I seen this as part of a presentation by Martin Bailie Planning Director, Glue London at the the The Digital Festival, hosted by Brain food store. This video shows how technology can be used to facilitate education by connecting with students in the same way they connect with each other.

Million from matty burton on Vimeo.

If you want to add your blog posts to your facebook account here is a simple way of going about it.

The first step is to log-in into your facebook account and then go to http://www.facebook.com/editnotes.php link.

Next you enter you feed address into the Web URL box (which I have highlighted in red), in my case my feed address is http://feeds.feedburner.com/ConsultMarkBlog as I use feedburner.

Tick the little tick box (which I have highlighted in green) below this field if you agree with the terms and click start importing. If the feed has been found successfully then you will be given the option to start importing, click the confirm input.

The end, I hope this was useful.

On Wednesday the 24th of February, I am going to the The Digital Festival, hosted by Brain food store. The line-up of speakers is great :

Brent Hoberman Co-Founder, lastminute.com
Peter Kim Managing Director, the Dachis Group
Shel Israel Author - Naked Conversations & Twitterville
Russell Davies - Open Intelligence Agency
Martin Bailie Planning Director, Glue London
Tim Duggan Co-Founder, Mercury Girl inc

I am in particular interested in Listening (and hopefully talking) to Peter Kim. The Twitter hashtag for the event is #BFS10.

On the evening before  the event there is a Tweet-up with Shel Israel on 23rd of February at 7:00pm at the Berkeley Court Hotel, Ballsbridge, Dublin 4, see this plancast for details.

If you are going, I hope to see you there.

Google has announced Google Buzz. What is Buzz? Well it is Google using an existing and exceptionally large customer base via GMail, and it is a stream of status updates, pictures, links, and videos from and to  your friends.

What is very important is that Google Buzz is available on mobile platforms. Social mobile is going to accelerate greatly this year, it is just as well Google has launched its own mobile smart phone the Nexus One, good timing or what? As far as I can tell Buzz simplifies the process of sharing media. It is more than just status updates. It seems to have all the simple features of existing social platforms such as Twitter, Friendfeed, YouTube and Flickr.  Just like a blog site (and Facebook) your friends can comment on your postings and then the comments are integrated into your GMail. There is even a “Recommend” button, which is kind of like a “Retweet”. You can also import Buzz into existing streams such as Google Reader, Twitter, Picasa and Flickr.

It seems to have all that you need, Buzz seems to be the “Ultimate Social Notice Board” (USNB).

I wonder if there are any plans to integrate Google wave or will this project [wave] keep Wave in Beta forever?

The only catch is that I have gone to http://www.google.com/buzz and clicked on the “try in Gmail button” and nothing. Where is my Google Buzz? I have lost my Buzz man!
Panic over for now, as according to this link it it will be rolled out over the next few days.

Here is the official video from google:

Yesterday, I gave a lecture to the second year MBA students at the Kemmy business school, University of Limerick as part of their module on Innovation and Entrepreneurship. The question I addressed was “Entrepreneurs - born or made ?” I shared my experience since leaving Dell. I also stressed in importance of building a quality network. I then gave my opinion on what Ireland needs to move forward. After the lecture we had a lengthy with the class around funding, generating ideas, the fear of starting up and the failure of “leadership” in this country to the Entrepreneur.

It you are a project manager or an Entrepreneur and you are building a team, managing team dynamics of the can be quite interesting as well as frustratating. You are never given the ideal team for a project, therefore your role is to identify skills/personalities missing from project, and either try to attain them, or fill in these gaps by yourself through developing the team. On top of all this you need to focus the team on the goal/objective of the project. You need to also wear all these hats:

• Leader
• People Management
• Negotiation
• Stakeholder Management
• Conflict Management

You need to be both a manager and a leader; there is a subtle but, essential difference:

Manager: A manger gets people to do things.
Leader: A leader gets people to “WANT” to do things.

It is important that there is no ambiguity with roles and responsibilities as these leads to tasks falling between cracks, and lack of accountability.

You need to lead and manage the group through the following 5 stages:

Group development by Bruce Tuckman, 5 Stages

1. Forming: The team meets and learns about the opportunity and challenges, and then agrees on goals and begins to tackle the tasks. Team members tend to behave quite independently.
2. Storming: The team addresses issues such as what problems they are really supposed to solve, how they will function independently and together and what leadership model they will accept.
3. Norming: During this phase, team members begin to trust each other. Motivation increases as the team gets more acquainted with the project
4. Performing: By this time they are motivated and knowledgeable. The team members are now competent, autonomous and able to handle the decision-making process without supervision
5. Adjourning: Also called deforming and mourning. At this stage the project is near the end and relationships then to fragment.

Know what phase you are in and adapt behaviour accordingly, also know when to move to the next stage.

I hope sharing my experience and knowledge is useful, now you can have your cake and eat it.

I recently gave a talk at open coffee in Birr with an aim to get some of the business in the area to start considering the power of social networks, and the possible positive impact it could have on their business. The location of Birr open coffee is the Birr technology centre and this was hosted by Denise Duggan of Shannon development.

At the start of the presentation some of the fears which came to the surface were around the technology itself and the consumption of valuable business time. These I think are quite natural concerns for any business owners. By the end of the presentation, the room was a more conformable with the potential of social networks for their business. Furthermore, there was a consensus with everyone that social networks are becoming a necessity for businesses and not such much of a luxury. There were also lengthy discussions on privacy, relevance to local businesses and especially the time aspect of social networks. Based on the discussion and some of the questions raised, I gave a simple four step framework with which to get started:

1. Consider your objective for using social networks, is it sales or marketing, building relationship with customers or maybe customer support?
2. Decide your time upfront and stick to it. Start small and build up slowly.
3. Start with listening, until you are comfortable with what is happening.
4. Set boundaries between personal and business activities.

I then made the point that these steps are quite similar to how they should treat any other business activity.
What are your fears with social networks, Time, cost, privacy? Have you anything you could add to the list?
Here is a copy of the presentation:

Today twitter added a new feature, trending with a local twist. I think this is great. Google has gone local quite recently also.

Here is a screenshot, I have set mine to Ireland for obvious reasons. In recent times Twitter has added enhanced features on its site. I wonder is their motive to lure people back from using the API. I wonder what the next feature is to be pulled out of their hat? Any guesses  What are the possibilites and effects of this extra piece of data? Is this a local move or a location move?

]]> http://www.consultmark.ie/blog/2010/01/27/twitter-trending-now-local/feed/ http://www.consultmark.ie/blog/2010/01/27/twitter-trending-now-local/ http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/ConsultMarkBlog/~3/RhG24w1bKwE/ http://www.consultmark.ie/blog/2010/01/20/enterprise-acceleration-centre-breakfast-morning-sales-and-social-networks/#comments Wed, 20 Jan 2010 09:54:22 +0000 Mark Cahill http://www.consultmark.ie/blog/?p=495

Part 1 of this blog post gave a basic introduction to social network analysis.

As covered in the previous post Link to the Part 1 a social network diagram in its simplest form consist of node and ties, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines.

Basic social network showing Nodes and Ties

Now I shall get a little deeper into the by exploring the properties of tie’s.

Tie Directionality

A tie is said to be directed or directional if there is a flow between the nodes. For example, if Node A recommends a product or service to Node B, then the tie that connects them is directional. It is important to note that a tie is not always directional. For example if there is no flow between the nodes but, Nodes A and B share a association of some sort, they may share residence in the same country (Ireland for example) then the tie is non-directional or not directed. Therefore, if the tie is based on an affiliation or association then the tie is non-directional or not directed.

Tie Reciprocity and Symmetry

If the tie is directional, then you need to ask the question is this flow or directionality symmetrical or reciprocal? Does advice/information flow from Node A to Node B only, or is the flow between each Node? In the latter case it is reciprocal (or symmetric). This property is quite important to identify opinion leaders within a group; where the a flow is not symmetric. This property is also useful in ensuring that there is cooperation within a group, for this condition you would expect the ties to be quit symmetric.

Tie Multiplexity

This property describes multiple relationships between actors (nodes), the tie is therefore multi-layered or multi-dimensional. The exmaple below shows Node A “asking advice” from Node B, and Node B “paying respect” to Node A.

Tie Strength

The strength of tie refers to the intensity and tightness of a tie. This may be represent the level love (or hate) between two countries. It should be noted that tie strength, therefore, is not a binary on or off state, but, is a variable measurement. Van Den Bulte and Wuyts (page 10, 2007) conceptualise tie strength as having two dimensions, (1) tie intensity or activity (the frequency of contact) and (2) tie valence (the affective, supportive, or cooperative character of the tie) and they state that this conceptualisation of tie strength agrees with best empirical evidence to date. Mark Granovetter (1973) first introduced the “Strength of weak ties” where acquaintances are weak ties and our friends are strong ties. He concludes that Strong ties share the same limited information while weak ties are a source of new information and thus are more valuable. Van Den Bulte and Wuyts (page 16, 2007) concludes that tie strength can be conceptualised as having two dimensions, tie intensity or activity (the frequency of contact) and tie valence (the affective, supportive or cooperative character of a tie.)

Tie Homophily

This property describes the tendency for like minded actors (nodes) to connect and mingle with like minded others. The reason this property has gained importance is that it constains actors’ social worlds. There is a negative side to homophily, which is it can cause the actor within a group to ignore new ideas, which often occurs in Brand Communities. On the positive side, it can foster trust and reciprocity between actors in a group.

References:
Van Den Bulte, C., Wuyts, S. 2007, Social networks and Marketing, Marketing Science Institute .
Granovetter, M (1973), The strength of weak ties, American Journal of Sociology.

A new year and therefore new goals, lucky there is help at hand. This help is in the form of a site called 43Things, which is a goal setting site with a difference, there is a online social networking aspect to it. Basically, the reason it is called 43 things is based on the maximum length of your list. This is not restrictive, as once you achieved a goal you can complete it on your list and add another to replace it. Where this site is particularly useful is that it connects you to others who have the same goal(s) as you, and therefore there is peer support, in other words you are “not doing it alone”. When someone in the group attains this goal they can share how they have completed this goal, and they can share their experience around completing it. If you are not sure what goals you would like, you can browse a tag cloud to see what takes your fancy.

There is also an iPhone application for 43 things, so you can carry your goals around in your pocket.

I would encourage you to log on to 43Things and build up your list right away, as soon as you are finished reading this blog post of course.

What online tools do you use to set goals?

What have you found useful and what have you found to be not so useful?

This morning as usual I set about my normal routine of firing up my Tweetdeck and then nothing! Next I went to Twitter.com and this would not load either, the Geek in me then gave Twitter.com a quick ping through the cmd prompt and again nothing. Finally, I went straight to News.com to see if they knew anything and I found this article: Twitter hacked by ‘Iranian Cyber Army’?

 (Credit: CC u07ch/Flickr)

Normally when a strange event such as site been hacked, Tigger woods crashing, or a natural disaster, thefirst point of contact is Twitter as this will tell you what is happened, where it has happened and how it was caused? This has highlighted my dependency on using Twitter.

No doubt time will tell how his story has unfolded, but what I am most interested in how Twitter will handle their online Reputation?

Will it make them stronger, or will it drive Twitter users to other alternatives?

A new DARPA (Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency) contest is using balloons to test our social-networking skills, The DARPA Network Challenge will award $40,000 to the first person who can identify the latitudes and longitudes of 10 red weather balloons positioned at different parts of the sky across the continental United States. The balloons will be in readily accessible locations and visible from nearby roads. DARPA is holding its Network Challenge to mark the 40th anniversary of the Internet.

The Social network element comes in to play as it is make more sense to collaborate in order to win this prize as the site says : “The competition is meant to explore the roles the Internet and social networking play in the timely communication, wide-area team-building, and urgent mobilization required to solve broad-scope, time-critical problems.” The contest started on the Saturday the 5th of Decembers 2009 and was due to end on the 14th of December; however a team from MIT has won the competition.

What I would like to have access to, is data that the winning team and all the other unsuccessful teams used to collaborate including the platforms used in order to win.
I shall leave you with this slightly sarcastic statement “It is not about taking part, it is about winning”

What I would also like to see is a European version of this competition, with the balloons spread throughout the Continent of Europe.

Google is going local with a sticker, more than 100,000 chosen businesses have been mailed a “We’re a favorite place on Google” decal with a unique bar code to put in their store windows. This unique barcode is in the form of a QR code. Inquisitive customers, upon scanning the barcode (which will more than likely be one of the millions of mobile phones with a camera, will be taken to the relevant “place page” which reveals various details about the business including hours of operation, reviews, photos, directions, phone numbers, brands carried, menus (if a restaurant), and even mobile coupons if available. Furthermore, the users can rate the business and have the option to submit their own review, this threads on the feet of Yelp and other local user-generated reviews services. Google is also counting how many times people search for a business, look up directions to it, or click through to its web site, thus tracking customers right to the doorway of your business. This move by Google really puts real businesses into the virtual world. Local business are allowing google to access to even more data voluntarily in exchange for customers on their doorstep, isn’t that nice !   

Just something to note is that this is another move by Google into the mobile domain, today the Web, tomorrow the mobile device. I suppose the Web now lives on mobile devices so this is a natural direction for google to move in. The next big gold rush therefore will be mobile platforms, and because they are mobile, location based service and search are a big part of Goggles future.

Here are 2 videos, the first on Google favourite places and the second on local business centre, enjoy.

 Here is a way of searching for Links to websites that contains links within twitter, it is called Backtweets. This is a little different than a normal twitter search as it enables you to also search shortened tweets. Backtweets. is also useful for finding links that may not even contain you twitter Handle.

Here is an example by putting in my site: http://www.consultmark.ie/

Here is direct link to the search:

http://backtweets.com/search?q=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.consultmark.ie%2F

As you can see there are results with shortened, examples here are through Friendfeed and Bit.ly. Another handy feature is that you can create an RSS feed and add this search to your favourite RSS reader, mine is Google Reader.

I think this is a simple and effective tool, which is great for browsing, remember if you are using this for your business that it is linked to your business metrics. It can be used as a listening tool for Brand Management and Reputation Management.

What do you think, what way would you use it?

Have you any other Twitter search tools that you can add?

A social network is a social structure made of nodes (which are generally individuals or organizations) that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, visions, ideas, financial exchange, friendship, kinship, dislike, conflict or trade. The resulting structures are often very complex, after all human nature is inherently complex.
The question of how the pattern of interconnection among social entities – consumers, colleagues,  business units, competitors and complementors  - affect behaviours and the outcomes of those entities in now receiving more attention than ever (Van Den Bulte and Wuyts 2007).

Social network analysis views social relationships in terms of nodes and ties, as basic building blocks. Nodes are the individual actors within the networks, and ties are the relationships between the actors. There can be many kinds of ties between the nodes. Research in a number of academic fields has shown that social networks operate on many levels, from families up to the level of nations, and play a critical role in determining the way problems are solved, organizations are run, and the degree to which individuals succeed in achieving their goals.
In its simplest form, a social network is a map of all of the relevant ties between the nodes being studied. The network can also be used to determine the social capital of individual actors. These concepts are often displayed in a social network diagram, where nodes are the points and ties are the lines.
 

 
Tie Strength is an important property of social network, and of particular importance to marketers.  Tie strength simply refers to the intensity and tightness of a tie between nodes, such examples are the depth of a friendship, or frequency of interaction. It should be noted that tie strength, therefore, is not a binary on or off state, but, is a variable measurement. Van Den Bulte and Wuyts (page 10, 2007) conceptualise tie strength as having two dimensions, (1) tie intensity or activity (the frequency of contact) and (2) tie valence (the affective, supportive, or cooperative character of the tie) and they state that this conceptualisation of tie strength agrees with best empirical evidence to date. Mark Granovetter (1973) first introduced the “Strength of weak ties” where acquaintances are weak ties and our friends are strong ties. He concludes that Strong ties share the same limited information while weak ties are a source of new information and thus are more valuable.

I shall write some follow up posts to this, which will explore in a little more detail the different structural properties of Social networks.

References:
Van Den Bulte, C., Wuyts, S. 2007, Social networks and Marketing, Marketing Science Institute .
Granovetter, M (1973), The strength of weak ties, American Journal of Sociology.

This time last Month (first Thursday of the month) I was on my way to Limerick open Coffee, as this open coffee I got my first real-life glimpse of Google wave. Been the technical enthusiast that I am, I wanted my very own Google Wave account. Shortly afterwards (a few days maybe), I tweeted for a google invite. Within a short time I received a DM from one of my followers (@eprenen) saying that he had spare invites and would send one on. Needless to say, I was delighted to get this invite, this invite did not arrive instantly, there was actually a wait of several days before it arrived to my inbox (apparently because google was checking me out).

At first look Google wave does not look like much (funny I am the same impression of Twitter), but as time goes on I can see its uses from a communication and collaboration point of view. The best way to describe it is a cross between IM (instant messaging) and Twitter. There is a not the same 140 character restriction as with Twitter and is not public (well, I don’t think it is) however, the similarities are there is relation to how easy it s to communicate with like minded people. From the IM persepective it has all you contacts and it tracks conversations in an IM fashion, where it differs in which a feature is avaliable that allows you to playback a conversation, this is a powerful feature. You can also add Video and Audio to the conversations, again simple but powerful. And it continues, there is of course a Google Extension Library to extend the functionality of google Wave.

I am starting to read The complete guide to Google Wave, (follow the link) this contains eight chapters and should teach me some more about Google Wave. If you have google Wave and you want to add me to your contacts list, my Google wave name is MarkCahill.Ireland <at> GoogleWave.com. For those of you that don’t have it yet, have a look at this video.

According to “The Social” Blog by Caroline McCarty, in relation to Robin Sloan :

“It’s sort of fitting that Twitter’s 5 billionth tweet came not from one of the celebrities or marketers who have flooded the service in recent months, but from one of the quirky Bay Area dot-com nerds who formed its first loyal pack of users.”

I had a look for this Tweet and it appears to have been deleted, however it has been cached on Google. Have a look for yourself, Click Here.

Oh Lord - Where is it gone?

Sloans - Brother and Sister?

Stephen Kinsella lectured me Economics for my Masters degree in Business Administration (MBA), based on his personality and his broad knowledge of economics (and beyond) I have always found him fascinating. Once I heard he had written a book, I was mad to get stuck in and read it. To my initial disappointment it was not an academic economic’s book, however this disappointment quickly turned to excitement as you do not need to understand economics to get this book. The format of the book has fascinated me, as it is based on a “imagined end”. This imagined end is based on a quote Daniel Taylor which is

“The power of an imagined end, and it literally can only be imagined, lies in its ability to influence present choices.”

By using this format Stephen opens up a discussion based where we [Ireland] are now and where we [Ireland] could possibility be in the year 2050.

The book was inspired by Stephen thinking ahead to what Ireland would be like for his son’s and his grandchildren. As part of the book, he has also introduces the fictitious but quite possible Murphy family through a 2050 diary. Factoids are also blended into this book to promote discussion. Despite the fact this is not a hard core book on economics, it is Stephens in-depth understanding of economics which translates it into a book for all that have an interest in Ireland’s future at this “Economical crossroad”.

This book really encourages the reader to think and discuss the following factors whicih will shape Ireland’s future:

Energy - including a discussion on Nuclear and green energy technologies
Education - a structure that is anti-creativity
Who we should trade with?
Health - including HSE 2.0 - the HSE with technology
Who is poor, who is rich, how big is the divide and why?
What about the aging population and the cost associated with them?
The importance of Literacy and now the importance of Digital literacy?
What is the price of Coffee and will Ireland be producing it?
How will Ireland Climate impact us?
How will the nature of Work change?
What infrastructure will we have, and what infrastructure do we need?One part of the book that was particular interest to me is that Stephen’s book talks about the possibility of a high-tech hub in Birr, County offaly producing the next Google. This interests me for the following reasons:

1. I grew up in Birr, County Offaly and I have always had an tremendous interest in technology and how it can change the world.
2. Currently I live fourteen miles from Birr (in Cloughjordan) and I am on the board of directors of an Enterprise centre (currently at the tender stage for Build). This Enterprise centre is been built within a Eco-village and shall be focus on sustainability and the creation of Green/Ecological business.
3. In my opinion Ireland is full of bright and intelligent people, we need to learn to “fail constructively” and gather in focused groups to make this scenario happen, as it is very possible. 

This is a book “Ireland in 2050 - How we will be living” I would highly recommend for those who have an interest in Ireland future, this includes all present and future citizens of Ireland, and maybe those beyond this little island that may consider it a place to do business. I now know what to buy my entire family and friends for Christmas presents, I wonder if if Stephen’s publishers do a bulk discount?