Friend and Forester Researcher Jeremiah Owyang sits down with Intel Insider Sarah Austin and shares his daily routine, ambitions, amazement and travel wishes.
Last week, Jeremiah gave me a quick shot out (I’m not worthy!) in this Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal story that offers even more insight into what keeps the social computing wiseman movin’ ahead of things.
My pals inside Intel are looking forward to Web 2.0 Expo, April 22-25 in San Francisco — follow the event blog here.
I’m hoping many (at least those based in or near the Bay Area) get to be on the scene. For sure, one great Intel community guy will be there — Bob Duffy.
Bob’s in my social media posse, and he has been helping Intel move from blogging into communities and helping experts get more involved off of Intel sites, where IT pros, consumers and other tech lovers might be asking for insight that Intel can share. He helped compile data, tools and experts to legitimize Intel’s branded community for IT Pros called Open Port. He’s now climbing the ladder to get a better view and help other groups and community minded managers benefit from best practices, and to integrate with existing and ongoing community efforts. For me, he’s in the right place in the right time — for him and for Intel. He’s a listener, participant and skilled at crystalizing powerful notions blended with data to help teams break down silos, harness expertise, ignite interest in activities beyond those inside Intel… He helps us move ahead because he’s thoughtful, inclusive, he’s involved online and takes time to meet and share interests and insights offline.
Sometimes, I see Intel trying to create products or solutions that will meet future demands. There may not be a huge need today for “Dunnington” 6-core processors because many applications are even multi-threaded to take advantage of dual core processors — but there’s tons of working going on to help get software to work ever better with new hardware. On the other hand, things like data security defense and power efficiency needs are top of mind, but often many don’t know that Intel engineers and products can help. New features are being built right into the latest chips at a faster, more predictable rate than ever before (i.e Intel’s “tick-tock” method of new chip design followed by new cycle of product process improvements followed by new chip design…).
This is where Intel marketing teams can step in and help. Finding the right communication tools and identifying pools of conversations can connect Intel technology experts with the growing number people and companies who might benefit from what Intel insiders are working on.
Here are some examples of IT stories and topics Intel experts are exploring on Open Port.
Here’s Bob talking in August 2007, just before the virtual doors were opened at Open Port
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Bob will be joining the social computing wiseman, Forrester Research’s Jeremiah Owyang, on this day two panel:
8:30am – 9:20am Wednesday, 04/23/2008 “Community Building: Good, Bad, and Ugly”
Dawn Foster (Jive Software), Jeremiah Owyang (Forrester Research), Bob Duffy (Intel), Kellie Parker (PC World & Macworld). A great community requires considerable forethought, attention to technology, and a dose of know-how to manage the unruly. Read more.
Full schedule of Web 2.0 sessions here.
During Web 2.0 Expo, I’m also looking forward to seeing the winners of CNET’s WebWare 100.
Hope to see you at the expo Tuesday or Friday. That week, I’ll be joining Ogilvy’s Rohit Bhargava at the New Communication Forum April 24 at 10:00 a.m. PT. Rohit is moderating a panel called “Future of Marketing and Advertising.” More on the New Comm Forum in a future post. I’m looking forward to catching up with Rohit after giving birth to a timely book called “Personality Not Included — Why Brands Lose Their Authenticity and How Great Companies Get It Back.” Learn more on his great blog.
This is a photo by Jeremiah Owyang, who invited me to the Online Community Roundtable gathering he hosted at Forrester. Bill Johnson put on this wonderful event with very engaged people who were sharing their wisdom and online audience building experiences. Jeremiah made sure I got up and spoke. Nothing prepared, I started with my favorite topic of storytelling and tried to connect with what everyone in the room was talking about. The audience pulled me in and along we went, having fun playing with the role of storytelling in social media, social networks, online communities…and our personal lives.
A presentation highlight for me was Forrester’s Charlene Li’s “I am social when I…” Use IM, email, social network, bookmark… More of us are getting more social every day.
Here’s Bill’s even summary and a post with photos and a video by Jeremiah.
This would be a great event for a few pals who are helping grow the Intel’s Open Port online community for IT pros. This is a creative, open model that could replace regular weekly meetings at work. Just get three people to share what they’re working on and get the live feedback from a concentrated, open-minded group. Who would you invite?
VLab&GDC2008 003, originally uploaded by KenEKaplan.
A Intel pals Annie Rodkins and Bob Duffy turned me on to last week’s VLAB gathering on Stanford campus. “Shaking the money Tree of Multi-Platform Social Networks” hit the sweet spot of my current curiousities…then it peeled back my skull and poured in a heavy dose of reality. Wow! The more you get involved with social computing technologies, doors just keep opening to fascinating work and business opportunities.
Here we learned about social networking applications maker RockYou, Google’s Open Social, Bebo, Social Media advertising agencies and how people are hustling to create low cost, rapidly deployed services for Facebook, MySpace, Bebo and other socially connected online services that use open APIs.
I’m not at all techie, so here’s what I found scribbled in my notes:
* Social “not” working on the job — a term moderator Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research blurted out describing how some bosses diss the use of social networks/media at work.
* We’re in a new social media economy
* Social advertising, where we can influence getting ourselves or friends in Ads (and get paid? why not?!)
* What’s a platform? RockYou says it’s the ability to add functionality; distribution; monetization (development and maintenance cost, stickiness and openness to other networks/platforms). Reward =distribution x revenue and Risk = development and maintenance costs devided by stickiness + openness.
* Build for “Multiple & Open” platforms/networks
* Steve Cohn had a great sense of humor and quick wit. He used “Make a Baby” with me application that’s widly popular now in his company’s Bebo social network.
* Words from venture capital guru Ken Guillicksen: cutting down costs gets more ROI…open social means more distribution but need keep down development and maintenance costs….if you share a niche product distribute widely while driving down costs and increasing ROI.
* “Social netowrks are the homepage of this generation,” said Jia Shen of RockYou.
* Have a pleasure model
* Higher rate of success in social networks than Web sites
Jeremiah Owyag ignited a Super Bowl Twitterthon and many are stepping in to use social media to engage more with the Super Bowl. Join the fun and Twitter your take on the TV ads hitting you on Super Bowl Sunday.
Instructions below and pre-game buzz here.
There’s just three steps:
1) Sign up: Get a twitter account, got that? Good.2) Send your vote to @superbowlads: When we’re watching the game in real time, simply send a reply to superbowlads. I created this Twitter account just for this virtual event. Reply to the superbowlads account, name the commerical, and give it a rating of 1-5 stars, 5 being the best.
examples:
“@superbowlads That Pepsi commercial was funny 4 stars”
“@superbowlads The Hillary Clinton advertisement was bunko 2 stars”
“@superbowlads Bud-wise-er, that was so 10 years ago, weak. 1 star”
3) See what others rated: You can then see everyone who’s rated the ads by doing a search on any of the Twitter search tools, I like Terraminds. See this example, it’s showing all the people who have replied to superbowlads.
My friend Rohit also is rallying people to engage online in new ways with the Super Bowl.
I had the pleasure of meeting Douglas Pollei at Intel headquarters the second week in November, just days before taking my sabbatical. We had a great talk about the state of corporate social media (can you say that?) that ended when we looked around and saw the once-buzzing cafetteria empty.
Douglas keeps a cool blog by night and for his day job he’s the VP of Internet Strategy and Corporate Development for IKANO Communications Inc., a portfolio company of Insight Venture Partners in New York. In other words, he’s a social media brother of another mother singing that same song about opening up, connecting and creating new opportunities.
We met through Forrester Research’s Jeremiah Owyang, who personally invited Douglas to check out the September Social Media: Friend or Foe of IT panel at the Intel Developer Forum. We exchanged emails — he even politely kept in contact after a very late response I sent after IDF — then during a business trip to Silicon Valley he saved some time for us to meet. If he were a vendor, I’d have respectfully declined, but the chance to explore accomplishments and conflicts about social media? No way would I miss a chance! Here are some highlights from our talk, as Douglas posted on his blog:
* Intel is seeking to involve more employees in the conversations with outside world. These employees must be not only observers but active contributors in the conversations, otherwise they don’t fully understand and move with the current. The IDF is a great example of the beginnings of this reach out and I believe it will continue to be.
* The intersection of the control and openness mindset creates conflicts in organizations. The true goal is to find the human intersections and how to understand, internalize, and communicate these findings going forward.
* Enterprises can create boundaries of communication, like a walled garden. Some areas are open and others are closed. The key is to organically let those with a voice contribute and potentially elevate these individuals to a higher status of job authority with regard to new media tools (social media, video, audio, etc..). When employees don’t reach out, it is comparable to being at the party and not talking to anyone but expecting value from it. You must mingle to be inspired and know the true and unscripted pulse.
* There will be many who will oppose these types of movements in a large organization but as they join in and see the value, many C’s including CEOs will be endorsers of the openness to know where to take the company, and how to raise stockholder value through innovation.
* VCs, private equity firms, and serial entrepreneurs are continually developing new media solutions that enterprises can adopt to enhance the communications with all channels of their business. Knowing the tech scouts who can see these in advance and know which products will win (and work) will be key to enterprises. Jobs descriptions in these areas are not currently on the enterprise org chart and so it is hard for many to understand their value. It is like telling someone to see a house built when only a floor plan exists.
We agreed to keep our conversation moving ahead. In fact, one thing we talked about was how I believe Intel has some wonderful stories to tell. Stories that are still coming together but will help directly connect Intel technology and innovation with social computing — from personal to commercial to developers and beyond. Intel’s new processor technologies can help people and businesses really get the most from Web 2.0, which seems to be growing and becoming more meaningful to everyone. Well, on the day Intel introduced it’s new Penryn chips — those featuring re-engineered, smaller, energy efficient, faster 45nm transistors — Intel CEO did it! Speaking at Oracle Open World, Intel CEO Paul Otellini (from ZDNet blog by Dan Faber):
“The enterprise is not immune from consumer trends,” Otellini said. Connectivity 24×7 and the need to socialize networks, as in Facebook, are key demands inside and outside the workplace going forward. “As this happens you need to think about how to rearchitect the infrastructure inside your businesses,” he added.
Otellini concluded that the “future in this sense is not very far away. The highly collaborative, interactive global social network is nearly upon us.”
It’s not a prophetic vision, but Otellini wants to make sure the Oracle crowd divines that Intel should be a core part of the rearchitecting of their businesses.
This is something many other companies are doing, or can be doing to help show how they’re relevant in making Web 2.0 and social computing more amazing and useful everyday.
Until we meet again, here is another topic we explored: Corporation being more human and actively finding their way in places like Facebook. This weekend I came across the Harvard Business Review’s “Why your company needs to be on Facebook.” Its was posted on November 9, 2007 by Charlene Li is a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. Cluetrain Manifesto? There’s no turning back. There’s moving ahead, integrating, being smart, providing reason and value every step of the way…never without passion and zeal for helping and connecting with others.
I attended my first Social Media Club meeting in Silicon Valley when it was hosted at KNT-TV, the NBC affilaite, during a time when it was exploring citizen journalism and ways to get the community involved in its newsgather efforts. That’s when I sat next to Mike McGrath, who became the chapter leader along with my former Intel pal and now KNTV pro Meredith Smith.
Finally, my wish came true. I wanted to host a Social Media Club meeting at Intel, and that wish came true thanks to support from my boss and especially from many Intel pals like Mark Pettinger, Bob Duffy, Laurie Buczek, Josh Hilliker and Aaron Tersteeg. Thanks to several others like Lyn, Denise, Darold, Jason, Patrick, Chris and PodTech’s “Marketing Voices” host Jennfer Jones.
I list the people first because that’s what it’s all about. My friends made it possible to get time with Shel Israel, Dave McClure and Jeremiah Owyang. The evening attracted a somewhat small, but fully engaged audience of PR pros, enterprise tech experts and social media enthusiasts.
Several people pitched in to spread the word, including some who pointed out that the event was available live through UStream.TV (nearly 20 people joined online — see chat pasted below).
This was an evening of sharing, griping, laughing and opening up to directions we can take to implement social media into the companies where we work.
What hit me most what how Shel Israel got things started, warmed up the speakers, engaged the audience and helped make sense of things through his eyes, feelings, thoughts and desires.
Jennifer Jones from PodTech talked about how more marketing pros are getting their footing in social media. What a great mix of experience with PR and marketing history and new exploration with social media!
Dave McClure what the guy who best hit the them — Social Media and the Enterprise, Moving Forward — and Intel’s Bob Duffy showed how Intel is taking concerted efforts to move beyond corporate blogs into community building.
How-People-Use-Technology Guru and original IT@Intel blogger Eleanor Wynn painted historic and human aspects that brought to life the “how we got here” and “how can we face challenges ahead” stories. She is gifted with an ability to listen and understand people, but her present to the audience was some real insight into how people are using social media…peppered with humor and wonder.
Thanks to everyone who visited Intel headquarter and to those who watched when they could. Here is a collection of blog posts related to the Social Media Club, Silicon Valley held at Intel on 10/22:
What inspired me was the great follow up posts by Jeremiah Owyang, who grounded everything in reality and next steps. Here are one and two great posts that I hope spur more devotion to making social media fit into everyone’s work/life balance…with help of companies and their mighty IT departments….moving at the speed of business. Then Jeremiah “The Social Computing Prophet” finds time to involve more disciples by taking notice that I was sharing his posts with many folks inside Intel. Jeremiah’s posts got over 35 comments so far — wow!
I’m checking out what people shared about their experience Monday evening at the Social Media Club, Silicon Valley hosted at Intel headquarters. I’ll write up another post this week when I have a little more time to reflect. But first, this…Someone in Facebook described Jeremiah Owyang, strolling up to the podium with think black book in this hand….he looked like a prophet. Aptly put, any which way you think about it…he’s a prophet sparing time, insights, always a helping hand with a finger pointing forward, move ahead, avante!
Jeremiah let’s fly brimstone, bleeding edge wisdom and can zero in on specifics backed by examples or data. Sometimes both. Here’s another helpful list to train our eyes on. Enterprises might watch for these potential ills as more marketers speed to add new tools that help companies and people connect with clients and audiences. The list, followed by Jeremiah’s business “fix.”
* Disparate user experiences to customers and employees
* Information spread off the firewall, some potentially sensitive
* Risk of enterprise 2.0 vendors being acquired by a competitor
* Real time information being spread at the “edges” of the company, where there was one before corporate communications
* Multiple login systems
* Multiple identity systems spread from system to systems
* Systems that may not talk to each other, now or in the future.
* Business program managers that leave the company or position, orphaning any technology deployment deployed at the business level
* Business groups paying for web programs in different locations, different budgets
* Lack of a cohesive web strategy
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One other cool thing from Jeremiah’s blog was this interesting, but not quite there video. It’s about MediaSnackers. This is a great premise — young people are the new www = getting info and entertainment whenever, wherever and whatever. But JO argues it’s not just young people. There are pleanty of us almost middle aged MediaSnackers. But the point is, are people acknowledging and respecting this short, random media consumption trend? Two-minuteTV on phones, 100MB or 10-minute video file limits on YouTube, mash-ups….but I’d say it’s not quite a mega-trend. But people are consuming and doing more, so where’s the time go/come from? Maybe by building in efficiency into stories we share.
The Social Media Club of Silicon Valley will be at Intel Headquarters on October 22 from 6 to 8:30 p.m. for a panel discussion on Social Media and the Enterprise: Looking Forward.
Register to attend the event here and see the online Upcoming Events listing here.
Prior and after the discussion, get a show and tell from online community builders from KNTV-TV’s communities efforts, Intel’s Open Port for IT pros and Intel Software Network community.
We will try to livecast the event through UStream.TV, allowing people to watch live and send in comments to the live event — embedded below.
Homepage for the Social Media Club http://www.socialmediaclub.org.
UPDATE: Watch and chat live on UStream’s site here (tried embedding comments below). Thanks Jeremiah.
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Dave McClure will be on a Social Media Club, Silicon valley panel at Intel headquarters on October 22. The discussion will be led by Shel Israel — YES! Others include IT@Intel blogger and social computing expert Eleanor Wynn, Social Media master Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research, Jennifer Jones of PodTech’s “Marketing Voices” and BobDuffy of Intel’s IT community, Open Port.
Register to attend the event here and see the online Upcoming Events listing here.
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Movin' Ahead 