acidlabs

Interesting post at the Ragan blog about what amounts to bad manners when you’re in the audience. Here’s my take.

If you’re in the audience at a seminar I’m giving or at a conference I’m presenting at, I’d prefer it if you were paying attention. I guess I figure you’re wasting someone’s money if you’re not. That said, these days, many people are getting very good at continuous partial attention, and what might look to some as not paying attention at all, could be quite the opposite. I know I can pay attention to a speaker, tweet, read related material on the web and do email at the same time.

Being a node in the conversation is just as important as listening to the conversation. If not more so. The value is in the participation - exactly what Clay Shirky describes in his Web 2.0 Expo talk.

I do my fair share of presenting, and pretty much expect people will be live blogging, or tweeting, or whatevering what I say. Equally, I often live blog or tweet others’ presentations. So, I absolutely don’t agree with the Ragan folks on live blogging. Please live blog what I’m talking about, good or bad. I want you to take part and I want to know what you think.

With Blackberry use - people could be live blogging. I’d want to check. Situation and context is important here. It’s likely to be bad manners in a class or seminar. It’s probably okay at a conference as long as you’re not bothering your neighbors in the audience. If it’s critical, excuse yourself and step out. At least then, nobody’s going to bitch about you.

As for mobile phones… If you’re so important that you can’t shut your phone off for the half-hour I’m talking, you’re probably not interested in what I’m saying anyway. For the rest of you, I absolutely agree with the Ragan people on the issue of answering and making calls. If you’re in a conference or class, shut your bloody phone off or I’ll publicly point you out in the audience when it rings and you answer it. If you talk on the phone during my talk, watch out! There are breaks in seminars and conferences at regular intervals. Get your messages and make your calls in the breaks.

That said, by all means interrupt me with your cogent and insightful questions and challenges. I’m a big boy and relish any of my assumptions being challenged.

Your thoughts?

Insightory , a newish social tool for “sharing management insights” contacted me a little while back to ask if they could use me as a “Featured Expert”. It’s something they renew every few days and which they use to highlight the work of someone they consider has:

1. Deep experience in a particular field of management
2. Done interesting or innovative work
3. Displayed consistent thought leadership (speaking, writing, blogging or similar “thought leadership” role)

Naturally, I was flattered to be asked. Since they’d already featured my friend, Scott Gavin, who wouldn’t put his name to something dodgy, I agreed.

Anyway, I’m now up as the Featured Expert for the next couple of days. A little bonus to ice the CIO mag article cake.

A while back now, journalist Sue Bushell interviewed me on the subject of Enterprise 2.0. We talked a couple of times over a few days and now, her major article has been published in the Australian version of CIO magazine.

Most exciting for me is that Sue has used me as the lead interview in the piece! Here’s the opening couple of paragraphs:

Canberra-based knowledge economy and social computing evangelist Stephen Collins heard a quote earlier this year that perfectly describes the Enterprise 2.0 dilemma: “If you want to find out what tools your staff are finding most useful at the moment, just go and see what your IT department is blocking.”

All too true, and not nearly as funny as it sounds at first glance, Collins declares. With Australia apparently several steps behind the US and Europe in Enterprise 2.0/Web 2.0/social media uptake, and corporate efforts at adoption thwarted by lack of real understanding, Collins is frustrated, calling this blocking attitude “frankly criminal”.

It’s a really good, in-depth piece that takes a look at all the factors - culture, hype, risk, security, the need to connect you organisation interanally and across the wall and the very real fact that work is changing. This is not your father’s business world.

You should definitely bookmark the article. It’s an ideal one to toss on your manager’s desk.

Just the other day, I read the comment below from an accountant on a newspaper article about social networking in business:

“Interesting info about Twitter - yes I was in that group that thought it would never catch on! Maybe I could send riveting reminders about when [sales tax] is due :)”

I felt compelled to reply. This is an extended version of that reply.

The writer’s offhand comment is actually not too far off the mark. This type of use is actually appropriate for a tool like Twitter and matches fairly closely with other emerging business use of Twitter where smart, social network aware organisations are using it as a channel to keep their community abreast of current happenings.

With a growing number of major businesses such as IBM, SAP, Janssen-Cilag and Morgan Stanley using social tools inside and across the wall to manage collaboration efforts, networking and communications, any organisation that simply discounts social tools as an effective medium is doing themselves a disservice. The cries of “time wasting” and “not for business” are ever more clearly wrong and often made by those who are dismissing social tools without looking to understand.

Now, let it be very clearly said that open slather is not the way to go for most businesses. Letting people muck about all day, grooming their Facebook profile is, frankly, less an issue of time wasting and more a matter of good people management.

Appropriate use policies that are very clear on what is and isn’t allowed and careful steps towards use and understanding are the way to go. As an independent consultant this is advice I give to my clients as I speak to them about the opportunity social tools offer them in terms of staff attraction, engagement and retention, for knowledge and information management and for collaboration. A little research is all that’s needed to find a wealth of information to support this position.

My business, acidlabs, uses social tools as a core part of the way I deal with clients and peers around the world. Using these tools has afforded me opportunities to become engaged in communities and work that might otherwise never have crossed my radar. In the last year, I’ve presented at a conference in the USA (I live in Australia) and met in real life in excess of 100 new and interesting people I might otherwise never have crossed paths with. Every one of those opportunities was as a direct result of the networking and information and knowledge sharing opportunities opened to me by using social networking tools.

I am a regular user of Twitter (probably one of the most prolific Aussies, actually), I use Facebook to track what my professional communities (and friends) are up to and are talking about, I use LinkedIn for strictly business networking and to ask and answer relevant questions, I use Upcoming to track and note my attendance at various events and I use several other social networks for their specific purposes - Flickr for photos, delicious and Magnolia for bookmarking, TripIt and Dopplr for travel and meeting coordination and BrightKite (a new network) for tracking location and arranging serendipitous connections with colleagues, peers and friends. I also blog and use tools like Google Calendar, BaseCamp and Google Docs to keep track and store information that is important to me and my clients.

There’s no reason your organization couldn’t be doing the same. If it’s good enough for Downing Street, who are officially blogging, using Twitter, YouTube and Flickr and significantly opening up the British government to constituent participation, it’s probably good enough for your organisation. As an Australian, I only hope that our Prime Minister sees what’s happening in Britain and does something similar.

I would be more than happy to have a conversation with you or anyone else reading this post about how social tools can help you build brand and community for you and your organisation.

This post is the first of a series of posts on social media, business and knowledge I’m doing at MAPping Company Success, a corporate and employee culture blog by Miki Saxon, CEO of RampUp Solutions. Miki also writes Leadership Turn, a successful leadership blog on the b5 media network.

Digital music and digital rights management has been a bone of contention for several years now. The music labels continually cry foul as they allege that illegal music downloads are doing them irreparable harm while well-founded research seems to indicate the opposite.

My personal opinion is that DRM, as envisaged by the labels and generally executed is broken - it stops me getting access to the music I want to listen to in the way I want. It’s either restricted in place for listening (CD, limited number of computers, etc.) or restricted in format (tried getting iTunes bought music out of iTunes and onto a non-iTunes friendly device? Doable, but not for amateurs).

Now, a couple of enterprising Aussies, Jared Madden and Adam Purcell have put together tune-out.com as a response to the wailing of the labels and in particular to the industry-funded film, Australian Music In Tune, that is being pushed as educational and which the industry wants used in schools as a part of courses on media and copyright.

There’s even a fairly high profile story about Frenzal Rhomb’s Lindsay McDougall being duped into appearing in the film on the understanding that it was about the struggle to make it as a musician in Australia. There’s no apparent response from the music industry at this point, but if the McDougall story is accurate, the music industry types continue to play unfair and fast and loose with the truth in order to push their ever less believable message.

Not cool.

Tune Out’s raison d’être is on their home page and states in part:

There is no digital music battle or piracy war. That is a figment of your imagination, and, every time you preach our digital crimes to us, we ‘tune out’ of your deranged ranting. Your declining profits are the symptom of a business model that is fast becoming irrelevant.

You want us to pay? We want you to pay attention.

Damn straight! I’ve signed their statement and message to the labels. If you’re interested, I suggest you do to.

Sydney-based journo and commenter on all things digital, Stilgherrian, has more detail.