Social Media Musings

A New Year, A New EMC Information Calendar

EMC's 2010 Information Calendar and widget is out in full force - have you checked it out yet? If not, you should! Packed with 365 days of fun photos and interesting facts, it's a fun addition to any blog or website! A cool new feature this year is the ability to add notes and keep track of interesting dates, appointments, birthdays, meetings - all that stuff you don't want to forget. And the best part is, it's all private, so you don't have to worry about anyone finding out that you celebrate your dog's birthday every year with a special doggy cake and ice cream, not that there's anything wrong with that!

Enjoy!

Engage. Evangelize. Empower. The 2.0 Adoption Council is waiting for you!

 You might have heard about the 2.0 Adoption Council from any one of our nearly 100 members who’ve joined thus far, or you might have noticed the logo right here on the left rail of my blog. I’ve had the pleasure of being among the very first group of internal 2.0 evangelists to come together and help one another by sharing ideas, tips, tricks and best practices for what it is we do every single day – evangelize the benefits of Enterprise 2.0 and enterprise collaboration and networking technologies (think communities, wikis, blogs, discussion forums, microblogging, etc.) and share with our enterprise organizations the benefits of exploring these tools and technologies to connect employees, change and improve business processes, and open up information that’s critical to the organization’s long-term success.

 What are the benefits of membership?

All of our members are all involved directly in developing and executing strategy for their organizations.  This means that we get to directly converse and collaborate with people doing exactly what we’re doing. I cannot stress enough the power of being able to discuss, share and ask questions of people focused on the same things that I am working on day in and day out.

As Andrew McAfee said at Enterprise 2.0 in San Francisco back in November, being an evangelist can be a lonely job because you’re often the only person or one of only a few who are in the role of an evangelist and you’re often in a situation where you’re sharing ideas, best practices, and benefits with folks who are not quite there yet in terms of seeing Enterprise 2.0 as a critical component of the future success of the organization. Having a network of peers to talk with and bounce ideas off of is just immensely helpful and refreshing.

We are a well-recognized group of thought leaders. Even in our short time since creation by Enterprise 2.0 expert Susan Scrupski (aka ITSinsider), we have received quite a bit of positive industry recognition by folks such as Andrew McAfee, Dion Hinchcliffe, Gil Yehuda, Dan Keldsen and Carl Frappaolo of Information Architected, and many others. We were also a research partner for the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Francisco and members have been interviewed by publications such as BusinessWeek, CIOZone, IDC, and The Economist.

We have access to and demonstrations from a wide variety of vendors and experts in the Enterprise 2.0 space. We’re often the first to know, or among the first to know about new products and services being offered, and are often offered access to the products to test them out and see what we think. We also schedule regular calls and discussions with industry experts in the Enterprise 2.0 space to ask them our toughest questions and learn from them first-hand. I can’t say that I’ve ever had the opportunity to chat with so many experts and learn from so many folks that have gone before me, before now.

We publish ground-breaking industry research. We are committed to collaborating on and publishing research from the Council members’ knowledge and experiences. You can check out our latest report on our site, and order a copy of it if interested. I highly recommend it!

So, are you interested yet?

 If all of this hasn’t been enough to encourage you to join us, check out our member testimonials:

I’m proud to be a member of The 2.0 Adoption Council because it provides me with an opportunity to connect with and have meaningful conversation with peers from all over the world facing the same challenges that I am on a daily basis. I’m able to tap into the Council at a moment’s notice, and ask for opinions, experience and assistance with a wide variety of topics and receive practical advice from my peers. I’m also able to share my own experiences in the hopes that they’ll help others along their own journey. I’m honored to be a part of the Council and the experience it provides.

Jamie Pappas, Manager, Social Media Strategy, EMC Corporation

 

Membership in The 2.0 Adoption Council is a must for any professional responsible for internal social computing. The ability to connect with smart people across the industry has been invaluable to me.

Laurie Buczek, Social Computing Program Manager, Intel Corporation

 

In just a few short weeks my network of colleagues and experts who share the same passion and focus that I do in the Enterprise 2.0 space has expanded exponentially. For the first time I no longer feel isolated behind our firewall wondering how others are dealing with the challenges I might have. In just a few weeks, I have already been able to benchmark best practices and case studies with a few members, an activity which has directly benefited me in the next stage in our internal deployment. I find the members all wanting to help and engage, making it a great source for real exchange and support.

Claire Flanagan, Sr. Manager, KM and Enterprise Social Software Strategy, CSC Corporation

 

Being a member of The 2.0 Adoption Council immediately paid off by expanding my network of knowledgeable and experienced internal community/social media professionals. Now I have that many more people to collaborate with regarding decisions and questions we’re faced with daily.

Matthew Ladin, Corporate Social Networking Chief Evangelist/Technical Lead, Texas Instruments

 

It’s only been 3 weeks but if first impressions are any indication, this is going to be a very valuable group for me. I think the opportunity for regular, informal contact through social cast and then the yammer platform is a great way to bring us together. I’ve enjoyed the discussion throughout the day and the opportunities available to learn from each other as we navigate these new waters. I look forward to expanding my participation and expanding the relationships that are budding….Thanks!

Jim Worth, Director MRL II, Merck Research Labs

 

I go to conferences, I Twitter, I Yammer, I’ve got friends and colleagues in Facebook, Ning and LinkedIn, but I didn’t have a virtual community of like-minded, focused and creative people looking to drive the 2.0 mantra throughout their organization, be it through culture, education, collaboration, technology or leadership. The 2.0 Adoption Council has become that place for me and the intellectual competence and idea exchange is second to none.

Dan Pontefract, Senior Director, Learning & Collaboration, TELUS

 

I am proud to be part of The 2.0 Adoption Council because of the network of knowledgeable peers in this space. We are all engaged with helping to make E20 successful in our organizations which bonds us. Our work in enhancing adoption is new territory and it’s exciting to be in the midst of this thinking, learning, strategizing and sharing of experiences.

Mary Maida, Information Solutions Manager, Medtronic, Inc.

The 2.0 Adoption Council has been a godsend for me. When I first opted in I was giddy at the idea of having others commiserate with and bounce ideas off of. It quickly became very clear that we had more answers than I’ve ever heard from a stage or an online event. It taps right into the strength of conference events; we get to have the hallway discussion every day if we like. We can drill down and talk about the realities of challenges, change, tools, and how to navigate these uncharted waters.

Megan Murray, Community Manager, Project Coordinator, Booz Allen Hamilton

 

Being a member of The 2.0 Adoption Council has given me a peer organization to share my challenges and my successes. I always find someone who is willing to help me out when I hit an issue that I have not dealt with before. The advice and expertise I receive is an invaluable resource for implementing collaborative solutions within my company. The team spirit and camaraderie of the council is well represented in everything we do from Demo Thursdays, to Guru Q&A, to exploring and evaluating new tools. I can’t thank my fellow members enough for the value that I take away each and every day.

Greg Lowe, Social Media Architect/Program Manager, Alcatel-Lucent

So, what are you waiting for? Join us! 

Is your social networking hurting your personal brand?

As we all explore the world of social media and social networking, we cannot forget that we all have a lot of learning to do along the way. Just as different tools resonate with different people, the ways in which the tools are used are all over the board, as well. This is likely no surprise to any of us who participate in social networks regularly. And yet, as users, we often forget how our social networking and social media activities can be perceived by those that do not use them as we do. To assume that the way in which we are using these tools should not be questioned by anyone is naïve at best, and foolish and even detrimental to your career, at worst. I'd offer this piece of advice to remember: Participating in any online social network or public forum is always going to be subject to review and interpretation by others, whether family, friends, current or potential employers. Why? Because it's just that - public. You should not have any notion of privacy if you're participating in public social networking sites. It's wise to always keep this in mind.

As a recent example, a co-worker was looking to hire someone to expand their team, but after checking out a prospective candidate online, became turned-off when they went to the person’s Twitter account and saw over 40 postings in the past 24 hours, most of which were not work-related. Admittedly, even to me - an individual quite comfortable with just about all social media tools available - I thought that was a bit much, especially given that many were during work hours. Personally, I have even un-followed people on Twitter who took up my entire tweetstream and seemingly used Twitter as their public IM tool. To me, quality over quantity showcases your talent when using social networking sites, whereas random and frequent brain dumps are not the kind of “conversation” I care to follow.

Is there such a thing as too much tweeting? Yes, I think there is – if you’re tweeting (or blogging or surfing Facebook or another social networking tool) with flaming finger velocity and it’s on work time and you’re not even remotely discussing work-related topics or somehow showcasing your talent as an employee of the company, then I think you’re approaching the area of risking folks thinking that you’ve got too much time on your hands. 

One might argue that if you’re getting your work done, producing high quality work, and not bothering anyone, that it’s no one’s business. I’d disagree. There are many days at work where having someone help me for even an hour would be a huge help. If you’ve got time to send that many tweets, messages, post that many blogs, etc. during work hours, and especially about non-work-related topics, then you’ve got time to help out a fellow co-worker and be a part of the team and showcase your talent to the company in that way.

Like it or not, what you do online when associating yourself with the company reflects not only on your personal brand, but also on the brand of your employer. Here are some tips I’d offer up to folks trying to find the balance between the personal and professional realms of social networking:

• The #1 question you should ask yourself - Would you care if someone else was telling you this?
• Share interesting information, resources, photos, videos, and link to blogs and articles
• Share success stories, ideas or comment on something of interest
• Do not use public social networking sites as your instant messenger tool
• Know your reply ratio – try to have a conversation with people instead of just broadcasting yourself
• It is OK to share some personal interests when online at work, be mindful of how it can be perceived – a good rule of thumb during work hours is 80% business, 20% other interests
• Learn that every tweet/blog post/status update/photo/etc counts – every post can help or hurt your personal brand as well as your company’s
• Learn from others, listen to advice and experiences they share
• Remember that this is a public forum in most cases
• What you say lives forever, even if you delete it, chances are good it's already been indexed or someone has already seen it
• Ask yourself: Would you say this to your manager or a customer?

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 Jamie 

 Blog: http://www.jamiepappas.com

 Twitter: http://twitter.com/jamiepappas

 

 

The Power of Saying Thank You

It seems fitting that during Thanksgiving week, I should write about the power of saying “thank you” in addition to the fact that it’s been something on my mind for a while. It seems in this busy world, we often forget to take time out and thank the people that mean the most to us, that we appreciate, and that help us to keep on keepin’ on, both personally and professionally. Social media actually provides us a perfect avenue and opportunity to do just that.

 

We should all know by now the importance of listening in the social world, especially when using social media for brand management (personal or business brand) and business. I talk about the importance of listening just about every time I talk about social media and how much we can learn from just sitting back and listening to conversations all around us. But one thing I’ve noticed is that it seems when listening in the social world, we often tend to hone in on the negative side of things and forget to also embrace the positive. The knee-jerk reaction is to pick up on the negative comments and react to those. One might even call it “doing damage control,” especially if it’s an influential person or entity sharing negative sentiment. The problem with only focusing on the negative is that’s only half-listening. And if that’s all you’re doing, you’re missing a huge opportunity.

 

There is an immense amount of learning to be accomplished in also taking note of the positive commentary on any given topic. After all, if you want to know what people hate, why wouldn’t you also want to know what people love about the product or brand? Doesn’t knowing the pros as well as the cons paint the full picture for you? I guess I don’t need to say that my answer here is – YES!

 

Just as we tend to reach out to help fix the negative commentary and hopefully build good will for the brand by addressing and fixing things within our scope of influence, I’d offer that taking a moment and thanking those individuals or entities sharing positive feedback with us also builds good will for the brand. And not only that, it just makes you feel good to note the positive side of things for a change!

So, in the spirit of Thanksgiving, do me a favor and be sure to thank someone for saying something nice about you, your brand or your company this week! And if you need to know how to say thank you in multiple languages, here are over 465 ways to do so!

And thanks to you for reading my blog!

 

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 Jamie 

 Blog: http://www.jamiepappas.com

 Twitter: http://twitter.com/jamiepappas

 

On the topic of Crock-i-ness

Well, there’s been a lot of buzz both before and since Enterprise 2.0 San Francisco in San Francisco on the question of whether or not Enterprise 2.0 is a crock. Put another way, can Enterprise 2.0 tools and technologies deliver tangible business benefits with tangible use cases in support of the tools?

Anyone that knows me knows by now that I believe the answer to this is Yes – Enterprise 2.0 can provide tangible business benefits supported with tangible use cases and I’m going to share a few with you here that we’ve realized since the creation of our enterprise community two years ago, which supports blogs, wikis, discussions and user profiles, to name a few things.

I will say right up front that we never identified success for our initiative as 100% user adoption. Not only do I feel that 100% adoption is unrealistic, but I also don’t believe that Enterprise 2.0 is for everyone. I think that a lot of people can realize benefits from using the tools available to them, but I do not believe that there’s any “one size fits all” tool for any organization. If that were the case, we wouldn’t still have people using interoffice mail, leaving post-its on our desks, leaving voicemails, sending emails, etc. We’d have everyone using only one way to communicate, and I don’t think I need to say that this view of the world is completely unrealistic.

I’ll say again what I said on the panel I participated on at Enterprise 2.0 – Enterprise 2.0 is not a cure-all or fix-all. It’s an enabler. Here are some examples of what it’s enabled at EMC in just two short years:

Increased Collaboration

One of the many challenges that large, geographically dispersed organizations face is bringing employees together to collaborate. It’s not that employees don’t want to collaborate; it’s that they have no way of knowing who is working on similar projects or facing similar problems around the company or around the world unless we enable and encourage them to share them somewhere.

That’s exactly what we’ve done on EMC|ONE – provided a platform that enables global, searchable access to conversations and content so that employees can connect with others facing the same challenges and share what has worked, what hasn’t and brainstorm on what to try next. A memorable story that has been shared with me, and that I like to retell is the salesperson in Australia who connected with the salesperson in North America about a deal on a specific product, against a specific competitor and they shared how they went into the sales call, collaborated on things that worked or didn’t, and ultimately won the deal. So, if I knew the dollar amount of that deal, I could conceivable call those dollars ROI.

 

Corporate Memory & Reduction in Redundant Requests

Content and conversations that occur via email or presentations stored on people’s hard drives is arguably essentially lost when that employee leaves or their computer get fried or stolen unless they’ve happened to share that content with others and/or done regular backups of their content – neither of which always happens in a predictable fashion.

EMC|ONE provides employees a venue to share their content and have their conversations and ultimately helps to preserve that conversation and the though process behind it, along with any content that was shared in the context of the conversation. It also makes it accessible to other employees in a searchable community of information for reference, collaboration and updates, as needed. EMC|ONE has also helped many employees reduce redundant requests for information as these employees share and document their information and FAQs in the community, they have a central location to point people to for consistently requested information, and reduce their own personal email and phone traffic and free up their time to work on other things.

 

Quicker Response Times

One of the biggest frustrations I hear from employees is that they have to wait on or even track down information they’re looking for, which wastes time, money and effort on a consistent basis. I’ve heard, (I think it was in Dion Hinchcliffe’s workshop at Enterprise 2.0) that the average employee spends an hour a day looking for information, searching through old files, emails, etc. and boy do I believe it.

A story that I consistently hear from our sales folks is how wonderful it is for them be able to search our competitive community on EMC|ONE and find real-time information and updates about competitors. They also love the ability to ask a question and have anyone in the company be able to answer it instead of just whoever is on a distribution list they send an email out to.

Following up on the example above, folks also are very happy to have access to a location that has FAQs to various questions they need answers to without having to wait to hear back via phone or email when time is of the essence. Depending on the person and amount of time they spend searching for information, this savings could be minimal to a fairly substantial amount.

 

Increased Innovation

For the past three years, EMC had held an annual innovation conference, and it has been planned during the past 2 years on EMC|ONE and then the summary, wrap up, photos, etc. are also shared on EMC|ONE. That in and of itself (using EMC|ONE as the coordination point) has not increased innovation, but what it has done is helped to increase worldwide awareness of the importance that EMC places on innovation and it has increased access to the information, ideas, and proposals that were submitted for the innovation conference by EMC employees.

In addition to the annual Innovation Conference, employees innovate on EMC|ONE every single day by coming up with creative new ways to address problems, challenges, and concerns on a wide variety of topics (products, customer support, solutions, internal issues, software challenges, you name it) they are facing. Not only that, they work with other employees that they would not have otherwise had an opportunity to work with had it not been for EMC|ONE.

 

Customer Support

At EMC, customer service is of the utmost importance. Our internal employee support forums for solving customer issues are, as of this weekend, now hosted on EMC|ONE. But long before the official migration happened, there have been all sorts of examples of employees collaborating together to make customer service as good as it can be. They work together, similar to the example above with innovation, on a wide variety of topics that concern EMC customers and creatively come up with new ideas and solutions to a wide variety of issues. Have some of those efforts kept customers and/or gotten us new customers? Yes, they have, and that in and of itself is an immensely powerful ROI.

 

Increased Employee Satisfaction

I’ve read varying articles on how much it costs to replace an employee that leaves the organization and it seems relatively consistent that it’s around 150% of the employee’s annual salary to resource, interview, hire, and train a replacement employee for someone who quits.

I can tell you without a doubt, that many, many of our employees have shared stories with us (that were not solicited) about how much more connected they feel to the company since EMC|ONE began two years ago. A few examples:

I cannot think of a time during my 20 years at EMC when I felt more informed, involved, and confident in myself and the business before EMC|ONE. ~EMC|ONE User

No other corporate resource gives me more value than EMC|ONE. I feel connected with what is going on, I understand our direction, and I get great satisfaction from contributing to people and initiatives across the organization that before I didn’t even know existed. ~EMC|ONE User

There has been no single resource which has added as much value to me, my customer messaging, and my understanding of EMC as EMC|ONE. I am part of the silent majority, who rarely makes the time to post, but gains tremendous value from this fantastic glimpse into the breadth of EMC. ~EMC|ONE User 

What I don’t want folks to think is that I think is that Enterprise 2.0 is a piece of cake, that it’s easy or that it will fix all of your problems. It’s not a piece of cake, it’s not easy, and it won’t fix all of your problems. What it will do is begin to connect employees to one another that have never had an opportunity to connect before and possibly never would have if it hadn’t been for our efforts. It takes a lot of hard work and effort to even begin an Enterprise 2.0 initiative, let alone sustain it and grow it and assist in continuing along the path to reach its full potential. We certainly didn’t do everything perfectly. Tell me who has and I’m happy to listen. I am proud that we are trying, and continue to try to enable employees to get more done with less, be more connected with one another and work, and find increased job satisfaction.

Do I think Enterprise 2.0 is a crock? Nope. But what do think is that companies that don’t take it seriously and start investing in researching what it can do for them might just find themselves at a significant competitive disadvantage in the very real and near future.

To companies and individuals that ignore the potential that Enterprise 2.0 has to offer or call it a crock, I’d say – Be careful, that crock’s teeth are very sharp and it's liable to bite you when you least expect it.

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 Jamie 

 Blog: http://www.jamiepappas.com

 Twitter: http://twitter.com/jamiepappas

Enterprise 2.0 is still alive and well, thank you very much

I am just back from a week in San Francisco attending the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in San Fran as a featured speaker along with a whole host of other industry experts. Those of us that were on the keynote stage got “backstage passes” and felt a bit like rock stars walking around. Thanks to everyone who made it possible for me to attend a great conference!

For my part, I participated in a panel with five other members from the 2.0 Adoption Council entitled “Is Enterprise 2.0 a Crock?”  I’ll share more on the panel and the whole idea of E 2.0 “crock-i-ness” in general in another post, as I’d like to get my overall conference thoughts down here first as well as share some advice based on ongoing discussions I had with folks at the conference that I hope to be helpful to them, as well as anyone else trying to do this. 

Photo courtesy of @adunne's Flickr Photostream. Panel left to right: Greg Lowe, Megan Murray, Bryce Williams, me, Bruce Galinksy, and Claire Flanagan. (I took a few photos, too, at the conference, though not nearly as good as Alex's.)

I have to say that I enjoyed the conference and the city of San Francisco. The weather was exceptionally nice and the city is amazing, even though I only saw a very small portion of its loveliness due to being inside most of the time.  But nothing compared to the opportunity to meet not only my friends from the 2.0 Adoption Council - Susan Scrupski our Founder, Andy McAfee, Greg Lowe, Megan Murray, Bryce Williams, Bruce Galinksy, Claire Flanagan, Timo Elliott, Hamilton Pridgen, Bert Sandie, and Donna Lucas - in person, but also so many other folks so passionate about the topic of Enterprise 2.0. I am proud to be a member of the 2.0 Adoption Council, and a part of the Enterprise 2.0 conference, as both have done great things for me on many levels.

One thing that’s still very clear to me from the conference, and the folks that I talked to there, is that Enterprise 2.0 is alive and well in terms of both interest in “cracking the code” of rollout and implementation as well as interest in and a hunger for examples of companies that are doing it and doing it well. It’s refreshing to work for a company (EMC) that’s considered to be ahead of the curve in terms of strategy, deployment, and adoption of Enterprise 2.0 tools and behaviors behind the firewall. I know that we still have a lot of learning and work ahead of us, but it’s neat to hear what folks think of what we’ve done so far, and of course to know that I’ve been in the thick of it.

So, how does one go about thinking about and preparing to launch an Enterprise 2.0 initiative? Here’s my advice on questions you need to ask yourself and be able to answer before moving forward. I’ll be elaborating on these questions in future posts:

How do you pitch the idea and to whom?

Understanding the key stakeholders and influences that need to be involved in the initiative and decision-making will go a long way towards a successful rollout. My recommendation is to define your goals and try to include key stakeholders from as many cross-functional teams as makes sense for your organization. This will hopefully reduce the number of times you may have to go back and re-pitch and refine the plan.

How do you determine what tools to use?

Understanding your goals will lead you towards tools. My recommendation would be to start smaller and more concise to meet specific goals you’ve identified and add new functionality as your users request it - providing too many bells and whistles up front will likely turn users off.

How do you secure executive sponsorship and program funding?

Getting an executive sponsor for your initiative who “gets it” and can articulate the value of the tools you’re proposing, as well as actually use them, is going to be key to your initiative.  You’ll also want to be honest with your budgetary needs – nothing is free, not even if the software’s free – it’s still going to take someone’s time (and time is money, after all), to roll out the initiative. My recommendation is to start with a pilot or beta program to get folks interested in the offering and then scale up as needed as new users join.

How do you educate on the tools?

Educating on the tool(s) that you choose is going to be key for a successful initiative. Too often, we make assumptions about people’s level of knowledge on any particular tool or subject. My advice is that you’re going to need to prepare beginner, intermediate, and advanced training materials in multiple formats to have a truly successful educational program.

How do you roll it out to the company?

When it’s time for go-live, you’re going to need to determine how you’re going to roll it out and to whom – will it be the whole company or a sample group of folks? You’ll also want to consider any marketing and communications channels you’ll be able to take advantage of to increase awareness. My recommendation is to also have a plan in place with consistent messaging for your advocates and evangelists to take advantage of when they share the tools with others. This will help to keep the messaging consistent and avoid confusion as to what the tools are for.

How do you handle the naysayers, those that don't see the value or support the idea?

See my previous blog post on this one.

How do you measure the impact and success?

You will inevitably want to consider the measurements you will take into account to consider your initiative a success. There are lots of different measures that can be captured, and each organization is different. My recommendation is to gain insights from your key stakeholders as to what they might consider a measure of success and then propose a phase 1 list to folks for consideration. As the tools and their use evolves, so too can your measures of success.

In summary, the key ingredients for any Enterprise 2.0 initiative are:

• Executive sponsorship
• Funding
• Defined goals/purpose
• Defined “rules of engagement”
• Partnerships are key (IT, HR, Legal, PR, Business Units, etc.)
• Group of passionate folks
• Patience
• Perhaps a leap of faith

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 Jamie 

 Blog: http://www.jamiepappas.com

 Twitter: http://twitter.com/jamiepappas

Innovation, Passion and Social Media come together at EMC's Third Annual Innovation Conference

Yesterday I had the absolute pleasure of attending EMC’s Third Annual Innovation Conference at one of our facilities in Franklin, Mass organized by friend, fellow blogger and social media enthusiast, Stuart Miniman(who did an amazing job pulling everything together!!! Kudos Stu!). This was my first Innovation Conference and I have to say that I cannot wait for next year’s!

 

From the moment I arrived, people were abuzz with the excitement of being in the midst of so many talented individuals, as well as anxiously awaiting the news as to whose idea had won the both the Innovation Showcase awards, as well as the naming of this  year’s prestigious Distinguished Engineers and EMC Fellow. A big congrats to all of the folks who achieved these honors and won awards yesterday!!

 

It was truly a worldwide event with people from all over the world participating in idea submission (there were over 1,400 ideas submitted!) and the conference itself both on local levels and globally. It was also very neat to see how diverse the teams of submitters were – folks from all over the company were coming together to collaborate on innovative ideas to improve EMC products and services for our customers, as well as introduce new ideas into the mix for what could become new products one day. One of the neatest moments of the conference was when folks all over the world connected live to EMC Sr. VP and CTO Jeff Nick to hear the award winners announced. Another highlight of the conference was that I loved meeting so many folks that I've talked to over the years on EMC|ONE, Twitter, or any other online tool in person for a change! It felt like getting together with a bunch of old friends. How great!

 

I also had the pleasure of participating on a panel moderated by Rob Masson along with Distinguished Engineer Steve Todd, NAS Advanced Development Manager John Cardente, and Ionix Technologist in the CTO’s office Ronen Artzi around “How we innovate at our local centers across EMC.” We discussed such compelling questions as “Are there areas within EMC or technology in general, that you feel have the greatest potential for innovation, and why?” and “Why is innovation important?” We all agreed that innovation is a key element of any successful company looking to stay in the game. We also discussed ways in which innovation can be enabled by social media tools and how they can connect you to people that you would not have otherwise met, but share similar passions, interests, and can help you propel your innovative ideas forward. Social media is a good way to both meet new folks, as well as carry on the conversation after an event such as the EMC Innovation Conference. In fact, our internal community EMC|ONE is very much abuzz today with folks talking about the conference yesterday.

 

The passion, creativity and drive of all of the folks that submitted the over 1,400 ideas to be considered is so humbling and awe-inspiring for me. It’s hard to put into words what a feeling of pride there was in the room as we sat there together talking about what an innovative company EMC is, as well as how we continue to propel the notion of innovation forward and make it a 365 day event instead of a once a year gathering! More on that soon, I’m sure, but what an exciting opportunity we have before us! Overall a great time had by all! As I said, I can’t wait til next year!!

 

Posts by Fellow Bloggers (will be updated as more posts are published):

Len Devanna

Steve Todd

Polly Pearson

Dave Spencer

Irsan Widarto

Stuart Miniman

Kathrin Winkler

 

Multi-media from the conference:

A few photos from me @ the Franklin Event

Len Devanna @ the Santa Clara Event

Irsan Widarto @ the Rotterdam Event

Executives on Innovation at EMC

Sandra Ferraro & Vijay Bharadwaj

Dealing with the Enterprise 2.0 and social media critics and naysayers

This past August, I had the pleasure of facilitating a discussion at PodCamp Boston 4 – “How do you get your company to see the value of social media?” This session could have very well been entitled “How do you get your company to see the value of Enterprise 2.0?” and my advice would have been the same.

Recently, a similar discussion came up among members of the 2.0 Adoption Council, and I shared my response with folks in the discussion, and decided to blog on it finally, as I’ve been meaning to for a really long time! 

When we started our community endeavor over two years ago, our success measure was never to have 100% adoption, but rather to build a community of value for employees passionate about collaboration. Once we had several hundred passionate folks engaged and getting value, we continued to work and evolve the community so that it not only continued to provide value to the existing community members, but the hope was also that as the value grows, it would also persuade others to check out the community, join, and contribute. We also actively seek to gather and share success stories, use cases, etc. and post those within the community, as well as include them in our presentations and informational sessions on the community. 

In my opinion, the most important thing that we've really tried to do, which has made a world of difference, is that we've tailored our message to each individual group in terms of use cases and how they can get value from the community. We go into every single meeting with the WIFA (What's in it for the audience?) question at the forefront of our presentation for the stakeholders of that meeting. We learned very quickly that if you tailor the message to their very specific needs, and pinpoint their worst pain points and address how the community can help with some of those issues, it goes a long way towards persuading them to at least give it a try. 

The second most important thing we've done is be honest about the level of commitment required to get a community up and running, as well as sustain it long-term. It's not easy. It doesn't happen overnight. And just because you build it, doesn't mean they'll come! Being honest with each group about the level of commitment required to build and sustain a community and emphasizing the fact that it's a long-term effort to build a successful community has worked wonders for setting expectations. 

Some additional advice I shared at my PodCamp session has helped me a lot in meetings and conversations with folks who are skeptical about the value of an Enterprise 2.0 initiative: 

• Anticipate possible objections: It helps to try to anticipate some possible objections ahead of time and think of how you'll respond to them. If you can prepare for the objections and think of a response, it will help keep the conversation on point and help you to illustrate/reinforce the benefits for that group. 
• Acknowledge concerns: You always want to acknowledge concerns - never tell people they're being stupid or unreasonable (even if you think they are!) Concerns are legitimate to the people raising them. You will not convince anyone to join the initiative by ignoring or dismissing their concerns. You also need to acknowledge that not everyone sees Enterprise 2.0 or social media as you do - some folks will need more time to see the value.
• Engage in friendly dialogue: Engage in friendly and inviting dialogue with the person(s) who are objecting or arguing against the value of the Enterprise 2.0 initiative. Whatever you do, don't get into a heated debate with someone who does not see the value of the initiative. It doesn't do anyone any good and it puts a bad vibe in the way of future conversations. 
• Respect critical feedback: Everyone's entitled to their own opinions. You don't have to agree with them, but don't dismiss them either. See if the feedback presents opportunities for improvements, further exploration, or even education on misinformation or lack of knowledge or understanding. 
• Educate where ever possible: Sometimes the critics feel the way they do simply because they don't have the full picture of the features/functions, use cases, etc. Sometimes they just don't know where to start and so they are critical for that reason. Use the conversation or information from the critic as an opportunity for education and see if you can illustrate your value proposition with meaningful examples and case studies. 
• Accept that social media is not for everyone: Enterprise 2.0 and/or social media is not for everyone and that's ok. If you go into it thinking that success = 100% adoption, you're going to be sorely disappointed. Your job is to provide value, illustrate use cases, benefits, etc. and accept that not everyone will want to use the tool or community. And you know what - that's perfectly fine.

Captivated by the force that is Gravity Summit, Boston 2009

This past Monday, I had the absolute pleasure of attending Gravity Summit at the Harvard Faculty Club in Cambridge, Massachusetts put on by social media wizards Beverly Macy (also teaches social media marketing at UCLA) and Rodney Rumford (also co-founder of TweetPhoto which I’m looking forward to checking out!) 

The line-up for the day included big name brands sharing their social media experiences, strategy and advice for using social media successfully.  And the folks in attendance literally came from all over the country to witness the event, which speaks of the level of information one can achieve when attending.

Me, Hammer and Carina Cristiano Leoni @ Gravity Summit, Harvard

MC Hammer – Life-long entrepreneur, blogger, tweeter, rapper, and all around nice guy - need I say more?

Gary Vaynerchuk – Also a life-long entrepreneur, creator and host of the famous Wine Library TV, and newly published book author

Troy Kelley – EVP & Chief Digital Officer @ Arnold Worldwide

Andy Mitchell – VP of Digital & Development Marketing @ CNN

Todd Defren – Principal @ Shift Communications

Josh Levine – Rebel Industries

Scott Gulbransen – PR & Social Media @ Intuit

Wendy Harman – Social Media Manager @ American Red Cross

Christi Day – Social Media Maven @ Southwest Airlines

Mike Spataro – VP @ Visible Technologies

David Puner (aka Dunkin Dave) – Social Media Manager @ Dunkin Donuts

Ramon deLeon (aka The Pizza Guy to Know in Chicago) – COO @ Domino’s Pizza Chicago

Polly Pearson – VP of Employment Brand & Strategy @ EMC Corp

If you missed the live streaming of the event on CNN.com/live on Monday, you can view videos of some of the folks on my YouTube Channel (some also embedded below). Hard to pick a favorite…Of course, I know EMC’s story very well, since I live it every day and am proud to be a part of the force and strategy.

Rather than do a play-by-play of the day, I thought I’d summarize the key points by picking a few keywords to describe the ongoing message of the entire day at Gravity Summit. I’d have to say they are listen, learn, engage, and empower.

Listen

Listen to what people are saying about your brand, whether it’s your personal brand or your company brand. Listen. Listen to what is being said, take it in, and use it as an opportunity to learn. In the opening remarks with Beverly Macy and Rodney Rumford, it was said “even if you’re never going to use social media in your business, you need to know how to listen to what your customers are saying.” I couldn’t agree more.

Learn

Learn from what is being said by others. There is an unprecedented ability to gain insights into what people are saying about your brand like never before through all social media channels. It’s like having the ability to finally be the fly on the wall we’ve all wanted to be at some point. As Rodney Rumford said “use social media to solicit feedback and be ready for what you’re going to hear – the good, the bad, and the ugly.” Take it as an opportunity to learn how to be a better brand and educate. Negative comments are such a huge opportunity to learn and keep people engaged. And, as Polly Pearson said, if people are complaining, it’s a sign they still care.

Engage

Engage with people via social media. I’ve always said that people want to connect with people, not nameless, faceless brands. Troy Kelley shared “markets are reporting getting more engagement out of social media than any other traditional marketing tools,” so now is your chance to get out there, engage, and be the central voice for your brand. As Hammer said, “perception has trumped reality, and if you’re allowing somebody else to control the perception of your brand, you’re in trouble […] being at the center of the flow of information about you and your brand is the key to managing your brand.”

Empower

Empower others to not only find out about your brand via social media, but also empower your employees to use social media in a transparent way. I agree with Gary Vaynerchuk that “social media’s power and potential are massively underrated.” I love Todd Defren’s take on social media: “social media is not about public relations, it's about public relationships […] social media is not about creating something new every day, but leveraging what you already have in creative ways.” It’s all about empowering people to take advantage of the opportunities social media presents to them and using social media to enhance information and relationships as we know them.

The only constructive feedback I have is that it seems like people were jumping out of their seats to engage with the presenters a bit more, and at times things felt a bit rushed. So, perhaps having one or two fewer presenters with a touch more time for Q&A would be a good thing? Hard to say for sure, but I’d love to see a bit more interactivity in the summit. After all, social media is about having conversations and building relationships.

All in all, a fantastic summit! My first of many, I hope! Kudos to Beverly and Rodney for a fantastic showing and event!

A few vids I shot from the event. See more on my YouTube Channel. 

MC Hammer Keynote, Part 1

 

Gary Vaynerchuk Keynote, Part 1 

 

Polly Pearson, EMC Case Study, Part 1

   

Todd Defren, Shift Communications, Part 1 

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 Jamie 

 Blog: http://jamiepappas.typepad.com/ 

 Twitter: http://twitter.com/jamiepappas

 

Clever Marketing by @GariFusion during PCB4

I was browsing through tweets tagged with the #pcb4 hashtag for this past weekend’s PodCamp 4 in Boston when I came across what I thought was a genius marketing campaign on Twitter for Brookline sushi restaurant Gari Japanese Fusion. 

These people have worked it out – they locate local events in the Boston area, pick up on the hashtag and then tweet specials and coupons to the attendees around dinner time. It’s absolute genius if you ask me. 

More restaurants looking to get into using Twitter should take their lead and try to catch the eye of event attendees by tweeting the specials to their event hashtag. 

Very cool marketing plan that seems to be working out well for them! Can’t wait to try their sushi! 

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 Jamie 

 Blog: http://jamiepappas.typepad.com/ 

 Twitter: http://twitter.com/jamiepappas