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business & working

Skype Journal Launches

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Stuart Henshall at Unbound Spiral has launched a new community around Skype, the free Voice over Internet Protocol system that lets you speak from one computer to another computer anywhere in the world. You can also call regular telephone number for a very low price.

Concurrently Skype growth has accelerated with over 2m active online and some 40m minutes a day. New products both hardware and software for Skype are emerging daily. Each day Skype adds another 130000 users. With 24+ million Skypers the majority early adopters, computer literate, these are the current change agents for the communications society. While for the most part tied to desktops and headsets they will become part of a mobile social communications revolution.

This burgeoning market needs representation, and a vehicle for sharing news, product updates, industry views and counterpoints. Skype is also proprietary, it is pointed out again and again that it is not SIP, and similarly security and business applications are frequently raised (usually by competitors). These are important issues, and the blog world has enormous power to influence where a company goes and how it develops. I’m listening for counterpoints!

I find it interesting, and very McLuhanesque, that this company has launched to support a community that uses a proprietary software application. It’s third-party marketing, customer lobbying and developer support all rolled in one; and the company (Skype) is not even involved in this venture. However, Skype could really benefit in an active relationship with Skype Journal, and I’m sure that they understand this. Definitely one to watch.

Do You Have a Company Blog Strategy?

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According to the Wall Street Journal, "Blogs Keep Internet Customers Coming Back – Small Firms Find Tool Useful for Recognition, Connecting With Buyers".

Instead of maligning blogs as being written by a million guys in pyjamas, the WSJ states:

The blog as business tool has arrived.

Some eight million Americans now publish blogs and 32 million people read them, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. What began as a form of public diary-keeping has become an important supplement to a business’s online strategy: Blogs can connect with consumers on a personal level — and keep them visiting a company’s Web site regularly.

Those inside the corporation/company/organisation/department may want to consider what Robert Paterson has to say:

Imagine you are a senior executive and one of your 20 old staffers asks you about whether we are going to have a Blog Strategy. You are surely going to be stumped.

I continue to be amazed at how busy people in corporate life are. The sad thing is that they are so busy that they don’t know what is going on and will find this a mystery

Blogs are not a mystery. You just have to start with the premise that markets are conversations, and go from there.

Our Own Reformation

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Robert Paterson has put together many of his thoughts on social software and societal reform in an excellent synthesis entitled, “Going Home – Our Reformation. Rob’s article begins:

I was in a meeting this week with a group of “educators”. We were talking about Communities of Practice. I mentioned blogging several times in the meeting. At the meeting’s end, one of the participants approached me and said, “Every time you mention blogging I get annoyed. It is only a fad and will never affect education.”
I believe that it is not a fad. I believe that Blogging, and its wider family of Social Software tools, will not only affect education but will shake our entire society to the core. I believe that our descendants will look back at its arrival the same way that we now look back at the advent of the printing press.

He continues with a number of current scenarios that show the desperate conditions we have created, and then goes on to show how targeted, local initiatives can get us out of this mess. The future that Rob sees for Prince Edward Island could happen almost anywhere, and he describes the kinds of grassroot projects that are possible and feasible. Rob’s description of the new schooling model is an example:

The School Revolution — As with seniors, the revolution in PEI schools did not happen as a result of any deliberate project to transform schools. What is happening is that a series of projects designed to engage children have taken hold. This work did not even take place in the regular school day but in the afternoon. The afternoon has become a place where children can do the one thing that they really love. They choose and then the community tries its best to find people who can take them to a place of great expertise.This idea had its start in two areas, Theatre and Sport. Theatre PEI began a community program in the afternoon to awaken kids to the thrill of theatre. At the same time, Sports PEI began a similar program to offer the average kids more opportunity in sport. All this work was organized and expanded by the use of local blog sites that were designed to engage the local community. The resources came from adults who lived close by.

Take some time to read Rob’s article and see if it makes sense to you. Either way; please make a comment. This is just the beginning and Rob has given us the first draft of the blueprint.
Here in Sackville, the town is going through a strategic planning process – once again. Our downtown is in decline, due in part to competition from the nearby Trans-Canada Highway development of fast food restaurants and drive-through shopping. The new highway also makes it easy to go to the big box stores and shopping complexes in nearby Moncton. Much of the discussion that I have heard to date is focused on the symptoms, not the root causes of the decline of the community. Instead of debating the problems for another decade, we now have some concrete examples of what we can do in Sackville (The Commons Network; The Media Revolution; Local Food Networks; Seniors College; and The Consulting Revolution) . Rob’s examples provide a starting point to initiate conversations on how to create our own future.

Thank you Rob, now it’s up to us.

Blogs for Traditional Businesses

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During the past few weeks I’ve had the opportunity to once again take to the airways. Along the way I met some very interesting people and the talk usually turned to business. I explained what I did and several people were quite interested in blogs, particularly in order to reduce their e-mail, increase their reach or gather competitive intelligence.

Naturally, blogging has been taken up by the IT industry, as reported by the media; but brick & mortar industries are less in the news. The Tin Basher Blog, about a sheet metal company in the UK, is a notable exception. According to the Tin Basher, there is a direct return on investment on blogging for this company:

If we’re being conservative, we’ll say there’s been a 10% increase since we incorporated a blog. And, we’ll also say that it costs 10% of that 10% to have me write it, maintain the other websites and pay for hosting etc. And, once we get the next order we’ve been promised, that figure suddenly rises to nearer 40% of annual turnover, but without any increase in cost.

This is concrete and tangible, which you may know really appeals to me. It also makes sense to Will at GoodBasic, who has been discussing this issue and offers services around business and academic blogging .

I think that we have reached the tipping point on this technology, which has been tested by the Innovators & Early Adopters and we are ready to bridge the chasm to the more conservative majority. Using social software like blogs or even wikis is no longer about technology as software & hardware but rather technology as the application of organised and scientific knowledge to solve practical problems. There is a growing market for those who want to know how to use blogs for business – without the hype or geek speak.

Blogs + webfeeds + podcasting + iPod Shuffle = Business Solution

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The guys at Infosential, a UK-based technology consultancy, have developed a great way to piece together some simple technologies (blogs, RSS, MP3, iPod Shuffle) in order to create a seamless competitive intelligence solution for a globe-trotting client.
Here’s the problem:

Our client is the classic Type-A personality, time-poor, stressed executive with too much to do and too little time to do it – he spends most of his life on planes in transit between meetings. He needs to keep up with the key developments in competitor intelligence, but gets very little opportunity to sit in front of a screen to browse through reports. Neither does he want to drag a large pile of paper around with him.

The solution, according to Tim Ducketts, starts by monitoring a variety of web-based information sources and recording the ones that may be of interest for their client. These recordings are made available as an RSS feed and the client can access these 3-4 minute recordings from anywhere in the world and then easily transfer them to an iPod Shuffle. The Shuffle measures 8.4 x 2.5 x 0.84 cm, which makes it pretty darned small.

This kind of a practical solution to a real-world problem validates the many hours of my monitoring and testing of new technologies, often without knowing where it will lead. In the end, I try to offer similar solutions that link a few of the right technologies with some innovative process and a little bit of insight in order to help somebody out. Well done Tim & Wayne.

Small Businesses, Loosely Joined

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Following on the last post that business is about networks, is this article from the Rochester Democrat & Chronicle about three individual business operators (craftsman, interior designer & architect) who team up in different ways for different projects:


When they come together, the way that they work is as diverse as a buffet. Sometimes they recommend each other to their respective clients. Sometimes they work together as a team, while other times one will work for the other two. At times they unite and bid on larger commercial projects that they would not have been able to have on their own.

I have talked about the Organization of the Future and Natural Enterprises and am using some of these ideas in my own practice. When you work alone, you can max out pretty quickly on a project, so you always need a good list of partners. Like the three businessmen in the article, I don’t see any reason yet to create a corporate body or a defined partnership, and am content with this constantly morphing business model – just the right size for the job at hand. This self-styled "Dream Team", flies in the face of traditional business management consulting:

But the three have never crafted a business plan, named a board, taken titles or even set formal fee structures. They also maintain their separate companies.

Via Small Business Trends

Business 101

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I guess that everything you really wanted to know about business you already learned in kindergarten, or maybe even earlier. I was talking about some of my projects last night and summed up the same business process at work with each organisation. Basically, business is about connecting someone with a need to someone with a solution, usually through some kind of referral system.

For instance if I need to get my roof fixed, I ask some friends and neighbours to recommend a good contactor. I take this information and filter it by who recommended whom and what my needs are. I then contact my first choice, engage the contractor, and then become another referrer (positive or negative) of these services.

In the corporate world it’s the same. An executive sees a problem, goes through his or her network and comes up with some recommendations. If you can provide a solution, and have some kind of relationship with one of that corporation’s networks, then you have a chance of doing business with them (I know, RFP’s are different, but networks still have an influence).

Therefore, doing business is – the act of connecting a problem with a solution though a reputation-based referral system (network).

This underscores the importance of understanding how networks work. You are only as good as the reputation that you have within the referral networks of your prospective clients. This is temporary and requires constant work and a slip can lead to ruin (e.g. Vioxx, WorldCom, Kryptonite Locks, etc).

So don’t think "markets", think "networks".

Taking back the Web

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So how powerful is the blog as a marketing tool?

One year ago I had about 50 visitors per month on this site. Today, I have more than 30,000. I just did a search for "harold" on Google, and of over 11 million articles, I am now on the first page; the last entry, but still page one. I know that this is a bit of vanity and I don’t believe that this position will last [I may have been kicked to page two already], but the lesson here is that I have spent no money on advertising nor marketing.

I write 3-10 short articles per week and I participate in conversations that interest me. I have not paid for search engine optimization and I have not hired any marketing specialists. I’m just doing on the web what previously I was doing face-to-face. This is the power of blogs; to extend our reach while retrieving our sense of community.

Now this great honour of being on Google page one does not equate to market share nor additional revenue, but it shows how some guy in a small town in Atlantic Canada can be part of the global village. This is the power of networks, as discussed in The Cluetrain and recently evidenced by the over 25 million downloads of the free, open source web browser – Firefox.

Yes, Virginia, we can take back the Web.

Jay on Workflow

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Jay Cross has posted his recent article, co-authored with Tony O’Driscoll, in Training Magazine – Workflow Learning Gets Real. Workflow learning is the next step in the transition from apprenticeship to instructor-led training and now to workflow learning, which incorporates many of the principles of performance-centred design, but now within a networked environment. If you’re in the business of training, consider this:

If the training organization in every company evaporated into thin air or disappeared through a wormhole to teaching heaven, individuals would continue to learn.

Incorporating the current reality, where anyone can be connected with almost everyone, at any time, Jay says:

As we enter an age of informal and workflow learning, authority is less centralized than ever before. "Learning is best understood as an interaction among practitioners, rather than a process in which a producer provides knowledge to a consumer," says Etienne Wenger, a social researcher and champion of communities of practice.

So if you’re still in the "training" business, you had better get focused on the "performance" business very quickly. The workflow approach incorporates learning directly into work, not as a separate activity. I see this as the intersection of process & system design, cognition and especially social behaviour. In other words, how people work, learn and interact – all at the same time and in a messy and very human way.

 

Where the jobs are

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As I said earlier this week:

I would infer that as cheap and easy Internet tools proliferate, those with specialised skills in coding, etc, may begin to lose their market worth – unless they also have the skills of inventiveness, empathy and meaning that Daniel Pink believes will be necessary for future employability.

It seems that this is already happening, according to this post from Daniel Lemire, on the lack of jobs for computer science graduates:

The message is quite clear, I believe. If you want to train yourself or students to produce software (programming or software engineering), you better be damn good because the job market is not there anymore. Will jobs come back? Automobile workers in North America are still waiting for the jobs sent to Mexico or elsewhere to come back. Now, programming or software engineering are not useless skills, far from it, but it might be a better strategy to aim for a business jobs where your programming or computer networking skills can be put to good use, for example. It seems that the job market is moving toward information technology (security, networking, using the right technology at the right time, understanding the implication of a given technology for business).