Week 11 - Case Study presentations episode 2

Today's presentations and the creative approaches used were amazing! Not only was it super-neat to see our course learnings applied to a wide range of scenarios, each presentation also added to my knowledge or ideas list to possibly apply to my own case study: indicating specific improvement opportunities in existing online presence (Laura), thinking of a Wikipedia page for the organization (Adriano), and hearing of new sites such as GigPark (David), and Vizu (Jessica). There were some really good reflections of James' talk (Adriano used the triangle too!) And we ended with yummy cookies!

Now on to the final assignment... goodnight and goodbye blog!

Week 10 - Case Study presentations episode 1

A social media strategy is about thinking how the business wants to be. Offline. Then the support comes in with social media and other forms of marketing. And all tools and techniques notwithstanding, it is still the human creativity and 'knowing your audience' that makes the difference in getting people from curious to connected to committed to engaged, the stages James mentioned in his presentation last week.

Our class discussion to determine a social media strategy for the case study Jaigris shared had some aha moments for me. For instance, hearing examples of situations where Facebook may hurt rather than help. While that was an example of target community members being intimidated by aggressive opposition, this was conceptually good to keep in mind regarding other possibly harmful side-effects. For instance, in the professional world, if an organization is building credibility and one of its members' personal/ Facebook life receives negative press, the organization itself is affected. It holds for British intelligence executives as well as school teachers. Another great thought was tapping unusual sources like the perspectives of criminals (or ex-criminals) affected by firearm ownership laws.

During my presentation on a social media strategy for Grace Educational Trust, the questions and suggestions offered by the class were really helpful (and it was so neat to see the class recognizing and supporting colleagues' ideas!) Through the questions I was able to see where more information could have been provided or clarified - such as specifics about the organization's resources, structure, ages of children, etc. (where was that button again when all assumptions are automatically understood?) The suggestions helped identify areas to potentially strengthen some strategy points, such as commenting on the overall site content organization, looking for strategic partnerships with schools involving children who may be involved with similar activities (hat-tip Laura), exploring open-source education (hat-tip Jaigris) and freely available educational resources, or ensuring that any online contributions (such as comments on blogs) do not inadvertently mirror any overused selling technique. I also learned about sites like the KhanAcademy (hat-tip David) and videos of Schoolhouse Rock (hat-tip Jaigris).

As I work to refine the strategy and articulate it concisely within the 10-page paper, I'm looking forward to the other case studies being presented next week.

Week 9 - Social Media Strategy

“Education: a debt due from present to future generations.” -- George Peabody

Neelima Pratap is clearing her debt by spreading education and supporting community development. As co-founder of the Grace Educational Trust, she and her 'partners in education' are giving children of a small village of Betim Ramnagar in Goa, India, the opportunity to break the poverty cycle. In partnership with a courageous social worker and counselor - Francis Dass - from India, Neelima started the organization with her own funds and resources, and has steadily built a community of donors / supporters who know her and/or are inspired by her work. And as is true of all worthy causes, the resources are always lagging behind the need.

Social media allows us to do things differently. Currently, the funds raised through Neelima's efforts (as well as her own resources) are used to support the organization's work in India. There is an opportunity to use social media, reach out to a community of contributors of educational content and instruction, and enable these contributions to directly and virtually support the work in India. Specifically, this means collecting digital educational resources as well as inviting educators' time contributions to deliver instruction in India over the internet or through mobile technologies. This model can be used both for the kids and for the professional development of teachers in India.

A quick SWOT: Grace has a great story to tell. Its current social media usage is at a very early stage, and resources are obviously a concern. But social media philanthropy is on the rise, and so is use of digital resources as well as mobile technologies for education. We can connect the trend with the need.

The plan to implement Grace's social media strategy needs to be sensitive to the organization's constraints. Social Media is not "free". There is work and investment involved in building and maintaining relationships with the community. So in Grace's case, the 'slow and steady' principle needs to be observed. The strategy of building a contributors' community can utilize a careful and incremental process:

• Listen to where the relevant conversations about early education are occurring (e.g. build a Google reader page of interest)
  
• Find key motivated contributors and engage them by soliciting advice on specific questions or commenting on their contributions to existing educational communities
• Relate back about how their contributions helped the organization
  
• Use as much community resources as possible (e.g. organizations like Taproot which help connect non-profit organizations with professional pro bono services)
  

The four pillars of a social media strategy - communicate, collaborate, educate and entertain - can all work together in the above model to effectively achieve the organization's goal of sustainability. The traffic from the targeted educational communities coming back to Grace's site, and conversion rates (e.g. newsletter sign-ups, contributions in kind, or donations) can be tracked with analytics. These measures/ metrics and reports can be used to refine the strategy.

The full circle of an effective social media strategy follows good business practice: define goals and measures, use the appropriate tools to support the goals, monitor and evaluate, and refine goals and strategy. The social media strategy is not and should not be an independent component, rather an integrated and complementary part of the overall business model and strategy. Life is, after all, one indivisible whole.

Week 8 – Social Media Measurement

“The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor; he took my measurement anew every time he saw me, while all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.” - George Bernard Shaw

The debate continues on what model (if any) can measure the effectiveness of marketing/ advertising. The challenge is that we first need to figure out what we need to measure. AllBusiness warns us: “Advertising is not an exact science. There's no precise way to measure the success of an ad campaign.” And while we're trying to figure things out, (quite annoyingly) the world continues to shift in its habits, mechanisms and the factors that influence consumer/ audience behaviour. The one good thing is: rate of change in technology is somewhat helping come up with new tools and services to facilitate measurement of various factors – these are our clues. And enough clues exist about the potential of social media's effectiveness to achieve some goals. So like good investigators, we take the clues, blend them well with expertise/ caution/ intelligent analysis, and produce the 'smoothy' answer to our whodunnit (i.e. what did the trick to help achieve our objectives, or not).

The process for measuring social media effectiveness is similar to any systematic cause-and-effect based activity. Answering a series of questions, thoughtfully and methodically, and acting on the answers with discipline is a time-tested technique. Works as well for weight-loss or personal financial management as for measuring social media effectiveness:

Pre-experiment:

1. What do I want to accomplish? (objectives)

2. How will I know when I've done it? (SMART success targets/ metrics; measurement mechanisms)

3. Where am I now? (baseline or starting measurement)

4. How do I get to where I want to be? (strategy and plan)

Post-experiment:

1. Are we there yet/ how far am I? (final or interim measurement)

2. Are my measurements reliable? (intelligent analysis)

3. How strong is the relationship between my strategy and my outcomes? (ditto)

4. What else/ what more do I need to do? (refine objectives, strategy, plan, tool selection, analysis... or my favourite: do nothing!)

While each step is important (and many have sub-steps), the significance of #2 and #3: understanding the data and strengths/ weaknesses of tools in piecing together the story cannot be over-stressed. Many a distorted number has led to many a distorted decision.

If all this is making you go “but where's the social media in this long diatribe”... well, there are two general paths in life. There's the “fly by the seat of one's pants” way. By definition, the method (or lack thereof) is unique to each situation and therefore as “tinglingly” (my word) exciting as a new romance. So fans of this philosophy may induce in me a heart-flutter and, at times, envy (because it can and sometimes does work). But this path of life has not yet gotten my followership (snacking habits notwithstanding).

And then there is the Stephen Covey way. He gave us 7 principles of highly effective people. Not 7 adventures or 7 short-cuts. But 7 principles. This method decreases the heart flutter, and increases the likelihood of repeatedly producing desired results. The process outlined above for measuring social media effectiveness is also a principle-based approach, therefore it is not specific to social media, and doesn't sound very flashy or exciting. When it's our clients' or audience's money on the line though, I'd rather decrease my heart flutter, and theirs.

Week 7 - Publishing Plus!

Unavoidably, I missed class, seeing everyone, hearing about the integrative week experiences. And spent a frustrating but eventually rewarding few days trying to figure out this video publishing process from PowerPoint to YouTube. Finally there. The results of my humble, and clearly newbie, publishing efforts are on my newly created YouTube page. I also used the technique in one of our earlier readings to make it private using un-intuitive tags. Just for fun.

Week 7 – Web 2.0 and Internal Communications

Somehow intuitively the concepts “open collaboration” and “CIA” (obliged to utter secrecy) feel oxymoronic. And as such, the success of CIA's internal wiki, Intellipedia, feels like an accident. It isn't. It's a remarkable story that supports the known and proven principles of social media as well as communications and knowledge management. Intellipedia – an online encyclopedia of intelligence information, was carefully conceived and created with the support of Sean Dennehy, the CIA’s Intellipedia and Enterprise 2.0 evangelist, and the CIA community maintains the repository. It has 80,000+ intelligence community members, and 5,000+ contributions daily. The #1 contributor is 69 yrs old.

“The objective of [knowledge management systems] is to support creation, transfer, and application of knowledge in organizations.” (Source: reading 1) In order to appreciate the variety of ways in which Web 2.0 technologies are supporting organizational communications and effectiveness, here are just a few examples, covering public and private organizations:

1. Blogs to build relationships:
   The Sun Microsystems CEO, Jonathan Schwartz, publishes a popular blog in which he discusses his company’s strategies, products, opportunities, and challenges. Customers and employees can then engage in an open dialogue with the organization.
   

2. Crowd-sourcing to build knowledge base:
   Microsoft launched a project – the MS wiki – to create free, complete, up-to-date and reliable documentation about Microsoft products.
   

3. Real-time information channelling to increase efficiency:
   Wells Fargo uses an enterprise RSS solution to monitor customer data and warehouse schemas, routing inconsistencies and problems to appropriate business analysts in real-time.
   

4. Data mash-ups/ consolidation to increase effectiveness.
   Government of BC's Family Search Program provides a search facility for parental support enforcement, bringing together 15+ sources of information to assist enforcement officers. As a result, reliability and collection of parental support payments increases and the need for government to provide support payments instead decreases.
   

It's no wonder then that many organizations are eager to harness their intellectual capital and build virtual communities of practice (Source: reading 2, p. 456, and reading 3, chapter 2). Admittedly, organizations have struggled to identify the true ROI of knowledge management, and one source suggests using the real-options approach. (Source: reading 3, chapter 4) However, many examples suggest that the benefit of effective knowledge management is not just a warm, fuzzy thing. According to one report (p. 11): "IBM's intranet has transformed from a corporate information portal to a platform used by most employees to work and collaborate across the company [... leading to] Productivity savings of an estimated $80.6 million." Not recognizing the value of employees' knowledge can be fatal for a company, as ING Baring learned. (Source: reading 3, p. 20)

One may therefore argue that by using Web 2.0 technologies, in these and many other ways, organizations can perhaps bring forth and productively use both the tacit and explicit knowledge (to which both reading 1 and reading 2 refer) of its members and partners. "[I]t is precisely in applying technology to increase 'weak ties' (i.e., informal and casual contacts among individuals) in organizations [...], and thereby increase the breadth of knowledge sharing, that IT holds promise." (Reference: reading 1 p. 112)

Week 6 - Sharpening the tools

“Progress isn't made by early risers. It's made by lazy [people] trying to find easier ways to do something.” Mr. Heinlein was clearly on to something. Apparently, we humans can't have enough of easy! It "shapes what we believe, how we invest, and who will become a supermodel".

To make things easier for individuals and businesses, if the list of tools in our textbook didn't seem sufficient, there are many more aids available. It's just not enough that in 140 characters or less we can share with anyone who cares what we think of Google's Buzz (thanks David!); services like Ping.fm ensure our opinions reach all our "friends" and "professional contacts" - and whoever else remains - all at the same time! And when we get tired of just filling other people's mindspace quicker, we have to preserve our own by tactics such as using a start page to organize information coming in. (This is where we preempt and filter out others' use of Ping.fm!)

The "grown up digital" among us don't just like it this easy... we expect it! Google gets this. They make things super easy - searching, advertising, working, living... their product is "changing people's lives." The problem and opportunity created by information overload is evident in discussions and progress of Web 3.0 or the semantic web. As "How stuff works" describes, we are moving towards a world where you could type "I want to see a funny movie and then eat at a good Mexican restaurant. What are my options?" The Web 3.0 browser will analyze your response, search the Internet for all possible answers, and then organize the results for you.

The business-world impact of all this? Well, businesses (tend to) start out small, and every nanosecond and even a half-penny needs to be spent wisely. So would I recommend any business and especially a small business to use productivity tools? Yes. Unqualified. Because half-pennies can be quite costly! For the business and its target audience. And so businesses need to respect their audience's time and money at least as much as their own, using any and every tool and tactic available to them.

But tools can't do it all (yet). They have to be cleverly used. A search engine helps our target audience find things, if we help the engine find the things we want found, for example with search engine optimization. Since we (seem to) have choices, we can also use tools badly (hat tip: Guy). Either way, we'll bring about an effect. What's the key to ensure it's the effect we want and need? Let me illustrate with the help of the Pink Panther:

• Inspector Clouseau: [gesturing to the hotel's dog] Does your dog bite?
• German hotelier: No.
• [Clouseau bends to pet the dog; it bites him.]
• Inspector Clouseau: I thought you said your dog did not bite!
• German hotelier: That is not my dog.

So the key is questioning our assumptions and asking the right question(s). What are we trying to accomplish, and will this path take us there? Otherwise, we may learn that the Answer to the Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe, and Everything is 42, but the Ultimate Question itself will remain unknown.

Week 5 - Take this technology for a walk...

Mobile technologies... educate, entertain, connect, assist, and even save lives. From simple, clever ring tones to sophisticated applications, the mobile media offer numerous ways to engage target audience (for individuals, organizations, businesses). The most effective and creative uses provide easy access to know or do what is valuable to the target audience. The discussion below points to many ways in which mobile technologies have changed our lives and will continue to do so. Some key links are presented again in a list at the end.

Every-where, every-how:
There are people who earn and live on less than a few dollars a day. Yet they have mobile phones. They are using these technologies to try and improve the quality of their lives or those of their loved ones.

Perhaps more than any other technology in use, the effectiveness of the "URL-strategy" (Ubiquity first, Revenue Later) is being demonstrated by the number of people using mobile technologies for a variety of old and new purposes. Games, shopping, services, entertainment, ... the list of what's available and can be accomplished via mobile technologies grows every day. And "[...] oh yeah - you can even make a telephone call." (Source: textbook, page 391) It's not just business or fun either; a new collaboration called the mHealth Alliance wants to bring together governments, NGOs and mobile firms to save lives. Alluding to this incredible growth, one comedy sketch video points out how all the features that not too long ago appeared 'cool' now seem antiquated enough to be the objects of ridicule.

History and evolution:
I actually didn't realize how old the wireless phone concept and technology was, dating back to the late 19th century, even though it did take a while before "the mobile phone truly became mobile" (Source: textbook, pg 393, 394). Learning about this re-emphasized a critical point to me: the power of context (such as a particular time and space). In the 19th or much of the 20th century, the time hadn't come for mobile technologies to become an integral part of our lives. Just as I doubt "smexting" would have caught on when people could continue to spread second-hand smoke to their loved (and not-so-loved) ones indoors. Recognizing (or in some cases creating) the right opportunity has a lot to do with successful business use of mobile technologies.

What's being done with it:
Examples abound on mobile applications and their effective use. Even something as simple as a clever ring tone can work as an incredibly simple yet effective communication and marketing vehicle. However, I found this Business Week article on Google vs. Apple quite interesting in pointing out that in the age of information overload and little time, the power to deliver relevant, timely information (including ads) to people wherever they are might be the success factor. And some of you may have already seen the TED video about "sixth sense technology" describing how we can (soon) carry even more capability around in our pockets (IMHO it's worthwhile to get beyond the first 5-6 minutes - and the entire video is embedded at the end of this post).

Try this at home, but with care:
I share these thoughts with the hope that at least part of the above will be read/ seen before the reader's mobile phone notifies of the fresh coffee it has just prepared for its beloved user :) Perhaps these examples will illustrate and support my thought that the current technologies and media are not just a different way of communicating with customers or target audience, it's entirely a different paradigm. And yet stories of successful use of mobile technologies continue to demonstrate that the underlying principles of understanding target audiences and bringing value to them (i.e. what they consider value) hold true across all paradigmatic changes.

List of links and references:

• An image of mobile technology use in the developing world
• Digital trends mentions a UN report about mobile phones narrowing the digital divide
• A service to send money via mobile phones
• An article by "Read Write Web" on mHealth Alliance
• A comedy sketch video on various mobile phone features
• Definition of the term "smexting"
• Conservative party (in UK) uses famous speeches as ring tones
• Business Week magazine writes on how the battle between Apple and Google will shape the future of mobile computing

---

TED's sixth sense technologies:

Week 4 - Audio and Video

One of the ways to realize the importance (or not) of anything is to imagine life without it. It's a great technique to get rid of the stuff we accumulate in our closets but don't need. It's just as effective a strategy to revisit and appreciate the invaluable richness in our lives owing to sound and vision - Audio and Video. Helen Keller may concur.

Integrating audio and video messaging into organizational effectiveness strategies has been made incredibly easy and cost-effective, even free. There is a variety of mechanisms to create and share such communication pieces. Software such as Audacity/ Sound Studio/ iMovie / Adobe Premier (Source: textbook, pages 213, 215, 245, 246) and platforms such as iTunes, YouTube, Brightcove, Google Video (Source: textbook, pages 220, 519) respectively allow creation and sharing of audio and video content. And good business sense coupled with a careful understanding of the target audience will allow 'placing' this content so that it can be found easily. The breadcrumbs trail has to be laid, guiding people to the content. Just as videos can be 'hidden' by assigning cryptic titles and tags (Source: JCMC), the opposite is also true; clever and appropriate use of tags can help bring people to the content.

Individuals (comedians, artists, professors, etc.) are using these media and strategies to promote their ideas and products. We have one such example in our very own midst - if it hadn't been for Adriano's recent post, I might not have come across the very engaging trailer of Club Scene. And I admit that on various occasions I have 'youtubed' a comedian or artist whose show I'm contemplating watching, and it serves to either save me some precious (and very non-virtual) $$ or made me an eager audience.

There are also many such stories where businesses and organizations have used 'rich media' most effectively. An excellent example (also cited in our textbook, page 251), is of the uber-successful "Will it blend" video. The video itself has the key components of successful communication:

• focus on the key message (it is only about their product, the blender, and how well it does its job, addressing this very directly)
• effective communication through execution (using shock value, the surprise element, and humour/ entertainment to retain attention till the end... and it answers the 'will it blend' question too!)
  

What is also fascinating to note is that the company is further utilizing the social media power with things like building a 'fan club'! I have to admit this is one of the most effective viral videos I have seen, and I had encountered it earlier. However, for reasons that everyone in this course will understand, I am referencing another one that I like, one about the cat-herders:



Yes, I chose to mention this as it involves cats. Because the internet is made of cats. And according to Stephanie Bryant, "cat videos are just how people start doing videos online." (Source: Textbook, expert insight on vlogging, pg 247)
p.s. I think I just reconfirmed the phenomenon about creating exclusivity through references to inside jokes. (Source: JCMC)

So, clever use of audio-video content creation and sharing through social media can work, and it can work extremely well. There is a note of caution. And that relates to the double-edged sword of viral videos. Damaging videos can spread just as fast, as one company discovered. So the key to remember, I think, is not letting the excitement of taking advantage of the opportunity stand in the way of sound business decisions. It pays to hear and look carefully before one leaps.

Week 3 - Virtual Worlds and Gaming

My ex-colleague's 10-year old son had a "second life". He paid money to set up his virtual apartment with virtual furniture. His apartment got broken into, and the furniture was stolen. As far as I understood, none of the agreement types indicated in one of our readings applied to protect against this situation, or offered any corrective or punitive recourse. I didn't pursue the story further to learn whether any virtual private detective services were offered or acquired, or simply more furniture was purchased. It is likely that the poor (pun not intended) father had to come up with more money regardless. The son's virtual life (I would imagine) felt quite real to the father.

According to Virtual Economy, "[i]n the first quarter of 2009, the virtual world of Second Life saw $120 million USD exchanged through user-to-user transactions, with a record monthly $45 million USD in transactions in March." In the virtual gaming world, "U.S. revenues exceed[ed] $1 billion in 2006." (Source: Textbook, pg 326) Following the money, not only are companies - such as IBM, Coldwell Banker, Dell, Armani, Ben & Jerry's, BMW, CISCO, Coca-Cola, and Domino's Pizza - doing business in the virtual world, there are specialized firms helping them in this expansion. And as in the non-virtual life (I'll revisit later why I didn't say "real"), the Virtual Economy article notes that people are influenced by social interactions to buy things. This environment offers many opportunities for businesses and individuals. Somewhat akin to what happened when online stores hit the tipping point, for businesses there are now more places to sell more stuff to more / same / different people. And for individuals, new opportunities arose to earn a living in virtual worlds.

"[W]hether you are in the physical world or the virtual world, people look for the core fundamentals of government, law, and order." (Source: First Monday) The growing economic activity in virtual worlds has also generated money disputes, offering scenarios for law and order to be restored. This is apparent in the opening up of another market for the legal community: virtual law. And in the fact that governments across the world are looking at whether, where and how they need to intervene. Virtual businesses are being held accountable in China. There was a class action lawsuit filed against a leading MMOSG's creator - a privately held American Internet company. And Government of Canada's Office of the Privacy Commissioner is informing people about privacy in virtual worlds.

So the virtual world is as real as it gets (which is why I hesitate to say 'real' and 'virtual' as if they were mutually exclusive.) The life and activities undertaken in a virtual world affects people, relationships, safety, livelihood, money... every part of our non-virtual life. Nick Yee thinks that behaviours that participants adopt in virtual communities carry over into the non-virtual part of our world. (Source: Textbook, pg 331) It is important to recognize and understand the distinct behaviour that people exhibit in virtual worlds, just as it is business-critical to understand where consumers' and people's online activity exhibits somewhat different patterns from that off-line.

Hence, any business contemplating expanding (or entering) into the virtual worlds would need to undertake similar planning as when going into, for instance, another country with different laws, culture, and social / consumer behaviour than the one(s) to which they are accustomed. The key is understanding the unique characteristics of this new "land", devising a business strategy suited to it, and offering value that makes sense to this somewhat unique group of land-dwellers. In other words, everything they would do as part of sound business practice in the real world.

Week 2 - Social Networking: something old, something new, something borrowed...

Social networks are not new. 'People have used the idea of "social network" loosely for over a century to connote complex sets of relationships between members of social systems at all scales, from interpersonal to international.' (Source: Wikipedia) In his book "The Tipping Point", Malcolm Gladwell takes many examples from history, covering a variety of social phenomena, to identify the human interaction characteristics that can cause ideas and behavior and messages and products sometimes to become what he calls "social epidemics". Essentially, these epidemics relied on social networks to spread, and one central factor was the role of a few, influential people in propagating the message or idea. His book was published prior to the social networking sites becoming big in the mainstream (primarily in the 2000's per this JCMC article). So what, then, is new?

I would argue that it's the rate and magnitude of change, facilitated by the speed with which the message/ idea spreads through social networks online. One of the cases in Gladwell's book is of Paul Revere who in 1775 rode throughout the night to warn communities surrounding Boston of a potential attack, thereby enabling the local militia to be prepared and ward off the offence when it came. He would have saved a lot of time and reached an exponentially higher number of people, were tools like Twitter or Facebook available to him. By all accounts, it appears Mr. Revere would have had a fair number of 'followers' and 'friends'.

By using a wide variety of examples, Gladwell tries to uncover the anatomy and lifecycle of a social epidemic, with the objective that if this is a reliable, tested formula and predictable pattern, then positive, rapid social change (or "social epidemic") can be intentionally created. This is an important message for any organization at any time, but especially so now that there are powerful tools available that can accelerate the impact. There are many success stories, where organizations - public or private - have utilized the collective social capital to their advantage, a situation made possible through social media's immense reach in "enabling conversations." From Wikipedia to Kiva, the possibilities are endless.

However, big gains come with big risks. Embracing social change of this nature and scope takes courage. For instance, when GM invited site visitors to create Chevy Tahoe ads and publish on the GM site, many critical ads were created. GM retained those ads, and their company's credibility. And as a result of this decision (taken in consultation with Campbell-Ewald, the company handling Chevy's advertising since 1914), "for three weeks running, Chevyapprentice.com funneled more people to the Chevy site than either Google or Yahoo did. Once there, many requested info or left a cookie trail to dealers' sites." (Source: Wired.com) As one of Campbell-Ewald's top execs, Ed Dilworth, said, "You can either stay in the bunker, or you can jump out there and try to participate, [a]nd to not participate is criminal."

Such risk-taking is not limited to the entrepreneurial world; for instance, the US intelligence community has adopted social media. Its transformation - both technologically and philosophically - is worth studying (see Intellipedia's story or this article in ITWorld).

These are but a few instances. Examples abound on how to leverage social media technologies for organizational communication and effectiveness. The possibilities are only limited by one's creativity and the level of acceptable risk. What is needed, then, is to ask and answer this basic question: which conversation(s) does one want to enable?

Week 1 - Meet Social Media

I loved the line in our text book: social media is about enabling conversation (page 4). Web 2.0 technologies allow and support previously passive internet users to become active, real-time contributors to and participants of the web content. And this seemingly, deceptively simple change is altering the way we engage and interact with the world. This article about Canadian CIOs' testing of social networking begins with one such example. Another example is experiencing career simulations on the Ontario Public Service's Second Life presence. And if the virtual world is not the thing for some, there's always couchsurfing which claims to have enabled over 1.7 million successful surf or host experiences. If something is changing our world so significantly, it is at least worth understanding, if not utilizing to its maximum potential. That's one key reason in my opinion why social media is important.

Different social media skills are like tools in a craftsperson's box... it is critical to intimately understand the best and specific use(s) of each tool in order for the craftsperson to excel in their work. I'd like to learn about the various social media skills and their optimal uses, both current and emerging.

In the field of public policy, the relationship between the government and the governed (individuals, organizations, etc.) is being redefined and refined, and social media can play an integral role in facilitating this process. The increasing use of social media by politicians (e.g. David Miller on Twitter) as well as governments (e.g. the various uses listed on this US government site) is a great indicator of this critical potential of social media. I am deeply interested in this potential.