Keith August 19th, 2008
The word is out. This month, Kate Crawshaw is speaking on: “Social Software within the Firewall - Introduction and Tips on Getting Started“. The session is on Wednesday 27 August. See details on the Melbourne KMLF blog post.
Keith August 18th, 2008
“… when you tell people you write, read or listen to blogs, wikis, podcasts, social networks and online video - if they give you a funny look, it is now officially them that’s a freak, not you.”
Picked up a couple of recent reports from different places. One was in time to build into last week’s presentation, one not.
Forrester Reports that Corporate Social Networks will Augment Strategic HR Strategies
The reports highlights the use of Social Media for: “… recruiting, alumni programs, mentoring, learning, collaboration, and connecting people…” It also reminds us that: “Professional networks are the backbone of business”.
Fastest Growing US Companies Rapidly Adopting Social Media
“77% of respondents now report at least some use of a social media tool in their business.”
This post highlights that social media adoption is “skyrocketing” in 500 of the fastest growing companies in the US.
Keith August 18th, 2008
In addition to Twitter being an essential information-sourcing tool, and useful for people returning to work from an extended absence, it has also started to occur to me that I am finding it a great way to feel connected while working as a sole consultant. In much the same vein as the people using it on extended leave, it takes the place of the office chatter that you get used to when working in an office full of people. I guess it also needs the same discipline of knowing when to engage and disengage…
When tweeting about this (about 4 hours ago), wonderwebby brought a post from deswalsh to my attention: 5 Ways Twitter Helps Me in Business. In particular: “it is an excellent way of overcoming some of the mental echo chamber effect of working solo.”
The journey continues…
Keith August 15th, 2008
So, I delivered the workshop today - to three great participants! The workshop was: Using social media to harness knowledge within an organisation: Addressing the challenges. We all had a great time, and a good conversation!
I have now also registered with SlideShare for the first time, and uploaded a (very slightly modified) version of the slide pack. Not totally happy with the way it has been rendered, but it seems to be fairly readable. It is also available for download. Help yourself! And thanks to those who contributed…
Also had a great conversation with Ian Farmer of Bullseye. Ian pointed me at a few interesting sites:
Also got a good reference from elsua via Twitter for “Twelve Ways to Sell Social Media to Your Boss - Don’t Forget about Yourself!” This may be of particular interest to this morning’s participants!
Keith August 14th, 2008
A good day today. Met some good people, and all of the presentations were good.
Great live Second Life demo from Decka Mah (aka Lindy McKeown) to end the day. She also introduced us to PicLens - a cool Google plug-in for image viewing. Second Life is definitely a usable environment for learning, but the interface probably has a way to go yet to be really seamless. One thing to remember - it really works best as a synchronous learning environment - you have to be there at the right time. One neat application - a virtual city for immersive language learning.
You’ve heard of blended learning? Well, with Second Life, you can have “mixed reality”.
Some of us got a Twitter commentary going. See the tweets here - and a couple of rogue ones here.
Chieftech mentioned this site as a good source for info on RSS for the enterprise - he has also blogged about the day.
Lots of other good stuff, but I really need to make sure I am all ready to present my workshop tomorrow. A few parting thoughts that caught my attention, (somewhat paraphrased) from various presenters today:
Keith August 13th, 2008
“Social media has enabled me to feel ahead, not behind as I return to work after 2nd baby.”
- Serena Joyner (on Twitter)
While preparing for my workshop for Key Forums on Friday - Using social media to harness knowledge within an organisation: Addressing the challenges - (breathe in now) I read this great tweet from Serena Joyner on the benefit she has found in Social Networking tools as she returns to work after her second baby.
Serena then directed me to a longer blog post that she has written on this topic, which was inspired by a similar blog post from “wonderwebby” (Jasmin Tragas), who I have only met recently via Twitter.
They each have a number of points to make about the the benefits of social networking, and wonderwebby has a number of additional ones from others as comments on her post. In brief summary, these points (which I have now added to Friday’s slide pack) are:
Keith August 12th, 2008
On my way to Sydney for client meetings, and to present at a Key Forums conference: Enterprise 2.0 for Information Professionals.
Keith August 5th, 2008
“If only most companies realised the treasure trove of expertise and information that their employees would be able to access if they encouraged the use of such services.”
- Shane Goldberg
Just bumped into Shane on Twitter. He also has a blog.
He has quite a few interesting blog posts, but the current one caught my eye in particular. Shane has found that Twitter: “is actually becoming an essential part of my information-sourcing activities, which are critical to my role.” So, for Shane, a public social networking tool is far from being a distraction from “real work”.
As Shane puts it:
“… many large companies are oblivious to the type of benefits that (open, publicly available) Web 2.0 services like Twitter can provide to their employees…
“These open systems allow employees to draw on the social networks they have created in the same way they use traditional internal informal networks that are always so beneficial to those who know how to use them.”
Read the full article at Shugg’s World.
Keith August 4th, 2008
You may have caught this video on YouTube, or seen it going around on email or FaceBook.
So many emotive emails turn out to be fake - it is refreshing to find that this one (according to Today) is apparently a true story. Just looking at the hair styles in the video places this in the early seventies! The original version was shot on 16mm film (yes, remember film?) without sound (making it easier to dub schmaltzy music over it).
It appears that “Christian” the lion was actually bought at Harrods by two Australians - Anthony Bourke and John Rendall - in 1969, kept in the basement of a London furniture store for a year and eventually repatriated to Africa, in the care of George Adamson of Born Free fame. (This came about because the actors who played Joy and George Adamson in the movie just coincidentally happened to drop in to the shop one day.)
The Today article states that the reunion shown in the video took place in 1972. The YouTube version of the video linked above also shows George Adamson.
The really amazing part of the story is a later reunion in 1974. Christian hadn’t been seen for three months, but suddenly reappeared and sat on a rock outside Adamson’s camp the night before Bourke and Rendall landed, as if waiting.
Keith July 31st, 2008
Apologies if you have visited this site any time in the last 12 hours or so, and noticed that it didn’t look quite right. Something caused complete chaos…
I realised that I hadn’t checked for dead links for ages, and ran LinkSleuth. In fact, I may never have used it since setting up the WordPress blog. This is a great little program that has always worked very nicely in the past, but this time it apparently caused complete chaos. Half the posts on the site vanished, the theme changed back to the basic old WordPress look, and all the Categories vanished.
I am still not quite sure what happened. I may have entered the URL into LinkSleuth in such a way that it behaved incorrectly; the way I have my site set up with redirects may have upset LinkSleuth; or LinkSleuth may just be a bit dangerous with WordPress for some reason. I’m not sure about this, but I can’t find anyone else complaining about it on Google.
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