Conferenza

Social Media Meets the Corporation

One of the best social media panels I’ve heard in a while came in an unexpected context: A seminar sponsored by software vendor Visible Path, on Monday at the Olympic Club in San Francisco.

The developing corporate uses of social media are fascinating: Once top-down companies are now embracing a range of applications to increase collaboration and encourage innovation. The session simply reinforced my perception that we’re rapidly moving beyond blogs and wikis to a variety of new tools that will both flatten the organization and blur former corporate boundaries.

Socialtext’s always-insightful Ross Mayfield said that social media offers corporations the chance to rethink the way they approach decision-making. “What would happen,” he asked rhetorically, “if we decoupled information rights and decision rights?” That is, what if everybody had access to the same information, so it wouldn’t just be top decision-makers who hoarded all the data? And what would happen if a particular decision was made more participatory – again, in a process enhanced by social media?

Motorola’s director of Internet and Collaborative Technology, Matt Beveridge, talked extensively about his company’s uses of blogs and wikis, but pointed out that the biggest challenge is integration: data is spread across too many disparate tools. Forrester's Jeremiah Owyang pointed out a second problem: Information context, making sure the right data is asked in the right setting. He gave the example of Facebook, which asked for intimate information he wouldn’t normally want to give in a business environment.

That’s a problem that Anthony Lye, Oracle’s Senior Vice President of CRM On Demand, said his company’s new offering would address. Traditional Customer Relationship Management software, he said, was simply an enforcement function. That “sales 1.0” process could be summed up as, “Report more, sell less,” he stated flatly. But Lye said that the “sales 2.0” process is the reverse: Sell more, report less. “Reporting should be a by-product of productivity,” he claimed. However, he wouldn’t give more specifics in advance of the company’s announcement – though he was scheduled to talk at the Sales 2.0 conference the next day.

Visible Path's offering is interesting: A "social map" of contacts, illustrating the strength of ties by watching a person's Microsoft Outlook activity such as email traffic and calendar entries. These kinds of tools are increasingly being integrated into salesforce automation tools like Salesforce.com, to increase the value of individual and corporate social networks.

gB

Pop!Tech launches "Accelerator", names HIV/AIDS project

Pop!Tech's major domo Andrew Zolli launched "The Pop!Tech Accelerator" Friday, an initiative he said is geared to put world changing ideas into action by bringing new tools and approaches to global issues with the assistance of the network of attendees at the conference's annual gathering here at Camden.

Zolli spend the early afternoon Friday session describing this, and its first undertaking, dubbed "Project Masiluleke", which he said would help bring a software tool to use in treating HIV/AIDS in South Africa.

PopTech - the live feed

Note that PopTech is being webcast live... the list of speakers is here, and the schedule's here.

And, while we will be providing some thematic reports on themes across several of the speakers as well as updates on Pop!Tech's evolving community, several bloggers are providing live updates, including the typically wonderful, copious notes of Ethan Zuckerman.

Pop!Tech envisions Human Impact

Pop!Tech 2007 kicked off its annual feast of ideas amid the chill autumn folliage of downeast Maine with the incredible data visualization work of photographer Chris Jordan and the urban sensory mapping work of Christian Nold.

This year's theme, "Human Impact" was creatively visualized Jordan's work, which demonstrates in his Intolerable Beauty the patterns made by around 425,000 cell phones - the number tossed away by Americans every day, or 15 million sheets of paper, the amount used by Americans every five minutes, a phenomenon whose visualization he describes as allowing him to chronicle the detritis of human consumption.

His latest show, in LA, is "Running the Numbers" and turns such images into artwork - such as creating an image of Mount Denali comprised entirely of images of the badge of the "Denali" SUV, with some altered to spell "Denial" in the same typeface, and an image of two billion plastic bottles - the number used by Americans every FIVE minutes.

Nold showed how he used a sensory mapping device to record the emotional states over time and in various locations in Greenwich, England and San Francisco, California.

Follow the links above to see these works, and better understand how they provide true insights on the level of visualization visionary Edward Tufte.

RSWurman's EG offers an encore!

For all of us who are fans of the events and designs of Richard Saul Wurman, news two years ago that he was producing EG2006 [the Entertainment Gathering] at the Skirball Center north of Los Angelesbrought hope of a new series of intimate, high brainwave events, in the tradition of TED [Technology, Entertainment Design] which he'd painstakenly created and led through its sale in 2002 to publisher Chris Anderson.

As that event approached, Ricky (as he's known to dearest admirers) disappointed many when he said this was a one-off, and not a series. So, it is with great anticipation and joy that word started slipping out a few weeks back that The Entertainment Gathering will have (at least) an encore at the Getty Center in Los Angeles December 2-4 under the leadership of Michael Hawley, the gifted MIT professor who became known to RSW's crowd as much for the genius of his piano performances as for his professional accomplishments.

"To be honest, I'm a bit weary of high-end packaged conferences, but I never tire of spending great time with incredible people," Hawley wrote to a friend who inquired about his objectives. "I'm designing EG to be the kind of conference I would beg to attend."

Featuring stalwarts of past gatherings like physicist Brian Greene, former Microsoft executive Nathan Myrvold, philosopher-comic Emily Levine and perennial favorite musician Jill Sobule, this edition also inclues concert pianist Leon Fleisher, Toy inventor Caleb Chung and Donald Jackson, the calligrapher to Queen Elizabeth II. And, of course, Wurman as "himself."

No doubt the event will be as extraordinary as ever, and Hawley hints strongly there will be plenty of room to spawn those special moments like occured last year, when on the spur of the moment Bill Nye (the science guy) and Blair Tindall tied the knot in an impromptu wedding in the middle of the conference on the urging of Pastor Rick Warren, who presided over the ceremony.

"So, what I'm aiming for is an event that will be a breeder reactor for magical, wonderfully unexpeted connections like these," he wrote, in an email distributed to several potential attendees, referencing the wedding and other magical moments of EG2006. "I am keeping EG intimate (no overflow room); it isn't an orgy."

Hawley adds that he is agonizing over each presenter, among them many national treasures and people of unique talent, as well as over each attendee, saying he aims to be in touch with each attendee personally to help insure he brings out the best of the best.

Presuming this event builds on the brilliance of the past - and there's every reason to believe it will - participants will certainly celebrate Hawley's almost incidental comment that he intends to continue EG as an annual event, as what he terms "a great big cherry on top of the sundae of LA" - a notion and venue he attributes to RSW himself.