ABC TV Interview: How business can create value with Twitter

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ABC TV ran a segment a few days ago on how companies are using Twitter to create value, including an interview with me on how businesses can use Twitter effectively.

This should be a topic of particular interest to small and mid-sized companies. If you are interested in learning more, SME Tech Summit in Sydney on 1 December will include specific in-detail coverage of how your company can use Twitter (as well as other social media tools) to build your success.

Comments made during the program include:

* Experts say Twitter is here to stay

* Twitter has become a legitimate business tool

* When you don’t have much money to spend, Twitter can be an excellent way to promote your business

* You need to be conversational and human to engage your customers

* There are ways that companies in any industry to use Twitter

* It is hard to do properly, and you do need to be consistent if you start

* Twitter is here to stay as part of companies’ branding strategy

The Big Shift in economic structure and why knowledge flows are becoming a fundamentally important business driver

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A couple of years ago Deloitte tempted John Hagel away from independent consulting to co-chair a new think-tank, now called the Deloitte Center for the Edge. I have been a long-time fan of John’s work, and find many parallels with my own path and research.

The Center recently released its first major study, the Shift Index, which was accompanied by an article in the July-August issue of Harvard Business Review, titled The Big Shift: Measuring the Forces of Change.

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When the Shift Index was first announced, I was immediately drawn to look more closely because of its first key finding:

The performance gap between winners and losers has increased over time, with the “winners” barely maintaining previous performance levels, while the losers experience rapid deterioration in performance.

This matches exactly one of the main messages I have been preaching since the beginning of the recession, for example in my keynotes at the MegaTrends conference in Abu Dhabi and my TEDx presentation in San Francisco on Future of the Enterprise: this is a time of increasing divergence in organizational performance, and adopting new strategies and activities is essential to avoid rapid erosion in competitiveness.

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SME Tech Summit in Sydney on 1 December – book the date!

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The Insight Exchange is going from strength to strength. Its next major event is the SME Tech Summit, to be held on 1 December in Sydney. The Insight Exchange’s CEO Beth Etling has put together an extraordinary agenda for what will be a landmark event in the space. Keynote speakers include Tim Pethick of Nudie fame (see interview with Tim on the event blog) and the always-provocative and insightful Mark Pesce. Check out the complete agenda for the rich array of content and learning that will be available on the day.

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Go to the registration page to see the very attractive offers and great early bird specials, which expire 31 October.

How did the event come about? It is now clear to anyone in business that technology is fundamental to how they work and bring in revenue. However only a small minority of companies have both the resources to use technology effectively, and the ability to keep on top of fast-moving but absolutely critical trends such as cloud computing and social media. There is a massive opportunity to assist smaller and mid-market businesses to deal with these issues.

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Keynote on Creating the Future of Media including Six Strategic Issues for publishers

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Yesterday I did a keynote for Publishers Australia on Creating the Future of Media, pointing to driving forces, key strategic issues, and action items for media companies today, with Iggy Pintado also presenting on leveraging social media in publishing.

The event attracted more attendees than any similar event organized by Publishers Australia so far, so clearly these issues are at the top of the agenda for the industry.

The slides to my presentation are below. As always, note that these slides are designed to accompany my presentation, NOT to be meaningful as stand-alone information. However many people tell me they still find value in the slides even without being able to attend my keynotes, so feel free to peruse them!

Creating the future of media: Keynote by Ross Dawson

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To complement the slides, here is a brief description of the Six Strategic Issues I covered in the presentation:

1. Scaling

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ABC Radio National: Beth Etling on the future of conferences – where is it going?

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Yesterday ABC Radio National’s Future Tense program did a special feature on the future of conferences.

Beth Etling, CEO of The Insight Exchange, was one of the three panelists interviewed, along with Matt Moore of Innotecture and Katie Chatfield of Jack Morton Worldwide.

You can listen to the future of conference program here as a podcast.

It provides a great overview of where the events industry is heading, with some excellent insights from Beth and the other panelists, particularly on the specific things that The Insight Exchange will be doing to push the boundaries on the industry, making events that are far more valuable to participants than traditional models.

In particular there was a great discussion on the role of blogging and Twittering at events. This is something that event organizers must understand and work with effectively to add value to conferences. Beth also spoke about the role of online community building before, during and after events. This is about combining the rich value of face-to-face interaction with the potential of online discussions.

If you want to experience real innovation and value-creation in events, attend The Insight Exchange’s inaugural event, The Power of Influence luncheon, in Sydney next Tuesday!

Embracing the Future: keynote speaker at Direct Selling Assocation

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Tomorrow I am giving the opening keynote at the Direct Selling Association of Australia Conference 09 which is on the theme of ‘Defining our Future’.

The slides for my presentation are below. As always, these are intended to accompany my keynote, not as stand-alone slides.

Embracing the Future: Keynote to DSAA 23 March 2009

View more presentations from rossdawson.

The presentation includes a diverse range of examples of markets that are currently growing:

Guitars

Home renovation tools

Home gardening

Books

Cookware

Lipstick

Quality jewellery (in the case of my wife’s business www.victoriabuckley.com)

Brain fitness

Clean energy

Robots

Aged care

Mobile applications

Events (done well, in the right sectors)

I’ll write more soon about the array of growth markets that offer great opportunities at the moment.

Why traditional conferences are dying and how unconferences and audience participation are the future of events

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For many, many years I have felt that the vast majority of conferences were very poorly run, continuing to apply ancient, didactic approaches. That’s one of the reasons that a few years ago I started running events, organizing the Future of Media Summit, which annually links Sydney and San Francisco, the Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum (the second annual event is on next week), Web 2.0 in Australia etc. Earlier events including what was at the time the extremely innovative Living Networks Forum in New York in 2003, using social networking technologies embedded in the event. Even though the events industry is vastly oversupplied, the majority of them are crap, so there’s ample scope for something better, as the consistent success of our events has demonstrated.

Certainly the last few years have seen the beginning of a transformation in how events are run, with in the US, Europe, and Australia (less so in Asia so far) many novel and highly interactive formats. However there is still a massive opportunity to create immense value with face-to-face events, and we’re currently looking to spin off our events business into a new company that will grow aggressively. News on that soon.

I am unusual in that a large part of my work is as a keynote speaker, speaking primarily on the future of business (including sometimes the future of events), usually within a traditional conference format. However at the same time I endeavor to create (or help my clients to implement) participatory formats that transcend the talking head syndrome.

Now the issue is getting mainstream media attention. News.com.au has released an article titled: Networking trend: the ‘unconference’, which examines the plethora of interactive events that are arising, such as unconferences, Lightning Talks, Ignite, and Pecha Kucha, and drawing on an extensive interview with me on where the space is heading.

The entire article is well worth a read. Below are excerpts of the direct quotes from me in the article.

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Video excerpts of keynote speech for Sun Microsystems Partner Executive Forum: The Future of the Network Economy

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I recently gave the keynote speech for a Sun Microsystems Partner Executive Forum, where Sun brought together the top executives from its extensive partner network for an update and relationship building session.

Below is an 8 min video containing brief excerpts from my keynote, titled The Future of the Network Economy.

Topics covered in the video include:

* In the Depression of the 1930s there was little structural change in the economy; in the current downturn there will be massive change.

* In a connected world you can – and must – reposition yourself across boundaries.

* Scale-free networks provide a common structure across society, web, infrastructure and more.

* Collaborative filtering is where the web is going: it enables us to find what is most relevant to us from infinite content.

* Open innovation requires identifying and stimulating the social networks where relevant ideas are proliferating.

* Our individual and organizational reputations will precede us, giving us and others insights into our expertise, reliability, and credibility.

* Strategy in an economy based on the flow of information and ideas requires us to rethink alliances and identify opportunities in new domains.

* The law of requisite variety means we must be at least as flexible as our environment.

* Studying ants’ collective behavior can help organizations understand how to tap emergence to create value.

Keynote at Direct Selling Association conference in March

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I’m giving the keynote, titled Embracing the Future, at the Defining our Future conference in the Gold Coast 22-24 March, run by the Direct Selling Association. Below is an introductory video on the event, briefly reviewing the event and main speakers.


DSAA 2009 from Tom Walter on Vimeo.

I’ve never spoken to the direct selling industry before, but certainly the themes I often cover of the evolving network economy and media landscape is highly relevant to the audience. I’ll go into more detail later on what I’ll be covering in my keynote.

ASTD Consulting News: Building Better Client Relationships

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The September issue of the Consulting News magazine of the ASTD (American Society for Training & Development) includes an article I wrote on Building Better Client Relationships. The article is below:

Building Better Client Relationships

by Ross Dawson

In an increasingly money conscious and global economy, where consultants often spend large sums and substantial energy in obtaining new clients, the key issue they face is how to build long lasting and deep relationships with valuable clients.

There are two main types of consulting: black-box services and knowledge-based services. A black-box service is one where something is done for the client, but they aren’t party to the process or activities involved. In a black-box situation, the client hires your expertise; they want you to do a specific task, but they are not engaged in the process. On the other hand, knowledge-based services engage both the client and the consultant, who work closely together to create an outcome that neither could have created alone. One impact of this process is that the client is different as a result of the mutual engagement, and the company can make better decisions due to this increased knowledge transfer.

It is necessary to understand how positive client relationships progress in order to position yourself to maintain the clients you attract. Relationship development can be broken down into four stages: engaging, aligning, deepening, and partnering.

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