Logic+Emotion

When Ambient Intimacy Hits Home

If someone had told me that Megan Porter had been killed in a terrible car accident, I'm not sure that things would have connected for me. But as I got the news that it was @megapixel (her Twitter name), I knew immediately. Even brief exchanges like the one above about weather or a common favorite cocktail, (we both like dirty martinis) is memorable via Twitter's system of real time dynamic signals. Ambient Intimacy is a fascinating sociological phenomenon and in this case can be quite sad. I didn't know Megan, but felt like I knew something about @megapixel.

Anyway, my thoughts go out to her friends and family who may or may not realize that people outside of the state of Texas are noticing that she's gone. I'm sorry for your loss.

Debunking The Myths of Social Media

Moving forward I will be contributing to the Harvard Business Review when time permits. My first contribution is up, you can view the entire article here. Below in an excerpt:

"There are a few considerations every organization needs to consider when developing their blueprints for their own unique social media design. While there is no one-size-fits-all solution, there are few things you can plan for as you review the many options before you.

Here are three to consider:

Seeding. As you plan your approach for designing your social system, take into account that you'll have to invest to grow your effort into a healthy ecosystem that can produce data, insights or even new ideas. People will be required in order to do this.

Feeding. Whether it's a community, Wiki or internal collaboration solution you've put in place, it will have to be fed with a steady stream of content. Some of this can be automated and some of it can come from your participants--but there has to be some editorial judgment made for every piece of content and functionality. People are required for that.

Weeding. A productive social business design will require efforts to prune and weed out material that can inhibit its growth (just like a garden). In some cases, automated moderation services can do this--but in others people will be required to ensure that interactions are productive. Weeding can also include creating a separate environment--for example, Nokia's "blog hub" encourages employees to vent freely internally (using anonymous aliases).You can bet that someone is looking at the data and analyzing it. If not, they should be."

Special thanks to Dachis Group colleague Peter Kim for developing the above framework. A nice sticky way to remember how much effort is really required for any social business initiative. I've also used the garden analogy before:

"The word you need to hyperfocus on is cultivate. Think of how one cultivates a garden. It takes several factors:

1. Passion for gardening
2. Patience
3. Willingness to weed, prune, seed, and grow. All the hard work that comes with producing fruit
4. Appreciation for the fruits that have been yielded
5. A desire to share the fruits of your garden with your neighbors"

Hope you enjoy the read, and it helps you think about the big picture as we all move quickly through this space and begin cultivating healthy social systems. Also, if you have ideas to the types of topics you'd like to see me cover on the HBR, leave a comment.

Is The Hub And Spoke Model Adaptable?

We've been doing a bit of thinking on how organizations can re-design themselves as social systems which produce emergent outcomes—that is, results which move business forward and tend to emerge in an organic fashion. Twitter's growth due to end user innovation, an open API, and other drivers are an example of this. When I first wrote about Twitter in Businessweek back in 2007—I called it an "ecosystem"—that's because it is. It's a living, breathing organization with thousands of nodes in place which facilitate real time dynamic signals. In my new role, I was recently able to take a high level look at an organization and how they wanted to evolve their communications system. Essentially they had a "hub and spoke model" in place—but it was based on one way vs. two way communications. The next phase, included transforming this in to a more dynamic two way model. Which makes sense. But, I'd like to make the case that a hub and spoke alone—does not make for a connected ecosystem.

The Limitations Of Hub And Spoke
Jeremiah Owyang recently published a Forrester report which advocates a "hub and spoke" model for organizations who are serious about adopting social technologies. When compared to his other models (tire, and tower) it's definitely a step forward. Jeremiah describes the model as such:

"We believe the most sophisticated and efficient way is the Hub and Spoke, which provides centralized resources that can support business units.  The business units still have the freedom and flexibility to dialog with the market –and should be in alignment with what other spokes are doing.  Social doesn’t impact one department –but impacts marketing, pr, product, services, support, and development –every customer touchpoint."

So when comparing what Jeremiah proposes to the other models—I'd agree that it's the next iteration. But, I'd also ask if the hub and spoke model, even with cross disciplinary teams at the core could potentially create a bottleneck where signals no longer become dynamic and prohibits the creation of a network effect—built off multiple nodes both animate and inanimate. Consider the case study on American Airline's Web design failure as captured by Fast Company and Core 77:

"The biggest challenge to better design isn't getting better designers. The problem is organizational, and the hub-and-spoke decision-making process that was originally created to slash bureaucracy--that is, to create more decentralized decisions and less hierarchy. But the overriding weakness, which design thinking makes manifest, is that good design is necessarily the product of a heavily centralized structure. Great design at places such as Apple isn't about "empowering decision makers" or whatever that lame B-school buzzword is. It's about awarding massive power and self-determination to those with the most cohesive vision--that is, the designers. Those are the people with the best idea of what customers want. That's the essence of "design thinking." If you were to summarize just how ugly--and self-defeating--the alternative can be, AA's Web site would be a smoking gun."

Both Core 77 and Fast Company articles are worth reading as they highlight the issues many large organizations face when designing products and services—and the issues underscore why there are so few examples of truly great products and services that we celebrate. At the core, effective organizations have effective cultures and effective cultures which often display a collective "hivemindedness" begin with a healthy and connected ecosystem in place. 

An Adaptive Organization
While the hub and spoke model isn't necessarily the wrong model—it's worth asking if there are better models that can lead to an adaptive organization. At the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, I had a brief but excellent discussion with Deb Lavoy who works at Open Text and is thinking about issues such as collaboration and emergence within organizations. For some reason we both ended up talking about the U.S. military and how it's had to adapt it's own methods to deal with an enemy who operates more like a network with cells and a decentralized structure vs. a top down command and control model. While neither of us have the details, we both made the reasonable assumption that the U.S. military must be adapting their model very quickly to deal with new threats like this as they've shown progress. What's even more amazing is here's a huge organization that has traditional power structures and hierarchies in place which is unlikely to change. And while I'm not in the military, I've been told that the single most important skill to a soldier on the battlefield is their ability to adapt to current conditions.

Multiple Hubs, Connected Nodes

 
 
The backstory behind the above visual was that I wanted to visualize what it might look like if you took a single "hub and spoke" model and turned it into something that resembled more of a network. Essentially, hubs and spokes still exist, but multiple nodes are introduced which are connected to other nodes as well as hubs and even individual constituents. Constituents can be any participant in your ecosystem—the iteration means that they can be directly linked to a hub, but also connected to other parts of the ecosystem including other constituents who may be organized in different departments of the organization. Here is where a collective begins to form. At a micro-level, departments, customer segments, and local area networks remain.  At a macro-level, the network can be mapped to illustrate how the business functions as part of a system comprised of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of smaller ecosystems. Constituants can signal dynamically to each other or plug into a different node being exposed to many areas of the entire ecosystem. Communication becomes instant and real time as it often is in many networks (think status updates, streams etc—all forms of dynamic signals).

Yes, this is high level thinking. Yes, it's still the beginning—but we think the opportunities exist. In it's simplest form you have to ask yourself this question: If you are going outside the walls of your organization's ecosystem(s), sharing knowledge providing value and yes even innovating out in the open, then why are you (or your peers) still hoarding knowledge, emailing and working in silos within the walls of your organization? These are some the questions that social business design can begin to address, if we start the conversations at the right levels.

From Social Media To Social Business Design

We are now seeing conferences dedicated solely to Twitter—the latest was Jeff Pulver's 140Char held in NYC. Like many others who were not at the event, I was able to attend virtually through following tweets.  After a while I thought to myself—wait a minute, we're still just talking about "social media" in silos. What about the bigger picture? And what do you ask is the big picture?

Great question.

Let's start here, the term "social media" itself is indicative of the state of affairs. "Media" limits our view of the movement, and brings with it the baggage of decades of advertising. Marketers are only too happy to view the social web as a new array of channels to market their goods in some shape or fashion. That's because it's a model they've used since the beginning. And there's no doubt that "social media" has become effective as a communications channel. Take GM for example, they've got a presence on Twitter, and in fact were one of the early examples of corporate blogging. They've "joined the conversation" so to speak with several of their executives actively contributing and talking to people in the open. But with hindsight being 20/20, what GM didn't have was a business model (or culture) that could adapt quickly in a rapidly changing environment. So, while it's great for a large organization to be tweeting, blogging and conversing their way into Web 2.0 nirvana—it's also worth noting that no amount of "media" social or otherwise will turn around an organization in need of reinvention. That's the big picture at the end of the day.

Enter Social Business Design 
Imagine if a company like GM, was at the core "social". Not just participating in "social media"—but through every part of their business ecosystem, were connected—plugged into a collective consciousness made up of ALL their constituents, from employees to consumers to dealers, to assembly line works etc. What if big organizations worked the way individuals now do. We're actively using cloud services, mobile, networks and applications that offer real time dynamic signals vs. inefficient and static e-mail exchanges. In short, imagine if what makes "Web.2.0" revolutionary was applied to every facet of an organization transforming how we work, collaborate and communicate? We think this is possible. And we're calling it "social business design". In its purest form, it's a shift in thinking—less about media and more about tapping the benefits of being a social business in a purposeful way.

While I can't go into the full vision of what we're thinking about yet—we're realizing that the bigger picture goes beyond how you can be a great tweeter, blogger or social media evangelist for your organization. It's time to think beyond marketing and building personal brands and time to think about how participation through social technologies can lead to emergent outcomes for any organization. Can "social media" save GM? It's unlikely that media can save any organization grappling with changes in their business environment.  But what if organizations of that size were able to act preemptively before market conditions forced them into similar predicaments? Same could be said for the music industry, they saw change coming, but for whatever reason never made the transformation, even though it was becoming clear that consumer behavior had evolved. Media has never solved these types of business challenges so why would "social media" be any different?

Life After Social Media: Four Core Archetypes
In the diagram above, you might notice the four archetypes we've been thinking about for a while (for more detail, read colleague Jevon MacDonald's post). We believe they represent the four characteristics that every social business will contain. They are: Ecosystem, Hivemind, Dynamic Signal, and Metafilter. Simply put, it's time to think about the big picture and the strategies that drive social technology as opposed to the other way around. This includes how a company's (insert social initiatives) play a role in their entire ecosystem—and this will take our discussions from "conversation" to "transformation".

Enterprise 2.0 And Beyond
We are currently working on rolling out a set of offerings to help businesses understand and apply these constructs to achieve leveraged and emergent outcomes that are measurable. If you want to find out more about this in the near future, visit our temporary site and submit your info. Our team will also be present at the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston next week. We'll be live streaming some of the content from that event. I'm looking forward to getting to know this crowd better—it's not the typical marketing bent. While I'm sure there will be a lot of talk about Twitter, I'm hoping the discussion will move beyond this or any other tool. If the big picture is business transformation, it's going to take more than a few tweets to get there.

For related thoughts from the folks I'm working with, see Peter Kim, Jevon MacDonald, and Kate Niederhoffer. And if you're going to E2.0, please say hello.

The Risks And Rewards of Backing A Good Cause

Here's the video from my talk at Federated Media's 2009 CM Summit. The format was to deliver a case study in approximately 15 minutes, and I couldn't think of a better one to share then our experience with our own personal situation regarding Daniela's family. I had hoped to share not only the parts that pleasantly surprised us, but also the things I learned from it. Interestingly there is also a bit of relevance to some of the dynamics we are thinking about at Dachis Corporation. Hopefully, the content in the case study is helpful to you.

People, Places + Events

Enterprise 2.0, Boston: 6.23-625
Next week I'm off to the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston with my comrades in arms Jeff Dachis, Peter Kim, Kate Niederhoffer, Jevon MacDonald, and Ellen Reynolds.

Dachis Corporation will be present and active. Kate Niederhoffer will be moderating a panel called "Metrics in the Hands of Users: Empowering the Enterprise 2.0 Workforce."  Peter Kim is  moderating two panels, "Lessons Learned From Internal Communities" (#llic) and "Does Social Media and Marketing Matter?" (#e2smm). Like any conference with the phrase 2.0 in it—there will be a "tweet-up", a meeting of the twitter kind. And we will be hosting it. Want to come? RSVP right here:

Boston has plenty of stars to network with while you're in town, like Laura Fitton, Todd Defren, Ann Handley, Chris Brogan, Christine Major, Jeff Cutler, Steve Garfield, Bob Collins, Susan Koutalakis, Alexis Karlin, Doug Haslam, Rachel Happe, Ilya Vedrashko. Many of them will be out this week.

Social Fresh, Charlotte: 8.24
I'll be keynoting the Social Fresh conference in August and really looking forward to it. Venues like this always hold a lot of promise and there are some great speakers there including:

• Ryan Boyles, Community Manager for IBM’s Project Zero
• Jocelyn de Almeida, Senior Territory Manager for MySpace
• Craig Coblenz of Facebook
• Spike Jones of Brains on Fire
• Olivier Blanchard of Brand Builder Marketing
• Corvida of Shegeeks.net, Mr. Tweet, and one of The Most Influential Women in Technology.
• Adam Covati, founder of idek.net url shortener and pici.me, a twitter photo booth for events
• Alexander Barbara,  founder of EasyTweets
• Tessa Horehled, Strategic Marketer at Drive A Faster Car LLC
• Jim Deitzel of Rubbermaid
• Keith Burtis of Best Buy
• Social Media evangelist Wayne Sutton,

If you are going to be at either of these events, please introduce yourself and say hello. I don't bite—hard. :-)

Is It Who You Know or What They Know?

Update:
Aaron Brazell at Technosailor wrote a response shortly after this post. It occurred to me that writing this in a nuanced fashion, has possibly dilluted my intent. I personally feel that "networking" has taken priority over substance and that the balance needs to be restored. So in short, "who you know" has become more important that "what you know" and this isn't necessarily a good thing. Hopefully, this clarifies my intent. 

When I first started this blog in February of 2006, I immediately sensed that things had changed forever. More specifically, as my early diagram shows, knowledge was being set free. Anyone could have a voice—participate and offer value. On the social web, value exchange is everything, you bring something of value to the table and everyone benefits—including yourself. In short, the social web empowers all of us to be amplified versions of ourselves. We can bypass the gatekeepers who once held control over who got to have a say, and who didn't.

Or can we?

If you look really closely at the small pond of folks who make their living in "social media" or "web 2.0" related practices, you'll notice something. You'll need the endorsement of a Guy Kawasaki, Seth Godin or Tim O'Reilly to be taken very seriously. The events that pop up are frequented by most of the same people—all of who know each other, many who are friends. One person sponsors an event, invites friends to speak—and those friends return the favor. And of course when it comes to events, anyone can buy their way in. You just have to be a sponsor. None of this is bad, it's kind of how it's always been.

But is it really about what you know, or who you know?

I suspect that it's both actually, though at this moment in time—who you know is more important than ever. Since the web has gone social, it makes sense as advancements in technology have allowed us to put a face to people, and relate to them in a more human way. And that's actually how it's always been. Relationships led to sales, closed deals—we bought stuff from the people we trusted. In some ways, what's old is new again. 

But I hope, it's not just about who you know.

Because there's something to be said for those out there, who perhaps aren't as adept at "networking"—but have a lot of insight to offer. They might not be uber visable, they might not have written book. They might not have have been responsible for the latest corporate case study. They may not even be founders of the next Twitter. But they could have something to offer. In that case, it's up to all of us to find them. Perhaps take a look at something like the Power 150 and start the list backwards (or maybe get out of the marketing echo chamber all together).  If you yourself have become the new breed of "gatekeeper"—ask yourself "is it who I know, or what they know?". Ideally, its both—but up to us individually to strike the right balance.

Ignore Everybody

Yes, there is a downside to the social web. Colleague Peter Kim calls it the echo chamber. I call it lack of original thought. The upside is that the level playing field of the internet also allows original thinkers to rise to the surface like the head of a frothy refreshing beer. I simply adore Hugh Macleod’s (Gapingvoid) first book, Ignore Everybody. The title says it all. You have to decide if what you believe in is good enough to fight for, to pursue, to risk everything for. Only you can decide this.

Ignore Everybody is designed thoughtfully—perfect for a plane ride of a couple of hours, visual and ridiculously easy to digest.  It’s also written in Hugh’s trademark naked honesty and cut the bullshit language. And of course it features dozens of his instantly recognizable cartoons. Each one will make you think—each one will make you question your own experiences. If you let them.

 The book is based around 40 super short chapters—it’s essentially a lengthy manifesto.

Rather than list them, I’m going to pull out a few phrases from the book that stop you in your tracks. The book is full of them.



“Good ideas come with a heavy burden; which is why so few people execute them. Few people can handle it.“



“The sovereignty you have over your work will inspire far more people than the actual content ever will”



“The first rule of business, is never sell something you love. Otherwise you may as well be selling your children”



“Stop worrying about the technology. Start worrying about the people who trust you”



“No one person can be good at everything. The really good artists, the really successful entrepreneurs figure out how to circumvent their limitations”. 



You get the idea. There’s a lot of business books out there right now telling you how to blog, tweet, build communities and personal brands. Here’s my advice to you—go against the grain and pick up this little treasure first. You’ll be glad you did. 


Should Your Social Media Lead Eat Their Own Dogfood?

In the past few months I've noticed a trend. Organizations of all shapes and sizes are appointing people into "social media" positions. From VP's of Social Media, to Social Media editors, etc. It's indicative of the fact that businesses are taking the space very seriously and making investments to grow capabilities.  But if you dig a little, you'll often times find that some (not all) of the people placed in these positions have very small "footprints" in the space. A recently created Twitter profile with a very short history, a presence on Facebook that looks like an unfurnished apartment, no blog to speak of. You get the point. And it's got me thinking. Should the people who lead the charge within your organization be active participants in the medium? Does it really matter?

Recently I spoke at and attended the Conversational Media Summit in NYC. It was an excellent event. And I noticed something very interesting on Day 2. Marcy Schinder, who did a very nice job presenting a case study for the AMEX Open Forum initiative began to individually engage people on Twitter who mentioned her. Then she went further and followed up with people she had met in person, with a short note through the service. Very personal, very effective—a great example of micro-interactions.

But why did I take notice? Because I look for signs of credibility with any representative doing work in the space. Often times the first thing I'll do is Google their name to see what they've done. Marcy shortcircuted all of that, her direct engagement with people using social technology told me more about herself than even a Google result would have produced. Within seconds, I made a snap judgement of credibility.

I'll put a stake in the ground on where I fall on this issue. It's not critical to be a fully engaged active participant before you accept the responsobilities of leading social initiatives, but once you begin, you'd better show an intimate grasp of the space. Because, we're all out there—Googling, Digging, looking for signs that you know what you're talking about. Take a page out of Marcy's book if you are in one of these roles. Engage people in relevant, meaningful ways and add a few notches of credibility to your belt. If you've got an opinion on this, participate in the poll above and/or leave a comment. Would love to hear your thoughts.

Lessons Learned Selling on the iPhone App Store

With Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference coming up on June 8-9, it's time to check in with L+E's favorite iPhone App developer, Roger von Oech. Roger is the author of the creativity classic A Whack on the Side of the Head, and the inventor of the Ball of Whacks and the X-Ball.

Earlier this year, Roger turned his Creative Whack Pack card deck into an iPhone App called the Creative Whack Pack. Roger refers to it as "the App's store's premier creative thinking/innovation tool." I did several posts on it the week it launched in March.

DA: So what's happened with the Creative Whack Pack app since you launched it in mid-March?

RvO: I've learned that visibility is everything at the App Store — there are 30,000+ apps all competing for attention but only a few get noticed; the rest get buried. Selling an app is like having a booth at a huge bazaar. You probably won't get noticed unless you're near one of the entrances or on a corner.

DA: How did you get visibility for the Creative Whack Pack?

RvO: The blogging community was vital in my launch. I've been blogging since 2006, and I was able to turn to a number of fellow bloggers for help in promoting the Whack Pack and get the word out.

You were kind enough to post about it. Chuck Frey of Innovation Tools did an in-depth review. Guy Kawasaki tweeted about on Twitter. Robert Scoble had me on his TV show for forty-five minutes. Mark McGuiness and Paul Williams did interviews with me.

These posts led to about twenty-five other posts about the product and generated a lot of good word of mouth. I worked hard at this, but I felt that this was a better strategy than buying ads or relying on iPhone review sites. I'm really grateful to the bloggers who supported my marketing efforts.

DA: What did that do for product sales?

RvO: It helped enormously. Within several weeks, the Creative Whack Pack rose to the Top Ten of the Business category. This was crucial. Far and away the best exposure you can get for your app is on the App Store itself. There are a limited number of places where apps are high-lighted on the store: "New and Noteworthy," "What's Hot," and "Staff Favorites." Each of these has room for only 32 Apps.

The only other place for visibility is the Top 100 of your category, e.g., Games, Lifestyle, Sports, Utilities, etc. One media firm has said that there's "an order of magnitude" difference between being on the Top 100 and being buried further down. And obviously being higher up, i.e., in the top 20 or top 10, is better.

DA: What happened then?

RvO: At this point I get very, very lucky. I was ranked #6 in Business. This got me enough attention for Apple to place the Creative Whack Pack on the front page of their "What's Hot" listing. Most of their selections are games, but the Creative Whack Pack is different enough that I guess they wanted to add some variety.

Basically, the "What's Hot" section is four pages of 8 App icons each. If you're selected, you spend one week on page one, one week on page two, and so on. The impact was immediate: sales jumped to a thousand units a day for the first days and then slowly declined over the four weeks I was there.

The best part was that the Creative Whack Pack was ranked #1 in the Business category for two weeks.

DA: What happened after your app went off the "What's Hot" list?

RvO: This is when I learned  some important lessons about price sensitivity on the App Store. "How much should I charge for my app?" is one of the biggest questions developers have, and I'm not sure there's any one right answer. I will, though, share my experience.

For the first two months, I charged $4.99. I thought this was a fair price because I had a similar product in the real world — the Creative Whack Pack card deck — that sold for $16. I was able to get away with this price because my early traffic consisted mainly of blog referrals, and these people were positively predisposed to the Whack Pack and thus prepared to pay a premium.

When I was on "What's Hot," I was able to keep my price at $4.99, again because Apple said this was a good product.

But after I went off "What's Hot," sales dropped significantly, and the Whack Pack fell to #10 in Business. I quickly realized that without a lot of blog referrals (these were all a month in the past and we all know how ephemeral the blogosphere is), I could no longer command a premium price.

At this point I cut the price to $2.99 (which is where it is now), and my unit sales immediately went back up. I decided that it was better to have more units sales (although with a smaller margin). I was getting an instant lesson in pricing!

DA: What does this tell you about price sensitivity on the App Store?

RvO: I think the App Store is quite price sensitive. I think that's why so many apps are free or $0.99. A lot of people just want to play with an app for five minutes or so a few times and then move on. You've got to have a pretty compelling reason to get them to spend more money.

I'd be curious to see what your readers think about pricing on the App Store.

DA: What advice would you give to someone who is thinking about creating an App for the iPhone App Store?

RvO: I've had a number of people ask me for my advice to help them turn their "winning ideas" into an iPhone App.

The most important thing (from my point of view) is: Don't do it for the money. I think you need to be clear on what your motives are for creating your app. If getting rich is at the top of your list, then you're setting yourself up for a big disappointment.

A lot of people are jumping in because creating an App Store for the iPhone is the "Gold Rush of 2009." I don't have any Apple inside information, but my gut tells me that over 90% of apps that go on sale in the App Store don't make back the money it cost to produce them. I see a lot of Apps "newly released" each day, but few of them show up in the "Top 100" of their category.

These were my motives for creating my App (in descending order):

1. I wanted to learn something.
2. I wanted to put my creativity ideas in a new medium.
3. I wanted to have fun.
4. I wanted to make some money (if possible).

All of these happened for me, but I'm not so sure this would have been the case if I had these motives in the reverse order initially.

DA: What's next for the Creative Whack Pack?

RvO: I've just released Version 2.0 this past weekend. The big new feature is "Note-Taking Creative Workshops." In my years as a creativity consultant, I've found that when attendees write down their ideas and answers to prompts and questions, their inspiration increases an order of magnitude. The result: note-taking leads to more productive creative sessions!

I hope to keep listening to my customers, and add some of their suggestions to future releases.

DA: Thanks for your time Roger. Good luck with the product.

RvO:  Thank you, David. Let me just add that selling on the App Store has been quite an interesting experience. I recommend it to anyone willing to pursue it!