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Three thoughts on social media for 2010

February 9, 2010

The hype around social media continues unabated – business, marketing, government, NFPs; everyone is getting involved. But to my mind, we’re still somewhat missing the point. Making it a part of our lives in a way that avoids the hype and adds real benefit to our own lives and the lives of others will be the the real tipping point of the acceptance of social media in business and amongst those who are still cautious about its adoption or perceive no need for it in their lives.

Additionally, there’s a large part of the world that simply doesn’t share our echo chamber. In the developing world connectedness is critical, as we continue to see in the management of disasters around the world (as in this great presentation from BarCamp Canberra 2010 by Shoaib Burq showing the massive increase in data available about Port au Prince since the earthquake) and in the continuing emergence of mobile data driven innovation in SE Asia and Africa. But for these folks, iPhones, Nexus Ones and iPads are still part of a distant future. Even a decent desktop PC may not be a reality. Rather, a grey-screen Nokia phone may be their tool for connectedness. We must engage with them on their terms.

So, here are my three big ideas for social media in 2010, distilled into some quick thoughts

We are still a long way from social media use in business as a given. Large numbers of businesses altogether and many more people within businesses of all sorts do not understand social media and perceive no value for it in their lives, the lives of their staff or their work. Education, valid, real case studies rather than theory, governance, mentoring, support from leadership are all critical factors in its success and as practitioners and consultants, we must enable that by speaking the language of business.

The developing world is yet to discover social media in the way the developed world has. And they may not want to. We must engage with the developing world to enable connections to happen and create great social innovation where infrastructure and tools may not be a rich as we have.

There will always be people for whom social media is not a priority. We must find ways to engage with them on their terms and integrate it with the things we are doing.

So, in the spirit of my last post, what do we DO from here to progress these ideas and the actions that can make a difference from them?

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The next step

February 7, 2010

in posts

An emergent theme of my posts of late has been change. Whether that’s technology, user experience, reform of education, public sector and government, conferences or business (including my own), it’s a constant.

: Image by trib via Flickr

Equally, I’ve had many conversations in physical and virtual environments about change. Those conversations, to my very great benefit, have been with smart, motivated, interesting people – friends, peers and those I look up to.

Just yesterday, I was able to get deeply buried in several conversations about change at BarCamp Canberra 2010. This third Canberra BarCamp was far and away the best yet. Very balanced in its participant-generated program, issues of technology, the web, education, public sector reform and social innovation were openly and actively discussed. There’s no right or wrong, just great ideas (many available now on SlideShare).

One thing that emerged strongly from the sessions I was involved in – largely those on reform and social innovation – was raised in the first session of the day, Matt Moore’s deliberative democracy discussion on wicked problems. That problem is what I’m choosing to call next steps.

We all know it’s incredibly easy to discuss wicked problems. Equally, it’s near trivial (on a grand scale) to come up with solutions to them. We can define people, ideas, resources, finance and economics, social reforms and any number of other matters that will require resolution to solve these problems. It’s the next thing that’s the hard one, as I said in this tweet to Havas Media Lab director (and HBR blogger), Umair Haque.

It’s the next step, the tangible action, that’s wicked about all of these problems. And it’s next steps that we lack in solving all of the big problems we face. And it’s incumbent on all of us, in the sense of the Builder described in Haque’s The Builders’ Manifesto, to take next steps rather than simply engaging in conversation.

BarCamps, expos, conferences, summits. They’re all excellent places to begin solving the wicked problems. But we must take next steps.

For me, the biggest take away from BarCamp Canberra 2010 was DO. We must not just talk, we must be prepared to DO.

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Conferences, inspiration, value

February 4, 2010

Image via Wikipedia

This post started as a comment on my pal, Linda Johannessen’s blog post about TED and conference organisers. Then it got long, so I figured I’d bring it over here. Not least because I want to discuss conference models this weekend at BarCamp Canberra 2010.
I’ll start with a story.
Attending something like TED is [...]

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It’s not a revolution unless something changes

January 27, 2010

My daughter begins high school next week.
And as she does, the Federal government and the various state governments continue to trumpet their triumphs in their so-called Building the Education Revolution plan. As yet, I’ve seen no revolution from this program, and little evolution. Mostly just reactionary, frightened implementation of the laptops for high schoolers program [...]

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Big Iron at the Australian Open

January 27, 2010

Image by trib via Flickr

On Monday this week, IBM flew me to the Australian Open for a day at the tennis and a behind the scenes view of the technology they provide to this and other events in their role as the key technology provider. It was all done under the aegis of my being [...]

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Kindle didn’t start the fire…

January 25, 2010

Apologies to readers for misquoting a Billy Joel song title. And the terrible pun.
My friend, Kate Carruthers has an interesting post about sitting next to an elderly gentleman on a recent flight and hearing his views on the change the Amazon Kindle is bringing to the book publishing industry.
As a Kindle owner of just a [...]

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Open, but not enough of the right stuff

January 22, 2010

Over at his blog and at Read Write Web, Marshall Kirkpatrick has taken the folks at data.gov to task for inflating the real numbers and nature of the data the US government is making publicly available. Marshall conclues that the data.gov number of approximately 168,000 datasets is inflated because approximately 99.4 per cent of that [...]

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