Fruitful

Countdown to next webinar

It's this Friday, noon to 1:30 CST. The webinar is designed to give an overview of social technologies in business, and should be of interest to anyone trying to start (or get approval on) corporate blogs, customer communities, etc.  One of the last participants wrote a very kind review on her blog:

...(it) generated a lot of ideas and left me wanting to run down the hall to our owner's office with the revelations of all the wonderful things blogging could do for us.  And I mean now! 

Signing up for the webinar not only includes the webinar itself, but follow up from Jennifer with a great deal of information.  And honestly?  The webinar itself was worth the cost to me.  My expectations have been exceeded.   I got more out of it than I thought I would. (And I had fairly high expectations.)  And I look forward to the next one.

To sign up, click here. Agenda is as follows:

- The societal trends that are fueling the exponential growth of blogs

- The impact of the "blogosphere" on your business, and how to monitor and join the customer conversation that’s already happening

- The various types of social technologies such as blogs, wikis and forums, and the six ways in which they’re being used (including internal usage)

- How social technologies fill the gaps in your current marketing mix

- Culture shifts such as transparency and co-creation that accompany the ‘open business’ trend

        - Guidelines for creating and maintaining corporate blogs

Please join us!

IFTF Update

Well, I was planning to blog on the IFTF conference, but it didn't turn out like I expected. A lot of the "new-to-me" ideas and information was glossed over in the intro session, and the rest of the conference was focused on the grassroots economy including social networking and open source. I discovered that the majority of the attendees were novices to the networked-economy concept, so I think it was a perfect introduction for this particular crowd.

For me, the main value was three-fold: I met some terrific people (including Jerry Michalski, a kindred spirit and one of the smartest guys I've met in ages), had some great discussions, and got some ingredients for further thought. There were some fascinating nuggets of information presented, and questions that I need to mull over... so you can expect some of these musings to appear here in the blog in the next few weeks. Things like multiple identities, the changing concepts of value and currency in the networked economy, the difference between bounded and unbounded markets... some yummy ideas to chew on. These were issues and questions that were raised but not directly addressed in the conference. I'm not even going to pretend to answer these questions, but I'm hoping that the collective intelligence of the group can come up with some interesting theories.

IFTF 10-Year Forecast

I'm in Berkeley at the 30th annual 10-year forecast retreat by the Institute For The Future. I feel very honored and delighted to have been invited; it's limited to 100 attendees from a variety of disciplines, industries and countries.

The topic is the grassroots economy; throughout the day we'll be hearing from luminaries like Steven Weber (author of Success of Open Source), Joi Ito, Howard Rheingold (author of Smart Mobs) and more.

Last night was the overview of the 10-year forecast, which included the prediction of hostile environments (ie. climate changes and urbanization) and a really cool concept called the bio-quantum paradigm (a fancy term for how we'll adapt to an overload of technology). I'll write more on that later! Right now I'm headed to breakfast. Stay tuned for some fascinating ideas...

Co-Creation Trend 4: Balance

(Continued from Revolution, Motivations, Control)

Haydn: Is there a point where the struggle to create and maintain relationships  dissolves mass market brands and takes us back to a version of local relationships where all parties to a transaction are known to each other?

Jennifer: No, this is not the end of mass-market brands. Nor is it the end of structure and control. We need to start thinking in terms of "both/and" instead of "either/or". The pendulum has swung from extreme local to extreme mass-market... and now the system is seeking to balance itself. The market will be both mass-market AND individual relationships. Look at the way we've communicated over time: We used the telephone, letters and face-to-face meetings, but these methods weren't scalable. So we shifted to telemarketing, direct mail and web sites... incredibly scalable, but no longer personal. We're now moving into the middle ground of personal AND scalable, which is made possible by new social technologies like blogs, forums, wikis and social networks. It's a new way of thinking, and it's a bit paradoxical. Companies who can make the mental shift will have an incredible advantage. Although personally, I'd bet my money on new companies born out of this complex new environment. They're created with the requisite culture and mindset.

Co-Creation Trend 3: Control

(Part 1 and Part 2)

Haydn: Can brands and conventional media really maintain control over it?

Jennifer: Absolutely not. No more than a ship captain can control the wind and the waves. But the ship captain has learned how to harness the power of wind and waves to reach his destination. Companies and conventional media can only ignore these forces at their own peril. The smart ones will figure out how to work with it, instead of against it... similar to a ship sailing with the trade winds rather than against them. Frankly, companies and the media should be thrilled; they no longer have to carry the burden by themselves. There are millions of unpaid volunteers who want to help create products and content that they want to buy. Yes, it means relinquishing some control. But it also means an incredible amount of energy and momentum to the companies who are brave enough to work with it.

Co-Creation Trend 2: Motivations

Continuing the discussion with Haydn Shaughnessy with the Irish Times, Haydn asks...

In your view, is there any kind of pattern emerging in content co-creation?  I mean by this can we start to draw any conclusions about where it is  going? Is it driven by any one major motivation?

Jennifer: My previous statement sounds awfully dramatic, but I truly believe we're on the cusp of a radically new type of distributed society. You can see hints of it in the open-source movement and in the growth of the blogosphere (where there are now over 40,000 new blogs started every day).  There's a massive, networked conversation going on, and people are joining the conversation for various reasons. People seeking information are meeting up with subject-matter experts. Others are sharing opinions, joining like-minded groups and collaborating on new ideas. Our society is reconnecting itself not by geography, but by interest. It's a meeting of the minds that will spawn a lot of incredible new ideas.

Co-creation trends: Revolution

Haydn Shaughnessy  writes for the Irish Times, and emailed me some questions on co-creation trends for an upcoming article. We thought it would be fun to make this a co-created discussion... so I'll post the answers I gave Haydn, and we welcome your thoughts and participation!

Haydn: In your view, are we seeing now the natural extension of what dot.com upstarts like Napster were trying to do? Was that its starting point?

Jennifer: Actually, the starting point was (and continues to be) our repressed and increasingly isolated society. The breakdown of the family unit, increased mobility, decreased job tenure and the rise of the 'free-agent nation' meant that a basic human need -- belonging -- is no longer being met. And over the years, consumers stopped having a voice and companies stopped listening. We've been forced to buy products and interact with others according to the rules that have been set by corporations. We want to do things differently... which is how all revolutions are started, whether political or economic. Companies like Napster don't even need to "try;" they're like lit matches in a gas-filled room. Traditional companies represent the monarchy. They can either join the revolution, ignore it or continue trying to repress it, but ultimately the revolution will prevail.

Multiloguing

So if a monologue is one person talking, and dialogue is two people talking, what's a multilogue?

I've been thinking about the societal and psychological reasons for the emergence of blogs, wikis and the like. Markets are conversations, etc etc. Everyone's talking about blogs, but there's not really a word to describe the purpose. So I made one up.

People define blogs as online journals. That definition leaves out blogs' linky nature that elevates them into a completely different arena. Just as a web site should be more than 'brochure-ware', a blog should be more than 'journal-ware.' I see the blog as  personal, scalable conversation tool that happens to resemble an online journal. Social networks like LinkedIn, wikis and discussion forums all serve the same purpose. We're engaging in multilogues, and using the tools at our disposal to make it easier.

The reason I've been thinking about this is because I've gotten push-back on the term "social technologies" as an umbrella term for blogs, wikis & forums. Perhaps the word 'technologies' is too tactical for a concept that's really quite a strategic/culture shift for companies.  One suggestion was "social engagement framework"; but someone else bashed using the word "social" because it doesn't seem to fit internal corporate applications.

Anyway, not sure where I"m going with this, but it would be fun to multilogue this topic. :-)