Category: Conferences

Mass Media, Social Media and an Elf Who Got Too Jolly

When I spoke to the Ragan workshop with Shel Holtz yesterday, one of my points was how blogs and social media sites like YouTube work together with the mainstream media. Many times the fact that a story is mentioned in the mass media is what leads to it getting lots of hits on the Web. This message I got Thursday from Cindy at LifeSource, where I recently did a SMUG extension class, is a case in point:

Thank you for coming to LifeSource last week! Your talk was very interesting. I wanted to share with you something that happened to my husband this week regarding “social media” Curt is a sergeant with the MN State Patrol. A few years ago he arrested an elf…yes an elf….and the arrest made it on “You Tube” (you can find it under elf arrest). Two nights ago our phone started ringing off the hook at 11 p.m. and our friends and family said turn Jay Leno on, Curt is on the show! Well we missed it but Jay played his video! We were able to see the Leno show last night on the website and also looked at the You Tube video which went from a couple of hundred hits to over 58,000! Anyways…I thought you would appreciate that story. Have a great week! – Cindy

Here’s the “elf arrest” video that caught Jay Leno’s attention:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3yhiXlNRjU]

This is one of the points I often stress, but perhaps not as frequently as I should. Social media and mass media work together, and often the biggest impact from social media comes when it is noticed by someone in the mainstream media.

A Class Organization

Yesterday I had the pleasure of presenting a case study for a two-day workshop on social media for corporations that Shel Holtz was doing on behalf of Ragan Communications. Minneapolis was the second stop on Shel’s six-city tour, and he asked me to share what we’ve been doing with social media at Mayo Clinic. I’ll upload my slides a bit later, but for now just want to share a good turn done by the hotel at which the event was held, the Depot Minneapolis, a Renaissance Hotel.

When I arrived home last night, my MacBook Pro power cord was missing. So I quickly sent a message to Shel through LinkedIn, asking if he had noticed that I had left it in the meeting room. (Meanwhile, it was another reason I was glad I had bought my wife a MacBook, so I could use her cord.) A couple of hours later, when Shel landed in Little Rock, he sent word via his mobile device that he had found my cord and left it at the hotel’s front desk, and that I should contact the hotel so they could send it to me. I live 100 miles from Minneapolis.

What a relief…made possible by a social networking site and mobile e-mail technology!

When I called the Depot this morning, the front desk attendant asked for my name and confirmed that he had the cord. When I asked if he could send it, and said I would give a credit card to pay the cost, he put me on hold for a few seconds and came back to say they would mail it to me and that there wouldn’t be any charge.

Thanks to the Depot for its good turn…which deserves another…so I just want people to know about a good hotel in Minneapolis.

Stephen Covey’s Mayo Clinic Lecture

The Donald C. Ozmun and Donald B. Ozmun and Family Lecture brings prominent academic and business leaders to Mayo Clinic to discuss management issues of interest to employees. This afternoon, Stephen Covey, Ph.D., presented “The Eighth Habit: from Effectiveness to Greatness.”

Dr. Covey (here is his blog) gave the address live from our Arizona campus, with videoconferencing to Jacksonville, Fla. and Rochester, Minn. Here are some of the highlights:

Covey says empowering shared mission statements are produced when:

  • There are enough people
  • who are fully informed
  • and are interacting freely and synergistically
  • in an environment of high trust

Covey says this Principle-Centered DNA is gradually overlaid by Cultural DNA (that is individualistic and comparison-based) in most people and organizations. He says the strength of Mayo Clinic is that it is peeling back the Cultural DNA to get at the underlying Principle-Centered roots.

Continue reading “Stephen Covey’s Mayo Clinic Lecture”

Charlene Li Forrester Web 2.0 Presentation

I had the pleasure yesterday of presenting at a Web 2.0 Summit sponsored by Kaiser Permanente. Our panel was moderated by Ted Eytan, M.D., who also presented on his blogging experience from the last four years as part of Kaiser’s sister (or cousin, or some other relation I don’t completely understand) organization, Group Health. He’s an interesting guy who also has a passion for LEAN in Health Care, which is the topic of the other blog on which he is a collaborator. I also got to meet and hear Tim Collins from Wells Fargo, whose company has official blogs that include Guided by History, The Student LoanDown and one that supports Stagecoach Island, its virtual world. TIm says Wells Fargo was the first big brand in Second Life, but that they got out just as many others were starting to get in. Now they have a world of their own.

Charlene Li from Forrester Research opened the Summit with an overview of Web 2.0. She’s also the co-author of Groundswell, a book I just bought at Audible.com (It’s also here on Amazon, and I’ll be reviewing it after I listen to it over the next few days). Before her presentation, we got to talk about our experience with audio books, and I recommended some from Patrick Lencioni that I think most people in business would find extremely helpful (and which I have reviewed on this blog): The Five Dysfunctions of a Team and Silos, Politics and Turf Wars. (I thought I had reviewed Death by Meeting, too…but I guess that’s on my to-do list.)

I’ll have my full review of Groundswell, but meanwhile here are some of the high points and recommendations from Charlene’s presentation:

Focus on the relationships, not the technologies. At Forrester, they have developed a four-step process using the acronym POST. You should consider:

  • People – for those you want to reach and with whom you want to interact, consider their characteristics and what kinds of social media involvement they have already. Getting seniors into a 3D virtual world may be a mismatch, unless the group you’re targeting is retired Microsoft or IBM engineers.
  • Objectives – Decide what you want to accomplish
  • Strategy – Plan for how relationships with customers will change
  • Technology – Decide which social technologies to use

Charlene’s blog has a fuller discussion of POST, and I’m sure Groundswell will be even more detailed.

Part of analyzing People is determining where they are on the Ladder of Participation.

Charlene had a lot of other great material in her presentation, but she closed with some Keys to Success:

  1. Start with Your Customers.
  2. Choose Objectives You Can Measure
  3. LIne Up Executive Backing
  4. Romance the Naysayers
  5. Start Small, but Think Big

I particularly like that last point, because it fits with the SMUG (It’s all Free) philosophy. It’s possible to start small because the barriers to entry are practically non-existent, but you should plan for success to that you can scale up as necessary.

For example, you can start a blog hosted on WordPress.com and map to a domain or subdomain of your choosing for $10-$20 (and can extensively customize your look and feel for another $15). Later, if your blog is successful and you decide you want to host it elsewhere to allow more use of Flash and embedded widgets, you can just download and install WordPress from WordPress.org and re-map the domain, and you won’t lose any of your links. I’ll have more on that as I build out the Blogging curriculum.

Tax Time and Weekend SMUG Class Readings

One of the nice simplifying factors about running a tuition-free online university is that you don’t need to fill out a request for 501(c)(3) status or other federal tax-related forms. With no revenue, the Internal Revenue Service isn’t interested in us. We can focus on our non-profit educational mission.

Alas, the IRS has not shown the same disinterest in my personal life, so in addition to attending some of my daughter’s basketball and volleyball games this weekend, I’ll also be doing this:

So while I’m meeting my obligations to the U.S. Treasury and the State of Minnesota, it’s a good opportunity for you to catch up on some SMUG homework and extra-credit readings:

First, here are the most recent SMUG class offerings, in the Podcasting track

During the past week your Chancellor was continuing his education (and hopefully helped some others with theirs) at the Bulldog Reporter Media Relations Summit 2008 in San Francisco. Here are some of those highlights, and while they don’t involve direct homework assignments, you will find them helpful for your capstone project:

I’ll also maybe let you know how long TurboTax took. Of course no self-respecting do-it-yourself on-line Chancellor would do anything but electronic filing. I’ve used TurboTax before (though usually not this close to the deadline), and I like how it carries forward my information from year to year. Hopefully its servers won’t be slammed by fellow procrastinators.