2010 January

Africa: Doing Her Bit for Haiti

January 17, 2010 By ajmunn 2 Comments

It is fun going to conferences and events that focus on subjects that are important to you. Once such event for me has been Africa Gathering. It not only focuses on the continent of my birth, but also how technology and social media can help with creating sustainable development. Two of my favourite subjects.

People most often view Africa as the recipient of aid, the poor cousin who needs technical assistance. Events like Africa Gathering are important as they show the world Africa is full of capable people who can, and do create systems, technology and processes that not only work for Africa, but have global significance and application.

The most visible of these projects right now is Ushahidi and their vital efforts in crowdsourcing data coming out of the Haiti earthquake and translating it into useful, available and actionable information.

Ushahidi was initially developed by Kenyans to map reports of violence in Kenya after the post election disturbances in 2008. Since then the platform has been rebuilt primarily by people within Africa, but in true open source philosophy with contributions from people in Europe and the US.

Take a look at their website and read further, it makes interesting reading.

Here is the link to their Haiti specific site.

As a Zimbabwean, it delights me to be able to point to the hard work, dedication, and resourcefulness of some very smart African people, who have developed a platform that has global application and the ability to ultimately save lives.

From an organizational perspective, this raises a few important questions and points

Who said social media tools do not have real purpose and application?
How can organizations learn from this?
Why aren’t more people thinking about how they can organize information from the collective and turn it into useable and valuable data?
Why must the revenue model of social media concentrate on making money directly from the tools verse figuring out how the tools and their application can empower your organization to reach objectives or gain revenue?

Let’s all learn a little from the people of Africa

Filed Under: Africa, Social Media Tagged With: Africa, Africa Gathering, Africa Strategist, Clare Munn, Haiti, Social Media, tcgagency, Ushahidi

Hey Social Media – It’s not all about You!

January 15, 2010 By ajmunn 5 Comments

Author: Alasdair Munn

A common complaint from those advocating for the adoption of social media within their workspace is the difficulty they encounter in getting management or executive approval and/or the slow pace of adoption.

All too often our approach to social media advocacy tends to focus too much on social media. In our quest to prove ourselves and have our ideas accepted we run the risk of presenting what amounts to an alien set of tools and concepts to decision makers. These decision makers may often have a very different set of associations and expectations of social media than we do.

A more effective way of getting our message across would be to take a holistic workflow approach rather than a social media approach. Presenting a case for improved productivity, collaboration, communication, cohesion and less wasted resources will gain greater attention, commitment, buy in and resources. It is important to realise that organisational use of social media is not just about customer social interactions. Sure that is part of it, however to support that and realise organisational efficiencies we need to look at the entire organisation from the inside out.

A workflow analysis may incorporate some of the following:

Analyzing existing workflows,
Looking at overall organizational objectives,
Understanding departmental objectives,
Mapping interdepartmental interactions,
Analyzing corporate culture,
Taking into account stakeholder learning styles and preferences,
Quantifying available resources and so on.

The benefit of this approach is the findings and recommendations will center on needs, taking into account all tools, be their online, offline, traditional, new and provide context while avoiding labels.

I am not advocating a silo approach. Understanding departmental individual needs and work styles/flow is valuable information and the first step to understanding how departments can meet their needs while working towards and integrated organizational effort. A set of common objectives does not equate to an identical application of tool sets.

This thinking is also applicable beyond the internal organization. It makes sense to incorporate all aspects of the organization be it sales channels, channel partners, supply chain management, sales, customer engagement and so on.

Social media does offer a wonderful range of tools and processes to allow us to work smarter, but it is not about social media, it is about satisfying our objectives using a combination of tools and processes, including new, old, online, offline and so on.

Photo by: Paul Likes ‘pics”

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Clare Munn, Collaboration, how to get social media buy in, Integrated, internal, organizational social media, Social Media, strategy, tcgagency

Social Media: Social Science not Computer Science

January 12, 2010 By ajmunn 3 Comments

Author: Alasdair Munn

I am very pleased to see that Social Science, as a discipline, is receiving some attention, particularly with regard to social media. Of course, as a social scientist, I would be expected to be pleased, but this is an important point in the evolution of the way we conduct business.

When I was studying Industrial psychology and Industrial Sociology 20 odd years ago, it was assumed we were all heading for careers in Human Resources. The world was in manufacture mode. The concept of universal scale meant an organization-centered approach. Human Resources was about keeping the employees happy and motivated.

Starting off in journalism, media distribution and then publishing helped me formulate my belief that people and social science are central to any organization; be it internal, external, partnerships, supply chain, stakeholders etc. Finding an evolving medium like social media, which held these beliefs as central to its core was a natural progression.

Now, in 2010 we are seeing the positive global effects that embracing a people centered approach has had. As social media becomes better understood, and its underlying principles espoused, organizations have been challenged to look at how they operate. They are starting to discover what role their people can play within the organization, and how listening to their audiences and stakeholders, learning from and involving them, makes business sense.

Social media has brought a people focus to the forefront. It has provided tools that have changed the way we communicate, search for information and make decisions and it has allowed us a voice. Organizations have taken note of this and can see there is value in social media. Just what that value is, is not always clear to them. At times it is hard to see how social media can truly assist the entire organization. It has been criticized for being lightweight and for dismissing ‘the real world”. Similarly the corporate world has been accused of missing the point of social media and failing to see the depth of application it can have within an organization. The two still have instances where they rub up against each other.

For social media to be valuable to organizations, it has to make itself applicable to the entire organization, sometimes visible, sometimes not. Internal and external, by department and integrating departments. Social media as business tools. Equally organizations need to change the way they approach and view people and organize themselves accordingly. This does not mean abandoning their objectives and responsibilities to their shareholders. It does mean changing their approach to achieving their goals. Part of that change is incorporating a people centric approach. Good news for us Social Scientist, good news for social media and ultimately, good news for organizations.

Photo by Welshwitch36

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Clare Munn, Human resources, Industrial sociology, organizational social media, Social Media, Social science, strategy, tcgagency

Jung got Social Media

January 6, 2010 By ajmunn 6 Comments

Author: Alasdair Munn

I loved my University years. I was lucky enough to find myself in a relatively carefree and safe environment in which I could explore the world without being exposed to its horrors. There was always an abundance of people wanting to engage in what we considered intellectual pursuits. We could stretch and exercise our brains. There were equal amounts of people who wanted to explore alternative forms of exercise and entertainment too.

My choice of subjects caused some concern. Not to me, I might add. They suited me to the ground. I did not have to learn as much as absorb. Now, almost 20 years later I am finding that my majors, Industrial Psychology and Industrial Sociology are responsible for forming my approach to how I work.

Social media, for me, has to be seen and applied in the context of people and their relationships. Their relationships to themselves and the people around them. Communities, culture, expected norms, values, desires and hopes.

Jung and his concept of The Collective Unconscious particularly enthralled me. My very crude and somewhat dumbed down interpretation of it is we are all connected through a series of universal truths. These truths are manifested and made real through stories and imagery. The underlying message of the stories remains fairly constant. What changes is how those stories are told or manifested. They alter according to our culture, our norms, values, life lessons and physical environment. In the end, we have a collection of wonderful stories, each carrying the same central message, but individually making that message accessible to different audiences, cultures and belief systems.

I spent some time over the Christmas break trying to analyze my approach to social media strategy and integrated marketing. I found that even within specific niche markets I tend to approach it with a multicultural philosophy. By that I do not mean multi ethnic, or even regional. Rather, from the perspective that our life experiences, norms, values and expectations help determine how we see things and how we react to them. For my message to get through I need to take my objectives and understand how to translate those objectives into stories, experiences and truths that you can interpret, understand and react to.

Measuring how effective I am being and constantly bringing that back to my objectives allows the story to stay focused, evolve and create a return.

Who is your Jung? What helped shape who you are today?

Photo by Kleinz

Filed Under: Social Media Tagged With: Clare Munn, Integrated marketing, Jung, Multicultural, ROI, Social Media, tcgagency

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Africa: Doing Her Bit for Haiti

Hey Social Media – It’s not all about You!

Social Media: Social Science not Computer Science

Social Media: More Than for Those Who Can “Cook a Bit”.

Jung got Social Media

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