Video interviews with J.B. Holston of Newsgator and Stowe Boyd before Enterprise 2.0 Conference

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There is some great content on the Enterprise 2.0 Conference blog, including video interviews with J.B. Holston, CEO of Newsgator and Stowe Boyd. These give a flavor of some of the great content we can expect at Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston on June 22-25.

I’m due to have a call with J.B. Holston soon in which I will be very interested to hear his views on what I call the ‘RSS Enterprise’. He has some great insights in this video, including on the current pace of uptake of Enterprise 2.0 technologies, and the legal issues relating to privacy in different countries. A summary of some of the points he makes in the interview is available here.

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Notes from Conversation with Juliette Powell

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Last night we had a conversation with Juliette Powell in Sydney. A small group of local digerati gathered for an informal conversation on social networks, taking advantage of Juliette being in Australia for the first time as she tours the world promoting her new book 33 Million People in the Room.

Below are the unedited notes I took during the conversation, reflecting what was said by the participants. It was a fascinating discussion, with just a few fragments captured here.

Notes from Conversation with Juliette Powell

After her book came out Juliette got invitations from around the world, including from X Media Lab for a keynote and mentorship program in New Zealand. There were limited opportunities to connect with her peer mentors in the busy schedule, so the only way to connect was online – the brief initial contact will be followed up on social networks.

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Conversation with Juliette Powell – Sydney, 27 May

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Fantastic news! Juliette Powell, author of the freshly launched book on social networking 33 Million People in the Room, founder of The Gathering Think Tank, and leading broadcaster and media entrepreneur, is coming to Sydney for the first time next week.

To take advantage of this there’ll be an informal gathering:

‘Conversation with Juliette Powell’

27 May, 6:00pm-7:30pm

Bar 77 (Mezzanine), Grace Hotel

77 York Street, Sydney

Juliette will share some thoughts on her book and where social networking is heading and then it will open out to conversation.

Juliette is particularly interested in learning about the implications of the National Broadband Network for her next book.

Everyone is welcome – just turn up.

Feel free to let other know. Event hashtag is #jpsyd

Juliette will be available for media interviews while she’s in town

Juliette Powell and 33 Million People in the Room

Check out the website for Juliette’s new book 33 Million People in the Room. It includes free excerpts, including an analysis of Obama’s use of social media in the presidential campaign.

Also see the Wikipedia entry on Juliette for more on her fascinating journey.

Here are a few of the fantastic reviews that Juliette’s book has received:

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Launch of the Influence Landscape framework (Beta)

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Today we launch our Influence Landscape framework! Click on the image to download the pdf.

InfluenceLandscape_Betav1.jpg

This continues our tradition of creating frameworks to elucidate where things are going, including extremely popular visuals such as Future of Media Strategic Framework, Future of the Media Lifecycle, Enterprise 2.0 Implementation Framework and many more.

The Influence Landscape framework is launched in a Beta version that will be refined and developed over time, as influence is now one of our major research and content directions.

Tomorrow 19 May The Insight Exchange runs The Power of Influence luncheon in Sydney, which will cover how to create value in the emerging influence landscape. We are also preparing our landmark Future of Influence Summit (evolving out of the Future of Media Summit), due 1 September – details very soon!

A few quick comments on the framework:

DRIVING FORCES:

A wide array of forces are shifting value and attention to the influence landscape and from traditional media, advertising, and marketing.

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Rapid turnover in the Web 2.0 space – the best get acquired

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A review of what had happened to the Web 2.0 poster-children prompted me to review what had happened to the companies featured in my Web 2.0 Landscape dating from May 2007. This was one of the elements of our Web 2.0 Framework which has now been downloaded over 150,000 times.

In the diagram below the green circles indicate the companies have been acquired, while a red cross shows the company has joined the dead-pool. (This was a quick review so I may have missed things – let me know if so.)

Web2_landcape_update_May09_500w.jpg

If you compare this with the review of the companies in probably the most famous overview of Web 2.0 logos and companies below, my list seems to have been quite a lot more successful, I suppose since I was selecting these as representing a particular aspect of value creation rather than being randomly selected.

[UPDATE:] I’ve just worked out that this means 32.7% of the companies in our list have been acquired in the last two years, which is pretty significant turnover.

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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!

Tapping the power of Social Media: 6 steps for marketers

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I wrote the article below for Tech Marketing magazine. It is intended as a quick guide for marketers who are looking to engage with social media.

It is now impossible to ignore the power and reach of social media. Yet the rules of engagement are very different to traditional marketing and PR. Here are a few guidelines to how to tap the power of social media without stumbling into the many pitfalls:

1. Participate and play

The only way to understand social media is to participate. Don’t just open Facebook and Twitter accounts. You need to play extensively with a wide variety of tools and discover how they are being used. If you think you don’t have time, think how much time you’ll have if you cannot work effectively in a world increasingly driven by social media.

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Announcing The Power of Influence on 19 May! Here’s your opportunity to show how influential you are…

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The first event of burgeoning new events company The Insight Exchange is announced! And to set the tone for some of the themes we will be exploring this year and beyond, the topic is… The Power of Influence.

This event will be the first of The Insight Exchange lunch series, which each month will explore a different topic, experimenting with formats along the way. The following events are:

19 May – The Power of Influence

23 June – The Impact of Twitter on Media and Journalism

21 July – Social Media Strategy

18 August – A very special topic and international guest – to be announced

For the May event, to uncover some of the dynamics of influence, we are running a competition for influencers – full details at Do You Have the Power of Influence?

In summary, contact us at @insightexchange on Twitter to set up your Twitter name (or whatever name you’d like), and anyone registering with that code (except yourself) will get a 40% discount in registering for the lunch. Whoever has the most registrations under their name will get some wonderful rewards, including a brief speaking slot at the event.

May the most influential win!

Q&A: Twitter’s retention rates: will Twitter be pervasive or a niche app?

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After my TV interview about Twitter the other day, I’ve just been interviewed by ABC Radio about the Nielsen research just out that shows that Twitter’s second-month retention rates for new users are 40%, compared to retention rates of 50-60% for Facebook and MySpace when they were at a similar stage in their growth.

social_network_loyalty.png

I was asked some interesting questions in the interview, so to paraphrase them and quickly respond:

Is this a concern for Twitter’s executives?

Absolutely. It’s one thing to get massive numbers of new users. It’s another thing to retain them. Unless Twitter can change this, it will never conquer the world as some suggest it might.

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An Argument for Heterarchy: creating more effective organizational structures

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The latest issue of People and Strategy Journal has an extremely interesting Point/ Counterpoint feature. Download the full article and responses here.

Karen Stephenson, a leading network theorist and practitioner, wrote an article Neither Hierarchy nor Network: An Argument for Heterarchy, examining how heterarchies, that bring together elements of networks and hierarchies, are the most relevant organizational structures for our times.

Leading people in the field were invited to respond to the article, with responses from Edgar Schein of MIT, Robert Eccles of Harvard Business School, Charles Handy, Tracy Cox of Raytheon, Patti Anklam, Barry Frew of Center for Executive Education, Art Kleiner the editor-in-chief of Strategy+Business magazine, and Ross Dawson of Advanced Human Technologies (me :-) ).

My response is below. If you are interested in how organizational structures can be more effective in a connected world, I strongly recommend reading the full article and responses – this is an extremely topical issue.

Heterarchy: Technology, Trust and Culture

Stephenson is absolutely right to emphasize both the rapid rise in interconnection that individuals, organizations, and societies are currently experiencing, and the resulting interdependence that stems from that. Relatively few have yet grasped that the degree of interdependence generated in a global connected economy significantly changes the drivers of individual and collective success. Central to these drivers are the organizational structures that coalesce value from disparate participants.

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