Endless Knots

How Twitter Changes Everything at Enterprise 2.0

When I was thinking of a title for a session on Twitter at the Enterprise 2.0 conference next week here in Boston, I, of course, had no idea what would transpire in Iran a few months hence. But here we are, witnessing the power of 140 characters, the energy that can be released with the greatest economy of writing.

Journalists, commentators, bloggers, and tweeters alike are struggling to find the proper analogies for what is going on, even as they pile on far more than 140 characters.

People have turned their Twitter avatars green in support of the protests.

Type "#Iranelection" in the Twitter search bar and endless tweets come up. Just since I started writing this post, 846 more tweets have come up with the same hash (#) sign.

If you're puzzled by many of the words in this post, you're in good company: "I don't know a twitter from a tweeter but I know it's important," said Hillary Clinton, explaining why her State Department asked Twitter not to take down the site for planned maintenance yesterday.

The same kinds of massive outpourings of messages, videos, and posts are finding their ways onto other social networking sites; executives from Facebook, YouTube, and, of course, Twitter suddenly find themselves doing interviews with the top broadcasters, who themselves are struggling to understand what this is all about.

Something is happening and none of us is precisely sure what it is, this "social" (is *that* even the right word anymore?) networking thing.

Which brings me back to my title - and our panel next week at Enterprise 2.0: "How Twitter Changes Everything," on Tues, June 23, at 3:30.

I think it will be unlike any panel those of us on it have ever experienced and we invite all coming to the conference to turn out for this one. Together, we can add our collective intelligence to understand how very short bursts of information can support massive change in "businesses," even the business of statehood. Here's the panel description for the conference:

How Twitter Changes Everything

Nearly impossible to describe without experiencing it (though countless try through analogy), Twitter has soared in popularity. Its  7 [now about] 20 million-and-counting users seem to agree that it facilitates a kind of communication previously unknown, allowing large numbers of people to exchange ideas in extremely short bursts in nearly real-time.

Among its appeals: tiny posts demand succinctness and clarity; you can reach tons of people/colleagues/customers in a second; it's superb in emergencies; communities of vaguely-connected folks can form quickly and naturally around shared interests; you can test ideas through instant polls...the list goes on.

Join this group of dedicated tweeters for a participatory session about how Twitter differs from other social appliances and how your business, organization, practice, and/or communication style can benefit. Come with stories!

Moderator - Jessica Lipnack, CEO, NetAge

Jessica Lipnack writes, speaks, and consults about collaboration. Co-author of six books, she is an expert on virtual teams, networked organizations, and social media. A long-term member of the Enterprise 2.0 Advisory Board, she stays in touch with a wide network of practitioners and thinkers, including the participants in her sessions.

Speaker - Bill Ives, Social Media and Blogger Consultant

Bill Ives currently provides consulting services on business blogging and other business uses of social media. He has over 25 years consulting experience in business uses of new media. Led the knowledge management client practice at Accenture. Holds a Ph.D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Toronto and did a post-doc at Harvard studying effects of media on cognition. Published over 100 articles on business uses of the web, knowledge management, learning, and psychology Currently co-writing two Corante blogs, FastForward and AppGap, about enterprise 2.0. Writes Portals and KM blog http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/

Speaker - Clara Shih, Social Networking Alliances and Products Strategy at salesforce.com and Author, The Facebook Era, salesforce.com

Clara Shih joined salesforce.com in 2006 and is responsible for Enterprise Social Networking Alliances and Product Strategy. Previously, she was the product line director of AppExchange, salesforce.com's online business applications marketplace, for which she led the development of the Checkout payment services for partner applications. Prior to joining salesforce.com, Clara worked in strategy and business operations at Google and as a software developer at Microsoft. Clara holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in computer science from Stanford University, as well as a Master's Degree in internet studies from the University of Oxford, where she studied as a Marshall Scholar. Clara is the author of a new book on social networking for business entitled, The Facebook Era: Tapping Online Social Networks to Build Better Products, Reach New Audiences, and Sell More Stuff (Prentice Hall 2009). Clara developed Faceconnector (formerly Faceforce), the first business application on Facebook. Clara twitters as @clarashih and blogs at http://thefacebookera.com

Speaker - Isaac Garcia, Co-Founder and CEO, Central Desktop

As co-founder and CEO of Central Desktop, Isaac oversees business strategy and sales for the company. Isaac has a proven record in both early-stage technology companies and enterprise sales & marketing. He started his technology career in 1996 as the first sales rep at Quote Desk Software, which was later acquired by CNET Networks, Inc. in 2000. As a founding partner at Upgradebase, Isaac served as Vice President of Sales & Marketing where he oversaw all business development and sales for the company. During his 3 year tenure at CNET, Isaac served as a Director of North America Enterprise Sales for CNET Channel. As Director, he was responsible for the acquisition, sales and management of global partnerships with Microsoft, Google, EBay, Yahoo, Insight and BestBuy. Isaac led and managed CNET's global partnership with Microsoft to launch the Windows Marketplace campaign in 14 countries, the largest sales and marketing campaign ever launched by Microsoft. Isaac received a BA in English from Ambassador University and attended the University of Northern Colorado Graduate School where he studied English Literature for a Master of Arts.

Speaker - Patti Anklam, Independent Consultant, Net Work

If it's Friday, it must be Adobe Connect

All of a sudden, the webcams, used principally for family connections for years, are workhorses (so to speak). All of the meetings we've had with Cisco of late have taken place in Webex, culminating in the extravaganza last Tuesday that combined Telepresence, Webex, and Cisco IPTV.

Then on Friday, for another client who shall go nameless but whose name you know, another webcast, this time via Adobe Connect, topic = "Leading and Motivating Remote/Virtual Teams."

An increasingly familiar format: slides on the left of the screen, occupying about 50% of the layout, me in the upper right, then a pastiche of chat, presenter, and poll windows that popped up to survey the crowd, none of whom was co-located either.

The polls serve a useful purpose. For example, how many of you are multitasking, we asked? 100% responded 100%. (At least they were paying enough attention to respond, I quipped.) Feedback like this mid-presentation helps guide what to say next, much as it does in a face-to-face preso when you ask people to raise their hands.

At the same time, people were throwing questions into the chat box, a long list of which now await answering as there wasn't time to in the session to respond. Likewise, the questions help frame Part 2 of this webcast "series." Last week's event centered around the most scarce of current resources, real-time interactions; the next centers around over-time communication.

Which brings up this last point, which really belongs in yesterday's post: If people are spread all around the world and the time difference spans 15 hours, where is the meeting taking place and what time is it? Online and cybertime are the obvious retorts but think about it. If our communication travels via packets, all split up into tiny digital bits, where is "here," and if it's 6 AM for Amy, 9 AM for me, 2 PM for Jim, and 9 PM for Neil, what time is it "now?"

Trip report: A brief foray into the future

 

Several firsts at once for a keynote I gave last week for Cisco, topic, appropriately enough, "Virtual Leadership:"

1. A truly global audience--from California to London to Singapore and many spots in between, with about 90 people in all.

 

In this picture, London, Raleigh, North Carolina, and me, the invisible photographer in Massachusetts

2. Everyone attended virtually. Everyone.

3. We used Telepresence, Cisco's technology that provides hi-def, interactive videoconferencing.

 

I could mute the mike on my desk

4. Telepresence was then combined with Webex and transmitted via Cisco IPTV, which meant that people could see me, see my slides, send questions...and probably multitask all at once.

 

When I was on mute, there was a screen icon to remind me

According to the host, Cisco's VP of Worldwide Inside Sales, Jim Blum, it was only the second time Cisco tried anything like this, the first being in May of this year.

And, as per above, it was my first time.

 

When my time was nearly up, a stopwatch appeared on the screen, first at 10 minutes, then again at 2 minutes

It worked perfectly, with no glitches technically.

Going back and forth between me and Jim, while with a slight (perhaps a second or two) delay, was seamless.

So...what is Telepresence and how is it different from normal videoconferencing, the herky-jerky, irritating, low-resolution, out-of-synch, wish-it-were-always-better technology? It's really hi-res, the screen is huge (see picture), the audio is perfect, and it really does feel almost-sorta-like you're with the people. Very different from Skype, iSight, the built-in video on my Mac...really different from any video conf I've ever done.

It's not just that you're seeing a really clear picture, i.e. watching the news on TV, but the newscaster is talking back to you. Quite phenomenal.

And low impact in a number of ways. No one traveled except to their local laptop - and in the case of Jim, his direct reports, and me to a Telepresence room. Now do a back-of-the-envelope calculation of how much this meeting would have cost if 90 people had been convened. Instead of coming together for "three intense days," as Jim said they did last year, they came together over about a week with highly focused, highly interactive virtual meetings.

Good for reducing stress on people and on the planet.

If this is the future of virtual meetings, sign me up. Presenter evaluation, meaning how I'd rate the environment--and the preparation--provided by the client? A+

Now I'm really nervous

Emerging Web Memo (not his real name, I'm jussst guessing) is looking forward to our upcoming panel at Enterprise 2.0, "How Twitter Changes Everything." Apparently, the post's wonderful author was inspired by our blogging panel last year - to the extent that his blog got going as a result. Now what if we flop? Patti Anklam, Bill Ives, Clara Shih, and Isaac Garcia and I are partners in crime in this one. We had our planning conference call today and I think, judging by the energy of the conversation, it might be not a flop. In fact, quite good. Come. Everyone.

GeekDoctor: Leading by clicking around

I'm doing a webcast on virtual leadership in a couple of weeks for eighty people, all situated virtually and all around the world. The link between the executive sponsoring the event and me  will be via Cisco's Telepresence -- though for everyone else, thank heavens, I won't be in high def.

In preparing for the webcast, I asked a few questions of one of my virtual leadership role models (scroll down for some great pics taken the same day this one was), John Halamka, CIO at Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, whose answers I thought others would enjoy seeing:

Q: You're on the move constantly. How do you maintain strong relationships with your direct reports?

*I live by Blackberry, laptop and conferencing technologies (Webex, iChat, Telepresence)

Q: What do you find most difficult as a "virtual" leader?

*Managing communications while constantly traveling is challenging.   My goal is to reduce the hours spent in airports through more virtual work

Q. What do you find to be easier when you're virtual?

*I eliminate many hassles - Parking, traffic, airport security lines, delayed flights, and lack of places to recharge my devices

Q. In terms of your reporting to your boss, how has your non-face-to-face presence affected your relationship?

*Paul [Levy, BIDMC's CEO] is just as virtual to me - we live in the world of social networking and web connectivity

Q. What advice on maintaining virtual connections with customers do you have for others who are very tech-savvy but whose customers may be less so?

*It's a journey. Start by eliminating as many face to face meetings as you can and set a goal of less travel/less in person meetings each year.

Confirm or ignore? Facebook by the book

My friend Clara Shih uses this video in her Facebook Era presentation. First saw her include it at Webcom Montreal 2009 and thought it so funny that I asked her where she got it. If you're on Facebook, you want to see it. Comes from the BBC Three show "The Wall." The very first person I sent the link to instantly posted it. You might too. 

Facebook and the !Kung

Well, not exactly, but this interview ("Where Gifts and Stories Are Crucial to Survival") with Pauline Wiessner, an anthropologist at the University of Utah, is not to be missed. She talks about how the !Kung (click your tongue to say it or listen to Miriam Makeba sing "The Click Song") maintain social connections across distance and time--and how here in the non-!Kung world we imitate them via social conveniences like Facebook.

First point is that distance is no impediment to intimacy if we are willing to keep those we care about close in our hearts through gifts. Reinforces the truth that many of the most generous people are those with ostensibly the least to give.

Second point is the story-telling. By talking about those who are "away," the !Kung keep them in the conversation. Facebook, Wiessner says, is a contemporary example of how we keep those not in view front and center in a different way.

"People who use it [Facebook] say it keeps memories of distant friends alive and it sometimes brings long-lost relationships back home. We all know of people who’ve been 'friended' by old pals from college and former neighbors they’ve lost touch with. When they see pictures of them and read 'sharings' from their Facebook partners, they are reminded of their presence in their lives."

Here are the opening few paragraphs of Claudia Dreifus's enlightening interview with Wiessner. You have to read it. Make sure you go to the end too where one of the !Kung snags a satellite phone and calls Wiessner in Utah, asking her to buy some soccer shoes for their team, which an American documentary filmmaker had promised to send a few years earlier but never had.

Q. ONE OF THE GROUPS YOU STUDY, THE !KUNG PEOPLE OF SOUTHERN AFRICA’S KALAHARI DESERT, ARE NATIVE TO ONE OF THE MOST UNFORGIVING CORNERS OF THE PLANET. HOW DO THEY SURVIVE IN A PLACE OF FREQUENT DROUGHTS, FLOODS AND FAMINE?

A. They have an intricate system of banking their social relationships and calling on them when times get rough. The system is maintained through gift-giving, storytelling and visiting. It works like insurance does in our culture.

I first arrived in the Kalahari in the early 1970s, when the !Kung were still primarily hunter-gatherers. My question then was: how do people without meat on the hoof, grain in the larder and money in the bank survive hard times?

When I was there for about a year, some answers came. There was a heavy rain. The desert plants died and the wild game dispersed. As people grew hungrier, they began telling vivid stories about loved ones who lived as far as 200 kilometers away. They spoke about how they much missed them. Soon people were busily crafting beautiful objects — gifts. Finally, when push came to shove, 150 !Kung began trekking to the encampments of the people they’d been remembering. There they stayed until conditions in their home area improved.

What I’d witnessed was a structured system at play. The Bushmen used the storytelling to keep feelings for distant persons alive. The gifts are their way of telling the receiver, “I’ve held you in my heart.” Over the years, I saw this repeated many, many times. It would turn out that the !Kung spent as much as three months a year visiting “exchange partners,” and this was the key to their survival.

"The world's most powerful form of networking"

On this, Memorial Day, take a look at the expanded points of the "most powerful form of networking" from Joshua at Design Pepper, which I ran across thanks to one of the newest forms, which I'm loathe to call networking at all because in truth it's merely linking and clicking. Simple and to the point. Reminds me of something Stewart Brand wrote to us years ago, paraphrased as I can't put my hands on the original: "Networking is not calling up all the friends of your friends and harassing them to death." Now, Joshua:

“It’s not what you know…” Countless articles, books, and blog entries have been written on the subject of networking over the years. I’ve read my fair share of them. But many of them also make me a bit queasy. Even if the tactics they suggest aren’t problematic in themselves, it seems that they often promote a coldly calculating approach. It’s as if instead of seeing people, they ask us to see merely the next stepping stone on our path to success. I believe that this is fundamentally anti-human, and in the end, counterproductive.

What then, do I suggest? The oldest, most powerful form of networking in the world: genuine friendship.

Jill Nemiro on creativity in virtual teams...and a lot more

Jill Nemiro, PhD, book author, former actor, and film and video editor, is an expert in virtual teams. It must be close to ten years since I first heard from Jill as she was working on her PhD in an original field: Creativity in Virtual Teams. Her dissertation was so good that it was published - and she's gone on to do several more books.

When Jill got started, she was among a small number of people doing research on virtual work and, among those, she struck me as unusually collaborative and generous. We've stayed in touch ever since and, when she teamed up with Michael Beyerlein, Lori Bradley, and Susan Beyerlein to pull together The Handbook of High Performance Virtual Teams, she asked Jeff and me to participate, which we gladly agreed to. We got a cherished spot in such collections -- the very last piece about the future of virtual teams ("The Virtual, Networked Organization").

Just received notice that Jill's been interviewed by Vern Burkhardt in the Idea Connection ("Virtual Teams"), where she talks about her background, what interests her about virtual teams, and how creativity plays into their success. Thanks for the mentions, Jill, and here's her excellent list of eleven competencies for effective virtual teamwork (and, Endless Knotters, don't miss the interview):

• Developing an awareness of yourself and how you interact with others;
• Developing and practicing supportive communication skills;
• Building the ability to communicate effectively across cultures;
• Resolving conflict effectively;
• Problem solving and decision making skills;
• Managing stress because virtual work schedules are often 24/7;
• Time management and personal productivity skills;
• Developing and motivating others – coaching and empowering;
• Utilizing positive political skills to push ideas forward;
• Knowledge management, data gathering, and information access skills; and
• Developing ways to advance one's career in the virtual workplace.

A tale of two Pauls

Something's been going on around the country--and in other countries too--where instead of people behaving in predictable ways as the economy has worsened, they're choosing to use their creativity in service of humanity. The media loves this and there are segments on nearly all the news programs about people stepping outside the bounds and "making a difference," as the NBC Nightly News calls its now-regular segment.

My friend Paul Levy, who's shown up a time or two before here, has found himself in the limelight as a result of the choices he's made as head of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, where revenues are off $20 million this year, which translates into 600 jobs. Paul's written plenty about this on his blog; if you click over there, you'll be able to follow the whole story.

Because of his approach to "running a hospital," he took the problem to the people and naturally they responded. After a series of town meetings where Paul laid out the problem, the hospital opened an online forum where people could anonymously post suggestions. They got tons (detailed data on his blog about all of this).

Long/short, through voluntary salary reductions from the top to deep in the organization and some other cuts, like suspension of 401(k) matches and removing payments for people's beloved Blackberrys, they've whittled down the number of jobs at risk to about 140, maybe fewer (I'm losing track a bit).

Enough of the story. Point is that the national press caught on and last night, the hospital was featured on that very NBC segment, Making a Difference, and tonight, it was featured on PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer as part of a longer piece reported by Paul Solman. Afterward, Paul S. asked Paul L. to record a bit more, a six or so minute piece where the hospital guy tells the TV guy how the whole wonderful thing came down and how anyone else could replicate what he'd done in four easy moves: be transparent; provide a forum for participation; be respectful; and explain decisions logically, in plain, straightforward language that people can understand.

Every bit of this is worth your seeing and reading, every bit. Please spread the word.

[Special note to those who know my strange life on trains where I meet all manner of people: A couple of years ago, I was getting off the train in New York when I realized Paul Solman was right behind me. Although we hadn't crossed paths since we both had written for the long-gone Boston After Dark in the deep dark past, I cheerily introduced myself. One thing led to another and next I knew, we were sharing a cab, Paul on his way to visit his 93-year-old father still living in the apartment where Paul had grown up on the Lower East Side, just a few blocks from where my grandfather had lived, and me on my way to my jewels in Brooklyn, aka daughters and son-in-law.]