Archive for October, 2007

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Just Say No To Fake Press Conferences…

In an internal memo obtained Monday by CNN, Federal Emergency Management Agency chief David Paulison rips the agency’s public affairs staff for a staged news conference in which staff members posed questions to FEMA’s No. 2 official, Harvey Johnson.

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Dell Listens

I get an email a day from friends and old colleagues asking what Dell is like. I’ll go on about all that in another post but one thing is for sure, Dell listens.

The degree to which participatory technologies are being used to create new listening posts is really amazing. What is also interesting is how this technology is being integrated into business processes. By combining the two, conversations that coalesce on IdeaStorm are routed into product development. And, conversations flagging tech issues in the Blogosphere reach tech support.

One of the new metrics for any communications department will be “conversation impact”. This metric will answer the basic question: “did we listen – did we do anything with the conversation?”

Jarvis gets at this in his story this week in BusinessWeek.

As a communicator and marketer, what is really exciting is seeing very talented people who would have once spent hours hammering out news releases discovering all kinds of new talents as activators of conversations and listeners. Instead of transmitting, they are participating – and it looks like they are having much more fun doing it. Which, to answer the original question, makes Dell a very fun place to be…

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The Final

The final of the “Really !@#$#$-up Rugby World Cup” is upon us and inspired by an email from Clive, I’m compelled to post. What to make of a pretty good Sth African side and England’s very own Dad’s Army rolling into the stadium?

Well, I was 50% right. The other 50% wasn’t what I was expecting. The memories of Paris weren’t quite what I’d anticipated either. The only cups us Kiwis got our hands on were full of cafe-au-lait. The only consolation was that Englishmen have never bought me so much to drink! It was a blast. I’d do it again.

As for the game. It will be a clash of two styles. Dull, plodding, English Rugby will run head-on into what is arguably the best team in the world right now – Sth Africa (I think they will land above NZ on the world rankings based on a win this weekend?). So long as they don’t get hypnotized by the ball flying overhead (something us Kiwis learnt a thing or two about from the French) and lulled into boredom by the forwards, Bill should be heading south again.

As for England – good job boys. You’re not the #1 team in the world, but you don’t play a bad game. As for your Refs, don’t get me started…

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Nice Wiki Presentation

If you are looking to get up to speed on the value of Wikis and related best practices, look no further than this preso from Mike over at Atlassian.

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Sharepoint

Sharepoint is going to be a major force in Corporate blogging and participatory platforms.

Blogging in a SME is very different to blogging in a medium to large Enterprise where, for the most part, IT professionals primary role is PREVENTING employees access to the outside world. Under the guise of security, supportability and a dozen other “abilities” tons of tools that power participatory media don’t stand a chance.

Sharepoint could be come a key enabling platform for driving participation on the web. Interesting to see the Newsgator announcement today – and that by Confluence.

NewsGator Social Sites enables easy discovery of the core element of collaboration within a business – seeing what colleagues within an organization are doing and making easy connections between people