September 2009 Archives

Continuing our series of translations of Social Media Strategy Framework, today is Dutch.

See the original post for the full overview of the Social Media Strategy Framework in English.

Click on image to download pdf

Please share this with any Dutch speakers who would be interested.

Also be sure to let me know if you can suggest any improvements to the translation.

Rumors about the forthcoming Apple tablet are heating up. Gizmodo reports that Apple is in discussions with New York Times and other publishers about putting their content on a new device, with a mooted launch date of January. Wired Gadget Lab says to expect a device running the iPhone operating system, with 5-6 times the resolution of an iPhone screen and 7 times the screen size. Techcrunch suggests that the device’s size will mean an on-screen keyboard can be used for touch-typing.

In considering how tablets from Apple or others will be used as a media device, it is useful to refer to our Future of the Media Lifecycle visual from last year.

Click on the image to download full pdf

This shows the lifecycle of media across home and mobile spaces, including how devices and interfaces facilitate the diffusion and creation of content from mainstream media through social media and life streaming and back again in a never-ending cycle.

As shown in the visual, there are two primary device forms that will be used in mobile media.

Continuing our series of translations of Social Media Strategy Framework, today we are launching the Spanish edition.

See the original post for the full overview of the Social Media Strategy Framework in English.

Click on image to download pdf

Please share this with any Spanish speakers who would be interested.

Also be sure to let me know if you can suggest any improvements to the translation.

The Insight Exchange is going from strength to strength. Its next major event is the SME Tech Summit, to be held on 1 December in Sydney. The Insight Exchange’s CEO Beth Etling has put together an extraordinary agenda for what will be a landmark event in the space. Keynote speakers include Tim Pethick of Nudie fame (see interview with Tim on the event blog) and the always-provocative and insightful Mark Pesce. Check out the complete agenda for the rich array of content and learning that will be available on the day.

Go to the registration page to see the very attractive offers and great early bird specials, which expire 31 October.

How did the event come about? It is now clear to anyone in business that technology is fundamental to how they work and bring in revenue. However only a small minority of companies have both the resources to use technology effectively, and the ability to keep on top of fast-moving but absolutely critical trends such as cloud computing and social media. There is a massive opportunity to assist smaller and mid-market businesses to deal with these issues.

Continuing our series of translations of Social Media Strategy Framework, today we are launching the Russian edition.

See the original post for the full overview of the Social Media Strategy Framework in English.

Click on image to download pdf

Please share this with any Russian speakers.

Also be sure to let me know if you can suggest any improvements to the translation.

Radio National’s Future Tense last week covered the issue of Participatory democracy, Web 2.0 and the Australian Government 2.0 Taskforce with an excellent program. The program can be heard or downloaded on the website, along with a transcript.

During the program I was quoted talking about the potential and the underlying demand for participatory democracy:

I think that there is a growing interest in [Government 2.0], and it is very different in different countries and in different demographics, but absolutely people's interest is growing in participating and having a voice and being able to impact smaller things in the environment in which they live, as well as larger things such as the political parties in power. And I think that trend will accentuate over time, as people get more used to the ideas and the tools provided by participation.

However the core of the program is an interview with Dr Nicholas Gruen, who chairs the Australian government’s Government 2.0 taskforce, discussing what is being done currently. He noted:

In addition to my rossdawson.com website, which focuses on my work as a keynote speaker and strategy leader, we have created a brief document which provides an overview of what I do in this space.

The document needs a few small updates, such as an additional book published, however it is essentially current.

Ross Dawson - Keynote Speaker and Strategy Leader

Continuing our series of translations of Social Media Strategy Framework, today we are launching the Italian edition.

See the original post for the full overview of the Social Media Strategy Framework in English.

Click on image to download pdf

Please share this with any Italian speakers.

Also be sure to let me know if you can suggest any improvements to the translation.

Yesterday I did a keynote for Publishers Australia on Creating the Future of Media, pointing to driving forces, key strategic issues, and action items for media companies today, with Iggy Pintado also presenting on leveraging social media in publishing.

The event attracted more attendees than any similar event organized by Publishers Australia so far, so clearly these issues are at the top of the agenda for the industry.

The slides to my presentation are below. As always, note that these slides are designed to accompany my presentation, NOT to be meaningful as stand-alone information. However many people tell me they still find value in the slides even without being able to attend my keynotes, so feel free to peruse them!

To complement the slides, here is a brief description of the Six Strategic Issues I covered in the presentation:

1. Scaling

Continuing our series of translations of Social Media Strategy Framework, today we are launching the Chinese edition.

See the original post for the full overview of the Social Media Strategy Framework in English and compilation of the framework in 11 different languages.

Click on image to download pdf

Please share this with any Chinese speakers.

Also be sure to let me know if you can suggest any improvements to the translation.

In the lead-up to my opening keynote at IPZ2009 Interactive Marketing Summit in Istanbul on 21 October, Turkish crowdsourced site Buzla did a video interview with me.

Click here to go the video interview in English, subtitled in Turkish.

As I explained earlier, the concept was that members of Buzla site spent two weeks submitting questions for me. The most popular questions as voted by the members were then posed to me in the video interview.

Click on the image to go to the video.

Again, I am preceded by the psychedelic teddy bears, which I am growing rather fond ot.

Here were the questions selected by the audience that I responded to in the interview:

Continuing our series of translations of Social Media Strategy Framework, today is German.

See the original post for the full overview of the Social Media Strategy Framework in English.

Click on image to download pdf

Please share this with any German speakers.

Also be sure to let me know if you can suggest any improvements to the translation.

I notice that Imogen Heap is continuing with the free streaming of her album Ellipse . And no doubt significantly because of the free streaming, Ellipse is charting at #5 on Billboard. It is a glorious album, though I think we can pretty definitely count the free streaming of the album on the web as a very effective strategy. Perhaps it will become commonplace to stream music for free in order to maximize sales.

I'd be keen to know the proportion of sales of this album and the songs on it online versus through CD. It would almost be surprising if she sold much in CDs at all, because her presence is so online..

I notice Imogen on Twitter now has over a million followers.

A bit tangentially, I just found this beautiful video of a beautiful song by Kate Havnevik, who I found through collaborative filtering and Imogen's music. If you like Imogen you'll absolutely like the extraordinary Kate. (note that it doesn't start for 10 seconds)

Now having launched version 2 of our Social Media Strategy Framework, we will release it in a variety of other languages.

Since I am giving the opening keynote at IPZ2009 Interactive Marketing Summit in Istanbul on 21 October, we will kick off with the Turkish version, and release the other translations over the next couple of weeks.

Click on image to download pdf

Please share this with any Turkish speakers.

Also be sure to let me know if you can suggest any improvements to the translation.

Our Social Media Strategy Framework released a few months ago has been getting a lot of attention and downloads. Based on the feedback we've been getting, one of the things that was missing in the first Beta version was a clearer explanation of the structure of the diagram, which has two simultaneous flows down the left and right sides of the circle.

We have clarified that in this version, indicating that the left side shows the three steps in the process of ENGAGEMENT while the right side shows the three steps in STRATEGY DEVELOPMENT.

For a complete description of the diagram see the launch of the original framework.

Click on the image to download pdf

This is still a Beta and we will continue to develop this, so please give us your input on how to improve it!

Bruce Sterling , one of the founders of the cyberpunk genre, gave a fabulous keynote on the dawn of the augmented reality industry in Amsterdam when Layar's Reality Browser was launched a few weeks ago.

Bruce says that augmented reality s a techno-visionary's dream come true. He's been following the space since it began at Boeing in 1992 and has been blogging steadily about augmented reality over the last few months. He covers the problems of the space as well as the massive opportunity. Bruce is a fantastic guy to hear from to get some perspective on what will become a massive industry and undoutededly substantially shift how we relate to "reality".

Video: Bruce Sterling's Keynote - At the Dawn of the Augmented Reality Industry from Maarten Lens-FitzGerald on Vimeo.

Dion Hinchcliffe has written a useful post titled Going beyond the hype: Identifying Enterprise 2.0 best practices, reviewing some of the work in the space, and with the intent of building a broader catalog of best practices.

There is already valuable information in the post, and I’m sure Dion’s research will yield useful insights. However I have to say upfront don’t believe in the concept of “best practice” with regard to almost any business activity, particularly with Enterprise 2.0. Managers may love the idea of finding and emulating “best practice”, but trying to do that is a setup to failure.

Just as our individuality as people is often hidden, we are gradually understanding that every organization is different.

For the last year in my future enterprise speeches I have been describing how there are two layers to organizations: the commoditized layer of standardized processes, and the differentiated layer of ad-hoc networks. Best practices can useful apply to standardized processes, but far less so in facilitating connection and collaboration across diverse organizations.

ABC Radio National Future Tense this morning featured a discussion on the future of influence (click here for the podcast of both the radio program, and the unabridged discussion between Duncan Riley and myself). It kicks off with a quote from Chris Saad saying that influence and reputation are the currencies of the day, even more than attention.

When asked why we rebadged Future of Media Summit as Future of Influence Summit this year, I explained why “influence is the future of media”, and the five key trends in how influence is transforming society.

Duncan pointed to how the rise of Internet and social media means that influence can now be global. He also raised the issue of trust agents, and what it takes to be trusted as a publisher. We have more choice in what we look for, and so we need markers of credibility.

On the topic of business models for influence, I talked about two key ideas. The first is whether and how individuals can profit from their influence, and how that will develop. The second is the emergence of influence as a currency, and the companies that profiting from making influence explicit for companies.

Listen to the long version of the interview for more details.

Last weekend’s Sunday Telegraph published an article titled Tech to the future that looks at what’s coming next in consumer and social technologies. Unfortunately it isn’t available online, however here are the sections where I was quoted:

Futurist and author Ross Dawson says the next big shifts will pivot around how we connect to other people and “how we share the content of our lives with others. It’s all about the social use of technology.”

Analysts predict that rather than a new Twitter-styled platform emerging, social networks will move towards being meshed or interconnected. They say private and public data will blur together and an advanced version of the social networks of your choice will be your browser of entry point.

One of the most interesting topics at the recent Future of Influence Summit was the emergence of business models for influence. Some particularly intriguing issues were raised in the Business Models for Influence and Reputation panel, suggesting that one of the key currencies of the future will be influence.

The panellists generally agreed that total revenue in the influence sector, including the companies represented on the panel (Rapleaf, Buzzlogic, Klout) is around US$100 million. The primary business model is providing insights to companies on who the influencers are in their customer base.

One example given is a hotel that asks guests checking in for their Twitter name, swiftly ascertaining how influential in social media they are, and treating them accordingly. If someone who has real reach is their guest, the hotel might upgrade them or otherwise treat them in a way that they are likely to rave about.

A few months ago I bought an MD80 video recorder - supposedly the smallest in the world, and smaller than the iPod Nano, which David Pogue reviews today as the smallest camcorder.

I thought I'd do a video review of it, discussing both its use and demonstrating its video quality. In fact the biggest problem is the audio quality. I love how I can just clip it on my jacket and take ambient video as I walk around, but the audio is not good enough for doing interviews of people. A very nifty device and certainly with its uses, but not quite there.

Was just catching up on Ray Wang and Jeremiah Owyang joining Charlene Li's Altimeter group from Altimeter.

Jeremiah is quoted in the New York Times:

Mr. Owyang said that his story holds lessons for other companies. “I think this is an interesting trend that many companies are going through — personal brands are here to stay, alongside corporate ones, and the key to success is to make sure they help each other,” he said. “But now the power is shifting to the workers, because they can take their network and a lot of what they know with them, with these social media tools.”

The third trend in my recent Five key trends in how influence is transforming society is:

Reputation shifts from the corporation to the individual

I strongly believe in Jeremiah's point that individuals and corporations need to support each others' brands. In fact one of the important reasons I have pointed to as to why companies should support use of social networks is that it helps their employees to build their own brands, to the benefit of both individual and company.

Now, as personal brands grow in relative strength, corporations need to consider how they can best reflect and tap the influence of the individuals working for them. As Jeremiah notes, social media means that personal brands are immensely portable, as are personal networks.

This is about power to the worker, absolutely, but those companies that understand this and tap this shift can do extremely well. They can attract those with strong personal brands and create immense value from their influence, simply by focusing on building the brands of their key staff as much as they do their corporate brand.

I just came across Inside Knowledge magazine's review of my most recent book, Implementing Enterprise 2.0.

Full details of the book including free chapters and the Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Framework mentioned in the review and pictured below are available on the Implementing Enterprise 2.0 website.

Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Framework

It's a useful review - here are a few excerpts:

I had a very interesting meeting yesterday with Deloitte Digital's CEO Peter Williams, someone who is always on the vanguard of innovation in professional services. A few things he mentioned about what they're up to:

* Yammer (enterprise micro-blogging) has taken off and is getting substantial use across Deloitte Australia. They did a security test on Yammer for some clients and it came out solid. They are still using the free version though are talking to Yammer about a paid version.

* Deloitte has implemented an internal 'Innovation Academy' which among other functions enables idea submission and voting, which they've created by mashing up several tools. The system has generated ideas already worth $15 million to the company.

* One of the ideas was GreenID, a joint venture between Deloitte, Edentiti and Global Data Company that provides fast online identity verification for clients who have traditionally done this offline.

* They have also created an XBRL gateway to facilitate conversion of accounts into XBRL format.

* A collaboration with Cooperative Research Centre ACID yielded an interesting visualization and view of the mental models of how ideas are generated in the professional services frontline. Unfortunately this is not available online yet.

Lots of nice things happening here.

I recently wrote from my own experience about Six high-return initiatives for driving innovation in professional services, and Chapter 9 of my book Living Networks is primarily about how digital channels are changing how professional services firms operate.

A CNN blog titled its story Is the iPhone really the Paris Hilton of mobile phones?, referring to a recent report saying that iPhone's are not profitable for telecom firms.

It says that the term first appeared on December 5, 2008 in a newsletter from Strand Consult, referred to in an ITWire story titled iPhone - the Paris Hilton of mobile phones?

Well, for what it's worth, I said it in September 2008. Following is an excerpt from my opening keynote for a five-city national roadshow for Optus Business, just after the iPhone was launched.

I don't think I was making quite the same point though - the iPhone was enormously glamorized, feted on all sides for a couple of months, truly the center of attention, just over a year ago. However the difference with Paris Hilton is that the iPhone has great social value.

BTW I haven't managed to track down the author of the photo in the movie - please get in touch if you want attribution or for me not to use it.

One of the best parts of my work as a keynote speaker is visiting places I have never been before. As such I'm delighted to be doing the opening keynote at IPZ2009, the digital marketing summit in Istanbul, on October 21. I haven't yet had the opportunity to visit Turkey so I'm very much looking forward to it.

In the lead-up to the event the prominent Turkish online site Buzla is running a virtual interview with me. People can ask questions in Turkish and vote on the questions, with the most popular questions asked to me in a video interview. The deadline for questions is September 11, and the interview will be up on September 14. Click here to ask questions (in Turkish only) and for more information.

For those who don't read Turkish, you might enjoy the fairly psychedelic promotional video on the site, which seems to associate me with teddy bears drinking hard liquor (though I might be mistaken :-) ).

In the wake of Future of Influence Summit last week, Seth Godin has done a short post titled Clout that neatly sums up one of the key themes of the event, and an issue that I and many others think is enormously relevant today. This subject is coming to the fore, as I suggested iin the second of Five key trends in how influence is transforming society.

I don't think Seth will mind if I put the full post here, as it doesn't really bear excerpting (as long as I include a solid plug for his awesome blog!)

Clout

The web knows something, but it's not telling us, at least not yet.

The web knows how many followers you have on Twitter, how many friends you have on Facebook, how many people read your blog.

It also knows how often those people retweet, amplify and spread your ideas.

It also knows how many followers your followers have...

So, what if, Google-style, someone took all this data and figured out who has clout. Which of your readers is the one capable of making an idea break through the noise and spread? Bloggers don't have impact because they have a lot of readers, they have a lot of impact because of who their readers are (my readers, of course, are the most sophisticated and cloutful on the entire web).

If you knew which of your followers had clout, you could invest more time and energy in personal attention. If we knew where big ideas were starting, that would be neat, and even more useful would be understanding who the key people were in bringing those new ideas to the rest of the world.

Back in the old days, we had no idea, so we defaulted to big newspapers, or magazines or the TV networks. But now we know. We just need to surface the data in a way that is useful.

I'll be writing a lot more on this topic and how this can best be done in coming weeks and months.

This interview segment on Techcrunch quotes Google CEO Eric Schmidt as saying on the future of search: “Connect it straight to your brain”.

Indeed. Search is about finding meaningful information. If just by thinking about what we wanted to find, we could find that information or content among all the information in the Universe, that would be a Very Good Thing.

So the question is: will we ever get there? I certainly don’t know whether we will ever be able to search by thought, but it’s certainly in the realm of the possible.

If so, I hope I’m alive when we get it. It will be fun!

Influence is the topic of the moment (as well as the next decade). In the wake of our very successful Future of Influence Summit earlier this week, not one but two significant studies of influence on Twitter were released today.

An extensive study titled The Influentials: New Approaches for Analyzing Influence on Twitter, created measures for relative influence, tracking in detail 12 popular users. Commentary on this further down in this post, and a nice visual showing response density to these users below.

Rapleaf, whose CEO Auren Hoffman spoke at Future of Influence Summit, released a quite different report showing the change in the structure of the Twitter ecosystem in the period late-March to mid-June of this year, during which time Twitter usage grew 60%. Rapleaf, in the course of doing a study to identify influencers in one of their clients’ customer community, came up with some interesting statistic in the dynamics of the most prominent Twitter users.

I was very happy to be able to sleep in this morning after Future of Influence Summit. While I haven't had a full debrief from the Sydney side of the event yet, it was a fantastic event on the San Francisco side, and I've had great feedback so far on what happened in Sydney.

Influence and reputation are now key issues on the agenda for any organization. At the Summit, we began to tease out the many issues that will be critical moving forward. I will spend some time digesting what was discussed and pull together some structured thoughts in the next little while.

We will also post videos of a couple of the sessions soon.

For now, it's worth reviewing what attendees at the event captured on social media during the event - together these provide a great overview of the Summit.

Twitter stream for #foi09

Blog posts: (In no particular order - more coming soon I believe):

Mick Liubinskas: Live from Future of Influence Summit