Should we start having Flip Conferences?

Liz Guthridge is my guest next week on the Business901 Podcast. We did not talk about conferences. We did talk about Smart Mobs, Peer to Peer Networks, Crowdsourcing and how Lean fits into the picture. Liz is the founder of Connect Consulting Group, where she helps leaders implement high-risk strategic initiatives in their organizations. She has expertise in employee communications, research and change leadership. She also serves as a community expert volunteer for Powernoodle, and has facilitated multiple sessions over the past year.

Below is an excerpt from the podcast that spurred my thinking on Flip Conferences.

Joe: Could you explain Smart Mob organizing for me?

Liz: Smart mob organizing came from the book about a decade ago called "Smart Mobs: The Next Social Revolution." Back then the concept was about giving power to the mobile many. Over the past 10 years it's evolved, especially inside organizations, which is where I work and play, about bringing together a group of employees for a common business purpose. You generally use technology and electronic media or classic technology like the Powernoodle I mentioned. One of the advantages of doing it with the technology as opposed to in person is that you can cast a wider net and get more people to participate in more geographical areas. You don't have to all be in person. You can hear more diverse voices because of that, especially the ones who are quiet, who are not necessarily going to speak up in you're in a face‑to‑face session.

It's also really well when you want to do something really quickly because you could run a session, get people to generate ideas. You can do it in, depending upon the complexity, as little as 90 minutes or so from start to finish. Or you could spread it out over a week or several weeks, depending upon how much people need to do, think about it, and do other things.

So for example, I recently did for one of the professional associations I work with, they were doing their, and again, it's kind of embarrassing for them to admit, first strategic plan. They were gathering in the Bay Area, which is not too far from where I am, but we only had basically that seven hours to work in total. They had to have a regular meeting as well, a business meeting.

So what we did through Powernoodle was to do a SWOT analysis, and we did a SWOT analysis with a double T, not only looking at threads but also trends. So I had a question for each. They had a committee set up to be working on their mission statement, and that committee had gotten totally bogged down. So we did a smart mob organizing around the mission statement.

So by the time they got together in the Bay Area and we had finished the smart mob organizing and I had looked at all the data, put it together for them in a report which we presented, we were able to come up with a very sound, strategic plan. Basically, a one‑pager was objectives, goals, and tactics in five hours.

Joe:  It sounds like that reverse learning‑type thing where you bring the homework into the classroom.

Liz:  Exactly. It's perfect for flip learning, yes.

Joe: You're having discussions about things they value rather than taking the time out to explain this or do this survey or do this. You're jumping in with both feet when you walk into the room, aren't you?

Liz: Exactly. That's why I think one of the things that flip learning is so effective as well as the smart mob organizing type‑techniques. Because, what you're able to do is to level set in advance because people are working with concrete material, not just fluffy ideas but concrete stuff, and are getting much more comfortable with the concepts, a better idea of where they think the organization should go or the team should go. So when they come together, either on a phone call or a video conference or in person, you're able to have a much more thorough conversation, a richer or more robust conversation. You have a real dialogue rather than talking at one another.

In past podcasts, Opening Appreciative Space Process 1 and Opening Appreciative Space Process 2, we discussed Open Space Technology (OST) is an approach for hosting meetings, conferences, corporate-style retreats, symposium, and community summit events, focused on a specific and important purpose or task—but beginning without any formal agenda, beyond the overall purpose or theme.

Having an open space conference is scary for many conference promoters. However, what would happen if we did a Flip Conference? I envision it working something like this:

1. Create a conference agenda very similar to the same way that you do now with subject matter tracts and experts filling the agenda.
2. After registration, attendees are allowed to watch the presentation before attending the event. They can even hold a corporate viewing so that discussions from non-attendees can take place.
3. Form an online group utilizing something like Powernoodle or another Wikki type structure to discuss beforehand.
4. From these conversations vote for other attendees to give 5-minute lightning round discussions.
5. At the conference, the subject matter expert discusses the findings or information summarized in the online conversation and adds a few other tidbits.
6. Present the Lightning Rounds as the subject matter for discussion. Maybe limit these discussions for 15 to 30 minutes.
7. The Facilitator/Subject Matter expert wraps up the discussion.
8. The online community continues for a pre-determined period and if it needs to evolve into an ongoing community it has that choice.  

Anybody up for trying? Drop me an email if you have an interest on a smaller scale a Lean Sales and Marketing Workshop or a Lean Service Design Trilogy  presented as a Flip Workshop?

Can you apply Process Thinking to Social Media

I think @RicDragon did it. Ric has unique insights grounded in marketing, process methodologies such as Lean, Social Media and traditional web know-how. This is a process that is repeatable and improvable and documented in his new book, Social Marketology: Improve Your Social Media Processes and Get Customers to Stay Forever. 

I had the pleasure of meeting Ric through Social Media before he wrote his book. This guy talked different. He talked about getting the fundamentals right; he talked about knowing where you were headed before you started and how to get there. But most of all it was simply explained, which caught my eye, a mark that is common to experts in a field.

An excerpt from the upcoming podcast.

Joe: What you're saying is that we really have to understand who we are.

Ric: Exactly. This is beautiful; we go from desired outcomes; we go to understanding who we are. Then we look outwards, and who is our audience? We do a piece of work that we call "micro‑segmentation." Now, micro‑segmentation, we're not just looking at the old-fashioned segments of yesterday's marketing. "Gee, soccer moms in Westchester who have a master's degree." We're going even deeper than that.

If we look at people, for instance, who like animals, perhaps I'm selling animal figurines. I'll go into the world of people who like wild animals, African animals, people who support elephant preserves. We go into domestic animals, and all the different types. We get into dogs, and we can get into breeds.

Finally, we reach a point of granularity that we're talking about the Airedale Terrier Kennel Club of greater Duluth, Minnesota, that type of granularity.

This piece of work is brainstorming. It results in an indented document which becomes a framework for all of our social media work because we can iterate through these various micro‑segments to find out where we can start to get engagement within their communities.

We can then research our micro‑segments to find out where their communities are, and in fact, research those communities doing what we might call "on-line ethnography," or it's been termed "net‑nography," analyzing and studying on-line communities.

Joe:  And this is not rocket science to do, is it?

Ric: Absolutely not. Of course, as we study these communities, we start to see what these people are talking about. We can start to engage that community or become part of that community, perhaps even becoming influential in that community. That's the whole community stage of the process framework. After the community stage, we've done the study, we can identify who's influential within these communities or outside of these communities. Then we can focus on the influencer piece of work, where we identify let's say a set portfolio of influencers.

We really work hard to engage those people. We follow their blogs. We comment on their blogs. We do what we call the "influencer project," where we can really get involved with those people.

For some organizations, particularly in B to B, you might totally put all of your social media energy into that type of influence or project.

Because, let's say if you sell antibiotics for poultry. Well, there're only five people in the world that you really need to talk to, or maybe 10 or 20. It's a pretty small audience. So you can really find out who's influential in that world and try to speak with them directly.

After you've gone through this process, you've looked at your desired outcomes, you've done your brand voice and personality, you've done the micro‑segmentation, you've studied the communities, and you’ve studied the influencers. At that point, you can put together an action plan.

Your action plan can be based on a lot of different elements of what your marketing objectives are, different types of plans that you can put together. Then, of course, measure, study, reiterate, and come back around and do it again.

Accessing the Full Value of the Cloud

Thomas Koulopoulos, author of Cloud Surfing: A New Way to Think About Risk, Innovation, Scale and Success (Social Century) was my guest on the podcast, The Next Step in Cloud Computing–Humans. Tom is the author of eight books and founder of Delphi Group, a 20-year-old Boston-based think tank, which was named one of the fastest growing private companies in the US by Inc. Magazine. Delphi provides advice on innovation practices and methods to Global 2000 organizations and government agencies.

This is a transcription of the podcast.

Tom is an engaging speaker, (samples at http://tkspeaks.com), and you will find the podcast very entertaining. He left me thinking about the cloud and the possibilities in a totally different way. It’s not about technology. It’s about how we collaborate, work, influence and experience the world!

Related Information:
Process Control Thoughts from the Poppendiecks
Uncommon Thoughts about Service
Time Based Thinking limits Lean Sales and Marketing
Why is ‘x’ the unknown?

Key to a Successful Event, begin with a Holy Shit Moment!

When holding a Kaizen Event have you ever really taken the time to think thru the event and how you will hold people’s interest and more importantly how you will get them engaged? Managers may think that everyone has the same level of interest and are willing to participate and share openly. I think that is what separates the professional facilitator from the average manager; the ability to engage in conversation with the entire team. Without doing this you may leave the best idea lying on the table, never to surface and be implemented.

I believe the best way to get the team engaged is by delivering a “Holy Shit” moment. That’s right, don’t try to loosen them up with small talk or a joke but go right for the throat and bring importance to why they are there. If you can, wheel in the issue, show why the improvement has to be made but do it in a visual manner. Maybe, even start the event at Gemba or maybe even downstream from that. Add some realism to the problem by bringing in several customers to describe how they interpret or how the problem affected them. You need to set the stage, before Act 1 is over, you want everyone on the team to be muttering; “Holy Shit.”  

Below, is a slide presentation on how Steve Jobs prepares for presentation and I think it is a good template for delivering that moment.  Another great resource I would recommend is Patrick Lencioni Death by Meeting: A Leadership Fable...About Solving the Most Painful Problem in Business and Overcoming the Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Field Guide for Leaders, Managers, and Facilitators. 

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs

View more presentations from Carmine Gallo.

I have been spending time this week updating my Value Stream Marketing Webinar and next to me, I keep the following books (These are Amazon Links below, if you buy all three, I might make $2.45 and if you do, Thanks!):

The Presentation Secrets of Steve Jobs: How to Be Insanely Great in Front of Any Audience

Slide:ology: The Art and Science of Creating Great Presentations

The Back of the Napkin (Expanded Edition): Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures

Also another great resource, 6 tips on Remote Presentations from Nancy Duarte

Technorati Tags: Presentations,Kaizen Event,Kaizen,Value Stream Marketing

Real life example of Agile Marketing

Good description of the Agile Marketing Process versus the typical waterfall method. I am really starting to love this stuff!

Jason Cohen describes how a free book transformed marketing at Smart Bear Software: objectively measuring the effect of marketing efforts, getting accurate lead information, and giving people something genuinely useful. This Pecha Kucha talk was delivered at Joel Spolsky's Business of Software 2008 conference in Boston.

 

Jason’s thought process on how to get quality leads from you e-mail subscriptions and whitepapers seems to be such a natural for industries transforming to online marketing. Remember, the old bingo cards and how your salespeople use to love chasing those three month old leads. How do they feel about internet leads? If you want quality, you may have to give up quality! What do you think?

By the way, doesn’t Pecha Kucha sound like a Pokeman Card? Actually it is a simple presentation format where you show 20 images, each for 20 seconds. The images forward automatically and you talk along to the images.

[901 Blogs] Social Media Hierarchy Revisited

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

Social Media Hierarchy Revisted

Awhile back I wrote a post that outlined what I called the hierarchy of social media. In that post I compared the tools commonly employed in social media to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Human Needs. The primary notion being that certain tools were more suited to someone just getting started, meeting basic needs, than someone deeply evolved and more suited to more advanced needs.

So my new hierarchy or pyramid has evolved to this

Plan,listen, join and grow!

Featured user on Business Week

Shameless self promotion: but this weekend I am the featured author on Business Week's home page http://www.businessweek.com

If you would like to review a few of my other published articles check out this recent blog post:

Watch out Guy Kawasaki!

Technorati Tags: Business Week,Business Exchange,Duct Tape Marketing,Business901

Steal This Small Business Promotion Idea

Read this great post from Chris Brogan on Small business Blogging.

Howsimple. How perfect. I love the whole blog.

There are other small cafe blogs out there now, each with its own personality.

Are we seeing cafe-shaped businesses already? Learn from these people. Oh, and read Becky McCray. She lives and breathes this stuff where I dabble.

Or if you want to get started, look at my main blog, Business901.

Invitation to Webinar: How to Get the Most Out of Your Pay Per Click Campaign

I like these guys and their webinars are great! 

Invitation to HubSpot Marketing Webinar 12-1PM EST (GMT -5)

Register Now

With more and more consumers turning to search engines as their first stop on the purchasing path, companies that make the first page of organic search results are those that win business, even in a tough economy. But making it to the first page of organic search results takes work and doesn't happen overnight. Recognizing this, businesses may turn to paid search to supplement their inbound marketing efforts. This webinar will discuss how to get the most out of your pay per click marketing campaigns and how paid search fits into your inbound marketing strategy.

Topics include:

• What is Pay Per Click marketing & when should you do it
• How to size up your market with PPC
• How to launch and optimize a PPC campaign

Space is limited so reserve your seat now.

Register for Free Webinar

The Telephone Doesn’t Use Any Gas

This content from: Duct Tape Marketing

The Telephone Doesn’t Use Any Gas

Technologyand data speed advances have made the use of web meeting technology a no brainer for even the smallest of businesses. In the fast paced world we live in, the ability to get a group of folks together online is such a powerful way to conduct business.

Now,I’m not suggesting that you never venture out and grab some face time, I’m just suggesting you can be smart about employing technology to help you get more done with the same 24 hours everyone has in a day.

Hereare some great ways to use webinar or webcast technology

One to one seminar –

Peerto peer seminar –

Livewith you –

Interviewan expert – .

Co-brandedpanel –

Sponsoredshow –

Qand A time –

Here are some of the more popular online meeting tools

• GoToMeeting/Webinar - .
• FreeConferenceCalls -
• Zoho Meeting
• WebEx
• Adobe ConnectNow
• Skype Video

Three Tools Marketers Overlook

From Chris Brogan, there is more

Marketers and PR types looking to use the social web to build business relationships receive more than enough advice on using blogs, wikis, podcasts, and social networks to connect. While you’re considering which software tools might work for your online marketing strategies, don’t forget these three sites, especially if you have location- or niche-based information, products, or services to promote.

Yelp -

Upcoming.org -

Meetup.com-

Thereare several tools like this that you might not have considered creatively in your potential online efforts. These might have even sparked other ideas for other tools people use on the web in a slightly different way. If so, let’s talk about that in the comments, shall we?

Otherwise,what do you think? Does this make sense? Any other recommendations?

 

Decreasing Connections While Increasing Our Networks

 Here’s a special guest post by Corvida. If you’re not already subscribed to her blog, you should be.

DecreasingConnections While Increasing Our Networks

While lounging on my couch this morning I decided to go through all 200 Twitter and FriendFeed requests that I’ve procrastinated on getting to this week. Lately I’ve been feeling so overwhelmed with requests that I’ve created a filter in Gmail to label and archive these requests. When I clicked on the label and took a cursory glance at my inbox, I wondered why I’d been feeling so overwhelmed with going through these requests. After about 10 minutes it hit me: as my network grows social networks don’t allow me to connect to my followers the way I used to.

ItWas All A Dream

Corvida writes at SheGeeks.net

The New School ways

I blogged about the old school and a couple people asked about the new school, so here they are.

SoundBite Back

Learn something new today

Posted: 20 Feb 2008 07:23 PM CST

Communication is changing every day. The only way to keep pace is to learn as much as you can, as soon as you can. This stuff isn't going away, so it's important to get comfortable with it and not fall behind. The good news is that you can learn most of what you need to know quickly, at no cost. And it's fun.
Here are a few ideas to get you started. Pick the thing you know the least about and jump in with both feet--and do it today:

• You obviously read blogs, but have you ever left a comment? Leave one here or on another blog, and get involved in the conversation instead of just observing it
• Better yet, start your own blog on Blogger or WordPress. Create your own conversation.
• Don't have time for a blog or want to walk before you run? Try Twitter.
• Join a social network like Facebook, Smaller Indiana, or LinkedIn
• Start your own network on Ning
• If you've never sent an instant message, create an account on Yahoo Instant Messenger or Google Talk (or sign up for Meebo and access multiple accounts at once)
• Add to a Wikipedia article
• Build a website using Google Page Creator
• Post about your favorite place on Wikimapia
• Post a video on YouTube
• Post your photos on Flickr
• Learn how to subscribe to RSS feeds
• Start a Jott account to use when you're on the road
• Share your bookmarks and discover new sites on del.icio.us
• Listen to a podcast
• Make your own podcast

So you say you've already tried all of these things? Great. What else do you recommend for those who are willing learn more about communication technology tools and trends?

What does your written message say to your audience?

If you want to learn more about Duct Tape Marketing, click here!

SoundBite Back

Even a contract can benefit from technology, here is some good resources for old school ways. 

SoundBite Back

Try something new (the analog version)

Posted: 09 Mar 2008 11:12 AM CDT

Last month I challenged SBB readers to improve their communication skills by trying something new. Since everything I listed involved technology, however, I want to issue a follow-up challenge from the analog world. While it's crucial to keep pace with technology, it's just as important to learn how to use some tried-and-true communication tools and skills, like:

• A library card. Still free, and still relevant. (If you live in Allen County, apply for one here.)
• The Reader's Guide to Periodical Literature. Still the best way to find every magazine article in print in a given year, and only available at your local library.
• Your reference librarian. Reference librarians are the original search engines, and they're better company than Google or Yahoo. When you need to dig deep on a research project, they're the people to see.
• Public speaking. One of the best ways to raise your profile at work or in the community. But make sure you can do it well before you volunteer. How do you learn?...
• Try Toastmasters or another skill-building group. There are plenty to choose from in northeast Indiana.
• Write a letter to the editor. Petrified of public speaking? Let your pen do the talking instead. Click to learn more about where and what to send to the Journal Gazette or News-Sentinel
• Your writing's not ready for prime time? Well, take a writing class at Ivy Tech Community College or IPFW.
• Learn a foreign language. Given population trends, Spanish, Mandarin Chinese, or Indian are probably good choices. French no longer makes a lot of sense from a practical standpoint, but learning just about any language is worthwhile. (Except Klingon. Learning Klignon is just nerdy.)
• You'd rather speak with pictures instead of words? Take a photography class. See pg. 32 of the spring Fort Wayne Parks & Recreation catalog from a class that's only $67.
• Teach a class. Already good at most of this stuff? Consider teaching others. You'll hone your public speaking skills, too, and you'll inevitably learn something new about your topic.
• Read. A book. A real book. Something with actual pages.
• Travel.
• Turn off the computer and talk to someone. Yes, I mean now.

Chalk one up for the apostrophe

Posted: 09 Mar 2008 11:11 AM CDT

More proof that puncutation isn't optional.
Photo from Grammar Girl's Group Photo Pool on Flickr

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Simple video on RSS Feeds

From Soundbite on RSS

SoundBite Back

Really simple video on RSS feeds

 

I'm a big fan of RSS feeds because of the way they simplify my time online. I subscribe to feeds from about 50 blogs, as well as everything from daily news from Journal Gazette and the latest entries on the Snopes.com Urban Legends site. With a quick browse through Google Reader, I cover a lot of ground in just a few minutes. If I had to visit these same pages individually to see when they were updated, I'd never keep up.
I'm such a big believer in RSS that last night I planned to find a video explaining how it works so I could post it here. Well lo and behold, The Good City has beat me to it, posting about Common Craft's "RSS in Plain English" video earlier today. In just three minutes, you'll learn how to save yourself hours a month.
So, how did I find out about the Good City post? An RSS feed to Google Reader, of course.

Technorati Tags: RSS Feeds,Soundbite,RSS,Google Reader

Business Management on line

I hate to take so much stuff from the Duct Tape Marketing Blog, but when it is important I am afraid many of you might miss this. Interesting online tools

The web app builder Zoho is doing something pretty amazing. It’s building out the complete suite of small business tools online and doing it in the face of proclamations and claims of this vision from Google and Microsoft.

They have successful built tools for online spreadsheets, documents, presentations, databases, web meetings, mail, chat and CRM. This week they announced a nifty little tool called Zoho People. The aim of this tool is to allow businesses (big and small) to move their HR and recruiting online. The basic features include an employee database with management functions, org chart, process and approval maps, and employee portal.

My guess is bookkeeping and shipping can’t be far away.

The Duct Tape Marketing Blog is a permanent fixture on my site, it should be on yours too.