Redcatco » communication

Social Media Week London

Benjamin — Fri, 29 Jan 2010 19:15:07 +0000

Roll up roll up, it is Social Media Week. Obviously every week is social media week these days, but this is an extra special series of events all around the world. First of all, by way of full disclosure, I am on the advisory board for the London Events, which might make me even more enthusiastic than normal.

With that out of the way, let me share a little about what is happening. The first Social Media Week took place in New York last year and was a great success. This year Social Media Week is happening in six cities around the world. The schedule of events can be found on the London site, with more events being added all the time.

I plan to be at the Social Graph event at the IAB on Monday, followed by the opening night reception. I will be joining a fantastic panel including David Terrar, Ala Patrick, Euan Semple, Mat Morrison, Dr Sue Black, Shefaly and co on Tuesday Evening for a session on Social Media in Enterprise. Lightning 10 minute presentations, followed by Q&A, at Cass Business school. If you are working with social media in a business setting you’ll probably want to book here now! The week for me rounds off with “Social Media Measurement” at Sun’s offices on Friday, where I will be chairing the afternoon session.

Key event details: Mon 1st Feb – Fri 5th Feb, 2010

Location: All around London.
Website: http://socialmediaweek.org/london
Twitter: http://twitter.com/smwldn (for the latest updates)

In other news, the blog got into the Technorati top 100 for Small Business Blogs, which is a gentle nudge to blog some more. We’ve been doing some very exciting things with WordPress for Redcatco’s customers, and are adding in some new server infrastructure in the next few weeks as well!

Do Your Employees Dance?

Benjamin — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:46:30 +0000

Have you studied bees? Our family has fantastic friend, Dave. Dave keeps bees and supplies us with honey from his local hive. The pollen rich honey does wonders for the hay-fever sufferers in the household.

Like most people, I’ve not had much reason to study bees. At least, not until I started studying the psychology of language. Dave’s bees do fascinating things, like building the honeycomb pictured here. Bees are viewed as hyper productive, industrious creatures, working away industriously. The hive is the very model of business, full of busy bees.

But did you know that bees spend a fair bit of their time wandering about aimlessly, and a fair bit dancing too? Bees major product is honey. Producing honey requires nectar, which the bees stumble upon by foraging. This is where the dancing comes in. The dancing gets work done efficiently.

When a bee finds a source of nectar it comes back to the hive and does a ‘waggle dance’ for its co-workers. The dance communicates the location of the nectar, indicating the direction and distance. The dance also communicates the type of nectar, by including a sample of the newly found treasure as part of the communication process. The co-workers then mobilize to bring back the rest of the new find.

It is a process of innovation and discovery. A single bee, with the time to wonder, makes a discovery. It then shares the discovery with the hive. The process maximizes the return on the new discovery, while minimizing unfruitful searching by other bees.

Do your employees dance? Do they have the time and tools to communicate where the nectar for your business is to other employees? Do they celebrate and communicate success? It is as important to the modern business as it is to the bee hive.

It always makes me sad when I hear a business shutting down communication channels that employees use – be it instant messaging, video conferencing or a community forum. In the wake of that decision is a hive of workers with less information to make them successful, and a less productive community.

Internal blogs and wikis and open communication channels (rather than closed point to point e-mail systems) are an essential tool for showcasing the steps to success. Did you just make a big business win? Then make sure everyone in the business knows. Let them know why it was a big win, and what enabled it to happen. Do a waggle dance!

It isn’t just for the benefit of current employees. Hopping back to the bees for a minute, the nature of the waggle dance is unique (if you want to know more, check out Karl von Frisch who pioneered the study of bee communication). If you take a different sort of bee and introduce it to the hive, it will not be understood. Although eventually, after some mis steps, the bees will learn to communicate again.

How are new bees in your hive able to learn the language to communicate with the existing bees? Wikis and blogs provide a place for new staff to come and absorb the culture and language of a business. That gets them productive more quickly. They are called business wikis for a reason.

New employee hire orientation isn’t a one off event. It is about binding people into a community and enabling them to be part of it. That is a two way process, requiring good communication tools.

Bees have a specific place where they can come to dance. For some species it might be at the entrance to the hive, for others it is vertically on the comb, but there is a place.

Does your business have somewhere for employees to dance?

Avoiding a Business Communication Crisis

Benjamin — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 15:58:17 +0000

Hey, that’s your business! Or it could be. Vandals pulled a large number of BT cables out of the ground in our local town (Camberley), leaving thousands of people and hundreds of businesses without their phones. It will take weeks to repair all of the damage. Sadly, with the increasing value of the copper in phone lines, this sort of incident is becoming increasingly common.

It used to be an issue in developing countries, where a few hundred Kilos of copper were worth a day’s wages. That equation now holds true in Europe as well. Systems do get broken, and good businesses should plan for that – see Seth’s post this week: “What do you do when your systems break?“.

Expect the unexpected isn’t just an aphorism, it is good business productivity advice. Many of these people that lost their phone lists also lost their broadband connection at the same time. That means people and businesses with no phones and no Internet.

Now that copper is so valuable, what’s your communications back up plan? Given that most people have mobile phones, the ability to make calls isn’t lost – it just becomes slight more expensive. Also, with many service providers it is possible to divert a landline number to a mobile one. Watch out for how you activate the divert – if it requires Internet access or the phone line, that’s going to be a problem. For the call centres I used to run, the divert process was automated.

So, what about Internet access? Well, the good news is that mobile data services are becoming more and more affordable, even here in the UK. Another alternative is to know where your local WiFi hotspots are, or have an exchange agreement with another business or friend in a nearby town. That way there is somewhere to go to get those critical e-mails out (or in!), and let people know what is happening, if you need to.

As Seth points out in his post, you also need to give staff (and yourself) flexibility about how to deal with the ‘normal’ day to day business. You may not have access to all of the usual systems and information, but make sure that remains your problem, not the customers.

It’s amazing how dependent us business people are on e-mail and web these days. Services can be vulnerable, so it is worth having a good recovery plan worked out ahead of time. That way you are prepared when things do go wrong, minimizing the impact on productivity.

Is Broadcasting Something to Shout About?

Benjamin — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:14:40 +0000

What is happening to traditional broadcasters? Who are the new broadcasters? How should we use broadcast media? What is broadcast media becoming? How do companies communicate in the emerging broadcast world order? These were just some of the topics from the Rebecca Caroe/Creative Agency Secrets ”Should Brands be Broadcasters?” event.

It stimulated lots of thinking, and there are certainly some big issues to deal with. The three speakers were:

Charlie Robertson of Red Spider.
Andrew Howells of Zype.
Quentin Boyes of Honeycomb Software.

For those that missed then, Qik’s Mireira Fontbernat vidoed the sessions: Videos from “Should Brands be Broadcasters?”. I’m not sure the event being broadcast via Qik falls into the “ironic” bucket or not. Regardless, very useful, and a sign of the times: One person with a mobile phone can broadcast an event across the globe, receiving questions in real-time from the viewers. It feels a little like the future.

Traditional broadcasters are moving into community building.
The big brands are using their own broadcast media to create interaction.
Individuals themselves are becoming broadcasters (via blogs, vlogs, Facebook, Twitter, …).

Charlie spoke about some of his work in creating more interactive, community-based experiences for broadcasters. Enough to be worth a whole separate post on the nature of community. Andrew talked about Honda’s recent marketing (see the Honda channel on YouTube to see some of their content) and the use of Homechoice (owned by Tiscali) as an interactive TV platform. The fact that a company most known for being an Internet Service Provider bought an IPTV service provider tells you something about the changes afoot.

Of course, the idea of broadcasters and brands having a conversation is really an illusion. The problem with conversations, as Twitter users know, is that they don’t scale well. The reason brands used broadcast media in the first place wass the ability for a few people to reach several million.

There are costs to that efficiency. Traditional broadcasting is one-way. That makes broadcasting efficient for the sender, but not for the receiver. When I watch a broadcast, it isn’t tuned to my needs or where I am at right now. My only control is to turn it off, just as I turn it on. Broadcast is also a time sink. If 100 of my friends start broadcasting even 1% of their life, keeping up with it all would consume 100% of mine. I wouldn’t even have enough time left to do my own broadcasting! Shocking. Some would say that might be a good thing. Just one minute of broadcast video could consume hundreds of hours worth of other people’s time.

When media was expensive to create, there were man barriers – good and bad. Volume was low, quality was (usually) high. With low cost broadcasting, thanks to the Internet and much more affordable video kit, those barriers have moved. Loose a day watching YouTube and you’ll feel how.

New media is blurring the lines between broadcast and personalized two-way communication. I can watch a Qik video broadcast and send comments back to the person filming. With services like Blogstar the producer not only has chat, but they can also turn the camera on the audience members – as I discovered during Phil Cambell’s The Gravity show. It certainly ramped up my participation!

What conversations have, that broadcasting looses, is that ability to listen. Listening creates interaction and context. In a conversation, I can listen to the other person and understand where they are coming from. And perhaps what they want too. I can tailor what I say to take account of what they already know, and better explain what they don’t. That conversation is unique.

A conversation is a kind of negotiation, or a knowledge journey. Traditional marketing fails at this, spectacularly. That is why it wastes so much time (for the receiver and the sender). Being efficient is more about the listening than the speaking, and listening takes an investment of time.

In the workshop I ran this week, looking at creating service level agreements and managing to them, the big take away was the importance of listening. Companies and people are all too keen to ‘get their message out there’. More often that not, a little listening saves a lot of talking. We need some technologies to balance all of this new broadcast media – filtering or switching off is only part of the answer.

When we listen more, we need to do less.

E-mail 2.0

Benjamin — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 10:06:31 +0000

How are we doing with email? How did we do without it?

Or would we be better off without it.

A number of things have put e-mail at the top of the discussion list in recent weeks, from blogs to national TV. The BBC’s Money programme covered the topic last friday (March the 7th – if you can use iPlayer link here: The Money Programme), with the accompanying news article “E-mail is ruining my life.”

Information Overload via E-Mail

Information overload is a growing problem, and e-mail is right in the middle of it. People are overloaded by their personal email, from SPAM to Facebook notifications and seemingly endless forwarded emails. Even musicians suffer from information overload these days.

It is something when it makes it on to national TV – it doesn’t seem long ago that I had to explain what email was. Now I’m helping people deal with e-mail over use. It is clearly a problem of epidemic proportions. Lots of people have been researching the issue, like Nada Kakabadse at Northampton Business School (on the lift site here). She was recently quoted in a New Scientist article on technology addiction:

“Companies offer technologies like PDAs and Blackberies and just expect people to learn how to use them. They don’t consider the possible negative sides. New technology gives a feeling of having more control, but it may be only a feeling.

We don’t want to be in a situation in a few years similar to that with fast food or tobacco today. We need to pay attention to how people react to potentially habit-forming technologies and respond with appropriate education and policies.”

There is the backlash, lead by people like Tim Ferris, of the 4 hour work week fame, and others, who advocate minimising e-mail use. From e-mail free days to keeping your email client shut, checking email just once or twice a day, people are trying to tame the beast.

The technology elite are moving away from e-mail to new tools like twitter and pownce to get away from the torrent that floods the inbox. Some even proclaim that email is dead (or maybe not).

The Problem with E-Mail

The reality is that there are a number of problems with how e-mail is used today. Many people use it like an instant messaging tool – sending and expecting immediate responses. This has become more common because of tools like Blackberries, which provide this experience, most of the time at least.

The nature of our psychology, combined with a Blackberry, starts to distort our world view. I had mobile e-mail for a number of years, but I don’t currently. That is very much on purpose. My out, in, then out again perspective has made me realise the pros and cons of these tools:

It is hard to have a meaningful conversation or meeting if someone is fiddling and distracted. We aren’t wired to have two conversations at once.
Just because email is instant for you, doesn’t make it instant for others. Instant e-mail makes us unwittingly selfish. Don’t cancel a meeting when people may already travelling there and have no access to email. If you do, at least call. Don’t expect an answer at 2am.
Email should never be used to avoid an awkward conversation or to hold an argument. There just isn’t enough salient indicators in email to convey emotion. We have no better communication medium today than having a face to face conversation.

One of the biggest challenge with e-mail is that it has no obvious priority level. Yes, emails can be marked high or low priority, but that is rarely used well. The other issue is more around time sensitivity. One email might be something for review or information that can be tackled any time in the next few weeks. The next email might be for a call starting in 2 minutes, or to do with an urgent customer problem. Thus we are drawn in, and our time disappears to the inbox.

E-Mail Isn’t Working

To be frank, E-mail isn’t work, it is communication. It is a means, not an end. Imagine if you spent the whole day chatting on the phone. Assuming you aren’t a call centre operative, you’d probably be viewed as well below the bar from a productivity perspective. We must reconstruct our work lives so that they are not so dependant on e-mail. We can’t do this on our own, it must be done in conjunction with the community that we interactive with. Don’t worry, you’ll be joining a growing bandwagon of reformers.

Declaring e-mail bancruptcy is not the answer, but refinancing is. I’ve already written about 7 common e-mail mistakes (there are more), but let’s come at it positively. Try this:

Turn off automatic email checking in your email client (tell me which client you are using, and I’ll tell you how to do it).
- This stops email interrupting you (even those little pop up messages play havoc with your attention and reduce productivity).
- You will become concious of how often you check for email
Try using Instant Messaging or the phone instead of email.
- Get a corporate system or try MSN or Skype.
- But avoid getting drawn into long conversations – more on Instant Messaging.

Send Less e-mail, and you’ll get less. Now, back to some real work…

Larry Lessig – Copyright and Great Presenting

Benjamin — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 22:07:59 +0000

I’m a regular follower of TED, watching as many of the TED talks as my Mac can take. The talks range from inspirational to informative, and sometimes they are both. Larry Lessig’s recently posted TED talk is fascinating, both for its content and for the way that he uses slides in his presentation. It was a post at Presentation Zen that prompted me to post on some of the techniques Larry uses. Larry is a professor of law at Stanford Law School, an author and blogs on the Lessig Blog.

Larry’s overview of the shifting world of content and copyrights and wrongs is truly thought provoking. The tectonic shift happening around creative commons is something anyone in the information industry should familiarise themselves with. The way that Larry communicates his message is noteworthy. Here are a few things he does that you can easy to apply to your own presentations:

Using visuals to emphasise your emphasis!
Illustrating using parallel stories.
Anchoring key concepts in order to back reference them.
Silence is more powerful that words.

Watch the talk, then read the explanations.

Use visuals to signal your emphasis

This is huge part of what your slides should be about, visually highlighting your verbal message. A slide with one word calls that word out when you speak it. It makes it stick and it makes it stand out. It works for short phrases too. Notice the use of black on white, then reversed white on black in the slides.

Illustrate using parallel stories.

We aren’t always great at getting things when they come at us head on, but we do get a story. Notice how Larry uses the story of flight and trespass, weaving it across into his message. If you want to get a complex issue across, it is easier to explain it in terms of something that is already familiar or that is less complex. Is there a parallel story to the one you want to tell? Tell that first, then link your concepts back to it. People will understand more and remember more.

Anchor key concepts then back reference them

Notice how Larry anchors his points with a word or a visual, then uses that later to reference back to his point. This is a great communication technique. When you make a point, anchor it with a visual or a distinctive phrase. You can then use this visual or phrase to remind people of that concept later in your presentation. It is a bit like creating a short cut or a bookmark that you can click later. Visual anchors make a rapid connection, in fractions of a second. As soon as you see the image of those planes in the last part of the presentation, you reconnect with his first story. Powerful isn’t it?

Silence is more powerful than words

One of the most impactful points I have seen made from a slide was made by not reading or mentioning the last point on the slide. In Larry’s presentation, there is the moment where he puts up a slide and mentions the TED ‘no commercials’ rule. Job done. Not reading a bullet point, or putting up a slide then not commenting on it, actually communicates something. In a smaller audience, it can cause people to ask about it, which is a great dynamic. Silence can be a communication tool.

Larry’s presentation is great, although he doesn’t engage with slides in the way that Al Gore does (see A presentation from Al Gore), which leaves you wondering when to look where. Also his eyes didn’t always connect with audience, but he makes very good use of pauses and word emphasis and is a pleasure to listen to all the same. Compelling content and presentation.

In your next presentation try anchoring your key points with simple visuals and tell a clear story.

See it, hear it – not the death of powerpoint

Benjamin — Sat, 21 Apr 2007 11:14:37 +0000

Very good article over on Presentation Zen: Is it finally time to ditch PowerPoint?

The actionable take aways and triggered thoughts for me:

The research referenced is a good confirmation that it makes sense to draw a diagram (or create something visual) when talking with people. It helps to create focus. It also assists people who work visually rather than verbally, and speeds knowledge transfer.
PowerPoint slides full of words are counter productive. I so often see PowerPoint used instead of a real document, when people are too lazy or scared to produce one. Text heavy slides take people’s attention away from what is being said…
Never loose your audience to the slide, by putting up a screenful of text! I see this happen over and over. Huge slide of text. Audience lost READING, no longer LISTENING.
Don’t read a word heavy slide to you audience. It can come across as insulting. Remember…
The slides are there to support the speaker. The speaker is not there to support the slides!

I love the picture of a slide at a conference half way down the page. It is used as an example of poor PowerPoint use – I think might have I sat in on that presentation! Much of what is written there applies to communicating even when you are not the kind of person who uses PowerPoint.

e-mailing your way to oblivion

Benjamin — Sun, 14 Jan 2007 02:46:25 +0000

Is it just me, or are e-mail and productivity at work just two things that don’t belong in the same sentence together? I find it amazing that companies invest so much money in deploying e-mail systems and yet spend nothing on training people to communicate effectively with them. Perhaps you work in a company that is uniquely different? If so, I would love to hear about it!

E-mail lacks so many of the visual and auditory cues that we need to communicate effectively, yet people write less clearly and deliberately than they would in a letter.

The opportunity for mis-communication and emotional trauma is almost endless. Recently I have been comparing the organizational effectiveness of e-mail, phone calls, conference calls and face to face communication. I am sure you won’t be surprised to hear that e-mail comes out bottom in terms of results achieved against time invested.

My conclusions?

If you can pick up the phone and get hold of the person, pick up the phone. In the long run it is actually quicker and cheaper.
A conference call will achieve more than an email storm almost any day.
If something has emotional element (e.g. might cause a strong emotional reaction), then the communication does not belong on email.

Redcatco » communication

Social Media Week London

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