Just in case, some of you don’t know where DXO is at, here’s the building. Its just next to Esplanade.

Tonight, we have here with us Dan Lejerskar, Co-Founder, Chairman and Executive Vice President of EON Reality Inc, sharing in-depth with his very own �??Seven Keys to Being a Successful Serial Entrepreneur�??.

Short introduction of the speaker

Dan is a serial entrepreneur with more than 19 years of experience in Virtual Reality and Simulation. Prior to co-founding EON Reality, Dan also started several successful companies. These include PFAB, a real-estate development company, Prosolvia AB, a publicly traded simulation company, and RealityBUY Inc, an e-commerce company focused on interactive 3D.

Follow me as we uncover the keys to being a successful serial entrepreneur with Dan Lejerskar.

At 5.30pm inside DXO, everything is set-up and ready to go…

Time now is 6.20pm, and everyone’s doing the final checks and setting up. If you’re still not here yet, you might want to make your way down soon. Light dinner will be served at 6.50pm with informal meeting with Dan. Actual event will commence at around 7.30pm.

Crowd is starting to grow and DXO is slowly but surely filling up! Nice music playing in the background with drinks and food for all guests. Dan and his guests are also moving around chatting with guests.

If you’re online now with us, you can also chat and share your thoughts in our floating room. You can send messages via a few ways.

1. on http://www.floatingroom.com/ with Widgeous Device
2. on Windows Live Messenger: send to w@widgeo.us
3. from Text messaging: send to 92721192 with “room say your message”
4. or via twitter: send it via direct message to wdg - “d wdg your message”

Warming up on stage… Mike the emcee for tonight

Mike’s sharing about the floatingroom

Light dinner served was pretty good. And everyone’s getting cosy and relaxing around. If you’re alone, don’t be sad, join us for a chat at our floating room!

7.38pm: We’re all ready to go!! Mike going up on stage now… “Hello! Hello! Hello DXO!”

Opening address for the night… today’s programme is brought to you by iDA and supported by TDM and E27! Woohoo! Show some love!! *clap! clap! clap!*

On stage now, Radm Ronnie Tay, CEO of IDA, with his opening speech.

He encourages everyone to leverage the tech initiative and take a go at being an entrepreneur.

On stage now, Dan Lejerskar…

Touching on what is an entrepreneur… from wikipedia.

And next he covers who are the history’s 10 greatest entrepreneurs. With a nice photo of Steve Jobs. He’s one of Dan’s absolute idol!

The seven keys to being a successful serial entrepreneur…

1. Think Big, start small and scale profitability
2. Clear pain killer
   Pick the one thing that is of burning importance to the customer then delight them with a compelling idea.
3. Keep it simple. Stupid
4. Customer driven development
   Rich custmers! Target those who will move fast and pay a premium for a uniqueoffering. Get key customers buy-in early. Think differently and constantly challenge.

   Giving some ideas and examples of customer driven development. As basic as things your see and do daily. So think differently and you’ll never know what you’ll get!

   The examples Dan’s showing now is beyond description! You’ve got to see it yourself! So sorry… no updates here.

5. Bring the A-team with you
6. Speed. Agility. Drive & Frugality
   This will help beat-out the competition! Stealth and speed will usually help beat-out large companies.
7. Be aware of the weakest link
   Always balance the key business elements: Product development (stay at the drawing board till you get it right), sales/marketing, finance (you don’t need a lot but you need to have enough!), organisation and company culture (this is essential).

Happy people have happy thoughts! Loving people have loving thoughts! Successful people people have successful thoughts! So now I know why wealthy people are always wealthy! Because they’ve wealthy thoughts! So start thinking positive!

Making friends is important too!

The primary emotion for success is enthusiasm!

[Sorry readers, guess we need to wait for the video from Peter for more content from this session. Losing the talk... ]

Company culture has to be united. When one is not with the culture, that person should leave.

Dan urges everyone to make a decision to become one of the very best entrepreneurs in your industry. Dedicate yourself to lifelong learning! Live a full life!

If any of you are looking for a job, contact Dan! His company’s hiring! Contact him!

Q&A/ dialogue session hosted by Justin Lee, Co-Founder of E27. And we have on stage with Dan, Martin, CTO from CISCO and Peter Christiansen, CEO GreenWave Reality.

If someone says your idea is crazy, than you’re on the right track! Continue building and improving, even when you’re successful! Keep aside one day a week for brainstorming and create new innovations.

Don’t be too hard on yourself. One can never keep things on top all the time. Just ensure that they’re above the line. Trust your gut.

You got to push your staff hard. But still build up the spirit in everyone and keep them motivated. You need to find competition within the guys and make them continue to drive the company and with you.

If you’re comfortable with your idea, and if your friends are telling you that they’re willing to buy your idea, than you have it! Start your business. There’s never the right time to start. Anytime is a good time. Yes, even at this recession period.

The first company you start, may not be the one that’s bringing in the money. Its through the years and experience and the relationship you have built that will help create better and bigger companies.

Thank you all for the session and thanks for coming and spending the evening with us.

Byee!!

For high resolution version, click here.

Date: 20th January 2009, Tuesday
Time: 14:00-16:00
Venue: LT18, NUS Business School
Map: http://www.cit.nus.edu.sg/nusfacilities/map/business_map.htm

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Multiple Worlds; Multiple Lives; Multiple Identities; Multiple ways to making money.

In conjunction with NUS Entrepreneurship Week, TDM brings to you �??Doing Business in Virtual Worlds�??. Step forward on 20 January 2009 to find out more about TDM and how you can be a part of it, as we present to you a quick overview of the organization AND a little preview of what it means to do business in Virtual Worlds.

Programme Details:

14:00-14:30 TDM Welcome Address
14:30-14:50 Social Networking versus Virtual Worlds by Aroon Tan, Magma Studios
14:50-15:30 Panel Discussion: Doing Business in Virtual Worlds
- Aileen Sim (First Meta)
- Ho Chee Yue (Association of Machinima Arts & Sciences(AMAS))
- Jeremy Snyder(Metaversum Asia Pte Ltd)
- Walter Lim (National Heritage Board)

15:30-15:50 Question and Answer Session
15:50-16:00 Ending Remarks and Competition Details

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Registration:

Click here for event’s eDM

* Sign up form right below�?�
Date: 21st January 2009
Time: 6.30pm to 9.30pm
Venue: DXO, Colours by the Bay, 8 Raffles Ave, #01-13, Esplanade Mall
____________________________________

1. Think Big, Start Small & Scale Profitably
2. Clear Pain Killer
3. Keep It Simple, Stupid

These are just some of the key principles that define the success of Dan Lejerskar, Co-Founder, Chairman and Executive Vice President of EON Reality Inc.

Dan Lejerskar is a serial entrepreneur with more than 19 years of experience in Virtual Reality and Simulation. Prior to co-founding EON Reality, Dan also started several successful companies. These include PFAB, a real-estate development company, Prosolvia AB, a publicly traded simulation company, and RealityBUY Inc, an e-commerce company focused on interactive 3D.

Join us as Dan goes in-depth with his very own �??Seven Keys to Being a Successful Serial Entrepreneur�??.

This event is organised by the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore (IDA), in partnership with E27 and The Digital Movement.

Recently, this geek managed to catch hold of one of Singapore�??s most successful but low profile technopreneur Ong Peng Tsin, 45, serial entrepreneur who founded Match.com and Interwoven (which he listed on NASDAQ). He sold his last startup Encentuate to IBM and also convinced IBM to setup a software lab in Singapore. Now, he is not only a board member of Infocomm Development Authority (IDA) of Singapore, but also the Chairman of Infocomm Investments, an IDA subsidiary.

How he started

After finishing his national service, Mr. Ong left to study electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Austin. Then he moved to the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign where he earned a master’s in computer science. Trained in double ECS and a programmer, Mr Ong joined a startup right out of school.

“When you join a business that�??s 20 people, which is the first company I joined, there isn�??t a clear marker when you started doing startups.”Mr. Ong said when asked about his first startup.

He subsequently joined Sybase which was also a startup then and went on to start his first business in the States which became the successful company we now know as Match.com.

Working for others versus working for yourself

Having both worked for others (Sybase, IBM, Singapore Government, etc) and being a serial entrepreneur himself, I asked Mr Ong what he felt was the fundamental difference between the two experiences, which he described very neatly in one statement, “In startups, things get done instantly. But in bureaucracy it takes time to get things moving. The reward is when it moves it can move in very big ways.”

Advice for the young

I asked Mr Ong what words of wisdom he had for our young aspiring technopreneurs today,

“It�??s all about people. All the failures and successes are about people.”

“Our kids today don�??t develop deep passions in areas. (They) don�??t know what to do in schools.”

Which he went on to elaborate that they are seen as simply follow the trends for their career choices. First it was the dot com boom, then it bio-tech. Now it�??s finance and that�??s not looking too good at the moment. So, what will be next?

He feels strongly that young people today should not just watch which industry is hot, makes money and try to jump on the bandwagon. When Mr Ong started out in this industry, he didn�??t think so much about the money but he was in it because of his passion for it.

“Nothing beats being clear on your passion�?� today, kids don�??t figure out their passions. The world doesn�??t reward people that get along. It rewards people who bash a new path.”

Obviously, I agree with Mr Ong because I risked the wrath of my parents to switch from a top Junior College to register in a local polytechnic IT course. You know I was a geek at heart even then :p

“A lot of times you�??ve got to make the mistakes and learn from that.” is Mr Ong�??s response on having been asked for advice so many times and sometimes, he is “tired of giving advice” because “the entrepreneurs don�??t listen”.

“Biggest problem I�??ve seen (in Web startups), people are not clear how they are gonna make money… you�??re a business, think about how you�??re gonna make money” else you “can�??t talk to investors. If you can�??t figure out how you�??re gonna make money, don�??t start a business, have a hobby instead.”

On Mentorship

Interestingly, while Mr Ong felt that mentorship is important, he also feels that we do not have enough qualified mentors here i.e. not enough people who have exited software IT companies in a significant way. Only a very small handful.

“Do(ing) it here (starting out) is different from when you do it in China, India, and US. Trying to get a mentor here is next to impossible.”

He went on to explain that as part of his work with the IDA, they are trying to develop quality mentors as well.

“Bootstrapping part is the hardest”. Mr. Ong talked about bootstrapping in context of having a mentor to help you in starting up and again, I totally agree with this. In fact, I think over here not many people have realized the importance of good bootstrapping and these days I personally try to focus more of my time helping companies to bootstrap because not many know how to do it right.

Conclusion of Part I

Coming back to advice for aspiring technopreneurs, Mr Ong feels that everyone who wants to start a business should ask themselves this important question,

“What do you want to do with your life in the next 5-10 years and why?”

Mr. Ong’s advice is to answer this question before you work on any startup.

If there�??s anything that an entrepreneur need above the common traits like perseverance, endurance, energy, etc, it is clarity.

Having enough clarity to be able to answer, “Why you are doing what you are doing?”

As this interview was long, it�??d be broken up into two parts. We’ll stop here for now but do watch this space as we continue to talk about building world class companies, the Silicon Valley, his family, the current economic situation, and some of his regrets.

http://wiki.opensocial.org/index.php?title=IGoogle_OpenSocial_Hackathon_Singapore

Google Singapore will provide the venue, power, wifi, food, and drinks.  You only need to bring your laptop, charger, ideas, and enthusiasm.

Places are limited so sign up quick!

Goodies for you guys!

Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/thedigitalmovement/sets/72157610646953472/

Video/audio links to the event:
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/kevinwalsh1.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/kevinwalsh2.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_1.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_2.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_3.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_4.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_5.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_6.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_7.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_8.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_9.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_10.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_11.wmv
* http://media.itr8.com/iterateod/tdm/gew/session_12.wmv

Chat Rooms:
* Main Discussion Room: http://www.chatzy.com/855575542660
* Room 1 (opens after keynote 1): http://www.chatzy.com/943003929798
* Room 2 (opens after keynote 1): http://www.chatzy.com/502132181517
* Room 3 (opens after keynote 1): http://www.chatzy.com/943297183044
* Room 4 (opens after keynote 2): http://www.chatzy.com/369936322338
* Room 5 (opens after keynote 2): http://www.chatzy.com/665407637852
* Room 6 (opens after keynote 2): http://www.chatzy.com/754735026892

Seesmic video conversations: http://seesmic.com/video/k0m7BmeUoW

Presentation Slides:
* http://www.slideshare.net/plus8star/stories-of-entrepreneurship-from-asia-presentation/
* http://www.thedigitalmovement.org/gew/docs/GEW_Slides.zip

_________________________________________________________________________________

Dear Friends,

TDM invites all to an exciting speednetworking event where we in Singapore connect with like-minded entrepreneurs from Silicon Valley and Stockholm.

Speednetwork the Globe is the first of the two global signature activities for the Week. It helps turn enterprising ideas into reality by building worthwhile connections between people all over the world. Rather than your typical speednetworking session, this event will be conducted online via chats and video conferencing to connect people in various parts of the world. The excitement will accumulate to the climax on 22nd Nov with keynote discussions covering from Singapore to Silicon Valley to Stockholm and others. Topics discussed are close at heart to entrepreneurs allowing them to exchange views, ideas and information. Supporting the online connections will also include some of the notable technologies from start-ups.

Date: 22 November 2008
Venue: Republic Polytechnic (Block W1, Level 4) | How to get there…
Time: 0900 till 1800 (GMT+8)

Sign up today to confirm your seat.

We have also set up a Seesmic channel where you can start the conversation right away! So if you have any questions or ideas to share, start replying to the video below…

Bring your laptop with you to the event for maximum satisfaction. *Public WIFI available

Sign up today to confirm your seat.
For more information, please visit: http://www.thedigitalmovement.org/gew/

Besides interesting talks happening here, an announcement was made here, this morning by Michael Yap, Executive Director of the IDM Research and Development Programme Office (IDMPO).

The Singapore infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) is partnering the IDM Research and Development Programme Office (IDMPO) on a mentorship programme to cultivate and develop Interactive Digital Media (IDM) ideas and projects towards commercialisation.

Here’s the press release for it:

…………………………………………………….

Singapore, 31 October 2008 �?? Singapore�??s Interactive Digital Media (IDM) industry receives a boost with the Singapore infocomm Technology Federation (SiTF) �?? and its vast network of industry members - partnering the multi-agency1 IDM Research and Development Programme Office (IDMPO) hosted by the Media Development Authority on a mentorship programme to cultivate and develop IDM ideas and projects towards commercialisation.

Targeted at individuals and young start-ups, the mentorship programme takes a two-phase approach. Firstly, SiTF members will shortlist and select innovative IDM projects for grants of S$50,000 from IDMPO�??s Microfunding scheme. With the grant, individuals and young start-ups will be able to advance their ideas to the �??proof of concept�?? stage, with a clear focus on technical or business merit and feasibility. At the same time, SiTF members will offer mentoring in the form of technological and business expertise.

In the second phase, SiTF will cultivate these ideas further into the project stage with the ultimate goal for commercialisation by establishing funding mechanisms through close collaboration with government bodies and the industry. The selected projects will also have the opportunity to be matched with SiTF�??s vast network of members for further investment. Lead SiTF members like MediaCorp Pte Ltd, Microsoft, SingTel and ST Electronics (Training & Simulation Systems) have already expressed their interest in project domains such as interactive media, mobile digital media, broadcast, IPTV and open source development etc. SiTF will continue to market this program to gain greater interest from more corporations who see opportunity to partner with start ups. Through support from the industry, the mentorship programme hopes to make available up to $10m worth of project funding and support over a period of five years.

On the partnership with SiTF, Mr Michael Yap, Executive Director of IDMPO said: �??We welcome the joining of SiTF in our effort to fuel innovation in the IDM space. We believe SiTF�??s wide network of industry members would add to the vibrancy of our IDM ecosystem.  We are exploring with companies such as MediaCorp Pte Ltd and ST Electronics to conduct joint calls for proposals.�??

With SiTF, the IDMPO now has a network of 10 incubators to create support structures for the start-ups, including the platforms for regular pitching sessions and finding industry partners. Collectively, the incubators will nurture some 450 start-ups over the next few years. The existing incubators have facilitated the funding of some 90 projects to date, out of which 15 were completed. Thirty per cent of the completed projects have successfully received private investment.

�??These are exciting times for players in the interactive digital media industry. Through the joint mentorship programme, SiTF aims to catalyse growth in the industry by enabling ideas to gain access to the right connections, guidance from industry experts and veterans, and obtain the necessary funding in order to ultimately develop into innovative products and services and bring them to market,�?? said Mr Ng Chong Khim, Chairman of SiTF�??s Digitial Media Chapter.

To find out more about the joint Mentorship Programme, please contact Jacquie Khoo at Jacquie.khoo@sitf.org.sg.

…………………………………………………….

Times are in PST.

One-on-One Session with a Social Media Leader

0913 - Reshma is opening the second day by giving a brief outlook of what’s happening today.

0916 - Starting off in the morning, we have Paula Dum, VP Marketing, Digital Tax Solutions, H&R Block and Francois Gossieaux, Partner at Beeline Labs on the One-On-One Session with a Social Media Leader.

0922 - Paula: We launched a broad social media campaign by reaching out to users through a number of social networking sites, and by leveraging on the specific personality of each site and each community on these sites, we tweak our strategies to match the profiles of users on each of these sites. By using this campaign, we’re able to scale and in the process, we find the need to manage each community. Some widgets that we built didn’t relate well with some of the users on some sites (which we thought it would), so we have to move fast and respond to feedback. We are building on top of what we’ve learnt and applying it in future projects.

0929 - Paula: eHarmony - Measurements that we use - using brand tracking studies to study awareness, but social media alone did not drive that. It’s a combination of different strategies, but to actually measure engagement from the social media sites. We’re definitely driving more traffic, conversion rate and retention rate.

0931 - Professional content vs general content - Paula: Showing that we provide tax expertise in terms of tax professionals and advice increases credibility. So we started the conversation and for the users to continue those. After that we end of by fitting the professionals into the conversations again.

0937 - Have you run into scalability issues? - Paula: Twitter is a bit difficult because the questions that are coming in are very diverse, and we need different expertise to answer those questions, so that to me is a question of scale to address when we have more than we can handle. We try to engage external parties to help us to handle these extra issues which we can’t handle and for them to advise us on other relevant tools which we can use to manage.

0943 - How do you manage legal on twitter? Paula: Information on our site has already gone through the legal process. We’re not as legally concerning as we’re filtering it back to our legal team.

0953 - How is the balance between social media and traditional media in such an economic downturn? Paula: Social media is part of human capital. People are communicating more because they’re scared or frustrated. Now the companies are cutting media budget, not staff, so now is the time to focus on the social aspect, the human capital side. Creating a blog or responding to a comment doesn’t really cost a lot of money. The more people you can retain, the more money you save on retraining the staff and readjusting to the social media strategy.

0958 - Paula: It’s been a two year journey in the social media practices. Get it going, start small with some success stories, we started with Youtube user-generated content and SecondLife. Then we went ahead with MySpace, Facebook, eHarmony and creating other community sites. Get some learning, if you want to do something successful, you have to be an active participant.

1002 - Networking Break

Creating Your Social Media

1020 - We’re back from our break right into the session on Creating Your Social Media with Colin Brown, DIrector of Business Development at Mzinga.

1025 - Colin: Dimensions of Online Strategy is all about conversations, content and the influencers. And these dimensions help to solidify the goals. Content strategies - Editorial calendar for the next quarter, half year, one year etc, SEO, Newletter integration, rich media experience, “Live”events and blogs. Make sure newsletter contents are different to that from what users can get from blogs so that they can reinforce each other, rather than create duplicate spam. “Live” event, if done properly, there’s a huge PR aftershock to drive users back to the site, given that both the traditional press and bloggers get to know about it. Any marketer should be looking at the wealth of information that any social media is receiving. It’s the people, not the companies that blog. and focus is on having a true voice.

1035 - Conversation strategies - Get support and develop a moderation policy. We would love to have a “Live” response/update going out, so companies really need to revise their policies in getting the word out quick. Different audiences interact differently to different conversations, so companies will have to align the approach with the audience and the different goals that your company has. Start small with things such as responding to comments and then slowly grow big.

1040 - Influencer strategies - Working on engagement policies and plans on how to engage (listen first, Promotions vs Relevant Contributions), who to engage (Find the influencers in your industry) and where to engage (commenting on external blogs).

1050 - Colin is going to split us into 4 groups - B2B, B2C, Non-profit and Internal and for the next 20 minutes, we’ll be working on the 3 different strategies.

1120 - Groups are still engaged in pretty interesting discussions. Just returned from the group that was discussing internal strategies and they were talking about the challenges of balancing internal and external social media platforms. One huge challenge is getting people to adopt social media on a large scale in MNCs. The common consensus was that ti achieve a high rate of adoption, companies have to create dependencies on social media tools. For example, one organisation started a “no-attachments on email” rule to drive people to wikis in order to get the information and files that they need. This creates a habit that will allow social media tools to be self-sustaining.

1130 - Overheard from B2C conversation: Go to interest groups that are already existing. No point building something from scratch if there are tools available out there. For example, Facebook fan pages are a good place to start to get interested customers who know about your product. Blogs are also a good resource to get customer feedback. Search for yourself to see what people are saying and keep on top of the data that you pull up. It is also a good source to check out the competition. Using personas can be effective, but you will have to know how to manage them well.

1134 - Colin is asking the presenters to report back and regroup. We will be sharing the key learning points of the discussion in a little while.

1138 - Connie is presenting on B2C: How do we create a strategy to encourage user generated content? Put some parameters in company’s product forum. Necessary to have human interaction and engagement. Listening in the product forums and internet to understand customers better. The company needs to be open to the feedback. Incentivise customer participation - feature “experts” on certain subject matters. It’s easier for customer relations too as there is less of a company interest. On negative UGC: realize that negative comments are more managable when they are in your backyard and you can respond to them quickly and effectively. Long term commitment is necessary to sustain continued interaction.

1145 - JJ on Non-Profits: Action plan that non-profits can take. Goals include engagement and fund raising. Start with what you know about your organisation and your community. Learn about their online social behaviour with Forrester. Build a moderating tool to aggregate content and understand where participation lies. Content strategy include starting a blog (which also provides SEO value) where you craft compelling stories, publicize your cause and rallying people around them. For fund raising, ideas include banners, widgets and display ads. Read up on Beth Cantor, domain expert on Non-profits in the online space.

1148 - Internal: How do we connect people within the organization? Challenges include aligning nonmenclature that will aid search of profiles in the database. Tagging as a possible solution. At first, people use tags that are different, so to eliminate confusion, create tag groups. Community buzz on LinkedIn, using groups. Create value for using social media by addressing people’s business interest with it. Appeal to personal interest first before company interest - get people excited to get on the platforms first before asking them to think about how they can benefit the company from it. Content: start off with weekly features (YouTube, Podcast, presentation) to get traffic to the site

1152 - Ryan on B2B: Goals: 1) Inject yourself in conversations outside the site? Realise that the community on your site is your “love group”, those outside are the neutral “swing group”. 2) Measure ROI and maintaining exec support? Key sales metrics need to be identified and continuously improved. Set up your rules on how to measure something and stick to it. 3) How to involve the community in company discussions? Eg Threadless allows consumers to choose which ones they want to order. How do you adopt that model to the commercial area? Need to tell the customer what you want to know instead of opening it up wide and boundless, as they will be confused.

1156 - Connie Bensen and using Twitter for Business. Check out www.conniebensen.com for her blog posts and notes.

1213 - We’re going for our lunch break now, but before that, let me put up some links that was mentioned during the session.

Slides from the session will be up at www.constructingsocial.com.
Alternative to Tweet Scan - Tweetbeep
Business Case on Twitter at Connie Bensen’s blog
Twitter Search - Do a search on #SMS08 will bring up all the tweets on the event

Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Strategy

1313 - We’re back with Measuring the Effectiveness of Your Strategy, the Tribulations Business Study with Francois Gossieaux of Beeline Labs, replacing Edward Moran from Deloitte Services who could not make it today because of some emergency.

1315 - Francois: Factors making communities work - people do want to talk to people, not to companies and people want to help other people, which is unbelievably powerful. Last thing that we found was that the commnunities that work the best, were communities that companies could tap into their social framework, rather than their market framework. Social framework is about the feeling when you help someone, market framework is more about relationship on business dealings. An evaluation was done on social framework by varying incentives that were given for help. People don’t understand the forces that are creating positive return on communities.

1322 - Francois: What a lot of companies is focusing on is the tools which is not the point. If your community cannot exist in a yahoo or google group, it’s not gonna exist anywhere. The fundamentals have to be something else other than the technology. In most companies, marketing are the starting point or core of the organization. Page views and time spent on the site are not a good way of measuring community involvement, example is that groups exists on yahoo or google groups who have never been to the group page to have good communication and conversations going on with the community. We’re not measuring metrics for advertising! Main things that company are concerned with qualititative data are measuring Sentiments, Activity Levels, Growth and Impact on sales.

1337 - Francois: 3 takeaways,

1. communities can increase revenue of up to 50% than a company which doesn’t leverage on communities. Communities can increase product success ratio because of the feedback loop that they can make use and improve on.
2. The rise of the CMO 2.0. What happens here is that, leveraging communities enables the CMO to regain the strategic seat at the executive table, representing the customers at the table.
3. To be successful, companies have to think different. There’s a mismatch of goals and actionable plan, mismatch between measuring metrics and goals of the company. Communities will transfer most business processes.
3.5 To build them, they will only come once. 99.9% of people in a community will never go back if you just build it without talking to customers. It’s all about content, moderation and ambassadors. Usually pilot projects are different from the actual situations that the company is trying to address. Communities of different size and goals require very different ways to building them.

1355 - Francois: Thinking out of the box. TiVo engaged users that weren’t in their primary community to provide them with insights on innovation

1402 - Measuring impact where there’re a lot of mentions going on, not just the community. How do you isolate from the noise? Companies that were measuring the impact exactly the way you would want to measure the customer support. Those companies who were successful those who with departments reporting back to their group using their own metrics, and also asking for funding from each department.

How to Implement Social Media Strategies for Big Businesses

1407 - Next up we have the panel talking about How to Implement Social Media Strategies for Big Businesses. We have the moderator Matt Warburton, Director of community Management at Yahoo, and the panelists, LaSandra Brill, Manager of Web & Social Media Marketing Team, Cisco, Michael Brito, Social Media Strategist, Intel and Connie Bensen, Community Manager, Network Solutions.

1410 - How do you define social media? Connie: It’s simply a set of tools that require human interaction, definitely a person needs to interact with the people. LaSandra: Agree on Human Interaction, 2-way communication and also different tools that can become conversation starters and facilitate conversations. Michael: Social media is about relationships across different channel, and there’re a lot of tools to foster relationships. Relationships and conversations.

1414 - LaSandra: There’re lots of red tape in big companies. There’re lots of risks and one of them is about the unknowns, which scares a lot of people. You should maybe do it before asking anyone about it - most effective :P. Mark: Getting stuff done with 3rd party vendors difficult. Michael: Just finding an ROI for social engagement is still blurry for Intel. Challenge is to convincing the traditional marketeers.

1439 - Do you write blogs for your companies? Connie: I’m writing. LaSandra: No. Michael: We want to make the blog less corporate. We want to make it conversational, so when we write, we would encourage people to respond.

1449 - LaSandra: I think the phase we’re at is being able to tie things together, tying the communities together. We want to really take that to the next level, really bringing the communities together, because there’re really some crossovers in these communities. Michael: Aggregate everything externally into one place, so that you don’t have to go everywhere to grab. Connie: We really need to listen and knowing about the customers. (Talks about some websites which are good tools.) Focus of connecting tools to others, something like subcontracting.

1455 - LaSandra: Using blog for getting community feedback. We’re driving topic conversations and listening. The challenge is not getting the feedback, but what to do with it and what processes are in place to manage the feedback. Michael: Not touching on consumer feedback yet. But on Intel Software Network, the businesses are giving the feedback in that thriving community.

1457 - Last comments. Connie: People and human interaction, it takes a number of people to be interacting. LaSandra: Go out there start small, and experiment and then add on to it. Don’t try to tackle everything. Michael: Forrester!

1500 - Networking Break

Overcoming Objections to Social Media

1522 - Overcoming Objections to Social Media with Gary Stein, Director of Strategy at Ammo Marketing and Peter Guagenti, VP Client Partner of Razorfish and Chris Carfi , co-Founder of Cerado, is the moderator for this event.

1525 - Peter: The number 1 objection, what do we need to do and what does that do to our bottom line. I don’t want anything negative to appear about my company.

1540 - Gary: There will be a few 5 star relationships, a few 1 star relationships and a lot of 3 star relationships. You don’t want to spend too much time on the 1 star relationships.

1546 - Gary: Biggest objection I’ve ever received comes from the legal department. Peter: You want whatever you want correct to be in place. The key is measurement and improve the value of it. Optimisation is always a spiral. Social media is the new thinking, you don’t have a little bit of room to experiment.

1554 - Gary: Social media is the tool to build relationships. It’s is best suited to do it rather than other forms of advertising such as doing it at SuperBowl.

1618 - Anything that is done has the opportunity to show up on YouTube

The Future of Social Media and Business

1620 - Closing Discussion: The Future of Social Media and Business. Panel members are Mike Walsh, CEO, Leverage Software and Shel Holtz, President of Holtz Communication. Darius Miranda, Customer Content & B2B Social Media Manager at Wells Fargo moderates

1624 - What will Web3.0 look like? Mike: From the perspective of communities, there are two stakeholders, the end user and the brand. End user - what you want, when you want it, how you want it. Host - evaluate and analyse information. This will come in the form of improved dashboards and analytics. Web 3.0 will see a maturing of technologies.

1626 - Shel: PR is about building relationships, not dumping press releases.

1631 - Shel: High level execs need to learn about Social Media and understand that it is not just what their kids are using and as a medium to spread bad news. Education is needed to change these wrong perspectives. Mike: VPs of Marketing and CMOs greatest concerns are on security and privacy. There is a need to balance the use of social media on internal platforms

1635 - Tip for success: try not to build your strategy in a bubble

1637 - Mike: Biggest mistake is not understanding how to get technology to advance in tandem with marketing programs. Shel: Biggest challenge: legal issues. CEOs need to balance legal risks with all other risks. Another big challenges include the team, budget and communication. Learnings: Engagement and social media happen on two levels - organic (both inside and out of the organisation) and campaign. Campaigns are a short term strategy and most companies focus on campaign. They need to invest time into both levels in order to fully leverage social media.

1641 - Mike: In the future, the different platforms will be more integrated so management of communities will be more convenient. Shel: Integration will happen on a variety of levels. Engaging people in conversation on your homepage will be a feature of the future. When you are passionate about something, you want to have a dedicated place to talk about your interests. For example, groups on Ning, Facebook and MySpace should be aggregated to create a larger and richer community.

1645 - Shel: Mobile strategy for employee communication is not really in place yet. Mike: It’s industry specific. Realtors and sales people will probably have a higher rate of using mobile devices. Also, it is more prominent in Asia Pacific. America lacks the infrastructure for the growth that mobile has experienced in Asia Pac. Culture shift to use of mobile is also holding the US back.

1653 - How far out should you plan your strategy for? Shel: One of the risks of planning far out is that you lock yourself into tactics within a changing environment. Tools, supply and demand can change. You have to be aware of the situation, and keep the conversation going. Mike: Planning ahead to about a year is the furthest you should go because of constantly changing situations.

1656 - Social media for recruitment? Concerns with legal issues: how do you use the information that is available positively? It is a double edged sword for applicants, so how should employers deal with social media on potential employees? Mike: Take a look at the info that applicants send you. Facebook is the tool for communication in Gen Y coming out of universities. Shel: Limits are set by the industry. The same level of trust should be placed on online conversations. Behave ethically and legally, and you’ll be ok

1702 - Closing statement by Reshma. It has been a great 2 days and thanks for reading!