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Social Media Practitioners of Minnesota

Posted by doug
at July 7, 2008

Last month, Jeremiah Owyang created an ongoing list of Social Computing Strategists, Community Managers, and Social Media Researchers in the Enterprise. The extensive list Jeremiah put together helps to bring structure to an evolving work force that so many companies define differently. Do these positions fall under strategy, product management, PR, marketing, interactive? In May, I helped co-produce the event DualityReality - Who Controls Social Media in the Enterprise here in Minneapolis. The event was the largest weekly event hosted by MIMA - a co-production of Social Media Club of Minnesota. I believe the large turnout was due to the simple question of “where is this all going “especially with large enterprises in Minnesota. General Mills, Target, Fingerhut, and BestBuy were part of the panel. I tried to recruit Scott Heimes from United Health Group and Scott Mark from Medtronic. Both were interested by had to drop out due to internal commitments.

So what about here in Minnesota? Who are some of the social media practitioners in large enterprises? I would like to add more to this list as people submit their comments.

Social Media Strategist:

Community Managers:

Social Media Researchers and Social Media Product Managers

As you can see, many of the titles come from disparate areas. Each company approaches SM differently which is the reason there should be an internal panel developed within large enterprises that discuss the approach, results, and alignment of social media within such massive organizations.

Definitions of these three groups from Jeremiah:

Social Media Strategist:

“Social Media Strategist, whose job is to lead the internal charge, develops the program, gains resources, convinces management, and measures success.”

Community Managers:

“The Community Manager, who’s job is to primarily be a community advocate is a social media user, and is externally focused, they are primarily the face to the online community. Primarily an externally (customer/community) facing role.”

Social Media Researchers and Social Media Product Managers:

“Analyzing online behavior or creating specs for future products. Expect large enterprise software companies to offer these features in their product suites in the coming future. Researching or building social media products that will be brought to market.”

Minneapolis, Social Media Club
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Minnesota Digital Communities

Posted by doug
at July 7, 2008

Minnesota is full of individuals and groups who are highly fluent in the conversation of community. When I had the idea a while back to start a chapter of The Social Media Club in the Twin Cities, many thought it was a crowded field. From the list below, you can see the numerous groups located here (MIMA being the largest at 900 members). So why Social Media Club? To connect our local conversations from all the below organizations with the other SMC chapters in the US including SFO, Boston, Austin, and DC.

The idea of Social Media Club is to have smaller round table discussions on the future of social media and how it relates to our world, business, or organization.

Leadership, Link Out, Quotes
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del.icio.us bookmarks for June 16th through July 2nd

Posted by doug
at July 3, 2008

These are my links for May 16th through July 2nd:

Link Out
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Arbeiten und Lieben and the Cloud

Posted by doug
at April 29, 2008

Work, love, and the cloud. Sounds like a bad 80’s Tom Hanks movie. Arbeiten and lieben comes from Freud and was mentioned in a recent Economist article entitled “Nomads at Last” describing some of the sociological changes taking place within our society through the abundance of technology and connectivity. Before we had the technology tools, but some of the ingredients were missing in the recipe including ubiquitous (l like that word) Internet service to mobile devices, phones, and computers. Recently the FCC auctioned some of the most important pieces of the sky to AT&T. The spectrum was the old UHF airwaves that we watched our 6 channels of TV on during the 70’s and early 80’s. This type of spectrum is essential in today’s fuel mixture to make the engine run. For example, the Kindle device from Amazon allows you to order books without a wired connection making book purchasing very simple. Even better, before you board an airline, just download a few books and check all your bags (if you trust your airline with them), and carry on the Kindle. Paul Saffo in the Economist article compared the elimination of cords and cables to the astronaut and the hermit crab.

Astronauts must bring what they need, including oxygen, because they cannot rely on their environment to provide it. They are both defined and limited by their gear and supplies. Around the turn of the century, as some astronauts, typically executive road warriors, got smarter about packing light, says Mr Saffo, they graduated to an intermediate stage, becoming hermit crabs. These are crustaceans that survive by dragging around a cast-off mollusc shell for protection and shelter. In the metaphorical sense, the shell might be a “carry-on” bag on wheels, stuffed full of cables, discs, dongles, batteries, plugs and paper documents (just in case of disc failure). These hermit crabs strike fear into the hearts of seated airline passengers whenever they board, because their shells invariably bang into innocent shins all the way to their seat. They carry less than astronauts-and are thus more mobile-but are still quite heavily laden with gear, mostly as a safeguard against disasters.

OK now that we can all connect with these devices seamlessly and without all the cables and cords using smaller computing machines like the Mac Air , the AsusEEE or the new Dell Vostro Machine , our computers become low power, highly portable terminals that connect us to our data living on the Internet rather than on our devices.

Cloud computing by definition is not new for most enterprises and large organizations. Employees connect to Intranet services using Oracle, BEA , or Microsoft tools that allows them to share data, see directories, coordinate teams and projects, and view shared calendars. The shift that we will see out there is not changes by large companies moving to the cloud, it is with mid-sized businesses, small companies, organizations, and families who are all becoming more nomadic and connected with small, always on machines. Why buy desktop software to manage your communications when you can do it for free with close to free tools. Working within these tools also helps users to connect socially (Google Sites - WIKI or Docs with comments). There is always the argument of security and supplying all your data to one provider is not wise. I guess that is why we place money in banks.

Last year I moved my personal domain to GoogleApps and got my wife to use the gmail tools to manage her mail and calendar. She indicated computing off of Google rather than on local software was a huge improvement. Next steps is the transition to GoogleDocs rather than Word. This may take a while since it requires a mental shift and discards old embedded ways of productivity.

Many older people will strain to recognize themselves in the behavior patterns described in this report, and indeed may never adopt them. But the lesson of history is that what the geeks and early adopters do today, the rest of us will probably end up doing tomorrow or the day after. It is the pioneers that set the direction; the mainstream will follow in time.

Modern nomads carry almost no paper because they access their documents on their laptop computers, mobile phones or online. Increasingly, they don’t even bring laptops. Many engineers at Google, the leading internet company and a magnet for nomads, travel with only a BlackBerry, iPhone or other “smart phone”. If ever the need arises for a large keyboard and some earnest typing, they sit down in front of the nearest available computer anywhere in the world, open its web browser and access all their documents online.

Once the new iPhone comes out in June, business users will connect to their GoogleApps and Exchange Services and many will leave their Blackberry’s behind. Why? The Internet experience on the iPhone is just more enjoyable and visual. Apple shows again that design fuels innovation and adoption. 2 years from now I wonder if the number of adopters of the iPhone, if opened up to all networks besides AT&T, will match the same numbers of PC vs Apple users in the marketplace. Will PC users cling to Blackberrys? The interesting part of the future adoption of cell phone services is it is not limited to first world countries. According to the Economist, half the world’s population now subscribes to a mobile phone service. My seven year old son asked yesterday at what age he would be allowed to buy one. Here it comes.<

Leadership
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del.icio.us bookmarks for April 16th through April 21st

Posted by doug
at April 22, 2008

These are my links for April 16th through April 21st:

Link Out
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Who Controls Social Media in Your Company?

Posted by doug
at April 17, 2008

Marketing, Interactive, Product Management, Strategy, Legal, PR, IT, outside vendors, consultants, and advertising agencies? All are groups who have a say in the struggle many large organizations are experiencing regarding control over social media. Forces are oftentimes at odds with each other due to top down control and bottom up innovation. (”Purists and Corporatists “) Is there an internal panel of individuals within the organization who collaborate on social media initiatives in order to create synergy and reduce overlap? If so, what organization leads this panel? Has your organization created a senior management position for social media strategy and services? Example Ed Terpening VP, Social Media, Wells Fargo . What kind of support do these types of technologies have at the C Level within your organization? Do you have an internal social media evangelist who works as the community manager within the organization to educate, train, and evaluate technologies and results? What kind of criteria do you use to hire these types of individuals who are hard to find? Do you find conflict from top down structure and bottom up innovation internally regarding social media deployments? How are the conflicts overcome? I would enjoy your feedback.

social media
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