Archive for the ‘Events’ Category

If you've never heard of it, then The Research Club is a must-attend for any market research professional. It's simply an open, warm and inviting event for market research professionals to attend and make new contacts - nothing more, nothing less! So successful has it become that there's now a Research Club in Amsterdam, Paris, Hamburg and Frankfurt, as well as London.

There's a Research Club meet-up tonight at Tiger Tiger on Haymarket, from 6.30pm, so if you're free, why not drop by. No invite required. We're leaving soon, see you there!

On Monday this week I visited the Social Media World Forum at London Olympia. It's in it's second year (I think) and growing, and hosts a series of conferences, workshops and a walk-around exhibition. This year the event was seemingly split in two; one half of the camp representing Social Media practitioners, including PR and SM agencies and SM monitoring specialists the likes of Yomego, Huzu (hi Graeme!) and the ever-provocative Nixon McInnes, the other half more focused on Enterprise2.0, including platform providers, cloud computing businesses and other specialists software service providers including Telligent, Huddle and Siteforum.

I went along with an open mind, not sure of the quality that would be on show, or the extent of the show. While it was only relatively small - some 4,000 visitors over two days - there was a healthy buzz, particularly around the Enterprise2.0 entity. So while PR, Internal Comms and Marketing people surveyed the Social Media room, more as a catch-up than a get ahead, the Enterprise2.0 room was demonstrating that business was finally getting its head around how to harness social tools for things like productivity, collaboration, KM and the like - the constituent elements in what we at dub label Social Business Design.

The reason we set about creating dub, and what is clearly lacking based upon my observations from the Social Media World Forum, is to offer clients impartial advice and support in helping their organisation not only identify which platforms - bespoke or off-the-shelf - they should consider as part of the solution, but also to help generate user buy-in, or as one organisation put it, carry out user diagnostics.

There are more and more useful and successful on-demand products and services available, yet few organisations fully understand how to get user adoption, and how best to tackle things like internal policy and compliance. Sadly, the stories that came out of the event demonstrated that these things are the biggest challenges, and the things that often require the greatest resource and budget in order to achieve any semblance of success.

So while dub can and does create bespoke social tools, we also work with clients to understand if there are social solutions readily available that can do the job, and then, more importantly, work with the 'people' so that they can identify what's in it for them, and how they can use it to help them with their daily grind.

(My next post will contain the excellent presentation given by co-founder of Huddle, Andrew McLoughlin. There's also an alternative view/review of the show through the eyes of my colleague Dan Miles here)

The opening day of the Social Media World forum was a mixed bag;  eager attendees and interesting talks, underpinned by appalling organisation.

For me, the underlying theme of the day was around integration and ownership of enterprise 2.0 tools. Helen Farrar of Virgin Media presented an interesting case study of their strides to embrace social tools over the last three years. Her statement that e2.0 tools MUST be fully integrated into existing company systems and processes to succeed really resonated with the audience. It was a point that was echoed by almost everyone who presented.

I asked her what the greatest challenge was in getting internal buy-in and she was refreshingly candid. Simply put it was fear. Fear of technology, fear of loss of control and fear of disruption. The solution she gave was equally simple – show people they’re being listened to and show that top brass are behind it.

This point was reinforced by Sonia Carter of AXA UK who gave a fascinating insight into the AXA e2.0 journey to date. As a toe in the water, they developed a vBulletin forum to act as an idea engine and to develop learnings across their three distinct businesses units. Adoption was slow until they put the CEO and another top exec into a live 2-hour Q&A session. Participant numbers rocketed, a server melted and this is now seen as the single most successful piece of internal engagement in the company’s history.

The thorny issue of compliance also raised its head here. The first incarnation of the community was developed at low cost and therefore rapidly implemented 'under the radar'. However, with its success came the need to expand and the need to adhere to corporate policy and create user guidelines. This took 12 months and cost over ten times the original community!

Which nicely epitomised the key take-outs of the day for me. To create a sustainable and successful internal social programme you need to:

• Spread the ownership - if only one department owns it, it will surely fail
• Engage stakeholders early and engage them often
• The objectives dictate the success metrics
• Look beyond the bottom line to measure ROI - think engagement/knowledge transfer/retention

Overall it was well worth attending and as with all of these events – you get out what you put in.

Last night, a few of us from the office went along to One Alfred Place to listen to a presentation by Jemima Gibbons on her new book, Monkeys with Typewriters. The event was actually hosted by the Society for Organisational Learning (SOL-UK), and was attended more by academics and those in the business of Knowledge Management and Learning, than Social Media/Business/Software people like ourselves. This however was what made the debate captivating!

To in part quote Jemima herself, Monkeys with Typewriters sets about debunking the idea that social media are an amateurish distraction for today’s organisations. Having only seen snippets of the book at the present time, I can’t reassure you that the book actually achieves this, but what became evident was the progress and development in social media and social software that have been achieved since Jemima set about writing the book. Many of the chapter hooks such as co-creation, passion, openness and transparency have already been well document elsewhere, leaving the book feeling the somewhat dated. However, it soon became clear that this particular audience were naturally some way behind our own thinking and work practices

What I feel Jemima has done well is to engage and strong selection of web entrepreneurs, practitioners and industry spokespeople. This has allowed her to present many varied views of such topics as co-creation, openness and transparency, whilst hitting home the point that entrepreneurs of the future will create much flatter (non-hierarchical) business structures, and harness the power of ‘we’ thinking.

Among those interviewed include Scott Monty (Ford Motor Company), who’s view was that Ford is essentially a news organisation, Craig Newmark (Founder of Craigslist) who emphasises his role as a customer service manager, and Lloyd Davis (Tuttle Club) who states that if you can’t come to Tuttle Club because of work commitment then you simply don’t get it - it is work!

Perhaps my main take-out of the session was that of the perspective of the learning professionals present in the room. They were adamant that ‘learning’ will never take place in such an effective manner online as it does offline (or face-to-face), despite knowledge flow and information the internet puts at out fingertips. Learning clearly needs to combine the two within organisations, but must understand how, when and where to integrate the two, and provide a real purpose to the social tools that support it.

I tweeted snippets of the presentation here for you to view, and was astonished to even get a response from the Craig Newman himself as praised him for his beliefs!

(New things I learnt: Tuple and Panopticon!)