Like Minds

Slight change of plans this week! I’ve grabbed the blog momentarily from Glenn and Jason and want to share an interview I did with a like minded individual who, although they aren’t speaking at Like Minds, are learning valuable lessons in people-to-people.

Just a quick disclaimer: firstly, I have started working as a consultant with them in building a Social Media program (there’s not much there yet, though), and secondly, excuse the camera work and messy hair -- no one’s perfect

Some of the key points that came from our conversation are:

• Engaging with people young people in a paperless world
• Using Social Media to extend and enhance relationship, not replacing it
• Integration issues with Social Media in a Charity, both external and internal communications
• Managing change with a voluntary work force

I think the points that Tim raises are pertinent to many organisations, and whilst there’s plenty of resources about Social Media strategy, there’s not much resource on integration. This is a very painful point for them, and again like many others I’m sure, they’ve had their fair share of people messing them around and wasting a lot of their precious time and resources.

Let me know if you have any ideas -- I’ll forward them to Tim -- I know he’d appreciate your help.

If you can’t see the above video, click here.

This week I caught up with Charlie Osmond, founder of Fresh Networks (amongst other things), and one of our panelists at Like Minds next month.

Charlie talked to me about what drives him, how money is the not his aim, the way in which Social Media works for B2B, and what his passions and pursuits are.

This week we received a lovely pack of Kodak Zi8s, ready to film some interviews with more of our speakers next week – but I also had the pleasure of interviewing Vikki Chowney, editor of ReputationOnline.co.uk and panel moderator at Like Minds on 26th February.

You can catch up with Vikki on Twitter – @vikkichowney, and myself at @lesanto. We’ll be ready to discuss the interview and answer your questions at the new time of 5pm GMT this evening. Also, if you haven’t got your ticket for Like Minds yet, there are morning and afternoon tickets still available for you to come and meet Vikki in the flesh.

GLS: If we take a little time to google your name, we soon see that you are an achiever. What has been the biggest obstacle to you making your way in life?

VC: I’m not sure if I’d call myself an achiever per say, just that I love what I do. I find myself getting involved in multiple projects, and work as hard as I can to make the most of them. I’ve been lucky so far, and haven’t faced too many obstacles. Probably the biggest one was making the switch to writing full time, which was more of a shift in mindset than anything. Previously, people knew me as a PR person that simply wrote on the side. Changing that perception took a while, but thankfully wasn’t too much of a leap. It’s not like I decided to retrain as an astronaut.

GLS: Talking of retraining as an astronaut, I’ve invented a time machine. The problem is, the demand for its use is incredibly high. I can only grant you one quick go, one time and for just one hour. What time do you set it to, and why?

VC: As you can probably tell from my previous answer, I’m fascinated by space. I’d go back and watch the moon landing. That defining moment in terms of our relationship with astronomy brought people together in a way that’s near impossible to replicate.

GLS: Can you name three people who have inspired you in your life?

VC: It’s possibly a bit of a cliché, but my mother is a huge inspiration. She was an entrepreneur at my age, and even though I haven’t gone down the same path (yet), she’s always helped me to view things from a different angle when I’m really in need. It’s a rare thing to have such unwavering support in your life. Professionally, I wouldn’t use the word inspirational, but I’ve always felt strongly about Voltaire. Someone that stands up to censorship and defends civil liberties with such beautiful written style gets a vote from me. Finally, I’ve got a bit of a soft spot for Khaled Hosseini, which I’d reference even if it were just for his novel ‘A Thousand Splendid Suns’. To take a subject so sensitive, and make it so real – but also readable – is a great achievement.

GLS: What is your greatest fulfilled ambition/achievement? What goal remains, something that you feel you must achieve as soon as possible?

VC: I’ve always wanted to write, so to be in a position now where I’m not only making a living from it, but also enjoying myself. Well, you can’t ask for more than that can you? As for further ambitions, I don’t tend to put a timeline on them. I’ve got aspirations to be published in national press regularly, but hopefully it’ll come in time. There’s no rush.

GLS: Is there a great innovation that you are waiting for someone to invent? What technological advancement would make your life complete?

VC: I am desperate for someone to take the Hype Machine (a music aggregation website), and make it portable. Whether that’s via a mobile app (I’d actually switch to iPhone if needs be) or even a whole new device I’d need to buy, I don’t care. It’s my primary method of sourcing new music, and I’d love to be able to listen to it while out and about. You only have to look at the amount of users (and people tweeting tracks) to guess that they’d be able to charge for it and create an extra revenue stream.

GLS: I’ve already invented a time machine and given you a go, now you can select your dream job! Take your pick, anything.

VC: Actually, I’d stick with what I’m doing right now. I’m lucky to have real flexibility in my working life and I’m putting my energy into building Reputation Online because the space is so interesting and fast-paced at the moment.

GLS: I’m a great believer in conferences such as Like Minds. I think they’re the ideal place to meet, well, like minds. But hey, you’re no stranger to these gigs. What’s your own opinion of them?

VC: Conferences are two a penny these days, and you have to be really selective in the ones you attend. Otherwise, you waste time out of the office and don’t learn anything. Interactive sessions like Like Minds are the ones you chose to go to, as they provide real benefit to those with a specific problem or gap in their knowledge. It’s a good environment to chew the fat.

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For this Friday’s interactive interview I caught up with Ilicco Elia (@ilicco) who is one of the line up of speakers for the Like Minds conference and works as Head of Mobile, at Reuters Consumer Media. We chatted about innovation, mobile media and Ilicco’s ideas on what constitutes a good mobile phone. Have a listen to the interview, there’s some fascinating insight shared by Illico.

Here’s just a small selection of quotes from the interview:

“in developing countries mobile is the first and often only way people are accessing the internet and their emails”

“at Reuters we’ve always looked for ways to get the news out as quickly as possible”

“over the last two years the third voice has been heard, I think this is a really interesting idea”

“at Reuters we try to keep at the forefront of what needs to be done, if we don’t – someone else will!”

“we’re developing peer to peer news ‘gathering’”

“my dream innovation is a mobile phone that I like”

Join us at 2pm GMT with Ilicco as we discuss this interview in a bit more depth, and ask some direct questions, not just about the important of mobile, but how to harness its potential. To appear extra smart, re-read our interview last week with Joanne Jacobs, as there’s some lovely overlap here.

Every Friday, we are talking to our Like Minds 2010 speakers, with the aim of starting the conference now (who said it’s bound by space, time and matter?), and also to fulfill the social aim of getting to know each other. These interviews will take the format of text, video and audio, and our speaker who has been interviewed will be on hand during that day to specifically talk with you.

We’re starting with one of our 6 keynote speakers, Joanne Jacobs, who is a Social Media expert consultant. Joanne has worked with a diverse range of companies, authored and edited books, and is a regular speaker on the London Social Media scene.

You can find out more about Joanne on her website, joannejacobs.net, and talk with her on Twitter @joannejacobs. Joanne will be discussing this topic on Twitter on the #likeminds hashtag at 14:00 GMT today.

Like Minds’ blogger Glenn Le Santo talked to Joanne this week:

Q: I’ve scanned your very impressive CV and see you’ve been right in the van of the Social Media ‘movement’ for some time. But tell me, when did you first have that ‘eureka’ moment and realise that Social Media was going to be BIG in the future (i.e. – now)?

A: I don’t think I really had so much of a ‘eureka moment’. Even as an undergraduate, when I was studying telecommunications and media policy, I was aware of the opportunities in combining content and communication platforms. Then when the WWW became big news in the mid 1990s, there were claims being made about the capacity for individuals to connect and share information effectively – but due to the limitations of the technologies at the time, they were more promises than experiences. Then when I began to study blogs as a platform for Socratic engagement and went on to work in interaction design it became clear that the natural use of the technologies was for social media.

Q: Your CV is crammed with achievement and milestones. What sticks in your mind as the best single moment in your career to date?

A: Wow: tough question. I guess I’m proud of the book I co-edited with Axel Bruns, and after that was published, my consultancy career also expanded, so that’s probably the best moment, strategically. But I think emotionally the best moments have been when I’ve been part of the London Social Media community and the Amplified group, watching and contributing towards grassroots responses to important issues

Q: Is Social Media itself new? Is it innovation? Or is it merely new technology being used along with the age-old human desire to socialise?

A: I prefer to think of Social Media as an evolutionary innovation, because the technology and the act of communicating via instant and asynchronous messaging is not new, nor is that age-old desire to communicate. But technically it’s a disruptive innovation. It’s the fact that Social Media has created an entirely new market of information sharing and fact-checking that makes it disruptive. Ask any Twitter user who has used the hashtag “uksnow” and they may not be able to articulate clearly why they value the shared experience of deep snow, but there are enough tweets and videos and pictures and comments to prove that it has been a significant experience of February 2009 and over the past couple of months.

I think also, the thing we have lost in journalism is the connector role that journalists used to play between the public and individuals or organisations with something to contribute. The Fourth Estate wasn’t just about reporting on the activities of the other Estates. It was also about providing a voice to the people. And media concentration and the rise of the popular press virtually eradicated that aspect of journalism. I think Social Media is (finally) bringing it back. So it’s a disruptive innovation that is recapturing a value in community that has been lost in the past couple of generations (at least).

Q: What’s the most exciting thing you worked on last year? Can you tell us? (it doesn’t need to be related to Social Media)

A: Probably the most exciting thing I’ve seen develop is the collection action and problem solving, and the opportunities to play that have come out of the London Social Media community and Amplified. When the Amplified team turned up at Civil Service Live in July 2009, we spent four days in bright blue t-shirts at Earls Court, tweeting, blogging, qikking and audiobooing the event in order to demonstrate to civil servants, the opportunities that can be derived from recording and engaging with ideas. A civil service trade show wouldn’t normally strike anyone as exciting, but I think what we did there was to introduce a whole new series of service options. After that, and after government hack days and other events, the COI released a large amount of government data to developers just to see what evolved. And they began to investigate use of tools like audioboo in public engagement on policy. It’s going to take some time, but really positive things are emerging from those collaborative and generous experiences. I’m really excited by that.

Q: If you could introduce an innovation that would change our lives. What would it be? Dream away on this one, I don’t care if it is practical or even possible!

A: Easy: a holodeck. And the technology isn’t that far away. I don’t mean Second Life – that’s nowhere near the kind of experience I’m thinking about. I want augmented reality to shift into the real world as a kind of 3D tourism experience. Think: the 3D version of Avatar where you get to participate in the story. But even then, if you’re in there on your own, and you can’t intervene on the gameplay, it’s tedious. Technically brilliant perhaps, but unless there are ways we can bring other players into the action, or things we can achieve in the space with other players – tasks to do, problems to solve – then it’s dull.

It would change lives not just because it has the obvious training opportunities for dangerous tasks, but because it could be a collective experience and because it would be inherently creative and developmental. Plus there’d be the obvious opportunities to replay the experiences from a spectator’s perspective. What could be better?

Q: I’d like to find out a little about you as a person. Would you describe yourself as an optimist or a pessimist.

A: I think someone who comes across to the other side of the world without a job, and with no contacts (as I did) would have to be described as an optimist! But I think more than anything else, I’m a realist.

Q: What are you most optimistic about?

A: Opportunities for collaboration and effective, creative problem solving.

Q: What are you most pessimistic about?

A: Positive action against global warming. I just see so much ignorance being disseminated by people who may otherwise be reasonable, but they are using social media as a platform to seed doubt about climate change where we should be using these technologies to help deal with the looming crisis. It’s thoroughly depressing.

Q: If you weren’t doing what you are doing, and could choose ANY job/status/position – what would it be?

A: Running a Games division of a mainstream media company, charged with creating immersive, augmented reality problem-solving games for lifelong learning institutions, business and government. One day I want to run the company that actually builds a functional holodeck.

Q: Finally. You’re speaking at the Like Minds Conference in February. What attracted you to Like Minds?

A: What came out of Like Minds in 2009 was a discussion about what was possible and how things can develop rather than a ‘how-to’ event for a specific discipline, or a ‘what-happened’ event for a series of campaigns. There are dozens of these events around, and frankly the ROI isn’t fantastic. Even among Social Media events, the same rules keep coming up and the same advice gets trotted out without any real evidence or metrics to support it. What impressed me about Like Minds was the attempt to give some depth of interpretation to existing case studies and some serious thinking about what can and should arise from the market leaders. I’m hoping this event can build on that remarkable beginning and consider some pretty important questions about people-to-people connectivity arising out of social media, but impacting every facet of business.