The Orange Chair

Long time twitter users (sufferers?) are used to seeing the whale image being lifted by birds: it means twitter is down. Again. Well, if twitter is a whale, this time the two birds coming along to lift it up are Jeff Bezos and Boston’s Spark Capital, to name a few. According to businessweek.com, twitter will see an influx of cash, and as a result:

‘The new investments, from Bezos and Boston’s Spark Capital, will give the company “some runway and breathing room” as it invests in a big technology upgrade, says Biz Stone, a Twitter co-founder. He would not disclose the dollar or equity amounts of the investments. The goal, he says, is to rebuild the architecture “piece by piece.” The process is already underway and “will take months,” Stone adds. Existing Twitter backers Union Square Ventures in New York and Tokyo-based Digital Garage also participated in the most recent round.

Bijan Sabet, a partner at Spark who landed a Twitter board seat through the investment, says the “highest priority is providing rock-solid service.” He envisions Twitter becoming “a global communication utility system,” though he didn’t elaborate on what that will look like. Bezos didn’t respond to a phone call seeking comment.’

I am not sure if twitter.com will become a global communication utility system, but something like it should.

For more details, see the article here: Twitter Gets Help from Bezos.

Over at Fluevog Shoes they are using crowd sourcing to find and select new designs for their innovative style of footwear. They called it Fluevog’s Open Source Footwear

and what it means is that some of their new shoe designs are selected..

“…through a combination of peer voting, feasibility and if we just plain like the designs. Then, we cover all the costs & development process (it takes about a year to produce a shoe) and get your shoe onto the market, without having to put our prices up or go broke. Always a bonus. It’s worked beautifully and you’ve proven that Fluevogers have more to say than just, “Way rad, dude”. You do it; we love it. Bring it on.”

Other companies allow for the design of product to some degree. For example, Nike used the web to allow customers to customize an individual’s shoes. But Fluevog is a much more involved approach. Very Web 2.0!

So if you have always wanted to design shoes — or just see how others go about innovating — check out the site.

I’ve just finished listening to a presentation on pre-boarding, onboarding, and engaging employees from day zero by Ron Hascome (VP, HCM Technology Strategy Practice, HRchitect). The key message I took away was that companies are now more concerned about the effect of onboarding on employee retention than they used to be. Another key insight was that socialization and branding are differentiators for best-in-class onboarding.

I joined IBM as a regular employee in October 2007. Listening to the presentation, I recognized the elements of the onboarding process I experienced as those that distinguish best-in-class onboarding processes. What’s more, my early use of Web 2.0 has helped me not only effectively become socialized within the organization, but also fall in love with it - an example of successful branding.

What is Web 2.0 and why does it matter to onboarding?

By interacting with other employees through blogs, wikis, and other forms of social media, new hires can connect with people who are passionate about their work, learn from people in formal and informal mentoring relationships, and build their reputations by sharing what they’re learning along the way.

Talking to people who are passionate about their work helps new hires understand their own roles better, form their own career goals, and gain a better appreciation for the company. These role models can also serve as mentors who help new hires not only develop the necessary skills but also weather the challenges and uncertainties of the first few years.

The ease of contributing using Web 2.0 tools such as blogs and wikis allows employees throughout the organization to share more of what they know. For example, people can post answers to frequently asked questions or knowledge-sharing stories from their work. New hires can learn from this content even if they lack the confidence to initiate conversations with busy subject-matter experts or the knowledge of which employees possess such expertise.

Building a social network and a reputation is also important to new hires. By providing new hires with ways to demonstrate what they know, a company can help new hires reach out and develop their network. New hires may lack the confidence to contribute documents to formal asset repositories, but the open nature of blogs and wikis encourages people to contribute even when they are learning a topic. Encouraging new hires to document and share what they’re learning not only addresses the challenge of knowledge transfer and retention, but also helps new hires build their reputations.

Interested in learning more about Web 2.0 and how your company can incorporate it in your onboarding strategy? Please feel free to contact me at sachac@ca.ibm.com , and I’ll connect you with my team (IBM Global Business Services - Application Services Emerging Technologies Team). We provide Web 2.0 consulting services ranging from awareness seminars, strategy workshops, implementation, and coaching on effective use.

Check out the related blog entry for comments and questions during the webcast. Want to catch the replay? Register on the event site for one of the following slots:

Thu, Jun 19 2008 / 4:00 PM - 5:00 PM ET
Thu, Jun 19 2008 / 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM ET
Fri, Jun 20 2008 / 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM ET
Fri, Jun 20 2008 / 12:00 AM - 1:00 AM ET

Amazon has com up with an interesting approach to using twitter: they broadcast daily deals on music.

I think this is well done. They don’t abuse twitter or their followers because they are limiting it to one broadcast a day. And they are letting people in on good deals, making it more likely that people will want to follow them.

If you are interested in what they are doing, or want to find out more about the deals, see Twitter / amazonmp3

There is a story at the nytimes.com on how LinkedIn is getting an infusion of capital.

I think the reason is simple (and I’ve highlighted it in this quote:

“Now, in the midst of Silicon Valley’s recession-proof enthusiasm for community-oriented Web sites, the most boring of the social networks is finally grabbing the spotlight”

if community-oriented web sites are recession-proof to Silicon Valley, to me that is all the more reason that businesses should feel confident in proceeding quickly with their own plans for such sites.

As for LinkedIn and its plans for growth, see here.

At nytimes.com is a good article on the venerable music company, EMI. Like many music companies, EMI is struggling with the changes brought on to their industry over recent years. Some of those changes were brought on with the Web.

What is interesting is that they are also using the Web — in this case Web 2.0 — to try and deal with this. For example:

‘…one way to reduce costs would be to use social networking sites to “source new acts and as a means to test public reaction to individual acts.”…. And some of the biggest new hires have come from outside the music industry. An executive from Google was hired to run the digital business, and the creator of Second Life, the Web-based virtual world, was recently hired to work on digital initiatives.’

The entire article is here: EMI’s New Boss Sees Cracks in Music World

The nytimes.com has an excellent article on how Barack Obama uses the Internet and specifically social computing to be a highly effective candidate for the position of President of the United States. This article has many good examples of how he is going about things differently (i.e. in a Web 2.0 way) than his Web 1.0-based opponents. To me, this is a key quote:

‘ Yochai Benkler, a Harvard law professor whose book “The Wealth of Networks” is a manifesto for online collaboration, points out a crucial difference between Mr. Obama’s approach to attracting supporters and that of his chief rivals. “On the McCain and Clinton Web sites, there is a transactional screen,” Mr. Benkler said. “It is just about the money. Donate, then we can build the relationship. In Obama’s it’s inverted: build the relationship and then donate.” ‘

Enterprises could learn alot from his team’s approach, regardless of which candidate they support. See the article here:The Nation - The Wiki-Way to the Nomination - NYTimes.com

Obama everywhere, indeed.

According to this article in the globeandmail.com, MySpace plans redesign for next week

This is big news in that it is coming on the heels of announcements of facebook to change the design of it’s site too. And while you may think that MySpace is for kids…

” with about 110 million users worldwide, claims to be the most trafficked website in the United States, adding that about 300,000 people sign up each day.”

That’s big traffic, and big business. See the article and expect more developments on this story.

I’m happy to share that one of my favorite Enterprise 2.0 tools within IBM is now available on the Internet. IBM Pass It Along is now available on Alphaworks, a public IBM site for people interested in trying out emerging technologies–all you need is a free ibm.com account. IBM Pass It Along is about sharing what you know and learning from other people. If you have a how-to you’d like to share, create a topic for it. If you’re curious about something, request it. If you’re just curious about the crazy tools we use within the enterprise, check it out! =)

Here’s what I love about Pass It Along, and I think you’ll love it too:

• You can find out who’s learning a topic and see what else they’re interested in. Sharing what I know becomes a lot more fun when I can see who’s learning, because it gives me feedback that what I’m sharing is useful. Lists of people are much better than anonymous hit counts because I can view their profiles to see what else they’re interested in.
• You can learn from other people’s contributions. People can add links, related presentations, discussion topics, and other updates. For example, the “How to Make the Most of Your Commute” topic I started within IBM drew lots of interesting suggestions.
• You can create a place for discussions. I give a lot of presentations, and Pass It Along topics are a terrific place to hold follow-up discussions and reach out to more people. I post my presentation material using the Presentation Wizard and include the URL of the Pass It Along topic on my slides. It’s a great way for learners to connect with each other, too.

I also really like how a newbie like me can create value for other people by sharing what I’m learning. =) Whee! I’m copying some of my public content over, and you can find my topics on Pass It Along.

IBM Pass It Along on Alphaworks is a public site open to everyone. Access controls will follow soon, so you can limit topic access to just your organization if needed. IBM Pass It Along is even better inside your organization, where you can link it up with your employee directory or do all sorts of other cool stuff.

Check it out - it might be a great fit for your organization!

IBM Pass It Along

Here are some of my tips on running an unconference based on my experience running an unconference as part of a 2-day IBM conference.

• Advertise - make sure your participants understand how an unconference is different.  That this is about what the participants want.  The unconference is what the participants make it.  Some participants still didn’t quite understand it until after they attended.  Don’t use only blogs and wikis to advertize, you want to get message out to others too.

• Make sure the sign up board is big, and is in people’s faces, preferrably before the unconference begins (we had 1.5 days for them to sign up before the unconfernece part of blue horizon began).

• Don’t expect too many people to sign up ahead of time.  Actually some unconferences don’t allow any pre-sign-ups anymore.

• Realize that some participants may still try to “present” leaving no time for interaction or questions.  Tell them that no preparation is required.  If they really really want to prepare, then set a maximum on the amount of time they can “present” and the maximum number of slides.

• You might want to specify a theme

• Hardest part is getting participants to realize that there is a topic that they can lead.  All it requires is enough knowledge on a subject to ask the right questions, initiate the discussion, and facilitate it.

• Facilities - we only had one room (a big room) so we put projectors and screens in 3 of the 4 corners.  We put flip charts in all 4 corners.   What worked best was having the chairs in a semi-circle.

• Schedule - we had 4 time slots of 35 minutes, in 4 break-out areas (16 slots total).  Next time I would like to make it longer, or have more break-out areas.

• Schedule board - we used a big white board.  I drew in the schedule and an area for people to request topics.

• Let unconference session leaders have 1-minute to tell all the participants what their topic is about.  Almost like a verbal-abstract.  Keep them to 1 minute (with a buzzer or something) or this could take forever.

• Encourage session leaders and participants to blog about it afterwards all using the same tag

• Advertise some more

Also, check out some great ideas by David Crow on tapping participants brillance.  I especially like the idea of open white boards with questions posed to all the participants.