Why should I ...

Why Mark Zuckerberg will end up being right.

2011-11-09T12:22:00.000-05:00

Admittedly, as a software guy, I get a little jealous when someone else's seemingly crazy idea begins to pan out as true.

We've noticed something interesting at CURE.

1. The growth of our Facebook presence is pretty massive. (up from a starting point around 2,000 to over 11,000 at present)

2. The growth of our Google Adwords campaign resulting in over 100 clicks a day. (Courtesy of a grant through Google)

Of course, I expected to see a net increase in site traffic to cure.org. However in watching the trends, our traffic remains relatively flat. I thought, "OK, well Facebook has accounted for an increasing share of our traffic, up from below 1% to nearly 7%, and Google CPC starting at an obvious 0% up to nearly 10%. Yet, we remain flat?

My first initial thought was that CPC was cannibalizing organic Google traffic, (it does,maybe a little > 1%) but the discrepancy was too drastic.

So whats the deal? Then I got to looking at our Facebook stats... Nearly 160,000 post views in a month (vs. ~ 60,000 page views on cure.org) and over 9,000 monthly active (out of ~ 11,000) users on Facebook vs 16k uniques on CURE (out of the entire web).

Then it hit me. Mark was right.

The future of non-profits and likely all brands will be living within Facebook.

Why?, that's much easier, the people are already there. It isn't that they don't like the design of cure.org, it is simply easier to support a cause they believe in, consume relevant up to date information and, in the future, give right there within Facebook.

So, my prediction. In the next 2 - 5 years, the vast majority of traffic non-profits receive will be through Facebook. In the long term, believe it or not, it will supplant the need to have a web presence outside of the Facebook ecosystem at all.

Sure that seems scary (maybe crazy) and is likely very far off. Facebook has a ways to go before we at CURE could even consider this (our CUREkids program for one can't run within Facebook) but with increasing capabilities for integration and just watching the data tends it seems not only reasonable that, at least for this non-profit, we'll be staking a greater part of our future on the support of our base within Facebook.

Market like you like

2011-04-11T09:03:00.000-04:00

I've been doing "marketing" now as a "job" for nearly 3 months. Yes, this is the reason I didn't blog at all, laziness had nothing to do with it *cough* yeah right *cough*.

In that time I've learned a tremendous amount about personal marketing both by developing things that work and things that just don't work.

I think the biggest lesson learned so far is that you shouldn't market in a way that isn't personally compelling. That isn't to say that just because you create a campaign that is compelling to you, it will be compelling to everyone else. No, it's merely meant to say that, if you don't like it, its likely that no one else will.

This basic premise goes for "tactics" as well. Take for instance non-profits and their donation raising strategies like sending you a "you missed your annual donation" letter. Yeah, that really makes me feel loved and appreciated. Thanks. We've ALL seen these before numerous times and increasingly fewer of us respond to them, some of us are actually insulted by them. (Hint Hint It's ME!) Yet, "we" press on using the same tired "tactics".

That said here's a few pro-tips:

1. Don't be afraid to market outside of the box, reaching everyone with a single campaign just doesn't happen anymore.

2. Try something new, don't be afraid to crash and burn once in a while.

3. If YOU wouldn't respond to what you've just created, don't ship it, because no one else will either.

4. Know your base. I can't stress this enough, you have have KNOWN you base at one time but they change, just like you. So take time to re-know them every once in a while.

Happy marketing and God bless.

Obvious and Upfront Value

2011-01-04T09:05:00.000-05:00

As a, now former, product guy, I've done lots of thinking about what makes a product "worth while" in the space. Over time, I've developed a litmus test to ensure that product decisions, whether large or small, are good ideas. Now, this test isn't an end all be all but that said, I think you'll easily be able to see where it applies.

Often times, product folks, (or marketers) are in a position to make a decision about the future of your product. (For the sake of argument lets agree a product can be something tangible, including software, or intangible like giving a gift to charity, anything a person will pay for and derive some type of value from) Its equally as common that you have to make a decision between multiple features each of which are likely compelling. So, how do you choose?

Now the obligatory nod to the entire industry and many groups of practice around how to make these choices. Admittedly, I'm a practitioner of Pragmatic Marketing, of which I am a big fan, but sometimes even that process, as good as it is, can be a bit heavy. So how do you choose if you don't have time to spare on a process or a tool?

There are two questions you should ask yourself:

1. Does this feature provide value to one of your user groups?

If yes proceed to question 2. If no, rethink your feature.

2. Is the value provided by this feature obvious and "upfront"?

Meaning, will your customers recognize the value it provides easily and quickly?

Every product must show value. That much is a given. No one pays for, or even uses, products that don't have value. People LOVE a product that shows its value simply by existing and being used.

What does that look like? How do you know you've gotten there? Well, lets take an online software system of any kind. You know you've gotten there when your users no longer ask questions like "where do I go to find this data". That should be obvious to anyone using the system. In a CRM system for example, users should never have to ask the question "how are we doing with sales this quarter" answering that question should be obvious and upfront in the daily usage of the system.

What about donating to a charity? People donate for a variety of reasons, one of which is to feel they have done something good. Usually, people will donate to a cause that they feel does the most good. So for you .org types, that means your product needs to easily display the value it gives to its cause. What is the "value" of my dollar? What did my donation accomplish? That information should be obvious and upfront when donors are making the decision to donate and it should be reinforced after the donation.

Try asking those 2 questions about your product decisions for a week. Post the results back here and share any thoughts you have!

Change is Coming

2010-12-29T13:57:00.000-05:00

Just a quick little update for those that follow this blog:

Effective January 10th, I'll no longer be in the technology industry. I have made the jump over the for non-profit space and will be heading up marketing at Cure International. That said, the focus of my blog remains the same and is exceedingly relevant to my day to day.

Check out Cure.org for more information.

Drop us a quick prayer if you're feeling up to it!

- Matt

Consistency & Individuality

2010-12-11T09:40:00.002-05:00

From time to time, I fill in for our campus pastor on stage at the church. We have about 800 to 1000 people in attendance over the course of two services in a given weekend. On top of that, our church uses a campus model. That basically means that we have several campuses broadcasting the same message to about 10,000 people each week, so consistency in message is important.

Lots of organizations today have a similar issue. They have a large, diverse and disbursed base that they need to communicate a consistent message too. All things considered, that's pretty easy to do with the web these days.

The problem comes in with people. Sure, you can "enforce" every word that comes out of your peoples' mouths but it sounds that way. In sales, the individual style of the rep is often times the factor that wins the deal. Recently, when selecting some new technology to partner with, the style of the rep was what "broke the tie" between two very similar technology choices.

Back to my church for a second. While they place a high value on consistency in message, they place an equally high value on "sounding like yourself". When preparing remarks that I'll use on stage, I'm free to be myself within some guidelines. This makes the message delivery sounds more genuine, which leads people to listen and receive it more effectively. This, of course, leads to greater buy in and continued attendance.

The same principles apply to coaching your sales reps. Give them guidelines, but don't give them exactly what to say. Let your reps be themselves and do what they do best, deliver your message and build relationships with soon-to-be clients.

Early and Often

2010-12-08T14:04:00.000-05:00

Anyone in the software space has heard the phrase "release early and often".

Many folks regard this as a high risk strategy. With complex systems, early releases can be regarded as careless and even dangerous, so most organizations tend to stay away from the idea.

On the flip side, I've yet to meet a client who didn't want an issue or enhancement addressed quickly. In fact, the happiest clients I have are the ones who believe their provider to be flexible and responsive. They seem to look past issues if they know the provider is ready to fix them quickly and efficiently when they come up.

As it happens, early and often doesn't only apply to software releases (or software in general). Think of early and often as a communication strategy.

Clients feel more engaged when you communicate with them frequently and on a personal level. No not an email that "feels" personal but on a real personal level. Pick up the phone or pen an email directly to a few clients now and again. Let them know what you're thinking, invite them to the table to discuss the future of your organization and do it often. Share your organization's thoughts with them even if they aren't completely polished, you'll be surprised how much you will learn and how little you really know about those you serve. Having conversations with your base doubtless will save you time and money (or read more properly money and money). By talking to them and presenting ideas and thoughts early, you can gauge the response and change course if necessary before wasting.... you guessed it time or money.

Doesn't sound like "traditional" marketing huh? I challenge its likely to be more effective. By communicating early and often you'll forge a sense of partnership while constantly reinforcing your brand's presence.

This strategy isn't meant to espouse carelessness or frivolity, but flexibility and relationship. Clients who feel like partners in your organization's journey are usually in it for the long haul... even if things don't always go according to plan.

Downgrading from perfection

2010-12-07T11:59:00.000-05:00

In today's world what is valued more? How messaging is said or how authentic the message is?

I challenge that being perceived as authentic is more valuable than being polished.

Today, over anything else, customers value relationship. Maybe instead of spending time grooming our images attempting to come close to perfection, people (including customers who, by the way, are people too), would find it easier to relate to business & organizations who are a little less perfect..... just like people.

Comming Soon....

2010-10-25T09:13:00.002-04:00

So,

I have received comment that this blog is horribly out of date. Its pretty much undeniable.

I thought I'd give a brief explanation, I no longer work in the Learning industry.

Ok, so that's a poor excuse no to blog, so, in the next few weeks I'll be re-inventing my blog around my new roles in the world of marketing, sales and customer service!

Stay tuned and thanks!

- Matt

P.S A preview of my next blog: "Meet them where they are! Marketing & selling to a 21st century audience. "

Talent Managment vs Talent Development: Human Capital or Human Cattle?

2008-09-15T12:55:00.026-04:00

Full disclosure: I used to LOVE the idea of talent management. In fact, I've designed systems that do just that. The question is, do we want to treat employees as cattle by growing them in a controlled environment, making all the decisions for them and never truly encourging them to reach for more or is there a different way?

The basic idea of Talent Management(TM) is to quantify and automate the talent pool in an organization. By and large, TM is meant to inventory your "Human Capital"(HC) and improve the rate of return by "investing" in learning, goal planning and training. This is the first in a multi-part series designed to showcase the value of a Talent Development approach vs. a Talent Management approach to people.

To set a baseline, traditional TM for a typical organization might look like this.

Assign competencies to people describing their desired skill sets and behaviors

Evaluate each person against their assigned skills and behaviors (read, performance review)

Identify Gaps where improvement can be made

Assign some behavior or skill modifying remedy. (i.e, training)
Rinse and Repeat as necessary. (Usually annually)

This practice often also involves goal setting and goal management as well, following much the same process, though, often times individuals will both be assigned and self-design their goals.

Over time, an organization can use the information gathered here to fire, hire and promote individuals, plan successions and career paths and determine a model for compensation, or at least that's the thought. The truth is many implementations fail, for reasons such as; time to implement, cost, and most often, poor adoption.

Over all though, the idea and core premise is sound but where are the people in this process? Is this really the best approach for identifying and improving talent?
Perhaps we need to reevaluate our process? Consider the difference between management and development. Perhaps best defined as a contrast between control and growth. Ironically, the goal of good management is growth, however, often times, our desire for control hampers change, thereby impeding growth.

Giving up some control however, can yield unexpected results and tremendous growth.

Consider these scenarios:

You're a director: Annually, one of your managers reviews Tom, you don't know Tom, aside from what he looks like, but you hear he's a solid performer. Year after year, you approve his review of "meets expectations", sign off on his raise and life goes on. Tom continues on doing whatever it is he does.

Enter, crowdsourcing.

Rather than a review, you beginning observing trends in your workplace community. Your employees are constantly interacting with one another online leaving a data trail for you to follow. To your surprise, Tom, that average employee you knew little about, is actually an internal super-connector. His peers rank his suggestions, comments and content as superior and invaluable. On top of that, apparently, he serves as an unofficial conduit, between your department and marketing, fielding most questions about your product! That's a far cry from the Tom you knew as "meets expectations". Shouldn't his manager have known and identified him as a top-performer?

That is one example of a startling discovery you could find by crowd sourcing your Talent Management. Here are some of the hard benefits:

Uncover hidden talent, rising stars, and filter out poor performers

Assess and catalog talent pools by using a job-folksonomoy. (More on that later)

Discover blocking factors (like Tom's manager who likely knew but felt threatened by Tom.)

Save time and money by removing or supplementing a heavy TM process.

Provide Just In Time learning by giving employees access to content and experts as needed.

As I mentioned, I'll continue building a case for Talent Development > Talent Management in the near future. Check back soon!

Social Lesson Planning K - 12

2008-08-12T08:19:00.004-04:00

So, as my organization and I continue to pioneer the social learning world I have begun reaching out via, no other than, social networks to ascertain the impact of social learning in the real world.

Recently, I have begun thinking about social learning in the class room. No, not the corporate class room or even high school. I'm talking about the elementary class room.

My wife is a teacher. She teaches 2nd grade and has for nearly 5 years. At the end of last year, the district was asking teachers to incorporate more social technology in the class room. In theory, this is a good idea, even second graders can use a forum/message board these days. The objective was to have the kids ask questions to one another with in the classroom. They decided on using a wiki for this. Probably not the most appropriate use of the tool but it did suffice.

Either way, that got me to thinking about teaching, learning and social media in our K-12 sytem. I was watching Kevin Kelly talk about the next 5000 days of the web and how we have moved from connecting web pages to other web pages to connecting data to other data.

Now, this seems like an obvious change, but it got me to thinking about its impacts on K-12 learning. My wife and her small team of 2nd grade teachers share their lesson plans (all created using the Learning Focus Methodology) amongst one another. This is good! Sharing, standardization and reuse are all tenants of Web 2.0 (and consequently Learning 2.0).

So now the What If.

What if, we didn't just provide a shared drive for the district to share lesson plans (in a semi-haphazard way as it were), but we provided a social content management system where teachers could upload plans from around the world on given topics, discuss them and use pieces and parts from each to create the plan they want to use.

Hard Benefits:

Enhanced education quality - by allowing discussion, people can communicate and work out small details, share best practice etc.

Time Savings - by allowing formalized reuse, teachers will save time and therefor have lower stress levels and the district less turn over.

Money - yes, in all likelihood, this will save districts money! How? They constantly buy new material year after year but if you let teachers find and share what works, they may not have to do that as frequently

I'm eager to hear your thoughts on this.

The future of Social Media: 5 years out.

2008-05-28T09:50:00.011-04:00

Recently,

Jeremiah Owyang recently posted a question on his Web Strategist blog.

The question was,
"Where you think the future of White Label Social networks is headed over the next 5 years, and why you back up that prediction?"

I happened to post a comment on the blog that I thought it would be good to share with everyone. So, here is my 5 year market prediction for White Label social media as a market.
1. Consolidation: As with any new market, software, more than most, it is rife with competition. Currently this is a good thing for the buyer because competition pushes price down and quality up. It forces people to innovate and go the extra mile. However, as was seen in virtually all software markets, it will plateau and the space will begin to consolidate with mergers, acquisitions and closings. I predict this will begin within 24 months and we are already seeing signs of it.
2. Commoditization: - The market will experience some degree of commoditization as innovation wears thin. Competitors will begin trying to cannibalize the market share of their competitors as well as their feature sets.

3. Segmentation - The market will likely segment as well. As with many products, solutions will begin to specialize and cater to different verticals such as health care, B 2 C and media. We are already seeing signs of this in the market today, but right now it is safer to be all things to all people. Within 18 months many solutions will begin to specialize to provide solutions to a niche space.

4. Innovation: Of course, the space will begin to evolve to a great degree as has occurred in all software spaces. For Social Media, I believe this will likely focus on incorporating Web 3.0, or semantic web technologies. As users of social media begin to create exponentially larger sets of data, finding the right answers to questions without a painstaking search will become absolutely critical. Semantic web and advanced search technologies will likely be the answer to this problem.

If nothing else I hope that this is somewhat interesting.

Survery: LearningTown

2008-05-28T09:42:00.003-04:00

Gang,

Just as an FYI I posted an interested survey that is currently "pending" for Elliot Masie's LearningTown.

Give me some thoughts about it. Currently the staff at the Masie center is reviewing it, hopefully it will get posted out on the community. We the the potential to reach over 4,000 learning professionals.

Survey:

The Global Talent Market is facing a shortage that will only increase over in the next 5 – 10 years.

1) Agree Strongly

2) Agree

3) Neither Agree Nor Disagree

4) Disagree

5) Disagree Strongly

2. My organization has implemented a companywide Talent Management and/or Succession Planning process.

1) Agree Strongly

2) Agree

3) Neither Agree Nor Disagree

4) Disagree

5) Disagree Strongly

3. For my organization, an aging or retiring workforce is or will be a problem in the next 5 years.

1) Agree Strongly

2) Agree

3) Neither Agree Nor Disagree

4) Disagree

5) Disagree Strongly

4. My organization has begun researching Social Learning / Networking to address Talent Management / Succession Planning challenges.

1) Agree Strongly

2) Agree

3) Neither Agree Nor Disagree

4) Disagree

5) Disagree Strongly

Ping me with your thoughts!

Polling the Electorate: What would you ask?

2008-04-29T22:33:00.002-04:00

Recently,

I was "adopted" if you will, as a LearningTown.com mayor. In essence, I'll be working with a few other colleagues in helping the Masie sponsored community thrive.

That said, we mayors have our first task cut out for us. We are to develop a survey to provide to our prescribed group. Mine of course, being social networking / NextGen learning. So, in light of that, I thought I might ask my blog readers what survey questions they would enjoy asking those people in the NextGen / Social Learning world.

These can really be anything from: "where do you see social learning heading in the next 18 months?" to; On a scale of 1 to 5, 1 being disagree strongly and 5 being agree strongly, social networking / social learning is important to my organization's goals in the next 12 - 18 months.

Leave your favorite question or questions in the comments below!

Thanks for your help!

- Matt

Masie Learning Systems & AG08 Re-Cap

2008-04-17T07:47:00.002-04:00

I've finally returned home from an epic journey of trade shows and meetings.

The week has been tumultuous to say the least (despite the travel). The learning space is changing and people are starting to come around to social media. Masie has recently opened his LearningTown.com site, for which, consequently , I'm a "mayor" (read facilitator). This site, while generally distributed across all topics of learning has clearly paved the way for the use of social media in learning.

Both the Masie conference and the eLearning Guild's annual gathering showed the rising level of interest in social media for learning. The term Learning 2.0 is becoming viral, at least among vendors and industry analysts. Maise dedicated a full pre-show session to User Content and at least a dozen sessions at AG08 focused on L20.

At this point, a need has been established and some early adopters have taken that leap of faith. I hold firm on my prediction that learning leaders are now exploring the idea of social media in their organizations for a variety of business purposes. While few vendors are positioning more than a tool set, several have begun to package solutions to address business needs.

With in 24 months, a growing number of organizations will have adopted solutions ranging from, small group collaboration tools to full blow communities. We will keep exploring the trends as they occur. Please post and reply with any comments!

Live from elearning guild's AG08

2008-04-15T13:20:00.002-04:00

Greetings all,

I write you from the Hilton in Walt Disney World which is hosting the e.Learning Guild's annual gathering 2008.

The conference is a-buzz, with new technology and fresh ideas. Learning 2.0, the aforementioned convergence of social media / web 2.0 technology and learning has been a resonating theme for many throughout the conference. There are still rather few providers in the space but some interesting new comers like FlockPod are starting to crop up.

Additionaly, those people whom I've spoken with seem very excited about the way L20 will impact their organizations. I've spoken with people from insurance companies, technology firms, health care and even freight rail and there is one constant theme.

This is big.

No one really has a firm grasp on how they will apply it but with a little guidance and some questions, the big 3 concepts are:

Retiring / Aging Workforce
Connecting to the Gen Y demographic
Harnessing and encouraging informal learning

The general feel seems to be that in the next 18 months the market will solidify on what it is looking for and really begin shopping for L20 technology.

The sessions I've attended have been good but most have been kept at a high level as there are few L20 implementations and fewer case studies. I'll post again tomorrow with the recap of what I've learned.

Cheers

- Matt

Twitter and Learning

2008-03-26T10:44:00.003-04:00

So its been nigh 2 months since my last post. Enough said.

I have not given up on blogging, but have been overwhelmingly busy more or less implementing the cool stuff we've been talking about for months.

So here is something crazy. Twitter. I'm sure several of you have used it, I do on a regular basis. Though, there are times I question the value of Twitter and what it does for people.

The value of Twitter may not have been fully realized yet though. Besides live Twittering events, and general public-IM, Twitter may have a hidden value to those of us in the learning space.

I was thinking about this this morning and was about to type my idea into our wiki but I though why not socialize this via my, now dusty, blog.

The basic premise of Twitter is to let people know what you are doing, thinking, eating, etc. Essentially for those of you who do not know, Twitter is a tool where you just type in anything in 140 characters or less and its is broadcast out to everyone. People who are specifically subscribed to you in Twitter will see you're message appear in their time line. At which point, you can quickly reply to it if you so choose.... or simply let everyone know that you're having a Coke.

So how does this even remotely apply to learning? Well think about it a second.

Twitter has a number of 3rd party application, ala Snitter, that sit on your desk top and allow you to quickly access Twitter via APIs.
Twitter allows you to subscribe to anyone else on Twitter
Twitter allows you to broadcast yourself to anyone following you
Twitter allows you to "favorite" a Tweet (a twitter post).

Those 4 things make it rather pervasive. So, if you're at your desk and you have just figured out something challenging or have a great little knowledge tidbit you want to share. You can click the window type it out and fire it off. Anyone else finding this valuable can then favorite that little tidbit and access it later!

Clearly it isn't the end all be all solution but hey it could work!

How do you think you could leverage Twitter in your learning organizations?

Push them into it: Forced Participation

2008-01-30T09:28:00.000-05:00

Greetings Folks,

So that title is perhaps a bit provocative and maybe just a bit over the top.

The basic premise however, remains sound. A system made to collect; catalog and harness the knowledge of your employees as they move about your organization will not succeed if people do not participate within the system.

Due to data privacy concerns, no matter how intelligent you design the system to capture the data, people will have to opt into it or it could be a serious detraction when attracting fresh talent to the organization. So how do you encourage the use of said system?

I recently began playing with the build-your-own social network platform Ning. I built a whole community surrounding Learning2.0. (you can check it out by going to learning2dot0.ning.com if you want) but, the point is that, shockingly, no one has joined it!

Seriously though, the reason no one uses it is because no one knows about it. Getting people to use any new system is primarily a marketing exercise. Here is a very common approach to getting people to use anything new. Many times, implementation teams will use a few of these concepts but the best results occur when you use them all.

Advertise the system to your employees! Leverage:

Email campaigns
Brown Bag lunches.
Blogs, Discussion Forums.
Company Intranet or Portal advertising.

It needs to have C-level sponsorship and endorsements

CEO should be aware and support it.
CLO or COO should be the primary driver behind it.

It needs to be tied to their personal income.

Set solid metric for expected participation. (3 flagged items per day?)
Include it in job specific goals.
Set metrics for usage. (read 2 entries a day?)

These methods won’t exactly force them to use it, but it will go a long way in encouraging they do.

As always I encourage your thoughts and comments.

- Matt

Connect your retirees to everyone

2007-12-19T08:37:00.000-05:00

Greetings again,

I hope everyone is having a great Holiday season thus far. Its been quite hectic for my family as we recently had our car smashed into by a van. All the same, best wishes to all of your families this season from mine.

So, I thought I'd tackle what seems to be a relatively easy concept of the 4 prior bullet points, then make a comment on an article I read about the biggest disappointments in technology for 2007.

So, the bullet:

Connecting retirees to everyone - (Before they leave AND after they are gone and we'll make it worth their while)

Lets break that statement down.

Connect retirees to everyone - simply put, we develop a social network (easy enough to do today) and allow them to connect with whomever they need to connect with. More accurately, as they will be retired or very busy, let others who need to connect with them easily find them and connect to them.

Consequently, this should be a basic corporate tenant. Let your employees connect with one another in anyway they see fit. In addition, provide them the tools with which to do so. For our uses, much of this hinges on the tool we put together in the previous post. Identify, label and track your experts. Then allow stakeholders to follow and engage them.

Facilitating this connection will save time and money for your organization as well as help build your future leaders.

So finally, the last part of that statement: "And we'll make it worth their while". That is mission critical to the success of this system. Tapping the knowledge of retirees after they leave the workforce will become difficult at best. Yes, you'll probably have some small percentage of people who would stay involved for free, however that is the exception, not the rule.

My suggestion would be to set up a reward system(cash or "stuff" preferably) based on the quantity and quality of the information provided by retirees.

You can manage this any way you choose but I'd recommend the following:

Pay them for posts that rise in "helpfulness" above a certain threshold.

You could determine this via user rating or subjectively via a community manager.

Pay them some nominal fee for being "online" or available to answer emails / questions

Let them keep their Blackberry for free! pending they answer communications that come to it
Push questions their email address (let them keep their corporate one or set up an alumni address (i.e johndoe@IBMalumni.com)
Pay them for being "logged in" to your social network

Pay them for blog contributions. Maybe they could be part of a group blog around their prior job function? Pay them for posts and comments.

These are just a few ways to compensate them. They aren't going to expect a full salary and if you make it convenient they can respond via their Blackberry from the 15th green or from the beach.

You will also have to accept that some of your top performers are just going to be done when they retire and want nothing to do with you anymore. No amount of money can bring them back! For this reason, you want a system in place gathering their knowledge prior to them leaving.

Please enhance the above with comments!

Finally, I was asked comment on the 13th point of this article. For the most part, its true. The social media market is HUGE. Guess what? This space will get even more crowded before it starts to consolidate.

Everyone wants a piece of the potentially rewarding pie. I agree that, as in all types of technology, the vast majority will die a .com death but there will be some winners. The most important point was that all we've seen from providers(as far as innovation) is the same old thing over and over. Features like cooler looking widgets and faster/better sheep throwing.

My 2 cents? I think you'll begin to see innovation in the space start to take shape not in the form of "cooler blogs" but in how Web 2.0 tools are applied. Applying the concept of social media, crowd sourcing and collaborative content to real business problems and bring folks together for the common good of their organization.

What we are discussing here is just one of many potential ways, albeit a good one, to apply social media. This isn't going away despite what many deem to be a fad. It is the way the NET Gen will do business and life at least until the next technology wave comes around.

Have a great Holiday!

- Matt

Please Save the Knowledge!

2007-11-12T07:41:00.000-05:00

Try this on for size:

People are not your most valuable asset!
The things they know and the way they learn and apply what they know are.

Right? I'm talking about knowledge and hows its applied. You might say, "True, but I need the person to do that for me." Maybe not.

So, I'm about to begin a series on ways we can use "2.0" to save the knowledge from folks transitioning out of our organizations.

There are a heck of a lot of approaches to this end. Some approaches exist and some are highly theoretical at the moment. As I see it, so called "transition" folks fall in to one of three categories.

Retirees
Voluntary Emigration (employee left on their own)
Involuntary Emigration (employee was asked to leave)

While harvesting the useful knowledge from non-retiree emigrants is an interesting business problem, based on the feed back from Learning 2007 and from other discussions in the field, tapping retirees is the more pertinent topic these days. (and by the way I think we will design a system to do both at the same time!)

So, I suppose the place to start is by identifying what problems the system should solve.

When employees retire, they take with them valuable knowledge and experience
Contracting retired employees back only delays the problem of lost knowledge
New hires seldom benefit from working with the senior ranks of the company

There is a system that can fix this. Wait before you think of it, NO its not a community.

O.K. I lied, it is a bit of a community but tossing a blog at this problem isn't going to solve it. If it were that easy, it'd be done by now. In addition, just connecting people to people won't solve it or SelectMinds.com would be rolling in money.

Nope the solution doesn't exit yet. At least not as a whole.

A working system will solve the problem by:

Connecting retires to everyone

(Before they leave AND after they are gone and we'll make it worth their while)

Capturing valuable knowledge intelligently

(i.e recognize each interaction they have, what is is, who its with and catalog it)

Tap their daily life quietly and efficiently

(let everything they do be a contribution, each time they type an email give them an easy option to capture that experience into "teachable moment")

Push them into it

(make them do it, force them, and above all make it easy and seamless)

Lets kick off by exploring those 4 bullet points. No it doesn't yet discuss the delivery of this "captured" knowledge to people who need it or a less web based approach of juniors spending meaningful time with seniors. However, its a start. Next time, we'll begin blowing this out into a system.

Learning Changes: Learning 2007 recap

2007-10-25T20:03:00.000-04:00

Good evening gang, (including anyone new from Learning 2007)

So, I had the privilege of attending Elliot Masie's Learning 2007 as you may have noted from the last blog post.

I neglected to say it in my previous blog but there is something fundamentally wrong about being "lectured" about the wisdom of crowds! It was veritably shameful really. At one point, I had the mic in hand to make a comment and I was verbally trampled for 5 minuets as the guy kept on lecturing. Needless to say, I had no comment after that.

Well, if you want a recap of what went on, you can browse www.learning2007.com as well as http://www.learningwiki.com to get an idea.

So the questions are:

What did I learn.
How does it apply to what we discuss

Well, I learned a lot. Some of the key notes including Don Tapscott, Dan Pink and OF COURSE Bobby Flay all had insightful things to say about learning and how the mind works etc. Dan Pink intrigued me enough to buy his book A Whole New Mind. After I read it I'll discuss again what I learned.

My purpose for going what several fold. I, of course, went to support my job function, but as a personal goal, I went to really "test drive" the idea of Learning 2.0 with some real training professionals. Here is what I found.

Training professionals have a great desire to capture and more so facilitate informal learning. You know that peer to peer over the cube stuff I talk about frequently.
They are VERY scared about the retirement of the baby boomers and how that will impact their talent pools.
Community and Knowledge Management, shockingly, are not necessarily connected. (I know they aren't quite the same but in Learning 2.0 they certainly complement one another)
People loved our definition of Learning 2.0
Few people are driving towards developing a full Learning 2.0 solution. Further more, those that are, are selling it poorly!

So how does does that apply to what we discuss? Well, I think it gives us the opportunity to explore a few new avenues of Learning 2.0.

I'll put it to a vote. Should the next blog post talk about:

The ideal learning 2.0 system.
Using learning 2.0 to supplement / relieve the stress of baby boomer retirement?
The challenges of getting people to use a learning 2.0 environment.
Q/A about the Learning 2007 conference.

You guys decide! We'll cover them all, you can just pick the order.

Cutting Edge from Learning 2007!

2007-10-23T10:32:00.000-04:00

As I post this, I'm listening to John Abele from Boston Scientific speak about "The Wisdom of Crowds".

Thus far, nothing "earth shattering" has been laid out regarding Learning 2.0 or Web 2.0 at least in this session. Currently they are talking about "polling the crowd" via audience response systems.

As it turns out, our definition of Learning 2.0 is actually being received quite well! I've run it by several "learning colleagues" and they seemed both interested and intrigued in our blog project. I suspect we'll get some "inflow" of lurkers into the blog with in a few days.

I'll post a follow up to this post in short order and detail some of the learning highlights such as speakers, books, sessions etc.

Oh and just in case a few of you were wondering, Bobby Flay delivered a great speech.
I"ll post some pictures / video soon.

Blog Action Day

2007-10-15T11:12:00.000-04:00

Gang,

Today is blog action day!

The theme? Draw attention to the environment. My little tidbit would be this spot of advice.

Check out Planet Earth (HD if you have it). It is a fantastic documentary about the earth and how amazing it is. Its about 8 hrs long but it provides an in depth look into seldom seen places on earth.

In addition to stunning shots it also drops substantive hints about what "We" are doing to the environment and to our planet.

If we don't act soon, the only way to see these natural wonders will be on DVD. So in short, do yourself a favor and and "learn" something about what you can do to help our planet.

- Matt

Why don't the pieces fit? Connecting people to the right people.

2007-09-25T14:47:00.000-04:00

So, we briefly detailed ways to "incent" participation last time. Getting people to participate is hard enough but what about getting the RIGHT people to participate?

Here is the challenge. Lots of things cause a community to fail or never really grow to begin with. Credibility is the key and correct content is your reputation.

A community that provides the WRONG answers to the questions posted will fizzle more quickly than can be imagined.

Harnessing the power of a true Learning 2.0 community requires not only getting bodies in the door, but it's getting the right people involved to answer the questions they should answer.

This just isn't easy to do.

I'll be brining a guest blogger in next time to explore ways to avoid this, but for now, lets get some conversation going.

So the challenge is this, how do I get the right people answering the questions my employees/students/community members are posting?

Sell Selfish

2007-09-12T08:28:00.000-04:00

Sorry all for the delay in this posting, it has been a hectic several days.

I wanted to give "Josh" a public thank you for being the first person to comment on the blog!

Incidentally, his comment transitioned the conversation perfectly into today's topic.

So our title is Sell Selfish. What does that mean?

The basic premise is thus: "People will do what benefits them" WIIFM! (whats in it for me?)

So to frame our discussion a bit more tightly, Sell Selfish will be my motto when discussing how to motivate a group of people to contribute as you wish them too with a particular focus on web based communities .

So how does this apply to Learning 2.0?

"Learning 2.0 will be connecting people who need to know with people who know on demand."

That is easier said than done.

The burning question now is what would it take to get someone who "knows" to expend effort relaying their knowledge to someone who "needs to know"?

The simple answer is make it benefit them!

Lets talk about how to make this happen.

$$$ MONEY $$$
Money is the universal extrinsic motivator, kind of like the "water" of motivators. Everyone could use a little more cash-in-hand. Paying those that know, to spend time & effort imparting their knowledge will work. No questions asked.

Positives:

Universal - will motivate just about everyone
Tangible - easy to see the value
Sellable - easy to sell or advertise

Negatives:

Expensive - costs you money
Not scalable - as your community grows, so does the cost to incent the community
Offensive - some of your major contributors that aren't motivated by money could be turned off by the fact that you offer it.

Rewards/ Stuff / Toys / Trinkets / Deals / Points
Many people will contribute if they are rewarded with things rather than just cash. Clearly, this model works as we see time and again, internet banner adds saying; "Fill out a survey. Get 2 free Ring Tones"

What about answer a question, (accurately) and get a chance to win an iPhone?

Positives

Universal - Motivates many people
Tangible - As with pure money its an extrinsic reward
Cheap(er) - As opposed to money, the rewards you give away for participation can be just about anything. They could be iPods to coupons or points towards just about anything. Cambrian House is one company that motivates users with "points"

Negatives

Cost - These rewards, while cheaper, still cost you money which will inevitably cut into the bottom line.
Offensive - as with money, people can be offended by what is offered in trying to garner their participation
Must be distributed - depending on what you offer, if its tangible, you have to ship it. Often times, this is an undesired challenge.

*** Reputation / "Rep"/ Street Cred / Kudos ***
Some people are intrinsically motivated. They do things just to be recognized for doing them. Reputation tracking encompasses the idea of a "flat" world where everyone is equal until proven not. Believe it or not, one way to get people to contribute what they know, is purely by recognizing that they know it!

Positives:

ITS FREE! - this costs nothing and its still rather effective!
It scales - no matter how large our community gets, recognizing contributes costs the same.

Negatives

Will not work on everyone - just that, some people just don't care if people "know they are cool"

Off the top of my head, those are the most frequently used "methods" to motivate people to participate. Not a new concept but a different take on something old, maybe like the Curves for learning communities? O.K, Maybe not that innovative.

As a note, I plan on exploring the concept of incenting and motivating community use and methods by which to do that further, BUT for those of you interested, it won't be on this blog. Keep looking though shortly there will be a forum where we can all talk about it!.

On the other hand, lets keep exploring "How We Learn" and some of the ideas behind that.

Next time: Why don't the pieces fit? Connecting people to people.

Communities: Eye on Learning

2007-09-04T14:51:00.000-04:00

Due to the title, as write this I can't help but hear the theme music to The Simpson's: Eye on Springfield.

Clearly, that has nothing to do with our conversation today.

So my first official foray into the world of learning 2.0 will be with the concept of web based communities in mind.

Community will continue be an important tool in the years to come. Already, a countless amount of learning occurs in web communities each day. The technically savvy demographic, clearly the first to embrace the internet, has been using it to communicate and learn for years. So the question is, why hasn't everyone embraced it?

As a former software developer myself, I noticed that much of the time when I would 'troll' the developer forums for the answer regarding an often obscure question, I would post my question but rarely would I answer questions other users had posted.

I never thought much about it at the time, but now I ask myself why is that? Why didn't I answer questions that I already knew the answer to?

After analysis, I could really only come up with 2 reasons.

I lacked confidence in the answer
I didn't benefit by answering the question

If the "people with the answers" do not provide those answers, how can we hope to connect people who want to know with those that do know?

My theory is that people will only participate if they benefit from their participation. That may seem very selfish, and the truth of the matter is, it is!

Short of changing the focus of "the people" to the greater good, I suggest we merely find a way to capitalize on selfishness.

I recently finished reading a book about the power of crowdsourcing and the wisdom of crowds, (which you can preview here at www.wearesmarter.org), and while I enjoyed the book and the concepts therein, each of the businesses that capitalized on the model addressed the concern of "what's in it for me".

So the question is how do we make this work for the learning community? Is it something that can be developed into a product? These are some of the topics I will explore soon.

Next Time: Monetize, Incentivise, Sell Selfish!