Shel Holtz Ragan Presentation: What’s Next?

I’ve known Shel for several years, and I try to keep in touch via Twitter, his RSS feed and listening to his For Immediate Release podcast (with his sidekick Neville Hobson.) Still, it’s been a couple of years since I’ve heard him present, and this talk at the Ragan conference with SAS was really interesting and helpful.

As I sit in the Charlotte airport, loving the free wi-fi, I’m taking the opportunity to clean up my liveblogging post from his talk, and to add some links to the sites he mentioned.

The title of the presentation was, “What’s Next?” and he had ten key trends he saw as important. I missed #9, so if anyone else (or even Shel) can fill in the missing info, I would appreciate it. But before I get into those trends here were a few of Shel’s observations.

Shel says the high-end webcast is going the way of the DoDo, because now anyone can do a webcast using Qik or Ustream.tv.

Seesmic – lets you record videos at your Webcam. Put video up instead. Twitter for video. And WordPress now has a plug-in that lets people comment on your posts via Seesmic.

Integrated social networks. Websites, networks merge. Conversation with customers becomes part of the online presence.

Fastcompany.com has redesigned its Web site extensively to incorporate conversation. All of the content except one cover story is contributed by the community.

Tulane University is using LiveWorld.

Google Open Social will enable you to turn your Website into a social network, just by copying some code.

Shel says Web 3.0 involves these key trends:

Trend #1: Ubiquitous connectivity

  • Broadband
  • Wireless
  • Mobile computing – get to the Web anywhere you have a phone signal. Very few organizations have mobile phone strategies; they (we) really should.

Trend #2: Network computing. Web services, cloud computing, grid computing, distributed computing

Shel uses Live Mesh. I like Dropbox. Google has a video service just for corporations, available only to employees. Videos are hosted outside the firewall. Company IT departments will need to get comfortable with software as service like this. Shel uses Google Docs to develop and store his documents. He mentioned Yammer, too.

Trend #3: Open technologies – APIs and protocols, software, data. This is a huge trend. Why spend a half million dollars on a CMS when you can download a free open source package that is just as powerful, and pay someone $10K a year for support?

Trend #4: Open Identity – Open ID, Open reputation, Open portable identity

Business world doesn’t like this because companies want to gather your info.

Trend #5: The intelligent web. Use Pandora, for instance. It looks at music you like and finds similar songs that are what you’ll like. Recommendation agent. Natural language search instead of keywords. Semantic Web. Check out Twine.

Trend #6: Distributed Databases

Trend #7: Technology Populism: Tech has gotten so easy that you don’t need an IT person to help you implement it. That’s really one of the main ideas behind SMUG. “It’s Not That Hard.”

Trend #8: The information workplace. Getting people whatever information they need when they need it.

Prologue is a WordPress Theme that can be added to a blog you have behind the firewall.

TownSquare is a plug-in for Microsoft SharePoint that adds functionality like Facebook. Not available yet.

As Shel mentioned, FriendFeed is a great way to pull together information.

Yahoo Pipes is a really interesting service and Shel showed a video that demonstrates it. Here it is:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d3h6ROs__II]

Gotta play with that.

Trend #9: (Updated) Aggregation–Friendfeed, Dubpages, Google Reader, Yahoo Pipes (mashup feeds), Feedburner – (Thanks to sktuttle for providing in the comments.)

Trend #10: Widgets will also increase in importance for distributing your content.

Comcastcares uses search.twitter.com to do customer support. Symantec has a fan page on Facebook.

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30 Ideas in 30 Minutes: My Ragan Panel Contributions

I’m serving on a panel to close the Ragan conference hosted by SAS in Cary, NC. The goal is to give participants a list of actions they can immediately implement as practical steps when they return home to work.

I was asked to provide six suggestions, and the other four panelists also are responsible for a similar number. We get a minute to describe each idea, so I’m writing this post to provide links to mine. I’ll likely add links with some of the other panelists’ suggestions after I hear them.

I’ve also included more than six ideas because I don’t know what the others will be offering, and if we have duplicates I don’t want to be left without something valuable to recommend. Besides, I can’t limit myself to just a half dozen.

1. Get a Flip video camera. This is the only recommendation of my main six that costs anything. You can get a Flip today at Wal-Mart or Best Buy or some Target stores. The Flip provides miniDV quality video and is completely portable. You copy files to your computer via the built-in USB instead of having to digitize tapes. And you can have video uploaded to YouTube within minutes, as I did with the David Pogue musical parodies. The cost of buying a Flip is less than a quarter of the cost of hiring a professional videographer for a single day, and you can use the video you shoot to pitch stories to journalists. Even better, you can make the video available directly to consumers.

2. Become a SMUGgle. In the Harry Potter books, a muggle is an ordinary mortal without magical powers. A SMUGgle is also an ordinary mortal, but one who wants to accomplish really amazing feats using social media tools. You become a SMUGgle by enrolling in SMUG. This will be a gateway to your learning about lots of other social media tools you can apply to your work.

3. Try Yammer. Yammer is Twitter for the enterprise. It offers a way to take advantage of the functionality of Twitter, but to limit the participants to employees of your company. The big value is trying before buying, so you can see whether you get user adoption before you sink a lot of money into a tool that people may not use. It seems to have potential for powerful collaboration, allowing coworkers to opt-in for e-mails about subjects they find interesting, and also can serve as a massive General Reference database of facts, links and other information employees have found helpful. I did a Yammer 101 course and expect to be doing more on SMUG.

4. Start a WordPress.com blog. It’s free and you can do it in 5 minutes or less, as my Dad did. If you’re a coward, you can make it a private blog invisible to anyone except users you invite. Then just invite your communications colleagues to have access. Getting this hands-on experience will show you how easy it is to publish content to the world. You also could use WordPress.com to publish your Web site, having it serve as your content management system. The SMUG blogging curriculum will help you learn.

5. Create your own free personal podcast. The SMUG Podcasting curriculum takes you from the very basics to having a podcast listed in iTunes. When you’re familiar with the process, you will have complete confidence to recommend doing podcasts for your organization with higher production values, better microphones, etc. The mystery will be eliminated.

6. Join a Social Network such as Facebook or LinkedIn. Or both. It’s essential for professional communicators to understand how social networking sites work.

Bonus Items

  • Build your own on-line newsroom. See our Mayo Clinic News Blog for an example.
  • Get a YouTube account. If you’ve only watched YouTube videos, you haven’t understood full potential. And if you work for a nonprofit, starting a branded YouTube channel is a no-brainer – it’s free. A Flip camera makes it easy for you to produce and upload videos
  • Get an iPhone. This is another one that’s not free, but professional communicators need to understand potential of phones and applications.
  • Try Dropbox. Its main purpose to sync files across multiple computers, letting you store your precious documents and files “in the cloud” so you have safe backup. The neat feature, though, is that it is a way for you to have the equivalent of an FTP site without the annoying hassle of log ins and passwords. You get two GB of storage free, and the paid option is something like $50 a year for 50 GB.
  • Read a good book. Here are three must-read books that will change the way you work and live, and you could perhaps read one by the end of the weekend.
  • Rules to Break and Laws to Follow – Don Peppers and Martha Rogers. I haven’t reviewed this yet, but plan to do so soon. I have been listening to it through Audible.com. It’s an excellent book about how a focus on short-term results can’t be the only measure of business success, because you may be draining or harvesting customer equity, and therefore actually reducing the value of your business.
  • Getting Things Done – David Allen. I have several related posts about the GTD subject matter.
  • The Reason for God – Tim Keller

Updated: My fellow panelists are

Here are some of their ideas:

  • Becky – Embrace individual customization on the intranet. Let employees upload and display their own photos instead of the staff photos.
  • Bruce – Look for Alliances. AP came from this concept. Use a similar approach to find like-minded sites with which you can share.
  • John – Have interns start a blog. “Outsiders’ view from the inside.”
  • Mark – use LInkedIn journalistically. Send out requests for quotes or sources.
  • Becky – Don’t overlook interns. They understand these technologies naturally and can give you insights. SAS has a student intern site.
  • Bruce – Anonymity is dead. Make identity work for you on the internet.
  • Customize your name. There are 266 John Mims in the U.S. The guy to my left uses his middle initial to identify himself. Good thing Lee Aase is relatively rare.
  • Mark – Sign up for Google Alerts on your name or your company.
  • Becky – Google your stuff to see if it shows up. If not, use titles and tags to optimize your content.
  • Bruce – Get blog aggregator/RSS reader.
  • John says you should have your posts published on days when people are reading. Write on the weekends, but set them to post on the weekdays. Here’s how.
  • Becky – Use blogs to come together during difficult times. UNC Chapel Hill with student body president being killed. Created a blog to share special memories. Print all the comments and share with the family.
  • Bruce – Create a wiki approach to document creation. Bruce had a colleague create a wiki certiori petition in the 9th Circuit.
  • John – Comment on other people’s blogs. Make meaningful comments which will get people to visit your blog.
  • Mark – Try Blog Jamming. Spend 48 hours in intense blogging about a particular issue. Then have the blog go away.
  • Becky -Hand over the reins for Web 2.0 video. SAS hands employees Flip cams. Let them duct tape to handlebars during bike to work day.
  • Mark – Search for Bloggingheads on NY Times.
  • Use RSS feeds for internal news, just as you do for external.
  • Mark – Check out everyblock.com. Everything that has happened on your block. It’s in beta now in 6 cities. News at the block level.
  • Bruce – Beware the privacy trolls that may require encryption through legislation that is being adopted in various states. This will slow down all of your on-line transactions on your Web site. So what can we do about it?
  • Mark – If you’re an editor, use Bullfighter or mystery matador.

As I count it, that makes for 34 ideas including my two extra books, which means we exceeded our quota by 13.3 percent. And I know I didn’t get all of my fellow panelists’ ideas recorded. I hope you see some things here you can apply immediately in your work.

I’m happy to have participated in this event, and would love to connect with others who are interested in these issues. You can get in touch with me on Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn.

I’d also welcome any comments you have, or other ideas you’d like to share.

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My Ragan/SAS Presentation

Here’s the presentation I’m scheduled to give this afternoon at the Ragan Communications conference, Corporate Communications in a Web 2.0 World.


Updated: Shel Holtz is liveblogging the conference on his blog.

Here’s the information about how you can enroll in SMUG. I would appreciate any comments or questions from those participating in the session. Let’s continue the conversation in the comments below. You also can leave a recommendation on LinkedIn, or “friend” me on Facebook (be sure to mention that you attended the Ragan conference.)

Here are links to our:

Mayo Clinic News Blog

Mayo Clinic YouTube Channel

Mayo Clinic Podcast Blog

[polldaddy poll=999558]

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Paying it Forward with a Small Good

Earlier this year I got a chance to meet Chuck Hester when we presented together at the Bulldog Reporter Media Relations 2008 Summit in San Francisco. Chuck’s story is about using LinkedIn for power networking, and he’s organized what he calls LinkedIn Live events to turn his local virtual network into a face-to-face networking opportunity.

I hope to see Chuck again this week at the Ragan Corporate Communications in a Web 2.0 World conference at the SAS headquarters in Cary, NC. I’m unfortunately going to be traveling during his presentation, but will plan to connect with him later in the conference.

Chuck is turning his experience with LinkedIn into a new book that will be released later this year. It’s called Linking In to Pay it Forward: Changing the Value Proposition in Social Media. You can read about it on Chuck’s Pay it Forward blog. So when Chuck asked me for the “Small Good” of giving his book a shout out, I was glad to help.

One of the things I appreciate about the social media world is the “pay it forward” philosophy. Much of what I’m doing with SMUG is experimenting publicly with different tools and techniques. Then, after I’ve worked out the kinks and gotten hands-on experience with the tools, I can confidently recommend the best ways to use them in my work environment. And I figure if I can help others by letting them learn from my experimentation, that’s a worthwhile service.

But I can’t experiment with everything; I personally haven’t used LinkedIn nearly as much as Facebook. So if Chuck would like to write a guest post with some highlights from his new book, I’d be happy to confer Associate Professor status and make him a SMUG faculty member.