeam who looked at what they created and immediately understood the solution they were providing and to what problem. However Puneet and Chuck were still trying to figure it out. Together with their clients they are building an amazing company.

I shared with Puneet that since I had no clue who my market was, I just started calling people alphabetically. Now my client list is very heavy with A list clients :)

I am truly looking forward to their presentation tomorrow. However tonight I will leave you with a quote that I found a year ago when I was working on some case studies for a client regarding how to implement social software for internal communications.

Connectbeam provided  Honeywell's Internal blogging platform. This is the reaction from one of their employees:

"My company is cool. In the last 24 hours we've brought online a pilot project which is one of the very first, if not the first, internal corporate social networking/tagging applications. By internal I mean the service and server are running inside our network domain, yet our employees will be able to tag internal and external content.

Okay why is this cool? Well... the application is inside our firewall and will allow our engineers to perform knowledge discovery, research, and sharing across the miles... even if they don't know each other! GoogleBeam works in tandem with our internal Google search appliance."
source - http://www.socialcomputingmagazine.com/viewcolumn.cfm?colid=143

Update! I found the cord...here is the picture

Introducing Enterprise 2.0

A few months ago I was honored to be elected Chair of the new Enterprise 2.0 TAG Society.

I am working with an incredible board;

Paul H. Arne - Morris, Manning & Martin, LLP
Bhupinder Chawla - PRIMUS Software Corporation
David S. Cohen - Equation Arts, LLC
Rodney Fernandes - Optaros, Inc.
Fritz Hibbler - Soma-Richter
John W. Linss - CoreSpeed
Les Ottolenghi - Digital Commerce

and today we confirmed our first speaker for the March 5th meeting. This is HUGE!!!! I mean this is truly a leader in the Enterprise 2.0 space. Last year when we provided a case study for one of our clients regarding Internal Communications, this person was seen everywhere we did our research....

I am incredibly excited to announce our initial meeting....

Meeting Title: "Connecting People and Ideas: Using Social Software to
Turbo Charge Innovation"

Date:   March 5, 2008

Time: 7:30am – 9:30am

Location (include street address, and floor #):  The Ashford Club,
5565 Glenridge Connector, Suite 100, Atlanta, Georgia 30342

Event Overview (short):
7:30am – 7:45am – Gather and networking time
7:45am – 8am – Introducing Enterprise 2.0 Society
8am – 9am – Keynote: Puneet Gupta
9am – 9:15am – Q & A
9:15 – 9:30am – Closing remarks

Detailed Description:   TAG's newest society, Enterprise 2.0, would
like to welcome you to our first meeting. Kick-starting our calendar
will be a keynote presentation by Puneet Gupta, CEO of Connectbeam.

Social software has already begun to infiltrate the corporate walls,
but is it a distraction or a powerful resource to drive innovation?
Puneet Gupta will discuss the empowering potential of social
bookmarking, tagging, and social networking in an enterprise context.
Come learn the strategies for rapid information dissemination and
expertise discovery that will set smart companies apart while those
that refuse to adapt risk being left behind.

Speaker
Puneet Gupta, CEO, Connectbeam, Inc.

Puneet Gupta is a seasoned technology executive and entrepreneur with
over 15 years of marketing and operations. Prior to Connectbeam, he
was CEO of CourseCafe, an online social collaboration application
company enabling researchers around the world to work together online.

Puneet was Director of Product Marketing at Selectica (NASDAQ: SLTC) -
an enterprise sales and solutions pricing software company, guiding it
into new industry verticals with innovative solutions, joint ventures,
and mergers and acquisitions. He has also held marketing and product
development positions at Peoplesoft, and Oracle Corporation, where he
received the Best Innovative Product of the Year award.

Puneet holds a B.S. in Computer Science and Engineering from Ohio
State University, Management of Technology from UC Berkeley, and an
MBA from Columbia University in New York. He is inventor or
co-inventor on several Patents.

We should be the cool kids!

Is your city social media friendly? Do businesses in your area have a reputation for embracing blogs, podcasts, and social networks?

This is the question that Dan Greenfield asked of several participants of SoCon08.

The overall answer (re: Atlanta)  was no - not really.

The question I had to ask myself today was;  Is that hurting me more than helping me as a social media consultant?

I have not traveled to the west coast...this past weekend I brought the west coast to Atlanta - that should count for something. But this weekend Chris Heuer and Josh Hallett and Dave Coustan pointed out that I need to get out to more conferences...something Timothy Moenk has been telling me for two years.

But today was the clincher. I was presenting to a new company here in Atlanta, my adopted hometown, where I have been evangelizing social media relentlessly for 2 + years - and the person I was presenting to said she had never heard of me. OK - that just sounds egotistical - but stay with me.

This person was also a social media enthusiast. However she had been going to conferences in NY and in CA and not even looking for good opportunities in Atlanta, because, she said, Atlanta had no market.

Because I have stayed in this city, it was almost as though my credibility was in question. Overall we worked it out and had a great meeting - but Atlanta... I am embarrassed!

I am not technical - so I can not go into details of all the activities that Jeff Haynie and Mike Schinkel and many others have been putting together such as start-up weekend or barcamp, but I do know that we have tried a variety of end user social media efforts that I have been involved with such as Atlanta Media Bloggers Group, Social Media Club, Social Media for PR Professionals, CRMA Summit, SoCon07, SoCon08, the new Enterprise 2.0 Society of TAG - plus PRSA events and there have been many other events.

So what is the disconnect?

Well - today I was sent another idea to start another group.

    Social Networking Experience Council

Initially I explained that I just do not have the bandwidth to start another effort. However, then I started thinking more about it. How can I get others to start "experience councils" regarding their industry? Someone who really is in PR (which I am not) should have a Social Networking PR Council. Many Interactive Marketing Agencies are claiming to be involved in social media. They should get together and start trading notes, because the one thing I have noticed is they are all over the place when it comes to how to create a social media site and what being a "consultant" means. We need more round tables and discussions.

But as much as I have tried to get those together, they do not happen in the business communities here like they should. The way they do things on "the West Coast." Everyone who claims to be an expert here seems to  treat social media as their secret sauce. It seems it is only a secret to people in Atlanta. Everyone else knows the doors are "open."

Come on Atlanta peeps - let's stand up and shine and not remain the outcast, introverted, stuff shirt city in the connected world. Let's start being one of the cool kids again!

Every generation needs a new revolution.

- Thomas Jefferson

The Evolutionary Timeline

I just returned home from our 3rd board meeting for the TAG Enterprise 2.0 society. This inaugural year is shaping up nicely with some amazing thought-leaders and activities in the works.

One of the first steps we are looking to take is to conduct some focus groups with an aim to get a firm understanding of where certain organizations and industries stand in regards to collaborative 2.0 type technologies. We are discussing the creation of a time line idea that possibly starts with unaware to aware but avoiding or inhibiting, to advocation to adopting to embracing.

This got me thinking about evolution in general. How there are currently many societies on various levels of the evolutionary time line. You can almost argue that there are many people within a neighborhood, family, or household that are on various levels of the evolutionary time line.  I mean right now there are people flying around in space and there are people living without any running water and there are even people who have no real connection to anything outside of their tribe - all on this little planet.

This is amazing to me. I still work from home often, and for background noise I usually have the television on History International. I learn about people, places and events from hundreds of years ago that show a more advanced civilization than some current civilizations.

So what that tells me is that our evolutionary time line has been accelerated for some time - but then we added digital technology and things really took off - that led to the Internet and the ability to access knowledge and information without time or geographic boundaries. Now we have collaborative technologies where we can easily discover others all over the world for the purpose of accelerating change and advancing technologies even faster.

So while those who are adopting such trends and embracing the opportunities that are in front of them are out conquering worlds and building digital empires, I have to wonder, will the rest - those who resisted change, be left with the equivalent of living without running water?

Today's quote

Our only security is our ability to change.  ~John Lilly

Everything I know about Social Media I learned from watching my son play XBox Live

Alright - a few people such as Tim Moenk, Amber Rhea, Grayson Daughters, Josh Hallet, Jim Stroud, Rusty Tanton, Chris Boese, and many more might take a little offense to that title. The reality is most of what I know I learned from very smart, brave forward thinking people.. :)

However, I developed some profound (if I do say so myself) insights from watching my son play XBox Live.

Today I had a wonderful meeting with Les Ottolenghi who is setting up an amazing program schedule for the TAG Enterprise 2.0 society - but I digress.

I was telling him my theory that XBox Live and all the other ways our kids are connected will end wars in the next decade or two. Our children will not want to battle the friends that they have known and grown up with online. They will accept, understand, and appreciate the differences that our generation and generations past have killed over.

He agreed on the fighting aspect but felt the new wars will be fought over available resources. I thought that made since... humans will have to go through stages in the evolutionary process. The majority have stopped enslaving and torturing other humans (unfortunately I am aware that this still happens in many many places - but we are at least appalled by it and it is not
accepted globally like it once was) - next we will stop killing each other over our differences. However that does not mean we will be ready to play nice. We will probably just move into parallel play - which means we will have evolved into toddlers. Eventually we might be able to share.

Later tonight I got to hang out with some friends and again I made the comment that everything I have learned from social media I learned from watching my son play XBox Live. The point I was making then was that people of celebrity status, whose careers benefit by connecting with their fans, but who also get so overwhelmed that they have to escape - can utilize social media to gain their humanity back, connect with fans while playing. I connected those dots when my son informed me that Jack Black plays Halo. I began to wonder if my son ever got to play with Jack Black and did not know it. Then I thought what wonderful PR that was if he did play and everyone knew it was him...

Speaking of celebrities, I can not get Heath Ledger out of my mind today. I first saw him in 10 Things I Hate About You - one of my favorite movies - and then in Knight's Tale - another favorite. He is/was damn good looking, but so what - so are many who died young. So why does he keep coming to mind today...I guess he just did not "seem the type" to be found dead.

Finally - I think since I have a fresh start with this blog, I am going to end each post with a quote as opposed to a random quote randomly.

Many people can appreciate the fact that I can appreciate this quote...so this is for you (you know who you are :))

Personally, I am always ready to learn, although I do not always like being taught. - Winston Churchill