Creating a World to which People Want to Belong

This is a reprint of an article I wrote for the April newsletter of the IAF Europe.

Robert Dilts
(image by Cantabrigensis
via Flickr)

"We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future."
George Bernard Shaw

Many years ago I had several encounters with Robert Dilts, one of the early developers of the systemic thinking school of NLP. Robert, in his kindness has left a deep impression on me with the subtitle of his book “Visionary Leadership Skills”, which serves as the title of this little article
on how facilitators can have an impact on change in organizations and societies. I hope Robert doesn’t mind.

We are living in times in which most aspects of life have become unpredictable. Will we still be in business next year? If so, what new skills will we need to serve our clients? If we are employed, will we still have a job? Will our kids be able to develop their talents and gifts? Will our organizations become better places, where the individual contribution is valued and where team work becomes a means for personal and corporate success? Will there be more or less wars,
terrorist attacks, and hunger (for food and for meaning)? And these are just the big questions – just try to write a list with two columns: in one column, jot down the things that you deem certain and in the other those which you think are uncertain. What’s your personal balance?

So: if uncertainty and unpredictability prevails, can we as facilitators have an impact or are we subject to the strong forces of a seemingly chaotic world?

I believe we can. As facilitators, we

• help teams to develop
• create room for dialogue
• assist organizations to improve their collaboration practices
• support individuals in their intent for personal growth
• deconstruct complexity and enhance comprehension
• understand and describe systemic patterns in groups and organizations
• serve as role models that provide orientation
• allow emotions and feelings to be expressed
• identify emerging leaders and give them room to experiment
• express our views on the good, the bad and the ugly of organizations and societies
• act as messengers of social initiatives
• suggest tools for improved collaboration
• etc.

As systemic thinkers we know that every action has an effect on the system. At the end our
work boils down to one simple thing that we do: Creating space for passion and responsibility to unfold. I love to start my workshops with a simple exercise: I ask the participants to get off their chairs (which of course are assembled in a circle with no tables), and spend 15 minutes to meet other people. For these 15 minutes, I encourage them to talk about two aspects of themselves: What are they passionate about? What do they want to take responsibility for during the workshop (and beyond)? This little activity sets the tone and provides fertile ground for openness, transparency, emotional involvement and collaboration.

So, here is our contribution to a better world: let’s focus on helping to increase the global
quantity of passion and responsibility. If we commit to this as an objective for any of our workshops, then I am not worried about our impact.

There is more reason for optimism: the global web culture that has developed over the last years is an indicator showing that people do collaborate if they have the tools, the freedom to use them and nobody standing behind their backs. Gary Hamel has expressed this perfectly in an article for the Wall Street Journal (“The Facebook Generation vs. the Fortune 500“). He describes the following patterns of collaboration via social media:

1. All ideas compete on an equal footing.
2. Contribution counts for more than credentials.
3. Hierarchies are natural, not prescribed.
4. Leaders serve rather than preside.
5. Tasks are chosen, not assigned.
6. Groups are self-defining and -organizing.
7. Resources get attracted, not allocated.
8. Power comes from sharing information, not hoarding it.
9. Opinions compound and decisions are peer-reviewed.
10. Users can veto most policy decisions.
11. Intrinsic rewards matter most.
12. Hackers are heroes.

Quite a good description of how the real world should function, isn’t it? So, let’s start to build in real life what works in the Web already. I am ready to assume the hacker’s position, if wish so.

Change Facilitators Need to Change

Image via Wikipedia

IBM has just published a very interesting study about the enterprise of the future, based on interviews with 1000+ CEOs from around the world. It is only 6 pages of text and it has the potential of shaking our foundations.

Summary - the enterprise of the future is:

• hungry for change
• innovative beyond customer imagination
• globally integrated
• disruptive by nature
• genuine, not just generous

I would like to open a discussion on what that means for us as Change Facilitators. Are we ready to guide our clients into that future? Do we have the skills, attitudes, knowledge, tools?

Do our consulting organizations work along these principles? Or are we repeating old patterns? Are we ready?

Join the discussion and let us shape the future, together. I have opened a discussion forum about that topic at http://www.change-management-toolbook.com/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=50.

I believe we need to change. Do we want to? Or do hope that after the current economic crisis everything will go back to normal?

On Complexity, Paradigms and Language

Image by pipiwildhead via Flickr

I read a great post of Peggy Holman on PATTERNS OF CHANGE: Invoking Emergence in a Time of Uncertainty Peggy starts with the provoking question:

What would it mean to know how to work well with the unprecedented upheaval many of us face today?

She continues:

We live in unprecedented times. With financial systems crumbling, oil prices rising and falling, educational systems failing their students, whole industries like newspaper publishing and auto manufacturing collapsing, it is clear that dramatic change is happening whether we like it or not. The pathways of the past no longer reliably guide us to understand the needs of the present, much less the future.
...
What follows is an emerging story that puts the old story of change in perspective, opens the way for something new, and provides some insight into how to put the ideas to work.

Sherri Black in her comment to that post, replies:

Peggy — it may be a bit more diplomatic talking about “old change” a bit more kindly — like change patterns that used to work but suddenly with the degree of turbulance in our lives do not seem to help any longer (or someting like that –not to offend all the other change or OD method masters).

I do not agree with Sherri. It is the role and responsibility of thought leaders to introduce a new language. The old language serves as justification for trying to reestablish the old ways of doing things. It is probably that we have not yet found the new language we need to describe patterns that are breaking through, and attitudes and tools that we need.

Image "PhotonQ-Beauty on the Horizon of Complexity" by PhOtOnQuAnTiQuE via Flickr

During my attendance of the last Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco I saw a fascinating presentation of Soren Stamer, CEO of Coremedia about Darwinism on the Web.

We have to realize that it is impossible to predict anything substantial even about the near future. Soren states seven compounding reasons why:

1. Increasing Dynamics
2. Rising Complexity
3. Increased Transparancy
4. Global Synchronization
5. Huge Opportunities and Huge Risks
6. Abundance of Options
7. Exponential growth

So, maybe the "old" OD and Change Practitioners have to learn we are entering an era of new paradigms. Which doesn't mean that the old methods won't work any more. But there are fewer situations in which they actually do work.

When I started my professional life, we were facilitating so called Objective Oriented Project Planning Workshops in Africa, Asia and Latin America, trying to conceive detailed plans stretching over 3-5 years. What a joke!

I now have to admit that what we have used over the last years, methods such as Appreciative Inquiry, Future Search Conferences etc. are not effective in isolation. Rather, they need to be complemented by new ways of facilitating change.

Where do we get the new language from?

Reblogging: Citizen-Powered Election Monitoring With Vote Report India

This is an exciting website (from: digiactive) for anybody who wants to effect social change:

Vote Report India is a collaborative citizen-driven election monitoring platform for the 2009 Indian Lok Sabha elections. Users contribute direct SMS, email, Twitter and web reports on violations of the Election Commission’s Model Code of Conduct. The platform aggregates these direct reports with news reports, blog posts, photos, videos and tweets related to the elections from all relevant sources, in one place, on an interactive map.


It is also worth to watch this great video which gives tips on digital activism:

Make a Difference

It is about 2 weeks that I attended the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Getting ready for this evening's Social Media Lab at the HUBBerlin, I am revisiting my conference experience. The conference's website is a great source for learning what will be the forces that change our future. Here is a recommendation: If you can spare 25 minutes, watch the keynote of Tim O'Reilly on how Web 2.0 is changing the world, and how we are changing the world.

Tim talks about three major trends:
1. Enterprises understand that Web 2.0 is about turning themselves inside out
2. Web 2.0 evolves into cloud computing
3. Mobile phones and ubiquitous sensors lead us to ambient computing

An example for the last point is the Quake Catcher Network of the University of California at Stanford which uses the motion sensors of users' laptops into monitoring earth quakes.

Tim ends with the assertion: Make a Difference! Time well spent:

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• Enthusiastic Web 2.0 Expo Keynotes (duncandavidson.com)

Real Time Virtual Collaboration Workshop

What tools and principles do we need to help change to unfold? Social and technological development as means for better organizations, and a better world.

Join an experiment of virtual collaboration.

This is an experiment in virtual collaboration. On May 9, 2009, from 14.00-17.00 GMT (please check your local time here), we will host the world's largest Real Time Virtual Collaboration Workshop. The workshop will be based on the self-organization principles of Large Systems Change Methods like Bar Camps, World Café, Open Space Technology, etc. and will be facilitated applying different collaboration technologies such as Voice-over-IP, messaging tools, micro blogs etc.

Although we have a certain structure and procedure in mind, this is work in progress, and if you have a passion for this, we encourage you to join the steering group. Just drop us a note in the forum below and we get in touch with you.

During the Real Time Virtual Collaboration Workshop, this page will be the central place where the agenda will be created. Also, this is a place for documentation.We will post the instructions later on.

For the time being, please register here and join our pre-conference discussion

Here is an update on what has happened so far:

Since we had the first call for the conference, more than 50 people have registered and we have formed an organizers committee to brainstorm and set up the main facilities. Here are our latest ideas:

This is the concept which is unfolding (work in progress):

a) we will have to create a very simple interface which will be the meeting place. Here, the agenda of the conference will be posted (on a wiki or a whiteboard), this is where participants can get advice from tool hosts, i.e. people who specialize to answer questions on application of certain tools. This is also the place where everybody can go to meet and join an open discussion - kind of coffee break room.

b) our team will propose a set of standard tools which everybody can refer to. This will probably consist of
- wikis for the agenda and for notifications
- chat rooms
- Skype (for one-to-one chat, group chat and voice-over-IP conversations)
- Twitter for communicating with the outside world in real time
- personal journals in which participants can post the summary of their group discussions

c) we will all start building our agenda before the conference starts. At the beginning of the conference, participants have the opportunity to add topics and suggest virtual breakout rooms according to their preferences.

d) we will encourage participants to use other platforms for joint learning and exploration. For example, it could be that a group of participants decides "let us build a photo story around a certain issue of interest" and off they go to search photo databases. People search blogs or other websites for certain information, and then return to a discussion forum (this could be a chat room or Skype or whatever).

e) participants will take responsibility to document their results on a platform that we provide, or in their personal blogs.

f) we promise to keep everything as simple as possible. However, some explanation will be required and we will produce a short video before hand to outline the main procedure of the conference.

Web 2.0 Has Matured, What's Next?

This is the summary of my 2 1/2 days venture deep down the rabbit hole. I have just attended O'Reilly's Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. While during the last days, I was just able to comment, I should now give some personal reflection on the conference.


Was it worth to travel to San Francisco only to attend the conference?
It definitely was. I had attended both of the Web 2.0 Expos 2007 in San Francisco and Berlin. There wasn't much of a difference between those events, and the excitement about Web 2.0 and social media was enormous at this time. I don't know whether the words Enterprise 2.0 and Government 2.0 existed back then, and if so, I didn't know them. MySpace was leading the web communities sector by far. Twitter existed already but except a few geeks like Stowe Boyd, nobody knew it or used it. Ning was the latest kid on the block, Dopplr and many other networks just had started a few months before.

This year's conference certainly had a very different tone. Social media have matured and are mainstream, somehow. For a consultant like myself who tries to help organizations to navigate through change, it was important to hear about the latest developments and have a look into the future. There wasn't much new tendencies, it seems that this is the time of consolidation. I liked the motto of the conference: "The Power of Less."


What were the main topics discussed at the Expo?
I didn't attend any sessions of the design or development track, so I have no idea what's new in terms of technology. I focused basically on two aspects, one being how to build strong online communities, particularly in the corporate sector - the Enterprise 2.0 aspect so to say, and the other one issues aoround marketing in the Web 2.0 world.

From my limited perspective, I would say that the notion of how to create strong tribes was one of the main topics (a concept that has been introduced by Seth Godin). The other one was mobile applications. It was interesting to see that Facebook and Twitter have become the mega (or meta) applications, those which set the standards and basically define the cornerstones of Web 2.0 All other platforms and applications are kind of supplements to a world which - at least from a marketing perspective - focuses around the question "How can I make use of the enormous diffusion rate that Facebook already has (with at least 200 million users, in all generations), and Twitter might have in the future? How can I increase the efficiency in which I use this platforms for my strategy - as a person or as an organization?" There are hundreds, if not thousands of programmes that aim at enhancing the user experience and the utility of both platforms. So, summarized, it is Microsoft, Google, Facebook and Twitter which dominate the Internet. And the iPhone of course, as a technical device - it seems that half of the attendants had one.


What about blogging - was that an issue at all?
Not really. It seems that blogging is taken for granted. When you are a Web 2.0 geek, it is out of questions not to blog.


What surprised you most?
A couple of things, in fact. First of all it was the growing awareness that there is a need for change management to accompany Web 2.0 projects in organizations. I arrived with my concept of Web 2.0 being a tool for change facilitation - which it is. But I had to realize that introducing social media as a tool for better collaboration, either across an organization or with outside stakeholders needs to be facilitated. It's like the introduction of personal computers 20 years ago into offices, or a big ERP project. And it seems that as long as the millenium generation hasn't entirely taken over all positions within organizations, there will be resistance to implementation of Web 2.0. For a couple of reasons: IT departments want to protect the security of the company's system, Boards fear that will not be able to contain openness and transparency once people are encouraged to write blogs, collaborate on wikis, etc. And putting customers into the driving seat of product development actually means turning how many companies work upside down.

Second, was the massive focus on permission marketing and the diffusion of marketing into every niche of the WWW. It was somehow fascinating and at the same time shocking for me to hear the same mantra again and again: Go to facebook, invade the social communities, listen to them and get into a conversation, and you will sell. And this is really a difference to the Web 2.0 conferences in 2005. Back then, marketing session were about how to make your social media platform popular. Now, marketing is about how you can exploit social media for your corporate goals (and here I include the fundamental Christians who have discovered Twitter as a perfect tool to reach out).

Third was that I realized that the concept of crowdsourcing has now become reality in the Twitter Era. You have a question - throw it out to the masses and you will get an answer. Even if you don't have so many followers (well, you should have at least some influential followers).


So, what's your executive summary? Web 2.0 has become mainstream, at least in the US and in Asia (so it will be mainstream in Europe in 1-2 years). It is clear what are the standard applications of social media for organizations, governments and non-profit communities. The tools have pretty much matured, and all further development just gives the cream on top of what we have already. It is now time to go vertical, i.e. deepen the diffusion of social media in organizations and society. This is a change project for most organizations, and for administrations anyhow.

We will have to fight for our privacy in the WWW, and have to learn how to protect ourselves from unsolicited, or subtle intrusion of marketing messages into our private lives, and of course the even worse things we all know about: child abuse, right wings, terrorists. This is an entire set of skills which we have to teach at school to protect our kids. As I have been saying many times before - the Internet isn't good or bad, it is really a mirror of our society - but it provides an effective platform for the very good ones and the very bad ones to pursue their aims.

But then, hey - it's good that companies and administrations are finally talking to their clients and citizens, and there is no way back to the classical, hierarchical organization where people work in their silos. The Internet revolution which started about 15 years ago has supported emerging societal trends that started in the late 1960ies and which found there expression in the collaborative approaches that dominate modern change facilitation approaches, such as Open Space Technology, Future Search Technology, World Café, etc. With the help of social media, we are now able to establish Open Space organizations, even on a global scale.

Putting Web 2.0 to Work: Social Software in the Enterprise

Image via Wikipedia

So, this is another session on Enterprise 2.0, one of the big topics at Web 2.0 Expo. The speaker is Ross Mayfield (CEO of Socialtext). He starts looking back in history. Only seven years ago, wikis, blogs, social platforms etc. were only used by a couple of technology folks. Within a couple of years, these social software platforms caught our imagination and changed the way organizations work.

"Web 2.0 is made of people. The power of these application comes from how people use it."

Three spaces for application of Web 2.0 in organizations:
1. Social Intranets, e.g. platforms behind firewalls which are used for enhanced collaboration in organizations
2. Social Extranets, e.g. platforms for organizations to collaborate with their customers / stakeholders / partners
3. Social Media, e.g. the established platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, etc. which organizations can tap on to get into dialogue with people.

Patterns that are evolving:

Enterprise 1.0 to Enterprise 2.0

• document-centric to people-centric
• structured to freeform
• taxonomy to folksonomy
• folders to tagging
• knowledge management to knowledge sharing
• need-to-know to need-to-share
• one-to-many to many-to-many
• centralized to distributed
• top down to emergent
• rigid to flexible

Email is a document centric paradigm more related to paper than to modern forms of virtual collaboration.

"The average employee spends one day per week searching for people and information. But search provides results, not answers. Discovery provides answers, sometimes from people. And context."

Social Messaging: Twitter is in that sense not a classical search engine but an intelligent anwering machine (no wonder that there are a lot of talks about Google likely to buy Twitter). An application could be for example call centers, in which employees spend up to 50% of their time doing searches on Google. How better it would be if replies to a question would be based on your context. So, we are moving from an asynchronous search to a near-time search. The consequence will be that ideas spread like wildfire and and organizations will eventually be able to move faster.

Ross also mentions that people in organizations who use social networks more than others, rise faster, and what is important for organizations: people working together to solve their own problems need less resources. Good stuff.

In parallel, I found an interesting discussion on how Europeans think about the rumors that Google might buy Twitter. I am just going to reply on that.

Zemanta - the Coolest Application for Bloggers I Have Seen

Image by Hans on Experience via Flickr

Wonder why since Wednesday my blog posts suddenly have quite a lot of images and links? Wonder how I am able to synchronously post from the Web 2.0 Expo at a high frequency and still have the time to select those images and links? I will tell you the secret.

I was lucky to meet a guy during lunch on Wednesday who was a representative of Zemanta. (John, if you read this post - I lost your business card, please send me an email). He told me about their product which I installed immediately. Zemanta is a plug-in for Mozilla Firefox which integrates into most blogging softwares. While you are blogging, it suggests you images related to key words that you use or names of people that you mention. So, for example when I mention Tim O'Reilly here, you see some photos and even videos of him popping up at the right (look at the screen shot below). If the suggested selection of images is not to your taste, you can do a keyword search. I looked for images related to the word "blogosphere". For each photo, the plug-in provides information about the type of copyright license related to that image. Zemanta also suggests links (see below), which on click are connected with the subject (you can see that I actually accepted the proposed links for 'Zemanta', 'Tim O'Reilly', 'plug-in' and 'Web 2.0 Expo'. For popular keywords, the software suggests again a selection of links.

Below the links you will find a selection of tags, and again, I accepted three of them (highlighted in orange). Next, Zemanta suggests other blogs articles that might be related to your subject (I selected a BBC article with an interview of Tim O'Reilly.

Related articles by Zemanta

• Renaming Web 2.0 (bbc.co.uk)

Finally, Zemanta inserts a function at the bottom of your article which makes it easy for other bloggers to use your material and reblog in their blogs. Try it out, it is so cool and increases the joy of blogging.

Authenticity is the New Authority

Last morning of the Web 2.0 Expo starts with a dynamic presentation by Heather Gold (the Heather Gold Show : "I'm extremely conservative about what's important. Some things should not be changed. Jalapeno cheddar bagels are wrong."). She talks about workplaces - what kind of workplace are you at? Do you enjoy, or do you pretend? "Everybody wants to be themselves." Marketing (again) is about telling stories (I heared that before).

What she actually is saying is that people don't change just because the Twitter - they don't become more lovable, more attractive: it's just the same kind of stuff that produce whether online or offline. People make decisions on whether they like what you write on your blogs based on relational stuff. So, is what you write consistent with who you are? The best way for being authentic is being present.

Nice stuff.

The Whuffie Factor

Cover via Amazon

Somhow I am ending up in the marketing sessions. Here is another one - The Whuffie Factor given by Tara Hunt (Intuit, Inc.). It's about getting your message across. Here is a shift of tone again. Question is: Why are some companies successful in using social media while others don't? It is about reciprocity. It is about giving and taking. It is about building trust. And it takes time. "People want to be treated as special snowflakes."

Which means you need to focus on individuals. You need to get our of the board room and into the community. Think diversity. You need to be remarkable.

That's the point when I decided that I had enough about marketing for today and turned my attention to the CoreMedia booth and a German beer.

Winning in the Facebook Era - There is No Privacy

Image by luc legay via Flickr

After that exciting session with Brian Oberkirch and Deborah Schultz I am now attending another marketing session "Winning in the Facebook Era" of Clara Shih (author of the book The Facebook Era). This session has a different tone.

Facebook has now 200 million users. It reaches to the furthest corners of the globe. There are 3 billion engagement minutes on Facebook per day. there are 660,000 developers of 180 countries working on FB development. Email as a communication has been surpassed in growth by Facebook.

Demographics: Facebook is fastest growing in the population between 35 and 49. Can anybody on the world doing business neglect the significance and importance of FB?

Clara continues talking about new marketing possibilities. What was already known 10 years ago as permission marketing is becoming even more important. She calls it "transitive trust". And it is basically the same message as I heard before: marketing is becoming more personal, emotional and it fosters weak ties (friend of friend's networks, that's the LinkedIn and the Xing type of interactions).

Facebook is CRM. And even better, because it gives you reminders and permissions to connect. And FB is bi-directional.

Clara continues to talk about monitoring brands: If you have a brand, what do people think about your brands? Have a look at Twitter. Just do a Twitter Search seaching for your brand name.

I have to stop here reporting about Clara's concepts in order to reflect because I am not sure whether I like what I hear. What actually Clara is telling me is that all networks can be and should be used for doing business. From a company's perspective, I see the potential, but where is the room for privacy, a business free room on the web? Will any network sooner or later be invaded by marketers? Can Web 2.0 also be a space where we just will be private? Clara, as a true evangelist is using a lot the term "getting a foot in the door". I am fascinated about the opportunites of marketing but at the same time I am hesitating whether I like that at all.

It's the People, Stupid - New Marketing Paradigms in a Web 2.0 World

Image by Randy Stewart via Flickr

This is a great session about returning to old marketing paradigms of pre-modern times in a post-modern world. Awesome. The sessoion is given by Brian Oberkirch (www.brianoberkirch.com), Deborah Schultz (www.deborahschultz.com)

This is the essence: Turn yourself away from technology and turn to the people is the message.

"The most interesting problems on the Web are social, not technical. Once the open, social stack moves into wide use, the real work is going to be on us to create ongoing experiences that inspire, inform, evolve."

"The Internet only seems to have something to do with computers."
"We are inherently social animals."

There is currently an explosion of the personal sphere on the Web intermixed with professional and marketing messages. "We are entering a relationship economy" (again - didn't we have that 50 years ago and it was just forgotten for a while?). So, the Web 2.0 is about the human element, but how does one translate that into marketing?

New framework for a new social web:

• organic vs. static
• emotion vs. data
• relationship vs. transaction
• continuum vs. grand gesture

New human skills required:

• listener
• connector
• critic
• detective
• catalyst
• diplomat
• partial geek
• juggler
• approachable
• intuitive inquisitive
• relationship oriented

When you start marketing on the web: Think as yourself as hosting a party! So, marketers really become connectors.

Let's break it down - that's what you do as a marketer:

• handshake
  
• greeting
• response
• handoff
• feedback
• make me smarter about me

What does it mean in terms of social media?

• Hit enter - that's a handshake
• A date stamp is a social contract

"Smart growth seeks to amplify connection and community -because the goal isn't just to trade but to co-create and collaborate." (Omer Haque)

The Year of the Mobile Computer, and the Future

Image via CrunchBase

Anssi Vanjoki (VP of Nokia) talks about the future of the mobile Internet. He refers to the start of the mobile telephone system. 1990 they predicted that by 2000 25% of the OECD population would have a mobile - it turned out to be 60%. In 2015 everything will refer to a person and a context - if chose to share this information. This is not only about geographical but also about social information. As I heard already heard yesterday, where ever you stand, your GPS functionality in your mobile will identify where you are and can send you/others information about this location. Sounds a lot like Orwellian phantasy, isn't? Yes and no. As I have been preaching over the last months: the Internet calls us to develop a new responsibility about ourselves and others (what actually do we want to share?). As Anssi says - The consumer is the decision maker.

Under the scenario, the map becomes the interface. We will touch the map of where we are (on our moblies) and it will give us all kind of information about that place. "We will be living in the media. We will extend our lives and souls to the Internet. This will make our life richer."

Want to see a glimpse of the future? Look at theis Nokia video on possibilities to merge nanotechnology and mobile technology.

Creative Leadership and Simplicity

Image by Robert Scoble via Flickr

John Maeda, President of the Rhode Island School of Design redefines the concept of leadership and compares traditional leadership and creative leadership. I will have to follow up his presentation later on. Interesting how the concepts of Web 2.0 and Change Management are interwoven on this conference.

I took the opportunity of another keynote that I weren't so interested in to check John's Laws of Simplicity (just mind you - John is a designer but uses his wisdom to talk about society, management etc. In 1999, Maeda was included in Esquire magazine’s list of the 21 most important people for the twenty-first century). So, here are his Laws of Simplicty:

1. Reduce: The simplest way to achieve simplicity is through thoughtful reduction.
2. Organize: Organization makes a system of many appear fewer.
3. Time: Savings in time feel like simplicity.
4. Learn: Knowledge makes everything simpler.
5. Differences: Simplicity and complexity need each other.
6. Context: What lies in the periphery of simplicity is definitely not peripheral.
7. Emotion: More emotions are better than less.
8. Trust: In simplicity we trust.
9. Failure: Some things can never be made simple.
10. The One: Simplicity is about subtracting the obvious, and adding the meaningful.

I need to read John Maeda's book.

Open Enterprise 2009

Image by shashiBellamkonda via Flickr

Stowe Boyd is always good for a session. Today, he is presenting together with Oliver Marks about what is going on in enterprises with regards to social media. They are doing research interviewing peopel working with social media in large corporations. There are a couple surprises:

1. Technology is not the focus when people talk about social media in companies. It is about people.
2. There aren't really clear cross cutting lessons about the success and failure of Web 2.0 attempts in companies. What works in one company might not work in another one and vice versa.

Here are a few nice quotes from their research:
"The world changes at a slower pace than a lot of us enthusiasts think it should"
"We can't look to IT (department) for innovation in Enterprise 2.0"
"As in so many other parts of the world change management and uptake is the major challenge"

Again, like this morning, it becomes clear that social media are a tool and at the same time require a change process. Oliver Marks says that 95% of all companies are still top down oriented. An interesting example is Tokyo, which is the Twitter capital of the world while corporations have difficulties to adopt corporate Web 2.0 strategies.

The Power of Less

Tim O’Reilly / Flickr Image by via CrunchBase

I am currently just writing down information as they come along. I will certainly write a wrap up once the conference is over. So, here is another short wrap up.

Tim O'Reilly is giving a talk of Web 2.0 5 years down the road. What's next? The Web is learning. Google has launched an pplication for the iPhone which has increased speech recognition and can connect what you are talking about, e.g. looking for the next Pizza Parlour and pulls out information. Mobilizy can identify historical objects you photograph with your cell phone and pulls out Wikipedia information about this object. So, the understanding web is becoming a reality whether you call it semantic web or else.

Web 2.0 + World = WebSquare

The Power of Less

We need Moore's Law to apply to the world's great problems. Tim gives a wide range of examples how the Web 2.0 can lead to less corporate and government spending. Electricity grids can become more intelligent through using techniques of crowdsourcing. Further; the idea of Government 2.0 is being discussed widely in the US; clinical surveys of pharmaceutical are being transferred to the Web as well.

Darwinism on the Web

I am listening to a fascinating speech of Sören Stamer on the current stage and the future of the Web in a highly interconnected world. Stamers reflects on the current crisis and the fact that it becomes impossible to predict anything about the future. These are the seven reasons why:

1. Increasing Dynamics
2. Rising Complexity
3. Increased Transparancy
4. Global Synchronization
5. Huge Opportunities and huge risks
6. Abundance of options
7. Exponential growth

We are living in time of fundamental change, and nobody can predict what will happen next near. Doesn't that frighten you?

1. Empower the community and build your tribe. Example: www.harley-davidson.com
2. Engage your tribes in conversations. Example: www.razor.tv in Singapore
3. Be personal Example: www.ophrah.com
4. Make your ideas more contagious. Virality is power!
5. Use established paradigms
6. Open up and do less, for example facebook
7. Let it go

Darwinism on the Web - Surviving and Thriving in a Web 2.0 World

View more presentations from Sören Stamer.

Content Needs to Be The Thing in a Content Strategy

The next session I am attending is facilitated by Kristina Halvorson (Brain Traffic) about content strategy: Content Strategy: What's Real, What's Relevant. I was attracted by her statement in the conference brochure: The moment you launch a web site, an email campaign, a mobile application, or content of any kind, you’re a publisher. Shouldn’t you start acting like one?

Kristina talks about different roles in organizations with regards to web publishing. Do you have a content strategist? A copywriter? A web editor? She says that in the process of designing web platforms, content often does not get the required attention because a lot of resources are eaten up by other functions such as programming, platform design, visual design, application development etc. There is also a lot of false hope associated with content generation "The user will create it for us!"

Clients will make decisions based on your content - about whether they will like you or not. So, here is a content strategy:

Not just:

• A series of eductational articles
• Blog by our employees
• A sponsored channel on YouTube
• A CEO Twitter account
• etc.
  

Content strategy is about

• What
• Why
• How
• For whom
• By whom
• With what
• When
• Where
• How often
• What's next
  

Web 2.0 is not about the platforms, it is about

• search - findable content
• links - guides to content
• authoring - orginators of content
• tags - road signs about content
• signals - RSS feed delivering content

Kristina recommends the book The Brand Bubble by John Gerzema and Ed Lebar.

Content has to work for you, check which website really offers value for you. As an example she talks about mint.com, where the demands of the user and the benefits for the user are in the centre of the message at the home page.

"Content needs a new home in organizations: a cross functional content strategy board, or a content specialist well connected."

So, is your content:
USEFUL?
USABLE?
ENJOYABLE?

So, this sounds really like work to do if you want to create a good content on the Web. Better think twice about the resources you will need to emabrk on a Web 2.0 corporate strategy.

Content Strategy: What's Real, What's Relevant (Web 2.0 Expo SF '09)

View more presentations from Kristina Halvorson.

Introduction of social media in organization is a change management tool and a change management process at the same time

Charlene Li
(Image by kyeung808 via Flickr)

My first session this morning at the Web 2.0 Expo, with Peter Kim (Dachis Corporation), Charlene Li (Altimeter Group - author of the book Grounswell), Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester Research - one of the most active Web 2.0 evangelists) on "Why Social Media Marketing Fails - and How to Fix It"

This about Change Management, what a surprise. What they talk about is basically what we change facilitators talk about for years.The introduction of social media into organizations needs to fit into their general strategy and you need to have executive buy-in. Charlene says that in many companies there are now plenty of people who belong to the digital natives generation. She opposes the idea to appoint a Chief Social Officer who is in charge for promoting the use of social media.

Jeremiah proposes three organizational models with regards to social media:
- the tire: social media activities come from the edges but aren't really connected
- the tower: the executive mandate defines the communication strategy, top-down
- the hub and spokes: cross-functional group in the middle of the hub which catalyzes social strategies

A few statements from the panel:

Peter Kim asks how do companies with measure and their meet quareterly goals and should we get rid of the marketing department?
Charlene Li: Social media isn't about technology. It's about relationships.
Jeremiah Owyang: The difference between campaigns and community marketing is campaigns are short term - community is long term
Measure of social media success should be based on what you want to accomplish, not the number of followers.
Charlene Li: Corporations don't trust their employees when it comes to the use of social media. So we usually do a comprehensive risk analysis before we advise our clients to embark on that journey.
Charlene Li: If you engage in social media you have to accept to fail.
Charlene Li: Most organizations don't want to open up.

Interesting question from a participant: What risks are we running in as a company if we are embarking on a social media strategy? Will we be accountable to deal with any request that comes in, e.g. through Twitter?

It becomes clearer to me that if we as consultants advise our clients on a social marketing strategy, the entire organization has to understand the significant impacts such a strategy will have on that organizations. Introduction of social media in organization is a change management tool and a change management process at the same time.

The big question at the end is: "Does social media even matter (to the well being of an organizations / it's execution)?" Peter say not yet but it will, certainly. Look back at ecommerce 12 years ago and how that developed.

Yes, I believe it will matter.


Other blog posts on the same session:

Jessica Valenzuela, Maven Digital Mashup

Susan Etlinger, Horn Group, Brass Tacks blog

Mia Dand, Marketing Mystic

Michael Cayley, Social Capital Value Add

Jennifer Leggio, ZDNet

You can listen to a podcast of the entire session here.

First Encounters at the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco: Some apps...

Just flew into San Francisco and went straight into a meeting of German Chamber of Trade and Commerce - a meeting of about 60 Germany affine folks - start ups, a couple of Ministry people, established companies, quite a mixture. We are listening to four minutes pitches of a couple of small companies:

Alexander Köplin introduces Twinity which is a Second Life based virtual environment but based on real cities such as Berlin, Singapore, London and soon New York City. Those of you who long to come to Berlin can have a first look there at the city walk around virtually and have a look at the sites but also visit the hottest clubs.

Doodle - I guess you all know. Doodle is a simple and highly efficient application to agree on event with a group that might be dispersed around the world. It is one of my standard applications.

Aperture I yet have to understand. Seems to be a tool that helps you to integrate multimedia into your blogs.

Dabbleboard is an application I came across already. It is a whiteboard application which seems to be for online collaboration.

Next is Twittbook a new search engine for Twitter feeds. They are trying to integrate LinkeIn profiles. They are just starting and I am not sure that it will add a lot of value, but I will try...

The jetlag is getting me. Need to find my hotel. More on Wednesday...