Getting Ahead in an Enterprise 2.0 World

May 15, 2009 at 3:19 pm · Filed under FASTforward'09, Zombies

Brown-nosing used to be the preferred method of succeeding in business without really trying. Enterprise 2.0, however, elevates the art to a different level. Thanks to Geek & Poke’s Oliver Widder for this perspective:

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What Innovative Uses of Twitter Are You Seeing?

May 15, 2009 at 7:39 am · Filed under FASTforward'09

The New York Times published an article, Putting Twitter’s World to Use, that had some interesting applications. For example, Corey Menscher, grad student at New York University, developed Kickbee, an elastic band with vibration sensors that his pregnant wife wore to alert Twitter each time baby kicked: I kicked Mommy at 08:52 PM on Fri, Jan 2!. Mr. Menscher is now considering taking the product to market.

There should be other uses of this. Ambient Devices, started before Twitter, provides glanceable technology to alert you to all kinds of things. This could be hooked to Twitter feeds if they have not already done it.

Here is another. At Henry Ford Hospital in Detriot, the docs twittered throughout an operation to remove a brain tumor from a 47-year-old man. Tweest included: A portion of the skull is being removed to allow access to the dura, the lining of the brain. The article said that, Medical residents and curious laymen following online asked the doctors what music they were listening to (Loreena McKennitt, a Celtic singer), whether the patient felt pain in the brain (no, just pressure) and how big the tumor was (the size of a golf ball). As is convention on Twitter, they tagged all their tweets with a keyword so anyone could search for the keyword and read the stream of posts.

Not sure I want the docs to twittered during my surgery. Better to focus on task as hand and I hope they are not crowdsourcing the next step. I understand the music part. I work better to music also. What music would like to be operated to? I would pick some nice slow instrumental jazz ballads over Hendryx.

There is also the Portland Twisitor Center, where you can ask where to find the best brunch spot or coffee house and receive instant official responses from the center and anyone else who might be following. True Massage and Wellness in San Francisco, twitters when masseuses have same-day openings and offers discounts. The spa is often fully booked within hours.

The article states that the most productive use of Twitter has been for businesses that want to better understand their customers, citing Dell and Starbucks. This is something I have written about this here as few times. (see for example,

What are the most innovative uses of twitter that you have seen? Here are the Top 21 Twitter Applications from Tech Crunch.  Twitpic is number one and TweetDeck is number two to no surprise. I use both of these but I am more interested in the unique ones. Here is a list of 275 twitter apps but most are around Twitter use itself and not applied outside the Twittersphere like the baby monitor. 

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Recording of today’s conversation with Vivian Schiller of NPR and Scott Anthony of Innosight

May 14, 2009 at 4:19 pm · Filed under FASTforward'09, Media, NPR, News, Webinars

This morning the FASTforward Blog hosted a great discussion between Vivian Schiller, the CEO and president of NPR, and Scott Anthony, the president of Innosight and author of the forthcoming book: The Silver Lining: An Innovation Playbook for Uncertain Times.

Moderated by Renee Hopkins Callahan and sponsored by Microsoft, the discussion touched on topics ranging from:

• the challenges of today’s news business, NPR’s particular “business” and its need to “be its own disruptor”
• the “misalignment” of business models with real value in some of today’s media companies
• the role of technology in enhancing the user experience
• the importance of good editors and harnessing the collective intelligence of informed human beings
• framing disruption as not just a threat, but also as an opportunity
• the viability of charging for content and other forms of monetizing content
• the need to experiment *and* be willing to fail often
• the importance of innovation even, sometimes, in the absence of a clear business model

Click on the link below to access the full recording of the conversation – you can play it in place or download it as a podcast. And stay tuned to this space in the coming days for a trancript of the discussion as well as a highlights piece we’ll be publishing.

 

 Standard Podcast [57:11m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (1593)

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Living the Freelance Life – Being Free and Secure

May 14, 2009 at 9:37 am · Filed under Freelancing

More and more of us work for ourselves now – either by choice or by force!

Many of us in jobs wander about what this life might be like.

Many would like to be more free but worry about security.

Many don’t know how best to live this life – for all they know is how to live the organizational life – so they have no idea of how to set such a life up.

Back in 1994, I only knew the traditional life but found myself free but ignorant. Here is a series that I am adding to every day of what I have learned to be true and that work.

Bottom line – you can be free and more secure.

So here is an expanding series of posts about Freelancing. Each day I will fill in the blanks and finish with Control and Adventure. I hope that his helps.

• What’s it’s like – Being truly free
• Why a job is not secure
• How to leave your job and how to market – It’s all about the relationship
• Costs – Freedom – Co Working – Sleeping at Night
• Growth – how to grow and not lose it all
• Managing yourself and your clients – how to be a grown up – it’s all about love
• Working at Home – managing your time your Spouse and Kids
• How to have Control and Adventure

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Who’s in Charge of Social Network Information?

May 12, 2009 at 10:17 am · Filed under Messy World

Industry research group AIIM just released the results of a study that warned that “a third of organizations have no policy to deal with legal discovery and 40% might need to search back-up tapes to find emails that could be relevant to litigation.”

The new 2009 AIIM survey found that 84% would have no way to justify why emails of a certain age or type had been deleted.

“In AIIM’s view, most organizations are only just waking up to the fact that among the deluge of day-to-day emails, are some that constitute important business records. These emails need to be recorded and retained as such.”

The reason I bring this up here is that there is no difference between email communications and social-network communications, covering blogs, wikis and other postings. It’s all electronic communications posted on behalf of organizations to conduct organizational business. Social network interactions are business records, too.

The question is, how soon before legal departments start getting the jitters over electronic communications beyond email?

There are also the accompanying management issues that also go with the storage and retrievability of electronic communications. Someone has to be in charge of discovering, storing and archiving these communications. Hardware needs to be made available, and managed.

The AIIM study observes that more than half of the respondents lack confidence “that emails related to documenting commitments and obligations made by staff are recorded, complete and recoverable… Only 19% have the facility to move important emails into a document or records management system, or a dedicated email management system.”

This, of course, is a nod to the study’s underwriters, but the findings also give pause to companies with intense and pervasive social networking activities. Can they retrieve discussions and communications from six, 12 , 24 months ago? What if important communications took place on an outside service such as Twitter?

Who’s in charge of all this information? And do they have the resources to manage, store, and archive it?

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