Social chaos or social mash up?

What is going on?  I have a Facebook profile, a Linkedin profile, a Twitter account, a Slideshare account. I have a Blog (as you might notice since you are here) Yammer, MSN. I should have been active at YouTube, Flickr and a dozen more places to be “up to date”;

I’m apparently not “trendy enough” but then again I also have a job to do. But how to manage it all? And why should I be all over? And what am I to do all these places?

People seems to have the opinion that Facebook is all about maintaining your more private network, whereas Linkedin is for your professional life . On Slideshare we share our professional presentations. Twitter isn’t micro blogging at all it is to share know-how and get information from a trusted network, (and I must add some leisure time where you get unexpected input as I used to do in the old fashioned encyclopedia – reading about stuff, or people I never knew existed – and even better; now I can get to know them on a “#Tweetup” !  The various social media applications seem to become parts of different aspects of my life.

But it gets increasingly more complicated to maintain it all. I want to produce once, and automatically spread the info on various platforms, and vice versa. I want a dashboard that can handle my digital networking life. I want to sort what’s relevant and not, for various parts of life.

It seems like corporations are heading in the same direction. Today I got the news I’ve been waiting for and it’s just the start. Linkedin and Twitter establish a partnership. This is clever! How it will look like I’m not sure of, but I’m sure that it’s clever for both parties. Who is next and what “pairs” are we going to see? I guess we will see a lot of changes and a need for all to stay flexible. I also believe that how we all act now is the shaping force of what will become.

The fall and rise of the media industry

The fall and rise of the media industry is happening in front of our eyes, just watch. The speed this is happening in is surprising for all of us. And we have only seen the start of it, so buckle up people, this will hurt. It’s 40 years since it all began and we know the famous message is sent and lit up on a screen to test if the system works: “Hello World” I’m sure some people nowadays just hate those two small words.

The reports are coming from everywhere, decreasing in the daily newspaper circulation and subscriptions, decreasing revenues from advertisements, and in many opinion; decreasing quality. The drop in the last six months of 10,6% , we now have a circulation lower than before Wold War II according the blog Reflections of a Newsosaur, and the blog posting;  Newspapers, the mass-less mass medium  Another  great report “The big Thaw” is worth a deep study.

The media industry isn’t one thing, there are diverse challenges for the film, music and broadcast industry, the publishing industry and the news industry, but the writings on the wall are the same; “transform or vanish!”

Professionals are scared for their jobs, for the future and for their profession. I’m more concerned for the managers and owners. Why? Well we have never spent more time and craved news, knowledge, entertainment in the history of man, and it’s not likely that we will stop now. The profession provides quality to all of this, and we will need people who are able to tell us histories, to teach us stuff also after the fall of mass media as we know it. But the TV producer, the radioman, the journalist could very well end up better than before, more free to do what she wants and reaching out to an audience more interested not only to listen, watch and read, but also participating in the discourse. But she might not work for a paper or TV channel. She might work as a freelancer, at an internet company, at a worldwide dominating search engine company, she might work at a company providing a browser and so  forth.

The media owners and managers are the one that now have started to feel the impact, and where should they go, since nobody need them anymore, and as it seems they refuse to change? That path leads only to one destination R.I.P. on their way it seems like panic, quarrels, politics and a dream of old dead ideas is haunting to many of them.

How will the creation of art, news, entertainment, TV, radio, music and so forth find business models that support sustainable revenue streams? I don’t know, most likely nobody really do, but I have some ideas.

Look for what works today, at the internet and telecom industries. The multitude of revenue streams and the combination of concepts out there today will support also revenuestreams for content production. Just remember that we have seen the end of mass media as we know it. What we are seeing is the mass interaction, the mass creativity and the masses interacting between themselves. My advice for the time being would be to produce once, deliver at as many places and to as many devices you are able to. Make a very clear split between content production and products! Make sure you collect and culture as much knowledge about users, participants and their behavior as you can, that’s your real value. Make a mix of revenue streams, share knowledge in-house and brake any silo thinking in-house you possibly can. And be ready for further change, this is not over, it’s barely began. Take a look at the  at C3 for further understanding of a new media house set up, I’ve been blogging and discussing with the CEO Chuck Peters for quite some time now, and they have done some great work.

I think it’s high time we look at that screen again with the, maybe most important two words in our lifetime; ”Hello World”  and interact with the message and answer back “Hi, Wasup”

Media business revenues are dropping so might your Company’s!

The challenges are huge and concern all of us. Rapid changes are hard to handle. I put an image of a car with this blog posting. What does that have to do with the media industry? Henry Ford’s introduction of the automated assembly line changed the car industry.

In short, his actions forced the whole of the car industry to adapt. It took years for them, and at a point it seemed that a Ford was the synonym for a car. In just a few years the market had changed. “Everyone” could afford a car, and not only the wealthy.  Only twenty years later the Ford Company got  problems. Competitors start to offer cars in all kind of fancy colors. Henry Ford didn’t realize the change; he still lived by his “old winning strategy” and the famous quote:  ”The customer can have any color as long as it is black”. This looks a bit like how the media industry meets their challenges nowadays.

The audiences are moving away from traditional media arenas, toward social media arenas. We know the news papers are in trouble with dropping readers. Also in the online news business descent revenues are hard to achive. www.vg.no has to let 10% of their online staff leave. The 4^th largest commercial TV station in Norway www.tvn.no closed down their TV news this week. What happens when media revenues drop as they do so for the time being? Advertising companies also get into trouble, and so are businesses trying to market their products and services.

There’s been a lot of focus on social media the last year, and a lot of confusion. It does not seem like businesses, nor the media industry, is as eager to embrace the phenomena social media as the users of internet are. Strategy Analytics inc. reports that 628 million users today are active users of social media. That is 60% of all broadband users.( Businesswire.com) Within the next five years it’s expected that Social Media Applications, such as MySpace, Facebook, YouTube and Flickr, will attract over one billion broadband user.

The media industry seems like they would rather that social media didn’t exist. Companies and businesses seems like they think; it’s a “hype” and of no real relevance to their marketing and sales strategies. If one look at the point of the Gartners “Hype curve” is that it starts off as a “Hype”, and develops into mainstream. Social media have become mass market phenomena, whereas the media and advertisement business, yet haven’t understood it. Advertising companies seems like they don’t know quite what to do about it, but are trying to figure out what’s going on. In this perspective we do have “power to the people”. Except that it’s a downward spiral. From somewhere and somehow revenue streams have to be involved. Content and news won’t continue to exist without it. Advertisement requires a belief of a return of investments from a business perspective. If the media industry looses their audiences, advertisement will lose businesses interest, but what to do then?

The confusion is great. Businesses search for some to answer the question, what to do? Media doesn’t seem to have the answer, advertisement companies seems to go by the media industry and would probably have liked things to continue as before. But people have embraced the “hype” social media to an extent that cannot be overlooked.

Few business developers in the media and advertisement business seems to have looked closely at how do the revenue streams in the internet business function as is? What kind of activities are at the internet, and how are they providing added value to the customers and the market? The media and news industry will need to adapt to the environment they have their audience in. Advertising companies will have to change in order to provide their customers with product that meet audiences in totally different manners than we are used to.

Companies will need to market their products, in order to do so they will need to go where the audiences are, and meet the customers in manners of which the customers can engage in. It amazes me that Management in companies today seems to not understand the importance of social media and what business changes are required to be able to meet their customers in a rapid changing world.  Avande reports that 75% of management admits that social media is important 60% doesn’t have social media on the agenda, and only  18% have some kind of strategy. I expect to see some huge surprises the coming years, where established businesses will lose their market shares, and even disappear all together, whereas unknown companies will grow huge in a very short time. It’s time to watch out and be proactively present to avoid being left behind.

I’ve written several blog postings (below) about this what, and how I believe that business models and revenue streams will be created. My point of view is shared by many and the key point are like Strategy Analytics report in their latest  report, “The People’s Revolution: Implications of Web 2.0 and Social Media Applications,” notes that media companies must view social media both as a tremendous opportunity and a competitive threat. The report also concludes that the ability to develop successful targeted advertising techniques will be the key to long term financial viability for social media sites.

Should we be cloning the marketing directors?

To me it seems like we first took advertisement into the web ‘as is’, then we discovered that the web have som neat add-on’s, like measuring what’s going on.

Rapidly someone found out that retail is a business that works on the net. And then, classified, or was that the other way around? In any event, not much changed. Maybe Social media will ?

I’m not going into traditional Campaigns, commercials, ads, banners and so forth. What they all have in common is that they are “old style push advertisements” and function as such. I’m not sure what effect they have (less, similar or better than in the traditional advertisement world of radio, TV and print media) but I would expect that traditional measurements would tell. The “new” in the digital world is that you can measure “exact” by web statistics, click rates and so forth. And we got SEO, SEM and more…

I’m not going into online retail-, travel- /booking- or various sorts of classified of solutions either. There are many well proven concepts of how to bring products to market and make revenues. Amazon.com is one of the oldest “best practice”. The gain these businesses have had “going digital” is mainly in the speed up of decision making  and transaction solution enabling a sale there and then, with less hassle than having to get the customer from an advert to the shop. Further developments have been to interact with the customer by polls, evaluations, suggestions and recommendations. We have also seen new businesses comparing products and prices and offered customers a “product search” and businesses traffic.

The usage of interactivity in marketing isn’t new, but the options provided by new digital tools and/or channels/ media are interesting.

Some have taken the campaign strategies a step further by establishing communities like Libresse or Nike. The interactivity, discussions and so forth help building a stronger relationship between the brand and the customers. It’s a kind of concept that also is used for product development, support improvements and so forth. Some others have gone into the gaming business and used campaign where virtual /role-play games are combined with introducing a product e.g. a new film, book and so forth

Usage of YouTube is interesting because anyone can post a video promoting, in some manner, products or services. So far this is a pure Push commercial, nevertheless we have seen viral activity, where people start making their response by own versions, as an ironic (or sarcastic), comical or plain commenting  videos. Some companies have understood this and taken advantages of it and used it in their overall campaigns.

There are a lot of other examples that mostly have made concepts that are more or less the same as always (read print and push mechanisms) with some digital add on functionality. Some of the “new” thoughts have been: “Don’t try to attract the audience to you – go to where your customers are” And now companies are pouring into Facebook, Twitter and so forth, and what happens? Too much push mentality, to little new concepts or too little reflection on what to do in these social media.

A marketing strategy in the digital world will have to look into all of these options and make use of the, in order to reduce cost and/or increase sales. More important in the coming years will be to implement multichannel strategies that includes the real world, and make some work flows of; where, what, how, why and when the company and their customers are interacting and conducting the purchase process.

Another aspect is that it seems absent for the moment that I believe will become very central is not to have everyone in your company going into social media by “cloning” them into many” small marketing directors” doing the same as usual; spamming the audiences with commercial messages in every channel possible. I believe that a key to success is to listen and engage within the frame of the profession and tasks people have in their organization and use the gained knowledge to develop the company, its products and services. That means that product development dep. Listen to trends, engage in how a great product should be. Designers looks into design and discuss function and aesthetics, the support division listen to what people have of trouble and provide answers and so forth.

And I’d like to see more of Business intelligence, structured data, tagging and semantic web strategies put into effect and combined with solutions of providing the motivated customer with the wanted offers. This will enable a whole new way of not doing factual measuring by looking backwards, but rather forward. If you know what your audience/ customer wants you can give it to them, instead of looking at history and try to figure what you did wrong.

If you want you can look at a PPT presentation about this subject at slideshare.net

I’m not angry at google.com and the NAA, just very, very disappointed!

I should have charged 5 $ in cash,- but what the heck I’ll do it for free!
It’s just amazing, and I’m not sure if I’m reading what I do. Google.com wants to establish a micro payment system for content? Google.com wants to use their “Checkout” system and they are about to finishing their new platform.

It was Andreas Wiese in the Norwegian newspaper Dagbladet.no that told me he wrote an article (print only)about it and I went out and bought the “old style” print paper (Print and coffee has a certain fragrance that’s so delicious!)

Please Google.com; correct me if I’m wrong. Why should Google provide this micro payment service only for one kind of business (Online newspapers)? To me it’s obvious that Google want everyone on the planet to “check-in” at Google in the morning, before you go to work, and that you should start give away some of your hard earned money before coffee; to Google, and why? Because Google want you to? Could you imagine a better reason? “Oh – if Google want me to pay, then it must be OK.”

It took me less than two minutes research to find that Nieman Journalism Lab, by Zachary M Seward published the story the ninth of September 2009.(at their page you can download the actual memo sent from Google.com to The News Association of America. NAA had sent out a request for paid-content proposals.)   The Wall Street Journal, blogs, Reuter blogs and a lot of media around the world followed up and states their skepticism.

Looking closer into this I can’t see that any newspaper would want this, less accepts it. It’s NOT Visa (or the like) providing a micro payment system to content producers!  It’s NOT someone independent from the content! It’s Google.com. Google.com is a “content collector” of huge dimensions, with an established power structure, in reality without competitors, which should make lots of us very uncomfortable as is. Enabling Google with yet another angle of attack to the market would be highly dangerous. Media- Publishing houses, news organizations and a lot of other businesses should really think twice. How to be able to conduct business in an independent manner? If Google controls access (via their search results), a huge amount of knowledge about users and content and also (with this idea) be in charge of, and control every possible entrance point to access content itself, and by that get an economic advantage for free? Why should the media- news and publishing industry ever think of this? It’s selling out their value for a cup of a beggar coins, when google really should pay them for making such a pleseant living out of presenting news organizations (and all others) content!

This idea of Google threatens the free enterprise and in reality represents a wish to create a monopoly that very few gouvernments, competitors, enterprises and end users around the world should accept.

Looking into Goggle.com’s business idea itself, I really can’t see how Google dares to go there. This is challenging everything users of the Internet know about the Internet and wants it to be. It’s like arguing that the democracy shouldn’t have elections anymore. It could possibly ruin Google as a company, not only damaging the brand.

Furthermore; micro transactions as a revenue stream for Google and  for content producers is a very primitive business model. And I really don’t understand how Google.com, which sits on the options to develop lots of far more lucrative business models, can even think of this. I just don’t get it. For the news- media and Publishing business it’s equally a primitive business model in a digital environment. In my opinion it will onlybe an obstacle and reduce the speed of innovation and leave businesses (including Google.com) with far less revenues than they can with alternative models. We know this because telecom-, community-advertising and  e- commerce businesses (to name a few) have far more advanced and lucrative models installed already. And the developments of those will become far more prosperous in the near future.

So why? Why at all Google? The risks involved, the critics, the oppositions Google will meet, from competitors, governments, and the world wide public may very well put Google in a very unpleasant situation.  To Google and the media industry; neither of the two parties are in such bad state as the woman in the classic Mad TV skit, so I say as the therapist  – Stop it!

Seven” right things” to do in digital business today

As I’ve seen around the world, in blogs, whitepapers and  in discussions with clients everyone realize that we are in a transformational age. But the transformations aren’t isolated to the area of internet and computing business. The world is interconnected!

Seemingly everyone want to be prepared for the ongoing changes, but too many doesn’t know what to do.  Quite a few know what they need to do, but doesn’t know how, and some know what and how, but haven’t found the means or the business models ensuring that it will work. It’s essential to understand that your digital involvement isn’t detached from the rest of the world. There is no “virtual” OR “real life” it’s both virtual AND real life at once.

Your business might be in a situation where there isn’t a choice; it’s either change now or vanish? Your business might be in a situation where the challenge is if you should wait or not?  History shows that those who doesn’t act in times of recession have lost market shares when times are great again. The winners are those who act in times of ressession.

What windows of opportunities do you have in your surroundings? There’s always an option that can be taken advantages of. As readers of my blog would know there are some hints that could guide you to do “the right thing” and find your window of opportunity.

Seven “right things”to do in the transforming world:

1)      Clarify your purpose of the business!
Ensure that your business has a purpose beyond just providing profit for the stockholders. Ensure that the benefits for your customers, and also the society as such, are clearly understood. If your business has an ethical perspective on their activities it’s more likely that you will have a strong position in a transformed society.

2)      Be social!
We are all social beings. That means that your business needs to be social too. We would rather like to identify, connect and interact with a company that has an interest in their partners, customers and their wellbeing. If your partners, customers have a great dialogue and experiences with your company and services/products, they will tell their network and do very effective marketing for you. Old marketing solutions doesn’t work as well as it used to.

3)      Embrace freedom!
Don’t try to control others, including your staff. If you do the right thing, everyone else will. Give your staff, partners and customers freedom and options to involve in your business. They will all help steer your company in accordance with the purpose of your business anyway. (this doesn’t mean that you don’t put up clear expectations and goals)

4)      Be focused!
Make sure that what ever you involve your business with, that it correspond with your purpose. Do not spread out and partisipate with whatever comes along. This will save you e.g. marketing costs that doesn’t support and enhance the purpose of your business.

5)      Be adaptive!
The challenges in the world, in societies and in business haven’t changed much, but the solution and ways of solving a challenge changes rapidly in transformational times. Make sure that you can change in pace with your surroundings.

6)      Be realistic!
You can’t do everything, everywhere at all times. Start with what you can do today, and go from there, but go as fast as you can, remember things have a tendency to change fast in transformational times. Investments (you can afford) done today are the increased income tomorrow.

7)      Be bold, surprise everyone!
Do things that surprise yourself, your partners and your customers, do something above expectations. There is nothing as wonderful for us than seeing someone doing more that what was expected.

I’ve listed sevengreat examples of companies that have done most of the 7 bulletpoints above, and you can read, research and figure out if there are elements you can make your own, that you can adapt or simply get ideas from. (this is just a very brief list as examples)

Virgin and Richard Branson.
It seems like there is no limit to what this brand can hold. Richards drive and determination makes tings happen.
Choice hotels in Norway and Petter Stordalen
Look at his engagement in the global heating and how he implements this in the chains of hotels he owns.
Sun, Microsystems and CEO Jonathan Schwartz blog – look at how he’s able to connect with the market, by being honest about what he wants
Tesla motors
Look at how they managed to get a year long waiting list of people that wanted to actually buy a electric care, long before the car was produced. (And the quality of the web page compared with other car manufacturers)
Gazette Communications and CEO Chuck Peters
Look at how they are really prepared to transform their news and media companies.
Stormberg and Steinar J Olsen
Look at how they are able to incorporate a purpose that goes beyond only profit for themselves.
Englegård and Celine Thommesen
Look at what happens if your purpose and heart is alligned. You don’t need to be big to be sucessful, but you do need to want to do it right, and put a lot of hard work into it.

What’s the business in news nowadays?

There’s an ongoing discussion in- and  outside Norway. The invention of  Internet has challenged how to run a newspaper, media- and publishing  house.
Sales of papers are dropping, so  is the advertiser’s budgets. The  willingness to pay for news on the net  seems like zero. The profit in the business is decreasing. And everyone is wondering what to do?

UPDATE: PPT presentation of this posting at Slideshare.net
Rupert Murdock wants to let people pay for news online. I don’t think he will be successful. Others want to keep news online short, superficial and written”for web” whereas the analogue paper should develop into more “deep digging journalism”. Some believe that the internet isn’t suited for “real critical journalism” This is proven wrong as well.

So the question remains; where is the business in news nowadays? News (in any channel and/or media) has had its basis in ownership to the content. Internet challenges this because the sharing of content is so rapid, and so fluid that you can’t have a story for yourself anymore. The monopoly is gone.

The “old triangle”

The news content and the creation of it, enabled a news organisation to gather a crowd of readers/listeners/ viewers. This gave the business model of selling the paper, subscriptions, classified and not to forget – ads.  But remember the core value has always been the ownership of the content. The connections between content, readers and advertisement has never been strong, because it has never been necessary to develop strong connections between the elements in this triangle.

A“new triangle”?

What if the content isn’t the real value for a media house anymore? Well it isn’t! That’s why media and news organisations now have the decreasing income both in the analogue and the digital environment. Some suggestions have been “go hyper local” become “niche news” I think both are great ideas, but it’s not enough, due to the fact that the idea of what is the core “ownership” haven’t changed into something of real value.

The business needs to have a foundation in a real, functional business model. On the internet there is one business model that is established, and that remarkably enough already is at work also with in the area of journalism, and media, but without the news organisations taking advantage of it – not yet. By deciding that content is no longer the core value, but the sum of participants (and their activities) in the environment is! Social media gather people; their participation creates content and feed journalism in totally new manners, and the connections are already shown to be able to be close, and strong.

Businesses like My space, Facebook, Twitter and so forth has it’s value in the amount of active members. The value of the knowledge about users has barely started to be explored, and for the news and media business this is a unique opportunity to dig deeper into this.

What if the real value for the news and media industry is seen to be the knowledge about the interactive and action oriented behaviour of Participants (readers/users)? I believe that one can connect participants, content and advertisement in far better ways that clarify and justify: what’s in it for me for all involved parties. Or, in other words “what’s the purpose?” can be better answered for all involved parties. (see also the blog posting below)

An approach to a new digital strategy?

I’ve started writing on a white paper, where I look at methodologies for creating  improved  digital strategies.

I feel that business strategies focus to little on the digital conditions where the business will have to operate.

I also see clearly that marketing strategies, sales strategies and web strategies doesn’t fill the needs in a highly interactive and action oriented digital world.

Putting together a digital strategy will, by its nature be an iterative process, where the overall business idea may have to be changed in order to achieve an optimal digital environment, that in its turn benefit the business idea. Where the overall business strategy will be the main steering document for the business, the digital strategy document will determine what to be the focus in the digital environment to achieve the overall business strategy. Next step in a development will be that the business-, and the digital strategy will merge and become one. Since the digital environment is so complex and interconnected I suggest a very holistic approach. Since the business world have moved direction and become so dependent on the digital environment, I suggest you take the digital strategy very seriously and what you learn by making your digital strategy should reflect back on your overall business strategy.

I’ve started to investigate if  terms like  “Purpose”, “Participation” and “Conditions” as some alternative angles to “vision”, “mission”, “values” and “goals” will improve the final result on a  development of a digital strategy. One reason for this is that operating in a digital environment is very action oriented and interactive,  and I believe that some of the “standard phrases” in a business strategy often becomes a bit to “vishy washy” and not as action oriented and measurable as you would like it to be.
I’m thinking along the lines: What if your business doesn’t have a purpose people understand? Why should someone bother buying it? How can people help you? Have you given people an opening to involve? And if you haven’t looked into the conditions the purpose will live, and how someone can participate, why should it succeed?
Take a look at your business, what is really the purpose? who is (or could) participate and in what way? Does it have optional conditions?

Purpose
What’s the purpose for what you are doing? What is your motivation, the owners and the staff working in your organization? What’s the purpose of what you have to offer? What is the purpose for the digital engagements you have or wants?  What’s the purpose for those who buy your message/service/products? My thesis is by investigating this thoroughly you might find that, your purpose isn’t all that well anchored in the actual business you are running or the market you want to reach? Then it’s no wonder if your business isn’t running smoothly!

Participants
The participants in making your purpose come to live is also a perspective that has to do with having a  dualistic perspective toward what you are doing, and the dependencies you have in others inside, and outside of your business. Because both you and your staff, partners, co-dependents and customers participate in making your purpose happen. In other words everyone that has a part in making your purpose real are participants. One are frequently speaking of stakeholders in the business world. We shouldn’t stop doing so, but still – if anyone would want me to buy a product, idea, service or whatever I’d like it to be of benefit for me and the surrounding world, with no, or as little, risk as possible.  Defining the customer/ client / partner and you as participants enable us to better find out how to fulfill the purpose and get our business better connected with the core of how we all participate in the digital world. Since the digital environment is highly action oriented, you will see that participants act. And in your work with the digital strategy you will discover that enabling action and interactions will be one of the essential elements in a successful digital strategy.

Discover Conditions
Under which conditions is your purpose and participants existing? By investigating the actual conditions the methods to implement the purpose and the way participants will engage is discovered. The structures of power in your digital business world, defining condition in the value chain, business models  and so forth. Evaluating limitations and options in infrastructure, hardware, software and in  the Internet business environment will be important analytic tasks to conduct during your work with the digital strategy. Correlatives between existing relevant purposes (others), participants and conditions can be taken advantages of to fulfill the purpose, with the right participants under the right conditions. The idea is to broaden up the more narrow common approach, that often is using tools like a SWOT analysis and so forth in business strategies. I believe that investigating how to get the best conditions to function together, you will end up changing your overall business strategy. Maybe you discover that what you believed was the core of your business, what drives your business, just maybe isn’t the same into the next decade ?

Changes in Social media or changes because of it ?

It’s reported that the Twitter people will become disappointed and that the Hype is over. (Gartner) My Space is losing popularity. Facebook is looking for ways of not getting stuck, by developing Facebook Light?

I believe that the future of social media hasn’t really began, and that the coming years will look very different from what it is now.

Maybe, just maybe “social media” will disappear as a separate “label”? In my view we are only in the beginning of a huge shift in the history of internet.

The businesses of collaboration,(synchronic and a- synchronic) e- learning, internet, intranet,extranet and social media applications might just merge into the business core IT (ICT) systems seamlessly and only those who are able to create added value for different organizations, businesses and societies.

Another huge area of change is the complete area of media.  Internet already have changed most of the media industry in film, TV, radio and print media. Journalism, entertainment and the industries surrounding all of this such as my profession: communication advisor. And the changes aren’t over, they just began! An couple of interesting blog posts on the failure of newspapers can be read here: conversationagent, by Valeria Maltoni, and  at splicetoday by  Bill Wyman

I believe that the keyword will be the same: seamless integrations. The channel and carrier of  TV/ Radio media has no real function in the future, and the IP will easily replace it, and this is about to happen with the film industry that’s going digital. Internet as a carrier (tecnological and communication wise) already have become the core of all other activities.

I believe that any enterprise without a digital centered business- it, and communication strategy will fail. Collaborative and social aspects of conducting business will be incorporated in the business itself. Interaction between the corporation and the market / audience will grow rapidly.

But I’m sorry to say; I don’t believe in the ever so popular naive statement: “Social media has given power to the people” I do say that the winners of today and tomorrows business world are those who are able to adapt and take advantages in these times of change. I do hope that ethic and environmental trade will be seen as an competitive advantage and will be incoporated as well, that will make a better world for all of us!

What have you done for me lately?

When did any web page answer this for you – lately? Long time ago? Never happened? – you don’t say…

It’s amazing. Just take a look around on the world wide web. So few web sites seem to be able to really offer their visitors what the visitors wants. It is as everyone wants to TELL you something – SELL you something. The “news” about the web 2.0 or social web doesn’t seem to have had an impact at all. What have you done for me lately?

Web 2.0, Social web or what label it has seems  to be the rebellion of the users, trying hard to find other ways to help each other out. Forums, chats, communities, dating services, Sharing sites,  Facebook, Twitter and so on,  all have huge amounts of users finding ways to connect, interact and communicate. This is great.

On the other hand; Public services, companies, PR,  advertising companies, IT providers, retailers, health care institutions and so on – what have they done for me lately? – Mostly nothing in the digital universe. Still shouting  in a confusing language, very unclear about what they are, and what they want to be there for. This is NOT great.

What have you done for me lately? As a user I want to know what your organization, your company can do for me.  I don’t want to know your business idea or who manages the company ( I might want to know that – when I do NOT get what you have to offer me) And you know what? I am, as a user, very helpful, I would love to help you get better – if you only gave me an opportunity. So why is it still hard to find “contact” on more than half of the web pages I visit during a day? Or:  How did you like our services? What could we improve? What is your idea of what else we could have offered you?

As a professional organization, corporation I really expect you to know what you are doing, and how to do it. I expect you to have a goal for your presence in the digital universe, and you know what? I’d rather join you, buy from you, return to you – if you do. What did I do for you lately?

How to transform your web site into a part of your core business?

It’s a great idea to stop asking what it costs, and start asking what the return of the investment is going to be.

It would be clever to acknowledge that the digital strategy have become the hub of all activities in all channels for your organization.

You might need to improve your definition of what your core business is, which part of the value chain you are in, and what part the web is going to play. If your web page or presence in the digital universe doesn’t have a purpose you will never get your investments back. Even if your web page is cheap, it’s a waste of money!
On the other hand if you presence has a purpose, you should get your investments back and earn on it / save by it.

The very idea is to know the value of every user of your web page  that act upon your core business. If you are selling a product, this means that as many of your visitors actually buy your product. If you are a public service it could mean that you saved money by delivering your services to a lower cost.

Visitors that you convert into users times value per convertion equals a unit value for you. If you are selling shoes online, you can easily figure this out. But your company might produce a annual report each year? Well the formula goes for this as well. You maybe want to have a lot of different stakeholders to read and understand your annual report. That’s your X. Today you maybe have to produce the annual report and have it printed, and distributed via postal services? An online annual ( or real time constant corporative report?) might cost less in production each year, certainly, there are no print costs, nor postal service costs. The savings of production and delivery per eks. is your VPC. The final value is the saving of sum of users reading and/ or downloading you digital annual report. You can use the same formula for your support system, by doing a shift from a phone / call solution towards a “ask Anna” automated and/or live chat system and so forth.

Furthermore it wouldn’t hurt to learn this formula by heart: X*CR*VPC=Value

First Summer, than election in Norway

It’s summer in Norway, and very nice weather these days. The media was occupied with the Iran election, and all of a sudden Michael Jackson died…

Next upcoming event will be the election in Norway. Not an important event in the world, and maybe not important in Norway either? But will it be an important event for social media in Norway?

One subject that’s bound to be discussed is the political parties in Norway’s usage of social media. What they did, what impact it had. One question that will be on everybody’s tongue will be; Did some, or any, learn and have a success like Obama?

It’s a boring question, because the answer is given; NO. The reason is as simple, The politics in Norway isn’t in a similar state as it was in the US. We do not have anything like a “Bush administration”.  We do not have any real need for change as the Americans felt in the population of Norway. Thirdly no political party in Norway are using anything close to the percentage of energy ( money, time, staff) in the area of social media.

But still it will be interesting to watch, for us Norwegians. We have a very high penetration of broadband, high percentages have a profile in e.g. facebook, and a lot of political parties do have (it seems) a strategy ready for using social media as one of their channels.

Does it seem like they have grasped some essence of what social media is about? I’m not sure. It looks like not. Mostly the various parties uses social media as a old fasioned Push channel. If that is their involvement, it’s likely that their effort will be worth little, or nothing at all.

As for the Obama campaign, social media didn’t play such an important role as we sometimes like to claim. Mostly it was an e mail campaign  – ergo more of a e- dialogue /e- marketing campaign, not so much a social media campaign. In addition the Obama campaign, took analytics very serious. What gives results? This is know- how from old fashioned Direct mailing. Maybe Political parties in Norway should spend more money on this ?

If political parties wants to get results in activities i social media, I believe it’s important to have the core goals in mind. And that is NOT winning the election. It’s providing the population with better public services! This is interesting, because I do believe that this is something social media and politics really have something in common! It seems like one still focus on sending the message, not listening to the messages coming back, and at all not giving a feedback of the dialog people are willing to invest.

Social media, as I see it seems to be very strong in some aspects;  
1 Spreading information wide and fast
2 Creating an arena for a producing and spreading knowledge
3 Creating an arena  where processes of mass creativity and innovation can take place in a very rapid cycle.

All of above seems to me t be a perfect environment for political activity. But I do wonder if the Norwegian political parties are able to handle this, during summer and fall in Norway.

Iran and Twitter or social media?

Just now, there are very important events in Iran. This isn’t a social media event going on , it’s real life. People are dying in Iran.That is also a fact in  Africa, Europe, Asia, the US and Australia without twitter peoples being occupied with it, people are dying daily due to various forms of injustice. What  this has to do with social media? could be a very arbitrary connection, only interesting for the very few in the world?

I cannot help myself but  thinking that  what the work of social entrepreneurs like Charles Leadbeater discuss  is very important in the discussion of what social media is about. In the subject of Iran these days, it’s just damn important to be awake.  That doesn’t make any other unjust topic in the world less. It’s just another example of how we people are, we are social, we interact. The ways in which we do so is irregular, it simply doesn’t make sense. Logically we should have been as concerned with any other conflict, deaths and problematic aspects in the world, but we don’t. The murders in Darfour didn’t get as much attentions as the Palestine / Israel conflict.

What does this has to do with my blog topic? Internet, innovations and so forth? Quite a lot. There’s no reason for having a industry, like internet, unless it’s connected to “the world” internet as itself have no value. Social media, has no value in itself.  It’s said that (just these recent days) Twitter has an impact on the Iranian news topic. And it just might have on the result but there is some “but’s” . I believe there will be written long white papers on the subject, and I might be one of them doing so. The social engagement is of importance, twitter itself  isn’t.  

This is not a blog posting on pro/con either the one , nor the other one topic, the examples above shows that very important topics find their way into “social media” a last example is terrifying, in Norway ;a young girl had  a horrifying traffic accident these  days, she might live after this, as we know from the media at this date. At facebook it emerge “hate groups”  that attack the drivers involved.(for now, no-one kan know the facts, nevertheless as “social individuals” we tend to “want” a conclution fast)  Social media can also be used to create a mob. Just mind you, yourself and what’s going on. Social media, seen from an innovation standpoint, and IT viewpoint isn’t  all that easy. It’s social, in all it’s effect, that means it also creates e-g- a mob.

In the topic of ongoing serious politics, Iran it’s great , some of ous are able to speak out – on (what ever) now shown by twitter ,  by the way, twitter didn’t know, nor wish for this effect, facebook didn’t expect their community used for creating a mob. The very reason for all of this is that the focus seems to have been on the “media” part of social media – not the “social” part of social media, such as facebook or twitter. Again i’de like all of you wanting to understand what sicial media is about to read the basics; Bordieu, Facault and so fort

Did I make myself clear or not? (knowing that there’s a pile of topics in this one posting…)

How to drive business in social media?

There’s an ongoing discussion about how to drive business in social medias. And as you might have guessed I have an opinion on the subject.

It’s like beginning with the end of a story to ask the question how to drive business in social medias. It’s better, I believe, to start asking what you sell. “How to” will  depend on what your business is all about. What is your business model? What is it you produce and sell? And foremost “social media” isn’t one thing, it’s a wide range of arenas. Did that sound complex? It is. Neither of the elements can be forced to function in contradiction to itself, so to try to force a non fitting business model into a social media where it doesn’t belong – won’t work.

Let’s forget about social media for a little. My thesis is that humans haven’t changed much lately(last mill years or so) , the new digital media enable communication between the masses, in a speed and spread we haven’t seen before, but little else have changed. (when I was a teenager it was a sport for the young boys to look thru the keyhole into the girl dressing room at school, now young boys can look it up on the internet, but it’s the same phenomena?)

Is there anything around that has been sold for a long time, where the social aspect is involved? Do I need to say more than the brand of Tupperware? The memberships of cooperative chains? Benefit programs as a member (car, travel clubs, airline mileage programs) and so forth. A VIP access to a nightclub contain the essence of a “social sale”. You get a certain treatment, because you belong to a certain group. To be able to sell something in a social media, you have to blend your business model into the group, code and motifs for the group we are speaking of. In other words it’s more of using the right (and fitted) sales strategy, and then find the channels and arenas to conduct you sales, than “forcing” any sale into a social media.

It’s even interesting to ask the question why? Why sell anything in a social media? Why not give something to the users? With the strategy to build a strong brand, and build a loyalty towards your brand?  Libresse is doing such a thing. Nike too. Or, why not do as 3M have done for years, using the customers complaints as their best innovational input, for producing better products, new products and customers support?  NextGenTel is using twitter actively to look for negative comments on their products, and reply them directly and offer them a solution, before the one complaining even got to make the phone call to them asking for support. That’s giving value to their customer, building loyalty and an ambassador for their brand and products.

In my opinion there are a big stack of available tools, techniques to sell, promote, build brand and get new ideas from your customers in the social media environment.

 

Obama Team @ Webforum2009 in Oslo

This was interesting. And people waiting for the “revolutionary new”, maybe got another aha experience. I did for sure!

 

If you’re trying to be an internet scout ( like probably the crowd of some hundreds felt listening to the staff around Obama today) you might discover than when you get back to the everyday life you see that what’s up front there – is much the same as what is here already. You won’t discover a brand new land, or planet for that part. You will discover a lot of what you already have seen before. Still the Obama Campaign did something that really made a difference. What might that be ?

The Obama team implemented and made a system of knowledge we already have, but in an environment where it ‘s new to think like that. Data mining, segmentation, Direct mailing knowledge, Does this sound like Direct mail strategy?) combined with a great sense of what sociology is all about. The mix, in a political campaign, speaking directly to people, instead of  “from above” has the effect any social activity, well done, has. Dialogue, connected to the real world!

Dialogue craves for participation, influence, the possibility to make people re- think and possibly change their origin opinion. That is what the American people all of a sudden thought possible, and responded to – and  - not only the American people. The population of the world could all of a sudden e mail, comment on facebook and twitter – to the “maybe next President of the US America”.

All done by a large team all over America using well known techniques of e.g. a great car salesman, and a sociologist and storytellers, telling real stories from real people to real people. Just what we want politics to be all about.

Fun or real value?

Frequently I see in the discussions of web 2.0 that it’s enough to participate. That it’s amazing what’s going on. Networking, possibilities, a “brand new world” is out there and we all have to join in. Any one asked the question why?

What’s “new? ”Where are the differences between the old fashioned fan clubs, Amcar or sailing clubs? Beside that you now can be in touch via the web. Don’t get me wrong. I’m there, not all over the place, but as you can see I do blog. I do have a facebook profile. LinkedIn is a definite must for a professional as me. I’m at Slideshare and I do twitter. I comment on articles about stuff I have some knowledge, and things that pisses me off. (By the way “Twitter” – us not native English spoken, might not know – twitter means something like bird sounds/singing)

But why? Why am I there, what’s in it for me? I will avoid boring you all with my reasons, they are no different from yours. A real question is if it at all is an important question why we individuals are there – more important would it be to look at the possible effects. Heard of the “Obama effect”? Was that you and I that made him president?  - not me; I can’t vote – or? Did our participation in social media influence the opinion? Maybe it’s wrong questions – why did Obama focus on social media? Maybe it’s his campaign that got the benefits – and not you and I? I can imagine lots of arguments coming up here now – and you are very welcome to bring them on.  One thing is for sure. The owners of the virtual locations ( Facebook, my space, twitter and so on) They got huge benefits out of it, as they do every time one of us consultants praise web.2.0, social media, the “new and brave future” I don’t want to be a parrot marketing the owners of these places –without getting real value back.

Another , maybe the most important thing to understand is the shifts in how our societies act. Long ago we got “trained” in democracy and that we should join our “crowd” and by being many have the influence we wanted to achieve what we all wanted. We needed a party or a fix organization to fight for all of what we wanted. Now we act far more in a way that’s : “I want to make this XX matter change/ happen” – and then find someone around that are up to the same as me – when we made this “something happen” we don’t need to be a part of that group anymore – we find new groups for new topics we want to change.

This is why a lot of activities from businesses, organizations, individuals will not gain on being active in social media. The reasons why participating, and the level of how to act (and knowledge about it) in this environment is simply not developed by far too many companies OR their advisors. It’s just not enough to participate. You need to know where you are going to be, and why. You need to know what to do there, and have knowledge of how to do it.

The most simple way to put it: It’s like any other activity you involve in, you need to know your environment, and understand it’s rules. This goes for you and me as individuals – or companies or the public sector for that matter.

Competing about peoples time

It seems like the competiton in real time collaboration isn’t between the companies delivering solutions, but a competition of getting people to spend time with them, rather than somewhere else – like travelling.

I’m readig in the Norwegian IT section of DN that Gartner (Sydney conference) announced that their estimates for 2009 is a loss of 2,1 million business travels, and that those “seats” will be replaced with telepresence, video and webconferencing meetings instead. This is of course great news for companies delivering such solutions and bad news for airliners and travel agencies.

This should make Cisco, Polycom, Tandberg and the small Norwegian company meetcon happy friends. But Gartner continues: Something new is evolving rapidly: an example is – Immersive workspaces. This is integrated solutions that builds on top of communities like second life. Web based, and with the ability, not only to “meet” (Video & audio) but also share presentations, your desktop and so forth. Gartner advices companies to get rid of old ideas of video conferensing, and adapt to more flexible collaborative integrated ideas of how to conduct work via the web.  (BKK in Norway just did and bought a solution from meetcon.no by the way) This might not be the best of news for the larger enerprices mentioned above, but rather gives smaller and more flexible web based solutions a competitive benefit?

As you may kow I’ve been writing about this for quite a while (just scroll and see former postings) and it’s fun notising that Gartner predict such a rapid developement.

Using Buzz ords such as multichannel strategies

Lesson one: Do not use a buzz word unless you can explain what it means!
Lesson two: Listen to what has become a common meaning of a buzz word.
Lesson three: Be willing to learn more, and adjust what you state.

Multichannel what is it ? what does it mean ?
Multichannel is NOT only using several channels…  if it is  some message (advert, campaign, branding – or whatever) is used in some sort of inter- chained way it’s still NOT Multichannel – it might be, and could easily NOT be.

Mostly the term is used to describe  retail- or e-commerce strategies where several channels are put in effect to reach – and connect with their target groups.
The idea is to let the consumer be more in charge of the transaction process, than before, and to let the consumer be exposed to an opportunity to become aware, interact and finally buy a service or product via several channels. In order to make this happen the various channels has to be coordinated, influenced by each other and provide a flow (memory between them) so that the customer experience a seamless connection with the sender of the messages. It’s sort of a artificial intelligence experience for the customer, where one message is followed up toward the customer in other channels, that give an opportunity to act, start a process and finalize it via several channels used.

But these principles could also be put in use for other areas?  
Like delivering our tax declarations, – getting information of car registrations, depths owners registered on a specific car is only some examples.
It should involve several channels, interconnected in some sort, have interaction with the “customer” of some kind and give a desired result fo the end user – like a service provided, and so on.

Still – A commercial – or public campaign- or branding activites using several channels is not a multi- channel strategy – it’s still an old fashioned Channel mix.

What about facebook?

It seems like facebook has become everybodys public “phonebook” Being there is like having one of those old Phone sentrals, but now I operate it myself. Is that all we want to use Facebook for ?

 
Of course it isn’t. You can make a great impression of yourself on facebook, and you can flirt, You can act silly and come with fun remarks. You can throw sheep’s, answer hilarious quizzes and give friends a virtual plant to grow, but can you do what you would like to do on facebook? Is it useful and functional for you? Is it developing you yourself or/and our society?

The profile, and stating who we are is for sure one aspect. That’s very nice to do. Or is it? Well we might forget that we are different people in different situations. Amongst friends we might want to show some aspects of ourselves, we wouldn’t show our boss, or clients. But you can be sure that your future employer will search your digital tracks and try to find out. (maybe the photos from your last party wasn’t such a great idea that your so called friends (hurmpf) posted, showing you with your head far down into a – toilette. On the other side we can let people know what we love to do, private or work wise, and meet up with people who also love to do the same. Any one up for Tango tonight?

Finding our “tribe” is another. We all want to belong to, at least one group. The “better” the group, the “better” we feel. It’s great to connect – or should I say re-connect with old friends and schoolmates and former co-workers, and at the same time everyone else can see who you are, valued by your friends. Do you have some semi celebrities on your friend list – or not? You can make an interest or support group. Obama did, with success, and plenty of him, supporting everything you can imagine, literally.

Facebook is like a huge eves dropping arena. Like running the telephone central, make a call to someone when you like, and listen into others interesting conversations.

It’s web 2.0. It’s community. And then I remembered what I learned (and believe to be right) what Valery Maltoni said: “Collaboration leads to Community, and Community needs Contribution.” To me it seems like we most likely will see the triangle coming together soon. I wonder what facebook are capable of as a brand – can they adapt, or will we see new players on the scene soon ?

Collaboration, Community and Contribution are interconnected

I read a blog article today that made me think (again). Valeria Maltoni’s blog article about “Real collaboration” address something very important happening right now. She formulated something I wrote about earlier, but she put it so neatly and short: – Collaboration leads to Community, and Community needs Contribution.

Well this is a concrete example of what mass creativity might lead to, new thoughts, that might create better ideas as the interactions flows.

We have seen communities on the internet growing, like facebook, myspace, dating services and so forth, not at all dull, but still many have thought – Community, So?

As we are speaking we see communities with a  new twist emerging. Addidas , using community to build and develop their brand and offer products that has evolved via their own community. Even more interesting is the growing communities of politicians (just think of Barack Obama’s support group on facebook) and  nongovernmental organizations, like Amnesty international.

This starts to look like somethings that makes a difference in the world and have serious impact worldwide. Social engagement! I can’t imagine how many postings politicians have gotten on their community based internet activities the last days from people all over the world being concerned of all the civilians killed or hurt in the ongoing Gaza conflict. This is real change!

As Valery Maltoni point out : Collaboration, Community and Contribution are interconnected and works together. I think that there is great hope for our near future, where the collective consciousness gets connected very effectively. I think I like it!

Great collaboration ideas

Do you know why so few organizations have started using digital collaboration as a basic way to conduct their business? We really know everything that is needed – Or do we?

 

I wonder what your thought might be on the subject. Or even better, what are great ideas for start using digital collaboration in your environment, work or otherwise? Do you at all use any digital collaboration of some sort? What arguments do you believe would be the best ones at your company, and towards whom?

I’ll let the question hang there- for a while.

Digital collaboration in three steps

To get where you want, you need to know where you are heading

The three most important steps are,  to define your needs, what is it you want to achieve? and how to implement it? Does this sound easy? Well it is – sort of, then again this is where most organizations fail.  If you want to get a deeper understanding of my viewpoint you can look at my presentation at Slideshare : Here

The main point in my presentation is that we have collaborated as long as we have been around, but now more than ever. There have been collaborative tools around for a long time, but now we have new possibillities as the web have developed, the introduction of broadband, web 2.0 and so forth.

Integrating what we know already will make digital collaboration more effective, and very soon a commen way of conducting any work tasks as we know them.  There are three levels of digital collaboration:

1 - Digital collaboration fitted to meet internal challenges is an improvement from the situation today
2 - Digital collaboration that involve the organization with partners and customers is an even better idea.
3 - Integrated digital collaboration with social media enables organizations to achieve an optimal environment where you, your organization and the market itself are so woven together that you might not be sure about who came up with an idea, innovation, service or product you can put in effect. Was it you, or your market?

What did Barack Obama do on the internet?

I haven’t had the time to dive into it so if you wish, fill me in! But the phenomena’s  are there in all directions. And beside everything that’s outside what I’m writing about – it seems like he gets credit for a lot and have a lot to live up to.

My topic on the other hand is internet an innovations that make sense. Did he? I don’t know. He – or what he stands for just might have. In the sense of being (becoming) an icon of possibilities, he was active on the web, no need to discuss that, and I reckon that there will be many studies to come from what happened, so I’ll let that rest here.

But having a public sector that can look at the possibilities of making a difference in a real way is fascinating. Opening up, politics and democratic processes are real options. We do have a time in history where we (yet again) can make a difference. The phenomena Web 2.0 have to me at times seemed meaningless and just another “buzz” word – until it’s given a meaning.  In the private sector it’s seems to go slow, but not at all everything is meaningless. In the private sector the most benefitual for people could be claimed to be virtual dating services. That provides opportunities for love. Something that is not to be overlooked!

In the public sector this might be a little too personal?  What could the public service do, and why? If we start with the latter, the public service has a purpose – which is to serve the population. What does that mean in terms of the internet, and digital opportunities? In my opinion, it means that services should be provided as needed for a cost as low as it can – but with a quality as high as it can at the same time. Internet services are perfect for that! We have tools at hand to measure what people use. We are able to make solutions that are making things easier, and we can, by internet solutions sort out, and find out, how to produce functionalities that are providing public services that has a real impact on people’s lives and make it easier. All at a cost that is far lower than how we do things today. Isn’t that great in a time with economic recession?

I didn’t forget the “what” part. What can the public sector do? Both politicians and administrations can do a lot! A self service solution in all areas is one angle. Digital collaboration is another one, gathering input, and open up for discussions and idea creation is a third one.   The amount of idea creation and benefit from these three options alone is amazing.

So if you’re in politics, what are you waiting for? By opening up, by embracing your community (what gives you all your votes) you will win! By working in the administration, saving cost (or better put; gaining more from the budgets you have) you will win. By being simply a citizen you win. I cannot see anyone not winning – and that is what Barack Obama also saw, and this made him win the election!

NOTE: all material on this blog is written by and belong to Geir Stene http://gstene.wordpress.com the http://davinciguy.wholinkswho.com has unlawfully copied my material, and will be stopped.

Change is painful

It seems like we all try the best to avoid change. Change demands to face the uncertain and very few of us like that. Nevertheless, however hopeless, to dare to face change also represent the option to come out stronger. This is very much true in the Internet business at the time we are in.
But now there is no way to avoid it, change is here.

Times are difficult in so many parts of the world these days, for so many people, and are so in most areas of work. What did happen is one question. Another possible question is: What will happen? Both are important to gain knowledge to get out of the state we are in, but still the most important question we all have to ask is what do we want to happen next? and start work towards that goal.

In my line of business I want to use my skills and creativity to improve things. Things in my life and things for the customers I work for. Since change is something happening for all of us as we speak, it’s easier to get change to happen. How can I help others to improve things is the focus of what I want to do at the time. Businesses nowadays have serious topics to solve: How to avoid going bankrupt? How to not have to let people go from their work?

In the public sector there’s a lot to be done, that will ease the workload, and thereby provide more resources available to get more done. Public service need to get most out of the budgets in order to do what the public services are there to do: provide services needed to the public. In the private sector it’s not much different, besides providing a profit for the owners; companies in the end of the value chain are doing that: delivering valuable services and products for people. My part of all this is to contribute as well as I can to provide solutions for customers, to find their best way to contribute to make change happen as fast as possible so we can get back on track again. What’s your best way to contribute? What do you want to happen next?

Innovative digital collaboration?

Being innovative doesn’t mean that you have to invent something totally new. Innovation is being creative and make it happen! Most innovations that works is by connecting some known factors together in a creative way and make use  of it in a new way, and very very few new ideas came frome solitude and a vacum, its almost allways made by groups.

I came across this Blog article at Tech Pulse 360 about collaboration today. Have to say there is very little new in it. The news is that people now start getting it. Collaboration is useful in order to get whatever you do, done!

Cisco have gotten this and are prepared to offer large solutions to large enterprises to a high premium price. Great for Cisco! They have seen what people in the business have seen for a long time. It’s a huge market, and the demand is rising fast. Cisco estimates a 34 billion dollar market, yearly! But they are sticking to “telepresence, and webex conferences, not taking full advantages of collaborative possibilities, both synchrone, and a- synchrone. For most of us, it will be unneededly expensive. Connecting what we see is happening in the “Web 2.0″ area, with various collaborative applications can be far more efficient for most of us in all kind of collaborative tasks. The applications are there, security and broadband challenges are solved. The global ressicion is a driver to speed up this developement as well, due to the need to look at cost/benefits and reductions on costs.

Well this is the ‘basics’. Another driver for digital collaboration that becomes innovative is You & I. Yes it is. Open innovation, in collective groups will drive forward a combination of innovation itself, and collaborative solutions as a result motivated by each other. Further reading on this ideas is a great idea. Charles Leadbeater book “We think” is a great start, but if you are as lazy as I am, a link to his blog would maybe be of help? Well just click on his name or the name of the book. In any event thinking alone hasen’t gotten anyone anywhere, action and results are needed in order to get innovation, so what are you waiting for? 

We are all ready, We have the knowledge, the overview of products and services to set up concepts and solutions that are innovative, and we have the fun mix of providing a quick ROI, being quickly adjustable to meet changing needs, easy to produce and most important easy to use. Anyone guessing its not Cisco’s solutions Im thinking of ? It’s more in the line of integrated software/applications, or this clever thing calles SaaS, that enables modern, innovative digital collaboration. All for a cost you earn back fast enough to dare to get started! Not convinsed yet? Well you now have the tools to get independent by large corporations, and can choose between social groups of your choice to get inspired, to get new knowledge and to balance risk between providors of all kinds.

“DIY” Innovation by real people

One of the largest industries on the internet are meeting new challenges. People aren’t buying porn on the web anymore, they are making it themselves and share it for free. Finally some innovation from us, the people, Wow!

This is interessting, just read what Sergio Messina says. Another interessting book on the subject is “The Porn report” from Australia. The names for the innovative engagement of real people is “DIY” ( Do it yourself) and “Realcore”. Got this knowledge from the newspaper Dagbladet. Well, the porn industry used to be innovative (just remember the struggle of home video format), maybe not so anymore. The positive side of ordinary people taking power of the internet porn is that it’s free, it’s democratic, it present real humans with normal bodies, in all ages and shapes, with “normal” actons and/or more kinky stuff presented, and the audiens find this more interessting than the “pro versions of porn” It’s also an interessting phenomen because this helps “destroying” a lucreative and cynical business that has exploited far to many people. Its like the burning of bra’s in the seventies, but with a modern twist, or is it?
It’s not only a shunshine story; we’ve all heard about private videos and images, that was never ment to be published, and tragic stories of people that got their most intimate parts of their lives exposed on the net. Well, everybody knew that Sex and Porn are two of the most seached words on the internet, or didn’t everybody know this ? For the qurious of you I have placed a free video clip on my Miscellaneous page. Was that evil of me ?

Google vs. Microsoft

Who to believe? Does Microsoft want to serve the market with great products or services, or do they want to survive? What about google, are they here to let multitude grow ?

 

To much power hasn’t done anything good for anyone. It seems like it’s a human pattern, that also goes for companies and organizations. Microsoft has been said to be the “bad” due to the market power it has. But is google the “hero”, that take power away from the big powerful MS? Maybe google has come to the point where they just have to much power to handle it?

I’m not thinking of the introduction of their browser, or the gadgets they spread, nor the income from adds alone or the search algorythm or the buy ups, I’m thinking of the sum of it all, the size, the presence all over the plaze, the hunger for growth. And i’m thinking of the ignorance and carelessness of all of us users. google have done one amazing thing, the have become a verb in our languages, that’s something! But is it good for us ?  The answers i have on my lips aren’t to difficult to guess, is it? there are a huge amount of articles, blogs out there about this subject like this article in “Dagens næringsliv” my point is that we as consumers, as companies should be aware of consequences for us and  ou clients!

Why is the web flat?

I’ve been wondering for more than ten years now; why does web sites on internet seems so “flat”? It’s like transferring paper to the screen.

Updated comments below article

When I ask this question to designers, they often get very defensive. Its like we all believe that a web shall have a global menu, sub menus, a logo on top, a lot of informative text and if creative some great images to follow. Isn’t that recipy like a soup in a bag? Just add water…. But do not misinterpret me, there is a lot going on and internet and the web is still only in the early phase of evolving into what we will see in the future. There are a lot of interesting blogs out there discussing and talking (writing?) about this kind of topics, one interesting is this one: 360

Inventions, phenomena’s and ideas tend to keep a pattern we have to accept; they all tend to be loyal to the origin they came from. “The world is flat” we all know this postulate, and it took centuries to evolve from this idea to the one we have now (what ever that is these days..), even after the fact was stated people continued wanting to believe that the world is flat for decades. Web sites (pages!) has a lot of it’s idea created around the idea of print. I always found this interesting, since the computer screen is digital, and factually resembles the TV set more.

Even designers used to defend the fact that designing web pages frequently seems like a “forced electronic paper version” instead of a medium of visual communication with  another fact:  ”3D is to expensive in most cases” or “live images can’t get quality due to lack of broadband capacity” This statements are now less true than before, and designers are working hard to evolve the web.

The idea of (and knowledge to) create a perspective in an image was developed during the Renaissance , you don’t need 3D technology to draw diagonal lines to a center point! You need knowledge, and you need a basis for your idea world. Lot’s of interesting things are happening, but far to much of it seems to me to be “experimental”…. And I don’t get it. Experimental?? what is so experimental by implementing what art, cinema and, radio/TV has done for years? What’s so experimental by doing what PR and commercials have been for years? There is less experimenting on the web, than in most new media the last centuries!

Since the “history” of the web is, in my opinion, based upon an “electronic paper”, and the idea has been to provide knowledge and information spread, it’s hard to get out of the thinking patterns that we have to use a lot of text, mainly a form of one way communication, we will still have that as a major direction of how a web page will look, and function. Even web 2.0, social media, interactive solutions keep producing “flat web sites” If one wants’ to get out of this, one will need to take the bull by its horns, and questioning the basic of the idea of what a web site really is, for whom and to do what.

• It came to my mind that Itera group uses the term “the world is flat” from the book: “The World Is Flat – The Globalized World in the Twenty-First Century, by Thomas L. Friedman
  There are two major points in my opinion on this use of term. First, using such terminology; To me it sounds typical American (excuse me my US friends) to simplify a phenomena by the wording that much so that the complexity disappear, it’s in fact a dangerous rhetoric trick of (amongst others)politicians to do so, and thereby avoid that the public focus is at more troublesome sides of the case.
  Thomas L Friedman’s book, tries to speak of a “flatter” (read less hierarchic world) but argue in fact of new business models, new technologies and how to achieve this – but, in my opinion naively overlook that it’s not very likely that e.g. poor / common people in the world (so called third world) are the one to enable this. Maybe the commercial corporation Itera group didn’t overlook this and see possibilities for profit in this term ?
  I would rather have a far more Holistic world, than a “flatter” one.
  

Police dep. wake up!

It maybe sound unbelievable, but NTB in Norway report that the police data systems are outdated and should have been replaced years ago, in order to be up to date.

Security threats and network stability is at risk. The Norwegian Police data Dep. even state that ordinary police work is at risk at all times due to the old data systems.

The saddest part is that this is not only a fact for the police dep. but for a lot of official authorities. Health dep. social dep. and so forth are frequently reported to have outdated technical systems, or/and outdated solutions when it comes to take advantage of information and communication systems as a whole. (IKT)

There is an old saying that you can “save yourself into poverty”. This is very much true for the news article mentioned above. Police work suffer, cost per hour rise, results comes slower or doesn’t come at all. The result is an inefective police core, which gets de-motivated as their competence is not put in effective use.

Everyone in the Public sector should examine their systems and organizational procedure and invest and reorganize in order to become more effective, and work smarter. It’s not only the equipment and technical investments that solve problems and give smarter solutions. It’s very much an human challenge to use IKT systems effectively.

When it comes to the systems of the police force in Norway, there is only one thing to say to those who provide the budgets; Stop it!

Analyze your needs, and get what you need to enable you to do your job! Look at cost/benefit and look after that the investments, increases effectivity, provides increased motivation for the police so they can make full use of their competence in their daily work. The goal should be that the police force doesn’t save money on their budget; but that crime rate drops!

Open standards and collaboration

Well, why not apply the “KISS” (Keep It Simple Stupid) model? Microsoft says they are focusing on open standards and pinpoint the great benefits of collaboration and interoperationality. In Digi.no there is an interessting article today.

That’s great news, even though I doubt Microsoft has what it takes to give the market just that. But one never knows. Microsoft has to change, they know it, what remains to see if they are just talking the talk, or walking the walk.

Collaboration is a huge area of business models, concepts, technologies and organizational implementing systems. Intermobility is as well. The offers on the market is large, and not very easy to  have a clear view of. Why not simplify the task at hand, and use the web as the front end? Not Microsoft, not SAP, not Polycom or Tandberg, but simply the web. The web is an open standard; the web is simple and familiar for all users. The web is accessible from where ever. The broadband capacity is increasing as we speak mobile networks as well. So why not? The answer is in the business models created a long time ago. This goes for Microsoft, Tandberg, Telenor and the lot. They are all reluctant to change, that’s one of the main reasons the KISS model aren’t implemented already. They are afraid to loose market shares, and want to lock their customers into their own proprietary hardware/ software. This is old fashioned, and can in the most simple way be described as a mild form of bondage, and who want to be that submissive in business?

But there is hope! There are alternatives for web based solutions that are open for all ( this includes software from e.g. Microsoft, like Sharpeoint) where one can integrate web meeting solutions (like meetcon in scandinavia/ Wiredred in Europe and the US), project management solutions and so forth into a complete, simple web based interface tailor-made for your organization and business. It can easily be scaled for small businesses, and for large cooperatives. Safety is not a topic, it can all be managed. 

For a while yet, the large companies, like the ones mentioned above will keep argue that it’s not true that the web can solve the collaboration and intermobility challenge. At the same time the very same corps. are the already working very hard to try to change, before google snap the market shares in front of their eyes.

PS: Latest news: Speculations on Tandberg being in a a possible buy up situation Read more here (in Norwegian)

Scared of recession?

World economics are falling into recession. There is no need to discuss if this is what is happening. Everything is “falling”: The stock exchange, The Dollar, Banking, Real estate, and so forth. The cost of a oil barrel isn’t though..

What does this tell us in the digital communication business? Normally that revenue will drop. Both private enterprise and the public sector tends to stop investments and sit put, till someone shout out; the danger is over – go spend money again! Is this a wise strategy?

What is important when economics slows down? In my opinion it’s important to look at new opportunities, to look at means to become more efficient, to get more value out of the same or less input; in short to be clever. Good times seem to, at all times, favor laziness! “Harder times” seems to split organizations and businesses into two major groups. The scared ones –  and the creative ones. The digital business and internet companies has a lot to offer to the market in this situation. Producing new business models that are cost saving, increase efficiency , build stabile and secure solutions that avoid high cost rescue actions, and provide the public with internet services that are easy to use, that gives them correct information and empower people to take the best actions in the society and in their personal lives. 

It’s kind of obvious, in times of recession all things tend to get cheaper. That’s when it’s clever to buy stuff, to invest - simply because one get more value for the  money! That’s when people tends to get more creative, in order to find solutions they can afford, this gives the market effect that providers of goods and services have to adapt and have to become attractive by getting better, more creative and keep being competitive.

There is no need for a genius mind to figure this out, still, why do so many get scared and run down in their caves and hide, hoping for everything to vanish, to not be this way anymore? And why is the media so in love with crisis? Just look at the media, in Norway; Dagens næringsliv, Dagbladet, VG, and Aftenposten, and also in the internet media like Digi.no, to name some examples. They are all shouting out headlines like bankrupcy, crisis, regression, in any business segment you can imagine. Worldwide media is no better. There is nothing that sell better than fear! Media knows this and do their best to make use of it.

The interesting part to watch in the coming months and year will not be the ones that sit put and wait; it will be the one that start acting now. That’s the winners of tomorrow. For private enterprises, my hope is that environmental solutions for energy, transport, fair trade, ecological production of food, seafood and so forth is the ones investors now will put their eyes on and give finanical support  to grow and be even more inventive and strong in the marketplace for the best of us all, including the return of investments and branding value for the investors. I hope for the best for us all that we will have a lot of clever, creative, innovative leaders especially in the public sector, because that will give the effect that the living standard will not suffer for the poorest, instead we will have the opportunity to make far better solutions and services for the general public that will save a lot on budgets to spend on the ones in our societies that doesn’t have the economic strength to live thru the “harder times” ahead.

Hacker’s in power

Didn’t most of us, at one point, naively believe that a hacker is some dodgy pale guy, living of coca cola and pizza, playing around on his computer24/7, testing just how “clever” he could be, and that’s it, a pain in the ass for those that became his victim?

Why is it so that none of us like the idea that our governments and military around the world use every method available and useful also on the internet and also have skilled hackers on their payroll?
Cryptology, God damn, is invented by power structures like the church, the Greeks, the Roman Empire, the Persians, the Chinese in ancient times used systems of hiding and protecting information, and to mislead enemies and the population with disinformation when suited. Why should this change?

The internet is an excellent place for any authority to spread information in a manner that fits them best, it’s also a perfect environment to collect as much knowledge of opponents as possible. The amount of information, the scale of shared information and communication and the speed it’s delivered by is obviously interesting and time saving for any structure that have motifs for altering a fact, or deny some from getting a fact brought into public. Georgia just experienced this, and I’m just amazed that people react with surprise and “shock”.
Of course nations do this; they use any legal (and sometimes illegal) mean to get hold of information and knowledge. This is also true for information that is not meant to be shared. But it’s incredibility naive to believe that their own systems are not as vulnerable as others! It’s not only Georgia’s governmental web that is easy to lock down, most countries in the west have far too many weaknesses, and some are even without any crisis strategy in case of an attack. Why is it so hard to believe that a hostile party could do such a thing (or worse), if they have a strong motif for it?

It is indeed a fascinating paradox that Governments have knowledge to make use of gathering information, or being active in preventing or misleading others actively, but they seem to neglect that this fact goes for other Governments as well and they easily can become a victim of far worse scenarios that the Georgian example.

What are the damages, you might ask, if our country’s official web pages where shut down, it will only take a few hours or a day to get online again. Well, what if they didn’t put the pages down? What if they slightly change some of the information instead? What if they directed the public interaction to their own servers instead? There are so many ways of developing the simple attack “someone” did with the governmental site of Georgia, which could become very dangerous for individuals, groups of people in a society, or the whole nation. And even this simple action of “someone” proves that Georgia showed them very vulnerable and weak. What did that do to the Georgian public’s opinion of their leaders? I think the “someone” knew exactly what they could gain of this action and used the simplest means to achieve it.

Where is TV heading?

It’s often said that no media has ever died. The book, art painting, photography, the movie, the radio all have survived new media and technology arriving. But that was before YouTube!

 

Internet and broadcasting is merging and at some point I believe that TV becomes seamlessly integrated with next generation of home media systems in a scale that changes everything within broadcasting as we know it. That doesn’t necessarily mean that broadcast corporations will die. But I do believe that broadcasters should look closely at how they brand themselves. In my opinion a broadcaster that uses its brand and transform from a large channel enterprise more toward a knowledge and competence brand will survive into the future. Maybe its time for broadcasters to get far more serious about their websites and how to use them in their core business, instead of being very protective and separate broadcasts and Internet activities as much as they do at the moment. Is that a clever policy?

If we look at it: What is the business of broadcasting? For Public service broadcasters it’s like the morning paper you get on your door every morning, core business is to deliver as interesting content as you can to an as large amount of subscribers as possible. For a commercial broadcaster it’s to gather as many viewers as possible, and sell them to advertisers. Is there anyone that can see the similarities to the core of Internet business? Content and a large amount of people gathered around a specific subject. I believe that broadcasting and Internet has a lot in common of what they can offer, and with business models that is very suited for at close cooperation. The best of TV and the best of Internet is a hit in my opinion. While waiting for the broadband development, I believe that conceptual connection between the TV programs, and Internet e.g. communities is very interesting aspects of how to create a win-win situation. Internet has the options to interact far better with the audience and to connect the knowledge of the user and take advantages of that both in a commercial way, and in an editorial way also for the content creation of TV programs.

Digital collaboration is for everyone

It seems like when people start talking about collaboration and digital solutions, one start thinking; That’s for large organizations, It’s complicated or it’s expensive and not for my office/company. This is not true anymore.

 
Everything we do at work is to collaborate. We work in teams, we exchange information, share knowledge, solve problems, discuss, attend to a lot of meetings, run projects, develop and sell products, offer a wide range of services and we interact in almost every activity we do. This is absolutely valid for both public and private sector. The concepts for digital solutions for collaboration are developing rapidly. Main drivers for this is the broadband capacities that are increasing world wide, and also everything that goes on in social media, Web 2.0 and so forth. It’s a common prediction that these markets will be one of the top five growth markets the next coming years.

Flexibility and integration are two important key words for the concepts that will become the standard for collaboration services. The benefits is as we know them on beforehand is; faster production / development cycles, cost savings, closer relations with team members and customers, better public services and so on. New aspects are that the web interface, the kind of functionalities that are included and better integrations of them is improving a lot. Another aspect is that getting started is easy, also for very small companies and units in an organization. “Out of the box” is just fine, as a start. At the other end of the scale, highly complex systems that seamless integrate all kind of back end systems and present it in a single interface – or, as in the image in this article, virtual workspaces on a wall that enables multitasking collaboration tasks where e.g. time frame is of extreme importance. (e.g. solutions for handling crisis and emergencies, or industrial processes) now is available technologies for a cost one wouldn’t dream of just a few years ago

Still the most important is of course not ‘collaboration’ in it self, but what you need to do, and how to do that most effective. The best solutions for digital collaboration will be those where the user don’t even think of it as digital collaboration, but just the way we work!

Commercial options as “Co- Martial Arts”

I’m playing with words, but still; I just thought of it. Commercials, isn’t really something people want, is it?
Still as consumers we do want and need things, when we want and need them, and most of us would love to get a great offer, just at the right time and place.

 

If my toaster broke down – or car. I’d be happy to get a solution to my problem. But it’s annoying to be bombarded with toaster or car repair ads when everything is just fine. As we have seen, advertisers have discovered this idea, like we can observe it at e.g. Amazon.com.
What’s the clue? Amazon knows something about you! (and more than you might like to know) and Amazon guess what else they can offer you. At times we think of this as great, and at other times we think it sucks. It all depend on our needs and motivations when we are exposed to the suggestions they make. But all what they really do is to make a qualified guess.

This is getting far better/worse (depending on perspective) in the web 2.0 development as we speak about it. But no doubt, connecting user Profiles to Content and Ads. is increasing rapidly. This triangle has enormous possibilities. Up till now web communities have been able to get “filthy rich”, selling their “flat” databases with a very simple concept; ‘Set up a community – get loads of users – sell – Success!’ And the revenue stream is basically made out of very traditional wide spread advertisements – Throw adds over people! No segmentation, no thought what so ever – if this is something that pleases users or pisses them off. The buyer of the community doesn’t really care, if he has 1(or 10) mill. daily users in his database to sell to advertisers he’s happy chap. This trend will not last for long!

But what if ? What if we can create concepts that take full advantages over the holistic paradigm of Content, Adds and user Profiles and make use of the input/output from that? And we can ! Then we can provide a “Martial Art advertisement concept” for the user (and also for the advertisers BTW): The concept is to take the force from the opponent and use that energy to achieve our goal – or defend us towards unwanted attacks. We are able to give users a community where they have common interests in content and social networking,to give them control over what ads they want to be exposed to and by that increase the likeliness of being able to provide individuals with accurate advertisement, based upon the Content they choose, and their user profile on that site. Any one that doesn’t think this looks wonderful ? It also works the reversed way, where advertisers can segment perfectly, and know the user pattern and interessts of a user, and usergroups in detail, and automatically provide the correct ad at the correct time and place on the site.  – Oh, did I just give away a great business idea? *grin* I don’t think so. It’s like Martial Art, you need quite a lot of talent, knowledge and training to get it right !

Did knowledge exist before The Internet?

Not all comes from “The Matrix”,“The Da Vinci code”or Microsoft corp! Some seems to believe that knowledge about Communication, Interactivity, Social networks and Semantics came with the invention of the Internet?!?

It seems like far too many people in our business act like they know all the theories and wide range of buzz words flying around, and that it in fact knowledge “arrived” with the invention of the Internet! . Don’t buy into it. System developers, Business consultants, Key account managers and so forth, all to often seems to have never even read Emanuel Kant, or know what the H*** the old Greeks were up to ( NO, I didn’t miss spell ‘Geek’ !)

The ‘fun’ part is when you look at Communication theories the “modern” origin is not all that far from the binary system used as a basis for computer technology per see. Most modern communication theory seems to accept and often adapt the Shannon and Weaver’s theories (1949) that was developed to understand how telegraphy, telephone, and radio wave signals could be sent, and received without disturbances. From this very physical viewpoint we got the vocabulary extendend in the communication theories: ‘Information source’, ‘Message’. ‘Transmitter’, ‘Encode’ ‘Signals’, ‘Channel’, ‘Receiver’, ‘Decode’ (reconstruct) and the element of ‘Noise’, that makes effective transmission of communication dysfunctional. Shannon & Weaver were aware that his model didn’t address ‘meaning’ and stated: “These semantic aspects of communication are irrelevant to the engineering problem”(1948). But this limitation seems to have been forgotten by many of the ones working with communication theories later on. Still this model is widely accepted as one of the main seeds out of which communication studies has grown. The terminology in semantics and semiotics make use of the terms and emphasizes the ‘code’ and ‘decode’ elements of communication, to try to pinpoint the challenge of ‘meaning’.

My point is that it’s needed to get deeper into the set of ideas that has evolved since Aristotle’s ‘Rhetoric’s’, via a wide range of theoretical developments. Roland Barthes, Umberto Eco, the Norwegian Jostein Gripsrud are just a few clues of further reading, all of them important to read. In my opinion, so is more general studies in Sociology such as Theodore W. Adorno and Pierre Bourdieu to name two examples. Especially in these times where we speak of Social networks, Communities, web 2.0 and Semantic web, sociology and anthropology are important readings to get a grasp of what communication and communities really are. Wikipedia is a great starting point and this article gives a lot of clues to further readings: Communication theory. And when you’re done with that – it’s time to pick up Jurgen Habermas and Ludwig Wittgenstein !

Collaboration beyond knowledge management

We are familiar with the traditional collaboration and knowledge management software solutions and “heavy” solutions for the web. To gather, sort and make data available for groups. We have gotten familiar with some of the social network solutions like LinkedIn, facebook, MySpace and so forth. But we have a lot in front of us when these – and real time communication solutions melt into seamless web 2.0 and web 3.0 concepts.

The essence of collaboration is; by doing things together we get a better outcome, than the effort done by the same amount of individuals would alone. The essence of digital collaboration is to achieve this in a virtual environment where there is no boundaries of location for the participants. Hardware, Software, Portals, web applications, API’s, and not to forget broadband connections and so forth enables a totally new set of possibilities. We can rapidly move from old fashioned (and kind of “static”) Knowledge Management software and server solutions locked in to the company’s IT environment, and move toward open engines where you can both structure your input and collect your output, team based, and go far beyond that and increase work flow processes, speed up projects and make use of your time line far better. Just as we all knew on beforehand; the most interesting discussions and biggest “breakthrough’s” in problem solving happens at the coffee machine, or over a beer in the pub. The trick is to set up a digital environment that support common human behavior, where the technology becomes as invisible as possible. In order to achieve the optimal of all the possibilities the most important factor is may be not not the digital boundaries, but the organizational ability to change from an old fashioned work flow, towards new and improved processes. Defining accurate and flexible concepts for your organizational collaboration and how to implement this in your organization is maybe a bigger challenge than the actual Digital bit of it.

What is beyond traditional knowledge management, and project management systems? We see concepts that includes both a- syncrone and syncrone collaboration in one and the same solutions, we see an increased interests in integrated services instead of singular software. Services that add, and include e.g. instant messaging, presence management, predefined web based web conference solutions (instead of heavy duty videoconferencing hard/software ) like meetcon are emerging. We see that complete collaboration portals (tailor made) that make real sense to reaching goals like; cost savings, time saving, rapid product development (time to market) real time meetings and e learning, increased contact with customers and so forth . All this is a reality of combined and integrated services that takes collaboration to new levels. The best part is that all the technology is at hand right now, it’s not science fiction! Sharepoint from MS, IBM collaboration and a lot of other have improved solutions during the last couples of years. It’s also easy to make solutions that are totally web based without the traditional software solution and need for download of heavy clients. We are no longer dependent on one kind of system, but can “shop” from a lot of systems, services and integrate them into our own needs.

And it gets even more interesting when you start looking at combining this kind of collaboration concepts with communities and add “mash up” concepts. Can you imagine this kind of concepts in a “transparency” environment? How this can influence your work force? What kind of innovative organization you can build and grow? I’m looking forward to see some of the upcoming project that I bet is already in work several places around the world. This is the wonderful part of innovation, it often seem to be a “collective consciousness” worldwide. The next few years will surely be interesting in terms of re-newing the way we work in both a global and local sense. Mobility, cross country and cross culture workflow will increase, and with it – the level of innovation will rise.

Who’s the Internet project Boss?

Have you ever wondered who’s really in charge of an Internet project? Or who “should” be?

I’m really tired of the constant “struggle” where IT Dep’s have opinions like; they should be in charge of Internet projects and that if not for them the Internet wouldn’t even exist. But hang on; it doesn’t make anything better if was the Communication dep. either. Claiming “content is King”. Providers, crews, individuals that keep claiming this kind of arguements are doing nothing but being trapped in “the monkey trap.”

“There is no Internet project!” (to rephrase a line from The Matrix movie) Internet is a channel as any. (E.g. TV, publications, radio, Cell phones) There is most surely a desired outcome for a company in need for an Internet involvement. IT / communication/ PR or what is – companies tend to forget that for the customer it’s not a project -with a start, and an ending. For the customer Internet is a long lasting process using that channel for their purposes (Business, involvement, information tasks and so forth). All kinds of businesses have all of a sudden become their own publishers. – Thanx to Gutenberg, and a brand new world of technology!

Gartner recently stated (ITxpo in Barcelona) that the CIO’s have yet a paradigm shift ahead of them. I’d say that it’s not only the CIO’s that have this challenge – We all do, and the responsibility for making the right decitions of how to go about it is in the hands of top management both on the customer and provider side of the table.

I don’t really care who is to be the “Boss” in an Internet project! An Internet project is always a team effort. The one in charge should be the one that’s best to manage, and motivate, and make everyone in the team able to do better than they thought possible themselves. The manager that empower everybody in the team, make all involved focused on the task at hand – and make sure that all agrees on the idea; the best result comes from what is happening in the group dynamics, not the singular effort from each and one alone. This person could be from IT Dep, Comm. Dep or from the Consultant/strategy Dep. or what ever. The best motivator, best inspirator, with management skills and a broad set of knowledge of all competence needed for the task is my favorite candidate for the job.

Is content “King” or is connecting “King Kong”?

A big question is always, what to do on my page, what content do I need to have there? And it swings both ways. For me and the web masters; writing, and you visiting a site; reading or involving.

It’s the same in business life, or for organizations, and webmasters who do their very best. Often its just to unclear what the site is there for, or even worse; it’s unclear what the company’s vision really is.

On my site it’s sharing some of my thoughts, and hopefully once in a while I manage to tip some of you of the standard automatic thinking pattern, and from that you get a new idea. If so; you have the opportunity to do something that is more precise and to the point in your work. Not by my doing, but by the ideas you make for yourself while reading my stuff.

For Companies or organizations is being different maybe the reason other people or customers react up on what is done at their site, and not the next one( competitor). Isn’t that what we all want? A reaction? Isn’t that at the core of communication? To be seen, noticed and then get a feedback? (please feel free to comment on anything on my page, any comment or question will make me more happy than total silence *grin* )

Very often management doesn’t realize the importance of having a clear idea of just what the web site is supposed to do for them. And the website, however nice it looks, sucks. “Content is King” is an old statement, that I don’t always agree on. Communicating the core of the business in all you do, and making sure that the quality of the content is superb is of huge importance, and I mean not only the writing – but also the visual text. (semiotics states everything is Text). The new(ish) idea that “Connecting is King Kong” has the same challenge, connecting people is not always enough, you need to let people have an environment where there is a meaning in the connection that you provide for them. For Nokia, the cell phone is reason enough, the concept of calling someone, or being available is enough, maybe not all that easy for your business ? The answer will always be found in the very reason why you are in business, and keep to the core of that; The challenge is in every case to find a smart way to do so.

Interactiv or not

I’ve been involved in the Internet business since the beginning. Then, and surprisingly enough still, the word Interactive keep popping up in the most peculiar ways.

I’ll use another web 2.0 site to help out; Wikipedia. In short Interactivity; In the “contingency view” of interactivity, there are three levels:

Noninteractive, when a message is not related to previous messages;
Reactive, when a message is related only to one immediately previous message;
Interactive, when a message is related to a number of previous messages and to the relationship between them.

The Reactive communication is what I speak of as two way communication. Real interaction is when the one message in a flow of messages, gets altered because of the content of former messages. This Blog is not interactive. I write what I want, you can involve by giving comments, but that doesn’t alter my text.
If you would like to create an interactivity with me, we we could implement a chat, and discuss the subject, your opinions would alter my opinions and honestly, most likely would these postings become better.