Holtz Communications + Technology | Blog

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #637: February 6, 2012

2012-02-06T20:56:03+00:00

Content summary: Donna Papacosta promos Tweeps in Profile featuring Shel as ‘Mr February’; new FIR Book Review by Kris Gallagher of Intern Nation; FIR Book Club #1 recording posted; News That Fits: the Komen Kerfuffle; Ragan promo; Dan York adds his perspectives on the Komen Kerfuffle; with gov.uk, the British government redefines the online government platform; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; listener comments from the FIR Room on Friendfeed; Reuters launches Social Pulse; TemboSocial promo; no report from Michael Netzley in Singapore this week; Costa Concordia and the public relations disaster for cruise; music by Bulldogs; and more.

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Messages from our sponsors: FIR is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years, www.ragan.com; Save time with the CustomScoop online clipping service: sign up for your free two-week trial, at www.customscoop.com/fir; and TemboSocial (formerly Pollstream): helping you transform your communications goals into exciting strategies that will enable you to engage, educate and inform your customers and employees online, pollstream.com/fir/.

For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for February 6, 2012: A 73-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

FIR #637 bookmarks on Delicious

Names of blogs, individuals, companies and organizations we discussed or mentioned in the show are posted to the FIR Show Notes pages at The New PR Wiki. You can contribute time stamps – see the show notes home page for info.

FIR #637 show notes at The New PR Wiki

Share your comments or questions about this show, or suggestions for future shows, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday February 13…

Leadership involvement is vital to social intranet success

2012-02-03T16:38:05+00:00

Evidence continues to mount that social intranets have the potential to produce big results for organizations. The ongoing McKinsey & Company study points to outcomes ranging from increased market share to reduced time to market, along with a host of other positive results. Studies from MIT and Aberdeen Group show productivity gains among employees using social intranets.

Yet a recent study from IABC and Prescient Digital Media suggests that 39% of companies don’t have any social components on their intranets (the number is as high as 49% in other research), and a substantial number of those that do have only one (like a wiki or a blog). Worse, only 28% of employees—including executives—rate their overall satisfaction with the social dimensions of their intranets as good or very good. Worse, as I noted back in November, a Forrester study reveals that only 28 percent of information workers use these tools at least once a month. Those who do tend to be early adopters, well-paid, highly educated and pressed for time. In other words, they’re the same people who likely adopt new technologies on the Web.

It’s easy to reach a conclusion for all this research: companies are letting considerable amounts of money swirl the drain because (a) they haven’t implemented social media behind the firewall or (b) they have installed some social tools but haven’t taken the steps to ensure they deliver the kinds of results of which they’re capable.

A new study from APCO Worldwide and Gagen MacDonald points to even more benefits that arise from social intranets, but it also points to at least one core deficiency in most organizations: a failure of leadership to lead when it comes to what the report labels Internal Social Media (ISM).

The Payoff

Most leaders understand the connection between the size of the organization’s population of highly engaged employees and market share growth. It’s why they fund engagement studies and task various departments with growing the number of employees ready to give discretionary effort to help the company meet its goals. According to the APCO study, companies using ISM enjoy higher levels of engagement across the board. The advantages of ISM don’t stop there:

Employees at companies that do a “good job” with ISM are less likely to leave their job than those working a companies doing a “fair/poor job,” and more likely to recommend the company to others. Fifty-eight percent said they would rather work at a company that uses social media. (The report also notes that two out of three college students ask about social media policies during an interview and 56% said they would either not take a job at a company that blocks social media access or circumvent those blocks.)
Sixty percent of respondents view the use of social media as tangible evidence that they work for an innovative company. Consequently, they’re more likely to be ambassadors for the organization’s brand and reputation.
Employees at companies doing a good job with ISM are also more likely to recommend their company’s products or services (89% to 64%), give their employer the benefit of the doubt in the face of lawsuits or crises (88% to 55%), buy company stock (75% to 45%) and support the government policies their companies support (64% to 36%).
Sixty-one percent of employees said their company’s social media tools improved collaboration with their fellow workers across great distances.

The Problem

While ISM offers huge benefits, the APCO study also points out that that employees see executive leadership as more important. In fact, when employees make decisions about whether to recommend the company or support it during a crisis or lawsuit, leadership communication matters vastly more than any other single factor. (This, by the way, flies squarely in the face of a popular school of thought that asserts only communication from immediate supervisors is effective.)

The report concludes that the ISM strategy needs to be “built from within—informed by (the company’s) culture, driven by distinct business needs and embraced by early adopters,” and that “executives and leaders should not only align around strategy but embody the change they envision.”

With 75% of employees indicating that executive leadership is a key tool compared to only 22% making the same claim of ISM, the marriage of the two would create an unbeatable combination. Conversely, in organizations where executives fund ISM but don’t aactively use it in pursuit of business goals, you can expect the kind of bland results so many companies are experiencing, with few employees using it regularly, minimizing the kinds of results these tools could deliver.

Gagen MacDonald produced this video summarizing its results and conclusions:

Leading Internal Social Media for your organization from Gagen MacDonald on Vimeo.

FIR Book Club #1: “Social Media Strategist” Author Christopher Barger

2012-02-02T23:55:31+00:00

Christopher Barger was the guest author for the inaugural installment of the FIR Book Club, hosted by FIR Book Review Editor Bob LeDrew.

Christopher is senior vice president, Global Programs for Voce Communications, a Porter Novelli company. Before arriving at Voce, Christopher was director of global social media at General Motors, building the company’s social media program and leading its presence across multiple social networks. His work to repair GM’s reputation in the social web earned him PR News’ “Social Media Leader of the Year” award in 2010. Christopher also previously managed social media initiatives and corporate communications for IBM, where he was designated “Blogger-in-Chief.”

Christopher’s book, “The Social Media Strategist,” was reviewed on FIR.

This podcast was recorded live on BlogTalk Radio.

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Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future reviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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This FIR Book Review is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

FIR Book Review: Intern Nation by Ross Perlin

2012-02-02T19:43:46+00:00

Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy, by Ross Perlin, is reviewed by guest reviewer Kris Gallagher. From the book description:

“Every year, between one and two million Americans work as interns. They famously shuttle coffee in a thousand newsrooms, congressional offices, and Hollywood studios, but they also deliver aid in Afghanistan, build the human genome, and pick up garbage. They are increasingly of all ages, and their numbers are growing fast—from 17 percent of college graduates in 1992 to 50 percent in 2008. A huge and increasing number of internships are illegal under the Fair Labor Standards Act, and this mass exploitation saves firms more than $600 million each year. Interns enjoy no workplace protections and no standing in courts of law—let alone benefits like health care. Ross Perlin has written the first exposé of this world of drudgery and aspiration. In this witty, astonishing, and serious investigative work, Perlin takes the reader inside both boutique nonprofits and megacorporations such as Disney (which employs 8,000 interns at Disney World alone). He profiles fellow interns, talks to academics and professionals about what unleashed this phenomenon, and explains why the intern boom is perverting workplace practices in locations all around the world. “

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Intern Nation: How to Earn Nothing and Learn Little in the Brave New Economy by Ross Perlin

Publisher: Verso
Hardcover, 288 pages
Published May 2011
ISBN-10: 1844676862
ISBN-13: 978-1844676866
(No Kindle version)

Purchase at Amazon US, Amazon Canada, or Amazon UK.

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This FIR Book Review is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

Gamification of PR messages could be a game changer

2012-02-01T20:09:12+00:00

Nearly everything you read about gamification is marketing-focused. When the books on the topic feature titles like “Game-Based Marketing” (which I enjoyed, by the way) and panel discussions at conferences focus on the benefits of adding a game layer to marketing efforts, it’s no wonder people might think there’s no pure PR use for games.

The difference between marketing and more classic public relations is simple. Marketing is designed to promote and sell products or services. PR, on the other hand, is about building mutual understanding between an organization and its publics; it’s about helping the organization tell its stories.

That last phrase, “tell its stories,” can be problematic. To be sure, there is power in telling stories. An old Indian proverb says, “Tell me a fact and I’ll learn. Tell me the truth and I’ll believe. But tell me a story and it will live in my heart forever.”

I love that proverb and I love stories. But when it’s a company—particularly one facing stiff resistance to his message—simply telling may fall on deaf ears. Good communicators understand the difference between telling and showing, because a demonstration will reach people at a deeper level and creater greater understanding.

But gaming can create an even stronger connection. In two cases, companies are using games to establish that connection, in one case through a game show interface and in another through having the actual experience. If you have to face the same challenge an organization does, or you can produce the same benefits, your eyes can be opened to something a company or industry has been trying to tell you for years. The game can create the “aha” moment that institutional advertising, press releases, blog posts that both traditional and digital media failed to deliver.

Once you’ve slapped yourself on the forehead and proclaimed, “Now I get it,” you’ll be inclined to share your new insight with your communities. Your tweeps, Facebook friends, LinkedIn colleagues and other connections are far more likely to pay attention to you, since you’re not a paid representative of the company. Some may even want to play the game themselves (if you haven’t already invited them to join you in playing a social game). And that’s how opinions get changed.

NASA is an example of an organization with a public relations problem. That is, the agency has a problem that wouldn’t exist if public opinion were different. With the host of economic issues the United States is facing, not many people are high on the idea of funneling billions of dollars into space exploration (Newt Gingrich’s moon colonization proposal notwithstanding). The common refrain is, “Why spend money on space when there is so much that needs fixing right here on earth?”

The R&D of space exploration, however, produces tangible benefits that translate into jobs and economic growth. Anyone who works at Tempur-Pedic, the company that manufactures and sells mattresses made of memory foam, can thank NASA. Memory foam was developed in the mid-1960s at NASA’s Ames Research Center and released to the public in the early 80s. It’s just one example of products that came out of space research.

Still, with a public reeling from a stagnant economy, mortgage foreclosures and other harsh realities, convincing people that their tax dollars are well spent on missions to infinity and beyond is a hard sell.

So NASA has unveiled Space Race Blastoff on Facebook. According to David Weaver, NASA’s associate administrator for communications (quoted in a Register article), “Space Race Blastoff opens NASA’s history and research to a wide new audience of people accustomed to using social media. Space experts and novices will learn new things about how exploration continues to impact our world.”

To play, you choose an avatar, then answer 10 “crossfire” questions. A correct answer earns 100 points. The first player to answer correctly gets an additional 20 points.

If it’s hard to convince people that the government should be investing in reaching for the stars, it’s damn near impossible to get them to support pharmaceutical pricing, which has been so contentious an issue that it has grown into an activist cause. Having worked in the pharma industry, I know first-hand how resistant people are to the notion that the price of one drug covers the R&D costs of the thousand or so that never made it to market, that drug companies must undertake development of promising medications knowing full well that most will fall out of the pipeline at one stage or another and only a few ever make it to market.

Boehringer Ingelheim hopes to make it easier by having gamers compete to develop lifesaving drugs and bring them to market via a social Facebook game called Syrum. The social Facebook game will have a soft launch in April. According to Dominic Tyer, writing for the PMLive blog, the pharma’s communications chief, John Pugh, said the goal is to “build a new communications channel and enter into a dialogue with stakeholders.”

Speaking at a social media conference in London last month, Pugh said, ““In FarmVille you’re able to buy a tractor and send it to your friends. In Syrum you don’t have to pay anything, but if perhaps you watch a video for a minute around COPD or answer a quick questionnaire about atrial fibrillation, then you might get that free microprocessor or a little robot for your lab.”

The game, Pugh said, is “a real opportunity to raise disease awareness in a fun and engaging way.”

Other social Facebook games have already been applied to non-marketing challenges. Marriott, for example, released My Marriott Hotel last June, as a means of recruiting new employees. The initial game release has gamers working in the kitchen. A link that reads “Do It For Real” takes gamers to the company’s recruiting site. The investment makes sense for a company growing in China and India with thousands of jobs to fill.

Not every PR message would be appropriate for a game solution. Developing and deploying these games is a costly proposition, so a solid ROI calcuation is a requirement. But for big issues where public support can be a game changer (sorry), the investment could have a significant payoff.

Note: I’m curating a collection of items about gamification using a Delicious stack. I’m about to start readingReality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World by Jane McGonigal; I’ll review it on FIR.

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #636: January 30, 2012

2012-01-30T21:13:18+00:00

Content summary: Inaugural FIR Book Club took place on January 27; GaggleAmp webinar January 31; new podcast alert: Jay Baer “Social Pros,” featuring “social media practitioners, people doing the real work for companies,” features an interview, social media stat of the week and “Work it Out” - first episode due on February 2; News That Fits: blogging declines in business as newer tools rule; Ragan promo; Michael Netzley reports from Singapore on the year of the dragon on the Chinese calendar begins with investor activism in Japan around the Olympus scandal, and a debate about credentialing and badges in higher education; Google+ Brand page no longer optional; listener comments; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; Dan York reports on Rizzoma Wave, Apple iBooks Author, SOPA/PIPA/ACTA, etc: the underlying war; Europe signs up for ACTA; TemboSocial promo; Facebook may not be optional, either; music from Dance Hall Pimps; and more.

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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for January 30, 2012: A 73-minute podcast recorded live from Concord, California, USA, and Wokingham, Berkshire, England.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

FIR #636 bookmarks on Delicious

FIR #636 show notes at The New PR Wiki

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday February 6…

Rejoice! Employee use of social networks has tripled!

2012-01-23T21:20:01+00:00

Palo Alto Networks is out with its annual numbers on employee work time spent on social networks. The company’s conclusions are based on analyzing raw data from 1,600-plus companies for a seven-month period last year. Their press release on the study confirms something we already suspected: “explosive growth in global social networking and browser-based file sharing on corporate networks, with a 300 percent increase in active social networking. (e.g., posting, applications) compared with activity during the same period in the latter half of 2010.”

The press release quotes the company’s CMO, René Bonvanie, saying “Whether or not employees are using social networks or sharing files at work is no longer a question; this data clearly demonstrates that users are embracing and actively using such applications.”
But, since network security is Palo Alto Networks’ business, the conclusion Bonvanie reaches is that you’d better watch out because productivity and network security are at risk. So the reporting of the study will serve mostly to encourage the lockdown of social channels at work. That conclusion, as far as I’m concerned, misses the point entirely.

In fact, a tripling of employee access to social networks is a cause for celebration, not panic.

For example, the numbers point to widespread adoption of Twitter at work. Nobody’s playing Farmville on Twitter, but we know from the Society for New Communications Research (SNCR) study, “The New Symbiosis of Professional Networks,” that professional peer groups have moved from proprietary networks to Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook. It’s likely that a lot of the tweeting going on from work is work-related.

In 2010, the bandwidth consumed by employees for Faceboook apps, social plugins and posting was 5 percent. In the new study it has risen to 25 percent. isn’t it interesting, though, that Palo Alto Networks includes “posting” as one of the activities driving the increase.

The numbers also point to file sharing sites as the source of a lot of bandwidth consumption. Of course, posting to and visiting Slideshare and Scribd, for instance, are good things, not something to worry about. These are places where knowledge is transferred.

The reason workers are using social networks is, in large part, that these channels are increasingly becoming a routine part of how work gets done. Yes, I understand that some people abuse their access and that companies need to address concerns over the introduction of viruses and other infections, but these issues need to be addressed without hamstringing the bulk of the population that uses social networking to improve their productivity and the company’s performance.

Social channels is exactly where employees need to be, given the results of Edelman’s 2012 Trust Barometer, which was released today. According to the Executive Summary...

(As trust in CEOs dropped, trust in) “a person like me” has re-emerged as one of the three most credible spokespeople, with the biggest increase in credibility since 2004, and now trails only academics and technical experts. Regular employees jumped from least credible spokesperson to tied for fourth on the list, with a 16-point record rise. Social-networking, microblogging, and conte-thsaring sites witnessed the most dramatic percentage increase as trusted sources of information about a company, rising by 88, 86, and 75 percent, respectively.

These results alone should make it clear that a tripling of employee engagement in these channels bodes very, very well for companies.

If you need more evidence that this is just the way people communicate, there’s another report from ReadWrite Enterprise that wonders whether dumping email as a channel for employee-to-employee communication might just make sense. One of the reasons online veteran David Strom cites is that, “as social media becomes more prevalent, it becomes easier to have conversations in the public eye, or at least on the corporate Intranet.” He lists activities like posting questions and replies in these channels.

There are other shifts leading to email’s demise –- the shift to mobile, and that IM, group chats and other technologies work better. Of course, email between the company and anyone outside the organization would remain a regular communication tool.

But Strom’s post reinforces the point that we’re using social nertworks at work as an important part of getting the job done because it’s just more efficient. That’s what technology is supposed to do. Of course, there are organizations that get this. CNN Money profiled nine companies from the list of the best companies to work for that have added social networks to the workplace. For example, Intuit’s @TeamTurboTax draws upon product managers and engineers to tackle customers’ problems. Intuit says that when the tax season comes around, employees throughout the pipeline volunteer to contribute to the effort to respond to customersk. So, would all those posts be counted in the Palo Alto Networks’ “posting” data? And if so, that kind of traffic needs to be viewed as a company advantage,something to be nurtured, not a cause for locking down the organization.

I posted an item to my blog last week praising Zappos for its handling of the server security breach. One of Zappos’ actions was to send an email to customers. A few of the few commentsto my post came from people who hadn’t gotten that email. It didn’t take long before someone from Zappos left a comment that apologized, explained that the emails are going to tens of million of customers in batches and that took a while. He then let everyone know what to do without waiting for the email. He signed his comment, “Jonathan, random Zappos employee.” Again, these are legitimate work-related purposes to which these channels are being used. I’d start training employees to do more of this, not make it harder.

But Palo Alto Networks has an incentive to put its view out there as a press release that’ll find its way into the inbox of a lot of executives, and that’s why you’ll continue to see companies blocking employee access, like the more than half of companies in Ireland do.

Finally, remember the Altimeter Group’s social media preparedness study, which points out that companies that train their employees on policies and practices experience a far lower risk of problems arising from social media than those that bolt the doors.

If your employees aren’t among those whose use of social media at work has tripled, you have a reason to be concerned. Your competitors that understand that shift in work processes are primed to kick your ass.

I initially reported on this story on today’s episode of For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report.”

The Hobson & Holtz Report - Podcast #635: January 23, 2012

2012-01-23T19:37:23+00:00

Content summary: FIR Book Review of ‘YouTube for Business’ is up; reminders: inaugural FIR Book Club on Jan 27 with Christopher Barger, GaggleAmp webinar on Jan 31; new FIR Interviews posted: Bob Fine, Social Media Monthly magazine, and Adam Kmiec, Walgreens; CREWE project to audit Fortune 100 on Wikipedia; News That Fits: of course employees are three times more active on social networks; Ragan promo; Dan York reports on the first battle against SOPA won, and more; could a ‘Secret Facebook of Power’ work for your organization?; the Media Monitoring Minute with CustomScoop; Pinterest buzz continues to grow; listener comments; TemboSocial promo; no report from Michael Netzley this week; first look at the 2012 Edelman Trust Barometer; music from The Dents; and more.

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For Immediate Release: The Hobson & Holtz Report for January 23, 2012: A 69-minute podcast recorded live from Wokingham, Berkshire, England, and Concord, California, USA.

Links to websites, blog posts and other content we discuss in the show are posted as Delicious bookmarks to facilitate your connection with the discussions and sharing of that content.

FIR #635 bookmarks on Delicious

FIR #635 show notes at The New PR Wiki

To stay informed about occasional FIR events (eg, FIR Live), sign up for FIR Update email news.

So, until Monday January 30…

FIR Interview: Walgreens Social Media Director Adam Kmiec

2012-01-21T20:19:28+00:00

FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz interview Adam Kmiec, director of social media for Walgreens, the largest drug store chain in the U.S. and a Fortune 50 company. Walgreens has engaged in the last 10 days or so in a social media-focused effort to build awareness among customers of alternatives to Express Scripts, the prescription benefit manager through which hundreds of thousands of people pay for the prescription medications. Unable to reach an agreement to renew their contract, Walgreens no longer accepts Express Scripts but using mechanisms like Prescription Savings Club membership (left) to retain customers.

The campaign to build awareness and retain customer loyalty has been largely focused on social media, including paid tactics like promoted Twitter trends and sponsored blog posts. In this wide-ranging interview, Kmiec outlines the challenges of the campaign, discusses the importance of statistical insights to drive decision-making, and the use of paid social media, as well as outcomes of the effort to date.

(Note, the Walgreens campaign was covered by Advertising Age and was the subject of a story covered on FIR #634. The FIR report was covered by the Best o’ Pop blog.)

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About our Conversation Partner

For more than 14 years, Walgreens Social Media Director Adam Kmiec has worked for some of the most forward thinking organizations in the world, while helping some of the most dynamic brands find success in the interactive and social space. His career spans both the client and agency sides of the marketing and advertising industry, covering stops at renowned organizations that include Fallon, Leo Burnett, and ConAgra Foods. His focus has always been on solving business problems by leveraging consumer driven insights to fuel creative ideation. He is a frequent speaker and news contributor. He is currently working on a book titled, “Yes, It’s Hypocritical,” due for completion next summer.

Connect with Adam on Twitter: @adamkmiec or via other social networks.

Share your comments or questions about this podcast, or suggestions for future interviews, in the FIR FriendFeed Room. You can also email us at fircomments@gmail.com; call the Comment Line at +1 206 222 2803 (North America), +44 20 3239 9082 (Europe), or Skype: fircomments; comment at Twitter: twitter.com/FIR. You can email your comments, questions and suggestions as MP3 file attachments, if you wish (max. 3 minutes / 5Mb attachment, please!). We’ll be happy to see how we can include your audio contribution in a show.

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This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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FIR Interview: Social Media Monthly Publisher and Editor Bob Fine

2012-01-21T01:16:46+00:00

In this FIR Interview, FIR co-hosts Neville Hobson and Shel Holtz chat with Bob Fine, publisher and editor of The Social Media Monthly, a new print publication that is also a current Kickstarter project.

The Social Media Monthly was conceived at the 2011 South by Southwest Interactive conference and launched a mere 53 days later, on May 20th, 2011 at BlogWorld in New York. Three weeks later Fine secured national distribution for the magazine with Barnes and Noble. The magazine was honored as one of the top magazine launches of 2011 by MIN, an organization that reports on the publishing industry.

In the interview, Fine recounts the magazine’s origins, why he opted to produce a print magazine about social media, the audience he’s trying to reach, the motivation of article authors, and a host of other topics.

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About our Conversation Partner

Robert Fine is the founder of Cool Blue Company, LLC, and author of “The Big Book of Social Media Case Studies, Stories, Perspectives”. Robert has over 17 years experience as a systems and sales engineer with various companies including CMGI, Hughes Network Systems, and most recently as Senior Director of IT for Global Strategy & Development at Conservation International (CI). He is currently pursuing his PhD at George Mason University where he is researching links between investments in information technology and achieving conservation outcomes.

Connect with Bobon Twitter: @bobfine.

To receive all For Immediate Release podcasts including the weekly Hobson & Holtz Report, subscribe to the full RSS feed.

This FIR Interview is brought to you with Lawrence Ragan Communications, serving communicators worldwide for 35 years. Information: www.ragan.com.

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