Community2.0

You are currently browsing the archive for the Community2.0 category.

It’s nearly the season to make merry – but it seems that it’s already the season for people to start making predictions for the coming year. I’m going to start a collection of interesting ones, hanging off this post, in an attempt to revitalise my blogging instinct.

Here’s Verizon’s top 10 in which Enterprise Social Networking comes top. No surprises there then, and this is something that we’ve been discussing with clients for a couple of years now. Couple of barriers to takeup – the lack of any really good tools, and the reluctance of business to see the real value in social tools for collaboration and effective working. Clearly, many companies still see social interaction as a distraction from the important cut-and-thrust of work, and lock down their employees’ access to Facebook, Twitter, and the rest. Time to reconsider surely – we need to start seeing the ability to collaborate and communicate in a more natural way as a differentiator, and something that’s vital to success rather than an inhibitor.

I’ve been spending a lot of my time this year travelling backwards and forwards to the Middle East, and found myself wishing for better tools than we’re currently using – and on the back of this, to work with people that find it second nature to work remotely when required. We’re still not very good at it.


Interesting piece that positions traditional views of reputation against a sense of history. In a world where everything is increasingly recorded, it asks if this is more important than an ephemeral sense of someone’s worth. Facts versus ‘opinion’…

This is fabulous example of a global company reaching out to its customer base and giving them the opportunity to share their ideas on how to reinvigorate its customer experience. Of course, the idea is only as good as Starbucks’ willing to adopt any of the suggestions that are made – and from what I’ve seen, they’re taking steps to do just that.

I’d like to see more companies taking this kind of approach – and it ties into some thinking I’ve been doing recently around brands and how they become more porous… 

Tags: , , ,

 

 

 

Ben took me on a guided tour of the Vegas Strip yesterday evening after the conference had cleared out for th day. I was going slightly stir crazy after being mostly indoors for the previous two days (one thing I’ve discovered about Vegas is that the Casinos are built to hide whether it’s day or night – to keep you at the tables…here is literally everything you need within the four huge walls) – so it was great to get out and about.My impression was one of scale and wonder. Whilst many of the casinos have a slightly decadent, seedy feel to them, the Bellagio is deeply impressive. From the flower gardens to the huge chocolate fountain to the Roman walkways, there was a lot to amaze…


An interesting situation this morning over breakfast. We had sat through a presentation in which Diane Davidson from Webex walked us through their efforts at generating a community for their customers, in order to provide a mechanism for LISTENING to them.

I was thinking ‘hmmm Webex is an enabler, a facilitator of communication (and community). Why create a community around just being the means to the end?’ and then, someone stood up and challenged the idea. It was slightly uncomfortable, but ultimately he asked questions that should have been asked. He wanted to know why Webex need a community when there’s already clear feedback channels from their customers that they appear to be ignoring.

Good question.

That said, I want to get hold of Diane’s deck – she seem to have a good ‘process’ chart for growing community that whilst it wasn’t exactly revolutionary, might help as a starting point for some of our work…

I’ve just posted some takeaways from day one of the conference on LBi’s blog Stream.

I’m not sure I’ve done the day justice, but you can download all of my notes from yesteday by clicking through. If you want to follow the day, check out my Twitter page (also appearing down here on the Barbd sidebar)…or check out my Delicious links.

This conference has been interesting for another reason too – the ways in which I’ve been connected to the guys back in the UK! I’m still feeling part of my home community despite being thousands of miles away. So far, I’ve used Twitter, IM, video conferencing. I’ve used Skype to push audio from one of the sessions at Warren and he’s responded by waving Cookiemonster back at me and making me laff…I’ve used Delicious to store interesting links from the day, and ‘ve used Flickr to post pictures from the event too…

I arrived in Las Vegas yesterday evening, and I’m blown away by the place. I’ve been to the US before, so I was kind of prepared for the wholle ‘it’s big’ thing, but it really is. Big. The hotel I’m staying at is basically a gigantic casino (well duh, this is Vegas after all)…but it goes on for ever. I have a great view of the mountains, so I watched the sun come up and light them up this morning…I was, after all, awake from 4am thanks to my body being on UK time.

The conference has been great so far…it seems that all of the questions we’ve been asking ourselves about community at LBi are all being asked equally here. “There are no answers” was one comment this morning. Some insight will appear on the LBi blog, Stream when I have a chance to gather everything together…

I think I’ll post in both places – hmm there’s a question – how far can I use my own personal blog to write about something that’s paid for by the company I work for? If we were able to syndicate inwards and outwards from our company blog that would be a moot point…