A TYPICAL CONVERSATION

Ever since Gautam joined 2020 Social three weeks back, we have had several interesting conversations with Indian firms of all shapes and sizes on how to use social technologies within the workplace.

The typical conversation starts when someone fills the “Ask Us How” form on our website: “I am excited by the possibilities of using social technologies within our company and want to explore what these technologies can really help us with.”

During initial discussions with Gautam, it becomes clear that the client faces a business problem, but she is not able to make the connection between how “the business being social” will help her solve her problem.

In the first post in this series, we have outlined three typical business problems several Indian firms are struggling with. In the next three posts, written over the next week, we will share scenarios for how social technologies can be a part of the solution.

SCENARIO 1: PRODUCT INNOVATION

Bedi Electronics has been amongst the top ten firms in the Indian consumer electronics industry over the last twenty years. Its 1200 employees are spread across six plants and twenty sales offices. Over the last two years, it has fallen behind its competitors in terms of product innovation.

Rahul Bedi, the 28 year old scion of the family, has recently taken over as the Chief Marketing Officer of the business. Rahul knows that his 250 frontline sales officers have the pulse of the market. However, Rahul gets to meet them infrequently, in annual sales conferences and monthly market visits. They share interesting product ideas with them during one-to-one interactions, but he doesn’t know how to validate them with other sales officers and build on them.

“I wish I knew how to learn about consumer preferences from my frontline sales officers,” Rahul said to Gaurav, “help them build upon each others’ ideas. If we can revitalize our product innovation process, Bedi Electronics will regain its strength in the market.”

SCENARIO 2: TEAM EFFECTIVENESS

Alacrity Legal Technologies is a new Legal Process Outsourcing firm which focuses on a complex method of helping law firms in the US get their litigation issues outsourced to India. On each of these teams it needs the various groups of people to work together so that case materials and lawyer’s notes for clients to work on before the start of the day. Hence teams of law researchers, Indian lawyers and US client managers need to work together to get fast turnaround times.

Sundar Raman, the 43 year old CEO of the firm, was concerned at the high levels of customer complaints – the key theme being that ALT teams always seemed to be missing their deadlines. Sundar decided to dig deeper and found that the reason why this was happening was that the nature of serial processing that the work required meant that a delay in emailing (due to whatever reason) would impact the final output by a large extent.

Sundar instinctively knew that a way for people to work on documents together without necessarily emailing versions back and forth would speed up the deliverables.

“But I don’t don’t what that toolkit looks like,” Sundar told Gautam, “and I don’t know if it’s even possible to change the work habits of seasoned paralegals and lawyers.”

SCENARIO 3: BUILDING AN ENGAGED WORKFORCE

Over the last two decades LMN Corp has grown from a family owned business to a professionally run conglomerate with diverse interests in shipping, mining, IT, telecom and media. Growth has been robust as the diversifications have paid off.

Sumit Bangia, the 50 year old COO of the company, has been an old LMN hand. Over the last few years, Sumit has become increasingly concerned with the increasing turnover of younger workers. Sumit’s trusted HR Head, 35 year old Shalini Taneja, found out from exit interviews that recent recruits felt disconnected from the conglomerate and felt that they didn’t know how they fit into the big picture.

Sumit and Shalini decided that the key to retaining young recruits was to build an open organizational culture where young recruits could connect with each other and older mentors across levels and functions. It was also important that they felt empowered and encouraged to bring their whole self to work.

When Gautam met Sumit and Shalini, Sumit explained his dilemma: “I don’t think we need more increments and higher salaries or better designations to motivate our people. We’ve hired some great people over the last few years. If we can just make them connect with each other and discover their strengths and then get out of their way, I am sure they will take us to great heights.”

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT?

Now that the stage is set in all the three scenarios, you must be wondering: what happens next? Find out in our next three posts.

Cross-posted at 2020 Social.

I am co-founder of social business strategy company 20:20 Social. In my previous avatars, I have held senior marketing roles at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University, and co-founded Vote Report India. Do read my bio and consider interviewing me for a story, inviting me to speak at an event, or asking me to help you with your social business strategy.

Related posts:

1. Announcement: Gautam Ghosh Has Joined 2020 Social to Build our Enterprise Practice
2. Seven Social Technology Firms I Admire
3. Social Technologies and National Contexts

When the legendary TED conference came down to India, Indian bloggers were expectedly excited.

In the run up to TEDIndia, a few Indian bloggers got together to interview TEDIndia fellows and Geetha Krishnan put together a compilation of the TEDIndia fellow interviews.

During the conference, the TED blog fed the excitement by posting session-wise roundups (session 1, session 2, session 3, session 4, session 5, session 6, session 7, session 8, session 9) and reactions to the most popular talks (Hans Rosling, Devdutt Pattanaik, Tony Hsieh, Scott Cook, Pranav Mistry, Sadhguru Jaggi Vasudev, Shukla Bose, Anil Gupta, Kavita Ramdas, Sunitha Krishnan, Sidi Goma, Ramachandra Budihal, Ananda Shankar Jayant, Kiran Sethi, Eve Ensler, His Holiness the Karmapa, Shashi Tharoor) and even did a roundup of reactions to the conference.

Several bloggers wrote posts about how TED touched them in unexpected ways.

Rajiv Dingra was one of them –

In my last 3 years and more of blogging experience Ive attended over 50 events (atleast) and each of them have left me richer in knowledge or in insight. But none of them have ever moved me to tears or made me go in deep thought or made me proud to be Indian all in the matter of days. TEDIndia infact was more a reflection of what are the grave issues in India and the brilliance and the fallacy of India rather than being specific to Technology, Entertainment and Design.

Peter Elst summarized TEDIndia in ten quotes.

While the overall reaction to TEDIndia was overwhelmingly positive, several attendees were left a little underwhelmed.

TEDIndia fellow Amit Varma complained that TEDIndia catered to Western stereotypes of India –

There was much exotica, and much mysticism served up that says nothing at all about the country we are today. The average foreign attendee would have gone away with his stereotypes about India reinforced, not shattered. That’s an opportunity missed.

Amit also shared an interesting sociological observation –

The pharmacy at the Infosys campus in Mysore does not sell condoms. I want you to think about that for a moment. This is a campus where thousands of young men and women stay and work together. The official Infosys position on this matter, thus, seems to be that either a) Infosys employees do not have sex or b) Infosys employees have sex, but it should not be safe sex. Isn’t this interesting?

Aditi Machado was surprised by TEDIndia’s strong focus on India –

In retrospect the India-focus at TED was too strong. When TED is held in the UK or the US, does the conference become all about those countries and those countries’ contributions to the world? I don’t think so. The running theme at TEDIndia, beginning with the first talk by Hans Rosling, seemed to be: ‘India will become the next superpower. Oh, and China too. But we’re in India and India is a democracy and we hate Commies, so we like India better.’ I’m sure many Indians were flattered, and I’m as patriotic as the next person, but it was disturbing to see that almost every speaker, especially the non-Indians, felt obligated to give us a big pat on the back.

Manjeet Kripalani at Financial Express also complained about TEDIndia’s uni-directional programming –

The title was promising: “TEDIndia: the Future Beckons”. On the Mysore campus, India’s future had already arrived. It did not reflect in the programming of TEDIndia. The idea of TED is unique. Brilliant new minds who expound their futuristic ideas in 18 minutes to a sophisticated celebrity audience, interspersed with entertainment, music and some socially responsible talk. This TED conference was more “Bono Saves the World” than either Technology or Entertainment or Design. No soft or hard power, but powerlessness.

TED attendee Our Woman in Havana rounded off her series of posts about TEDIndia (day one, day two, day three, day four) by deciding that the real genius of TED lies in its ability to gather together people who are hugely talented and successful in a diverse range of fields –

Some of my best TED moments were little breaks when a randomly struck conversation brought nuggets of new thought –talking literature with A who worked in microfinance with the Acumen Fund and discovering our common heritage; discussing whether Urdu should be written in Hindi script in order to preserve the language in India with T; clashing head-on with J over Cuban politics at lunch; understanding from A why someone would want to put a boutique hotel in Ahmedabad; learning from B how designers can source organic materials; always always bumping into T and talking football, Punjabi and why lawyers are perceived as emptying rather than filling; dancing with a stranger; drinking coffee with an artist; discussing with C how to put Shashi Tharoor on the spot with a question about Indian state accountability over genocide. The genius in TED lay in those moments where nobody knew what would come next, and could then be blown away by what did come next. At times, those were the speakers, and often, those moments came in the all too brief meetings we had with people who already seem to have become friends.

For me, TEDIndia was about a rediscovery of the power of storytelling –

These stories reminded me that the most powerful stories we can tell about ourselves are, in fact, stories about other people. These stories reminded me that by telling stories about ideas that are bigger than us, we become bigger than ourselves. These stories reminded me that we are shaped by the stories we tell others, but even more so by the stories we tell ourselves.

The TEDIndia talks will soon be up on the TED website, so do look out for them.

I am co-founder of social business strategy company 20:20 Social. In my previous avatars, I have held senior marketing roles at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University, and co-founded Vote Report India. Do read my bio and consider interviewing me for a story, inviting me to speak at an event, or asking me to help you with your social business strategy.

Related posts:

1. I’m a TEDIndia 2009 Fellow
2. Ideas Rediscovered at TEDIndia: The Importance of Storytelling
3. Netroots Rising: How a Citizen Army of Bloggers and Online Activists Is Changing American Politics

Last week, I had the good fortune of spending four days at the TEDIndia conference in Mysore as a TEDIndia fellow. The talks weren’t consistently inspiring, but the people definitely were, and I especially enjoyed bonding with the 100 other TEDIndia fellows.

TEDIndia reinforced three ideas in my mind: live many parallel lives, tell stories to inspire others, and stay open to inspiration in unlikely places.

In this post, I’ll talk about the importance of storytelling for individuals, organizations and cultures.

Let me start with some of my favorite stories from TEDIndia:

- Hans Rosling kicked off TEDIndia by using his Gapminder graphs to tell the story of the rise and fall of civilizations and predicted that India will catch up with the US in terms of per capita GDP by 2048.

- Devdutt Pattnaik gave a fascinating talk on how a culture’s mythology shapes the beliefs and behaviors of its businesses.

- Tony Hseih told the story of how pursuing happiness, not selling shoes, is the corporate mission for Zappos.

- Pranav Mistry’s demo of his Sixth Sense technology was a fascinating peek into a world where the real and the virtual have merged into each other.

- Sadguru Jaggi Vasudev narrated the idiosyncratic story of his lifelong quest for meaning.

- Anil Gupta from Honeybee Network shared awe-inspiring stories of grassroots innovation in Indian villages.

- Kavita Ramdas explored how women are resolving the tension between tradition and modernity by sharing the stories of inspiring women on three continents.

- Charles Anderson demonstrated the interconnectedness of earth’s systems by telling the story of why dragonflies annually travel 400 miles across the ocean from India to the Maldives.

- Anupam Mishra highlighted the importance of traditional methods of sustainability by telling the stories a well that squeezes out moisture hidden in the sand.

- Vagina Monologues author Eve Ensler’s stories were a celebration of the girl within us all.

- Shashi Tharoor said that the country that tells the best stories will be the country that leads the world.

All these stories shared three common characteristics:

- First, they were stories, told as stories. They had a generous dose of drama, a series of ups and downs, and inspiring heroes who fought and won against unlikely odds.

- Second, they went beyond the tedious TEDIndia narrative of “this is the story of how my non-profit saved a hundred children” and talked about ideas that were bigger than the speakers.

- Third, they helped me understand the world in new ways by explaining where we came from, where we are, or where we are heading towards.

These stories reminded me that the most powerful stories we can tell about ourselves are, in fact, stories about other people. These stories reminded me that by telling stories about ideas that are bigger than us, we become bigger than ourselves. These stories reminded me that we are shaped by the stories we tell others, but even more so by the stories we tell ourselves.

So, I am searching now for the storyteller within myself, the storyteller I lost when I started a business, and I am asking myself: what is the story you will tell today?

I am co-founder of social business strategy company 20:20 Social. In my previous avatars, I have held senior marketing roles at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University, and co-founded Vote Report India. Do read my bio and consider interviewing me for a story, inviting me to speak at an event, or asking me to help you with your social business strategy.

Related posts:

1. Bloggers Remember TEDIndia: The Good, the Bad and the Quirky
2. I’m a TEDIndia 2009 Fellow
3. THE WORLD’S WEIRDEST START-UP IDEAS (AND YES, THEY WORK)

I have the US version of the Kindle. It has more than 100 books on it and I totally love the paper-like reading experience.

When I was in Washington DC, I could download books from the Amazon Kindle Store directly to my Kindle, in seconds, through the wireless service. I remember a one-week Spring Break trip to Miami when I downloaded and read half a dozen books on my Kindle while I was sitting on the beach. When I moved back, the only books I carried with me were the ones on my Kindle.

Since I have moved back to India, I have been downloading the books to my laptop and transferring them to the Kindle. I have also realized that physical books in India are cheaper than books in the US, so the $5-10 savings from buying a $9.99 Kindle book instead of a $20 hardcover doesn’t always hold in India. Still, since I already have the Kindle, I continue to buy all my books from the Kindle store.

It will be nice if I can convert my US Kindle into an international Kindle, by paying the $20 price difference. However, I still haven’t found a way to do that.

I think the right price for Kindle in India with be less than Rs. $200 and the books will need to be priced at less than  $9.99. I don’t think Amazon is in any hurry to have differential pricing for India and I don’t really see more than a few thousand Kindles being sold in India until it does.

Here’s the full text of the story –

Shell out more for a Kindle in India
Neha Tara Mehta
New Delhi,  October 21, 2009

It weighs just 10.2 ounces ( 289 gm), is lighter than a typical paperback, can get you the book you want to read in less than 60 seconds, and can hold over 1,500 ebooks.

But Kindle’s international launch hasn’t kindled much interest in India.

The prohibitive cost appears to have spoiled the party for book lovers in India, where Kindle was launched just recently.

The cost at which it is being advertised is $ 279 ( Rs 12,863), but it will cost a lot more for it to be delivered to your doorstep. Users in India will also pay much more for buying a book on Kindle – the wireless reading device that will help users access e- books – than their peers in the US. Amazon, the marketer of Kindle, hasn’t revealed the number of orders it has received from India, but a spokesperson for the online world’s largest mall of the printed word said: " The cost of shipment to India, including shipping duties and tax, is $ 405 ( Rs 18,680.30)." Kindle users in India can get books in the public domain for free, but the books on sale can be worth over $ 100 ( Rs 4,612.50).

" Most new releases and the New York Times bestsellers are priced between $ 11.99 and $ 13.99 ( Rs 553 to Rs 645) unless otherwise marked," the spokesperson said.

In the US, most new releases and the New York Times bestsellers cost not more than $ 9.99 ( Rs 460.80) to Kindle users. the spokesperson said, " We will look for ways to cut costs and pass those savings to customers." There’s no clarity on whether Kindle users in India will have access to the full Amazon booklist because of geographical rights issues. Indian classics, authors and translations may also not be available in large numbers. Book critic Nilanjana S. Roy likened the Kindle launch to that of the iPod in India. " It may take a while to get the pricing right. I don’t see it becoming a runaway hit in the first year. A five- year timeline could change a lot of things," Roy said.

For existing Kindle users here, the launch comes as a bit of a disappointment, as they have already spent time and money acquiring the gadget from the US. Gaurav Mishra, CEO, 20: 20 WebTech, who picked up a Kindle six months ago from the US, said: " I haven’t found a way to align my US model with the one that has been launched in India.

My Kindle is linked to my US credit card." " For markets such as India, the sweet spot is 10K or less," Netcore Solutions MD Rajesh Jain said.

I am co-founder of social business strategy company 20:20 Social. In my previous avatars, I have held senior marketing roles at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University, and co-founded Vote Report India. Do read my bio and consider interviewing me for a story, inviting me to speak at an event, or asking me to help you with your social business strategy.

Related posts:

1. Mail Today Story on Indian Celebrities Using Twitter
2. Mail Today Story on People Whose Lives Were Changed by Blogging
3. The ‘Age of Conversation’ Collaborative Book Featured in Indian Daily Mail Today

2020 Social is presently working with clients to leverage social technologies to achieve five types of strategic business objectives — increase revenue, decrease cost, design better products and processes, enable stronger relationships and increase productivity.

Instead of focusing on specific tools and technologies, we use a structured methodology to tap into the power of the five underlying value systems embedded in social technologies — user generated content, conversations, collaboration, community and collective intelligence.

Finally, we architect effective solutions in the form of community platforms, social applications, social commerce marketplaces, social CRM programs and enterprise collaboration programs.

Gautam will use his organizational development experience to help our clients think about the organizational culture and governance aspects of using social technologies. Specifically, here are the three questions Gautam will be working on –

1. What are the new challenges face by the customer-facing functions in the organization (sales, marketing, product and customer support) when the boundaries between employees, partners and consumers blur? How do organizations respond to these challenges?

2. What are the new pressures that organizational structures are subjected to when employees freely communicate and collaborate with other employees, customers and partners across departmental, geographical and organizations boundaries? How should organizational structures evolve to handle these pressures?

3. How can organizations use social technologies within the enterprise to simplify communication flows, enable stronger relationships with employees, catalyze innovation and improve employee productivity?

Over the next four weeks, Gautam and I will be co-authoring a series of posts (using, what else, a wiki) to come up with clear and actionable answers to these questions.

Everyone at 2020 Social is delighted that Gautam has joined our team and excited at the possibilities that we will be exploring together. Welcome, Gautam!

Related posts:

1. HeadShift CEO Lee Bryant on Transition Strategies for Enterprise 2.0 Adoption
2. Three Scenarios: How Can Indian Firms Leverage Social Technologies Within the Workplace?
3. Decoding Social Media Marketing and Social Business Strategy

- Associate Consultant/ User Experience Guru (1)

From IIT/ NID or equivalent with 4-6 years of experience in user interaction design, user interface design, user experience architecture or information architecture. Familiarity with content management systems like Expression Engine/ Wordpress/ Drupal/ Joomla and social APIs like Facebook/ OpenSocial/ Twitter will be required. The role would involve developing the design specifications and wireframes for community platforms and social applications and overseeing creative design and development via third party vendors. The position is based in Delhi.

20:20 Social is a Social Business Strategy firm, serving Indian and international clients. We operate at the intersection of business, communities and social technologies and add value with our focus on business results.

Working at 20:20 Social combines the best of both worlds: you enjoy the open and collaborative work environment of a web 2.0 startup, the steep learning curve of a strategy consulting firm and the benefits of being part of an established organization (we are related to 20:20 Media, one of India’s largest independent PR firms).

Send your CVs to careers@2020social.com: today might be your lucky day.

I am co-founder of social business strategy company 20:20 Social. In my previous avatars, I have held senior marketing roles at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University, and co-founded Vote Report India. Do read my bio and consider interviewing me for a story, inviting me to speak at an event, or asking me to help you with your social business strategy.

Related posts:

1. How to Build an Open and Collaborative Professional Services Firm?
2. A Different Web 2.0 User Experience in Asia and Africa?
3. How to Design Social Work Environments That Are Freeform, Frictionless and Emergent?

Here’s Sapna’s note on her research –

My research project is titled "Studying Alternative Protest in Cyber Space: Through the Prism of The Pink Chaddi Campaign". It is a Habib Kidwai Fellowship project, financed by James Beveridge Media Resource Centre, AJK Mass Communication Research Centre, Jamia Millia Islamia.

There will 4 different chapters in my final report. First one would be an introduction to the campaign. Second will include the data that I have collected by interviewing various people who were involved in the campaign. Third chapter will trace the connection between feminist debates in India and the pink chaddi campaign. Fourth will conclude the report with appropriate remarks/findings etc.

So the interview that I had with you and the data that I am able to collect through the survey that I have designed will all go into the second chapter of my report. Since the MCRC people are really keen to add new, authentic data to their archives, this chapter is the most important of all.

I have earlier written about the Pink Chaddi Campaign and what marketers can learn from the campaign.

I am co-founder of social business strategy company 20:20 Social. In my previous avatars, I have held senior marketing roles at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University, and co-founded Vote Report India. Do read my bio and consider interviewing me for a story, inviting me to speak at an event, or asking me to help you with your social business strategy.

Related posts:

1. Hindi Blogosphere’s Reactions to the Pink Chaddi Campaign Show the Divide Between Bharat and India
2. The Valentines Day Pink Chaddi Campaign: Indian Pubgoing Women Vs. Shri Ram Sena
3. Updated: The Perils of Facebook Activism: Nisha Susan Locked Out of Pink Chaddi Campaign’s Facebook Group

I am a big believer in social recruiting myself. At least 4 people in the 12-person 20:20 Social team were recruited online, on social networks and blogs.)

HR professional are beginning to use social media in various ways, ‘Social Recruitment’ being the most prominent of them. Blogs and social networks have turned into fantastic recruiting mechanisms and organizations that are adept to change (management) have been quick to adopt these tools due to ease of use and low cost. Example: Ernst & Young uses Twitter and Facebook to hold public chats with candidates and Deloitte woos potential recruits through YouTube videos.

Social Recruitment is a two-way process which involves an online dialogue between the company and the candidate. Hence, the first and most important step to develop a successful social recruiting strategy for any organization is to analyze, build and monitor its online employer reputation. Several social media analytics tools like Radian6 allow companies to track conversations about them with ease. It is necessary to know the opinion in the market of an organization and also any issues that exist as these are considered more credible than the information found on the corporate career site. Job Vent, Jiibe, Jobvite and Glassdoor are other popular sites for understanding the expectations of people and how the HR practices of the company are fared in the candidate community.

Companies even cultivate a great employer brand that may be different from the corporate brand and reach a targeted audience of younger applicants. This helps attract the best talent as it establishes a transparency and gives candidates a fair idea of the ideals & culture of the organization. An excellent example of the use of social media in this case is ‘Microspotting’ – a blog for Microsoft which encompasses videos, a Twitter profile and a Flickr photostream.

After online reputation management, the next step for an organization’s HR practitioners is to form a team of Employee Brand Ambassadors. This team consists of people who are not just tech savvy but also ’social savvy’ . They are trained on understanding RSS, content portability and distribution, blog participation, creating and responding to forum threads, encouraging comments, microblogging effectively and understanding user patterns, site analytics and effectiveness .A Candidate Community Manager is responsible for how communication takes place for career opportunities, company culture, promotion of career events & highlighting of awards and news items.

The most basic, low cost and effective way to get to the ideal employee via social media is to have a creative job description on the company’s website and use email and social websites to share it, as nine out of ten times the best candidates are already in the employees’ network.  To add a personal touch to this it is apt to implement a Live Chat feature on the careers page so that candidates can contact the hiring manager directly incase of any questions. It’s also possible to do a quick background check before a face-to-face interview, using search engines, Facebook or LinkedIn.

Finally, Social Recruiting also helps promote diversity in hiring practices as a heterogeneous mix of candidates is present online and can be chosen on the basis of their experience, age and other factors.

Clearly, social media has proven to be a boon to HR practitioners making recruitment more convenient, effective and time-saving than ever before.

I am co-founder of social business strategy company 20:20 Social. In my previous avatars, I have held senior marketing roles at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University, and co-founded Vote Report India. Do read my bio and consider interviewing me for a story, inviting me to speak at an event, or asking me to help you with your social business strategy.

Related posts:

1. Guest Post: Social Media Analysis for the Brave New Film’s Stop Starbucks Campaign
2. Guest Post: Social Media Analysis for the Vodafone ZooZoos Campaign
3. My Panel on Social Media & Citizen Journalism at the Yahoo! Business & Human Rights Summit

The more important half of what I need to do involves building a world-class professional services firm that is open and collaborative not only in terms of its internal work culture, but also in terms of how it connects with the external social media ecosystem in India and abroad.

Practicing what you preach is easier said than done. The pressures of defining an offering, putting together a team, and building intellectual property, even as you are finding and serving your first set of clients, are real and substantial and it’s tempting to narrow your focus down to the next one month, or three. The good things is that I have resisted that temptation so far.

So, here are some good things that we are already doing –

1. We are building an open work culture.

All of us sit together in a big hall, and all the three “private” rooms in the office are used as public spaces. So, the entire team sees Dave, Upasana and me working hard and enjoying it. We don’t need an open door policy, because we don’t have any doors; all we need to do is to turn and talk. The work space is an important aspect of work culture and, even though we didn’t start with the ideal work space, we are getting better with time.

2. We are building some serious intellectual capital.

I recruited people at 20:20 Social primarily for their ability to learn quickly, and everyone in the team is on a really steep learning curve. Each person in the team has a mandate to become the (in-house) expert in a specific aspect of the Social Web and we’ll publish a series of position papers in Q4 2009 to share that expertise with others. Dave and I have already published a position paper on ‘Social Business Strategy’. Expect three more position papers later in the week, on how activists, celebrities and news organizations can use social technologies.

3. We are learning in public.

Everyone at 20:20 Social has a blog and I encourage them to do their research in public, make mistakes in public, learn in public, because that’s what you do on the Social Web. Already, almost everyone has defined the scope and methodology for their research reports. Do visit the 20:20 Social blogs and share your feedback with the team.

Even as we continue all the good work we are doing inside 20:20 Social (and with our clients), I want us to do more to help the social media ecosystem in India become stronger. I made a small start sometime back by compiling a comprehensive list of social media agencies in India and Dave is working hard to activate the Social Media Club in India. Help us by adding to the list and joining the Social Media Club and tell us how else we can help.

I am co-founder of social business strategy company 20:20 Social. In my previous avatars, I have held senior marketing roles at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University, and co-founded Vote Report India. Do read my bio and consider interviewing me for a story, inviting me to speak at an event, or asking me to help you with your social business strategy.

Related posts:

1. Top Ten Frequently Asked Questions on Building a Social Business Strategy Firm in India
2. Announcement: Gautam Ghosh Has Joined 2020 Social to Build our Enterprise Practice
3. Cool Digital Agency or Serious Strategy Firm?

The approach remains the same as the previous editions. Each author will submit one 400 word article under one of ten section topics –

1. Conversational Branding
2. Influence
3. Getting to Work
4. Corporate Conversations
5. Measurement
6. In the Boardroom
7. Pitching Social Media
8. Innovation and Execution
9. Identities, Friends and Trusted Strangers
10. Conversation at the Coalface

If you are selected as an author, you become part of the great ‘Age of Conversation’ community, which consists of well-known marketing thinkers, social media experts and community leaders. You’ll get link love, opportunities to raise your profile via podcast, interviews and even book readings, and you will be raising money for a worthwhile charity.

The book chapters are due by November 1, 2009 and the author slots are running out fast, so register to be a author today.

I am co-founder of social business strategy company 20:20 Social. In my previous avatars, I have held senior marketing roles at the Tata Group, taught social media at Georgetown University, and co-founded Vote Report India. Do read my bio and consider interviewing me for a story, inviting me to speak at an event, or asking me to help you with your social business strategy.

Related posts:

1. Conversation Age E-Book: Create Conversations, Not Clutter
2. The ‘Age of Conversation’ Collaborative Book Featured in Indian Daily Mail Today
3. Three Reasons Why You Should Buy ‘The Age of Conversation’ Collaborative Book On Amazon Today