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8 Posts authored by: Heath Buckmaster
Heath Buckmaster
1

I was wandering around the house last night listening to the persistent hum of technology all around me. I realized that I might possibly have more technology in my house than pieces of furniture, so I started to add it all up to see what in the world had happened to my once peaceful and quiet life.

 

Starting from the fibre coming in I've got a Netgear* switch. Attached to that is a linux server that faces the world, and a Netgear Wireless-N router that manages the internal house network. The Wireless-N supports a Vista* 64 desktop, Vista 32 notebook, XP* Notebook, my iPhone*, and a Linksys* Wireless-G router in another room.

 

Off the Wireless-G router we've got a Vista 32 notebook, XP desktop, two Apple* Airport Express* devices (for music streaming to living room and back yard), and a Dell* Wireless-G access point.

 

Off the Wireless-G access point we've got the Xbox* 360, Nintendo Wii*, DVD player, and DVR connected (for on-demand downloads).

 

It's actually more complex than it needs to be, but only because I haven't finished upgrading the house to Wireless-N, and because I still haven't got around to building a media center PC in the living room which could replace the DVR, DVD, and one of the Airport devices. (by the way, I'm going to be building my own Core i7* based system in the next couple of months - so stay tuned for a play-by-play)

 

I'm actually amazed at all the tech that is required to do some very simple things that I want to do - like streaming music from my computer across the house into the stereo in the living room. Right now we're using an Airport Express to do that (along with iTunes* and AirFoil*), but why can't my stereo have a network plug so I can send to it directly?

 

Which begs the question, why isn't EVERYTHING in the house network aware at this point, I mean it's 2009 right? My TV should be wireless or bluetooth at a minimum, so should the stereo. And while I'm at it, why not the refrigerator so that I can constantly pull an inventory based on RFID tagging of products...and the thermostat so I can remotely manage it...and the alarm system...and the outdoor sprinkler system...the list goes on.

 

But can it be too much? Even if I close the office doors at night I can still hear the hum of hard drives, CPU fans, router fans - it echos all over the house (not to mention heats up the house quite a bit). I really don't want my house to become a data center, I just want to be able to do what I want to do! I want music no matter where I am, I want to watch movies on any system in the house, I want to be able to access every computer from every other computer...my demands aren't that big are they? :-)

 

So I want to hear about YOUR home network. What gadgets are you using to techify your life, and what recommendations do you have for others who are designing their home? I'm ready to learn how I can simplify!

 

* Product and vendor names are copyrights/trademarks of their respective companies.

1 Comments Permalink Tags: home_networking, wireless_networking, streaming_media
Heath Buckmaster
1

Let's Jam!

Posted by Heath Buckmaster Feb 9, 2009

*** Originally posted on the IT @ Intel blog in 2007. Bringing it over to Communities site for the benefit of those who are developing professional communities of their own. ***

 

Last time I talked about how we were  building communities within IT, more specifically, how I had built a technical  community by using various social media tools like blogs, wiki’s, and forums.

 

Near the end of the article I mentioned that we were about to try something different -  a Web Jam. This concept is not new, and is something that IBM has been doing for years,  but we wanted to see if it was something we could do at Intel.

#

Even here, it’s not completely brand new - our Sales and Marketing Group had already done two web  jams for the entire organization, with great success - so I wanted to see if we could do  it at a community level. I had excellent help from Jeff Moriarty (another corporate blogger), and our other partner  in crime, Barbara McAllister. We put together tons of communications and we facilitated  the jam November 13-15.(Note that as of this current reposting, we have now done jams at multiple levels of the company, including an IT-wide web jam at the end of 2008.)

 

Here are some of the actions, results, interesting learnings, and thoughts for next time.

 

Pre-Work

  • Heavy communications on the blogs, forums, newsletters, and email distribution lists. We made sure our reach was as broad as possible, even having an article posted on our employee intranet home-page, and a jam home page on the wiki. We wanted people to participate even if they were not formal members of the technical community.
  • Created the forum shell. The web jam exists on the forum environment, so we created a  new “Web Jam” forum, seeded it with some questions/topics, and then left it inactive until we were ready to start the jam.
  • Created a kickoff announcement. I made a 5 minute audio announcement and one-slide  presentation that I replayed over and over again during the first hour of the jam. That  allowed people to call into the audio meeting at any time during the hour and hear the  message.
  • Enlist a sponsor/senior manager who will commit to participation - the more, the better
  • Develop a short list of Goals for the Jam. No more than 2-3 things you want to get  out of the session, and make sure people know about them.

  •  

    Running the Jam

    jam_stock1.jpg
  • Do not get frustrated if participation starts out slowly. Encourage where you can,  and pre-stock the forum with a few questions to get the discussion going. It will pick  up.
  • Don’t try to run a jam for a small group of people. You need size to be effective  for a jam. The collective wisdom of hundreds of people will get broader and deeper  discussion on the topics that you’re interested in.
  • Make sure you have the senior manager / sponsor actively participating. It’s not enough  to sponsor, they have to add questions, answer questions, and encourage usage.
  • Make sure questions don’t sit unanswered. If people start to see a question is being  ignored, they will be hesitant to ask more. Find someone who can answer it and send them  an offline email, point them to the forum to answer.
  • Keep it going around the clock. Make sure participants from all geographies are  participating - but remember there may be cultural barriers to this type of public  question/answer.
  • Keep the communications going during the jam. We did ours for 48 hours, and it’s  important to use your distribution lists to keep people interested and engaged the whole  time. Summarize interesting messages from each day to show you are actively  reading.
  • Wrap it up well. Warn people when the Jam is about to close - set a deadline for  getting their questions posted so people have time to answer before you lock it  down.
  • Lock it down. Once the jam period is over, stop new posts. You need to be able to  look at metrics from the session and if people are still posting, the integrity can be  harmed. Take the forum offline temporarily and let people know that it will be back in  read-only status once you pull your reports.

  •  

    Post-Jam

  • Run your reports fast, and get the forum back online in read-only format. This way,  people can look through the discussion if they could not keep up with it during the jam,  and if there are interesting topics left open, they can start new discussions in your  normal forums, or contact people directly with questions.
  • Run reports on views, posts, users, comments, anything you can depending upon what  your forum environment provides. If you don’t have access to do it yourself, make sure  you are working with an administrator to do it for you. This data will be valuable for  your report-out.
  • Build a summary - highlight the most viewed posts/topics, and recognize the most  visible users.
  • Create a post-jam survey. Make sure people have an opportunity to provide feedback  on the value they received from participation - and what they would like to see changed  for the next time.
  • Measure yourself against your goals. Did you achieve what you wanted to achieve?  Were there any barriers? How will you solve those for the next time?

  •  

    Some of our results

    jam_stock2.jpg
  • Total Topics Posted: 35
  • Total Comments across all topics: 219
  • Active Participants (posted at least 1 item): 74 (of ~330 target)
  • Approximate Total Views: 6296
  • Average Views per Topic: 251
  • 52% Actively Participated, 43% only Viewed, remainder did not participate
  • Geo Participation: 94% Americas, 2% Asia Pacific, 4% Europe and Middle East
  • 98% of participants felt it was worth their time and 96% said they would participate  again
  • Reasons for not actively participating: Inability to post anonymously, concerns  about using a public forum to ask questions, concerns about possible impact to career  and job security, concerned about whether answers would be honest

  •  

    What people found to be most valuable from their participation

  • Sense of team
  • Ability to have discussions about concerns, and a chance to ask questions to senior  managers
  • Realization that management is out of touch
  • Like the hard questions being asked and the honesty of the answers
  • Seeing dialogue on priorities, roadmap, senior management insight
  • Helped create positive energy within disparate teams
  • Great place to ask technical questions and get detailed answers
  • Creates documented responses from senior managers and technical representatives
  • Watching senior management address very tough questions in a public forum

  •  

    What do people want to see changed for next time?

  • Make sure unanswered questions get answers
  • People want to see more involvement from all levels of management
  • Create an opens list from the previous Jam, and use that to start the next one
  • Be able to post anonymously - this may be a limitation of your forum  environment
  • Kickoff should come from senior sponsor
  • Make it very easy for people to find links to the forum and how to get help
  • Use the jam to let people get to know each other - post job titles, locations,  background, experience - use it for social networking
  • Publish FAQs based on the learnings from the Jam
  • Use podcast (video) technology to create a summary message from the senior sponsor  about they evaluation of the jam
  • Recognize the most active participants

  •  

    So what are we doing now? Coming off a very successful IT-wide jam at the end of 2008, we're wondering how soon it will be before we follow in the footsteps of IBM for a company-wide jam. It's not unheard of, and it's not unmanageable, but it's harder to focus on a small number of topics when you have a potential audience of 80,000+ people. We'll see where it goes, but for now doing these at the division and department, and even program level, is having a great value to our teams - in fact I'm setting up a finance department web jam for later next week.


    If you have any questions about the process or want more detail, please add a comment  and I’ll try to provide it!
    Cheers!

1 Comments Permalink Tags: social_media, jam_session, professional_networking, social_networking, webjam, social_computing
Heath Buckmaster
0

*** This post was originally published in 2007 on the old IT @ Intel blog - I am reposting it for the benefit of this new community site , with some updates to bring it up to date. ***

 

Back at the beginning of 2007, the managers of my organization had a dilemma and they  needed someone to help solve it. Now, I’ve got 13-16 direct reports which is already a full  time job, but their need was something I found pretty interesting, and since I have a  passion for social media it seemed right up my alley.

#

Here was their problem - how could they help a group of developers in another country learn  everything that our US resources knew about an enterprise software we’ve been using for  over a decade? Keep in mind, these US resources had stayed mostly static for the last 10+  years…the people who implemented it are the same people who engineer it today. They have  significant “tribal knowledge”, and are intimately familiar with how we have configured and  modified the software through the years to adapt to changing business needs.

 

But the new teams in other countries did not. Not only were many of them new to the  technology, but they had no idea what we’d done over the last ten years, or why we’d done  it in the first place. So I was chartered to go off and “build a community“…and that’s  what I did.

Here’s where we are today, then I’ll tell you how we got there (keeping in mind that we  still have more work to do)…

 

Today

  • Over 500 people on the community email list, with participation from senior managers,  first line managers, project/program managers, analysts, developers, customer support,  infrastructure teams, and business reps.
  • Monthly newsletters with technical and business topics, including featured articles on  external blogs and forums (meetings and the newsletter are the top value areas rated by  community members)
  • A wiki-based knowledge center of technical content about product features, projects,  infrastructures, “tribal knowledge”, etc.
  • 11 discussion forums, an online calendar of events, and fully archived meeting and  training materials (including video replays)
  • Weekly video podcasts presenting updates on major program and project status
  • Technical and Business related blogs, presented by community leaders and guest  bloggers
  • 40+ technical training brown-bags, quarterly “Town  Hall” meetings for the entire community (meeting attendance averages 10% - with many  meetings repeated off-hours to accommodate geographical attendance)
  • Quarterly community health surveys to identify areas of improvement and gather ideas from the group

  • All that came from 8-10 different sites across multiple countries, who used to only talk to each other if they happened to be on a project together - and even then, only when time zones overlapped (which in many cases they don’t), or if someone worked early mornings or late evenings.

     

    All of that started from no common distribution list, no newsletter, no blog, no consolidated wiki  (only a few scattered pages), no forums, no global community.

     

    So here’s how we built it…

    First, I created a global distribution list. I needed a way to get the word out that we  wanted to build a community, and I wanted a mechanism to have ongoing communications with  whomever wanted to sign up. It’s a voluntary community, and people can opt-in and opt-out  just by sending an email. I scoured some existing distribution lists and org charts, then  came up with my first target audience. They received an email blast from me explaining that  we were creating a community and I wanted them to be a part of it.

     

    Out of that initial blast to about 40-50 people, exactly one person declined. Everyone else was ready to go and wanted to sign up right away. The distribution list grew over time - people forwarded it to their friends who were interested, and people even saw posters in the hallway telling them about the community (I was using every communication medium at my disposal from posters, to personal blogs to word of mouth). For about six months, I was getting sign-ups almost every business day.

     

    Next it was time to build a “portal”. I wanted a single website that I could send everyone  to that would give them access to all community offerings. This was built on the wiki. I  started to consolidate a bunch of existing material, then created one main jumping page  that listed everything we had to offer. I created a quick and easy to remember URL alias  (using an internal system that does things like tinyurl), and started sending people to the page.

     

    After the wiki started, it was time for discussion forums. I selected a few topic areas, created the forums on our internal systems, and added that to the portal page. Pretty soon, people were posting technical and business related questions, and eventually, people started answering. Now, I will tell you that I sometimes have to track people down to answer the questions that sit for a few days without a response. I don’t have to do that too often though, because now people are subscribing to alerts and if they see something new that they want to talk about, they usually do.

     

    Four months went by and I thought it might be time to see how the community was doing - in  the form of a “health survey”. So I created a survey of about 10 questions and sent it out  to the list (which was around 200 at the time) - I even offered one lucky respondent the chance to win a $10 gift card. The responses indicated that we were on-track, but could do more. People wanted to see podcasts! So in less than a week, we kicked off our first video podcasts with topics about major program status. The podcast continues, and is produced by two of my peers, and they have enjoyed great feedback on the content and quality. Instant turnaround on the survey.

     

    I continued the monthly scheduling and facilitation of technical and business brown-bag discussions, and then kicked off a quarterly Town Hall meeting for the entire community. These meetings gave members an opportunity to hear about community metrics, updates from senior managers about important programs, or other events of interest. The mailing list steadily grew toward 300, and new people began authoring pages in the wiki and participating in forums.

     

    Soon it was time for the next health survey (September 2007). This time around, people wanted to see technical blog posts…in less than a week we published the first, and now we have guest bloggers who have stepped up to provide discussions of a more technical nature.

     

    That brings us to end of 2007…and we launched the next exciting offering from the  community - the Web Jam. It’s not a group of people getting together to make holiday fruit  puree - it’s a 2 day event, housed in our forum environment, to get people talking about  technology and interacting with each other. With sponsorship from senior management (and  not just sponsorship - committed active participation), we have discussions  that are community driven about any topic they can think of. There are people out there who  question what we’re doing, and we want to hear from them and give people a chance to  respond. We have technical resources who want to gather BKMs from peers in other countries  - so they will start that conversation going.

     

    In two days we gathered an insane amount of feedback about what concerns people, what  interests people, and what they want to see next. It’s going to be pretty exciting to see  what happens next (more about the web jam in a subsequent blog post).

     

    2008 was a continued flurry of activity, with even more technical brown bags, web jams, project video contests, community logo contests, and more. We built off a wildly successful start into the largest professional networking community at the company, and we've still only just begun. In 2009 we're kicking off a technical mentoring program and a leadership/steering committee. Upward and onward!

     

    So that is the story of how one person kicked off a global community, then signed up more  and more people to continue the creation.

     

    But it’s never that simple is it?

     

    Here’s the big challenge…and I don’t have an answer for you yet on this one… How do you make the move from awareness, to participation. In other words, if you’ve got  thousands of people reading your content every day, how to get those thousand people to  actually reply to, change, or add to your content? How do you get more people to create pages  on a wiki, or add/answer questions in a forum? How do you turn visibility into action?

     

    That’s where I’m focusing now. And if it’s a journey you want to hear about - let me know  in the comments!

     

    - Heath

    P.S. if you haven’t already seen this amazing video about social media / communities / Web 2.0, it’s a great introduction to where information exchange is headed… http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLlGopyXT_g

     

     

0 Comments Permalink Tags: social_computing, social_networking, technical_community, social_media, professional_networking, community, creating_a_community
Heath Buckmaster
3

I was heading to bed the other night and pulled out my iPhone for a bit of application spelunking. I hit Facebook and updated my status, opened Twitterific and posted my 140 characters of content, flipped over to Yelp to see if anyone had rated my latest restaurant review, checked AroundMe to see if any new places showed up, checked my elevation and long/lat in GPS Tracker, then finally played a word game or two and went to bed.

 

In less than 5 minutes I had provided personal information into not even 1% of the potential applications out there that consume something “Heath”. Whether it was incidental detail about what I’d had for dinner, or GPS positioning centered on my bedroom, or a record of restaurants that I frequent, there was a bunch of stuff out there that could be used for mischevious purposes.

 

Now, I don’t have any problem telling people that Hana Tsubaki is my favourite sushi place, or that I ate a bowl of low fat Wheat Thins last night while watching American Idol – these are rather inconsequential things about me. But what if I had posted that I was going away to Bodega Bay for the weekend, or that I had accidentally left my credit card and sunglasses at El Fiesta Mexicana at lunch? That information could be used by someone to show up at my house knowing I’m not there, or to go impersonate me at the restaurant and grab my credit card.

 

Granted, we hope to live in a world where private information isn’t misused, but let’s get real – how many weeks go by before we hear about another stolen laptop with millions of people’s SSN’s or other personal information on it? That’s a blatant security situation, but what about the billions of bytes of data that people share on their blogs, websites, twitters, Facebook or myspace accounts, and pretty much anywhere else they interact online?

 

It seems like people are sharing a lot more information these days than they used to. And I mean things that you wouldn’t even hear in a verbal conversation. Do I really need to know that you have athletes foot going on between two of your toes? Probably not – but guess what, I blogged about that very topic not long ago. What are the “new” personal boundaries with all this social media and “living online” stuff? I'm not sure there are any!

 

I don’t need to know if my coworkers are circumcised or not, but in a recent discussion on our internal diversity forums that topic came up in the Parents Network. Perfectly appropriate conversation in the context of that employee group, but some pretty personal information being shared.

 

Where do you draw the line? At what point do you say "I don’t think anyone needs to know where I am and what I’m doing every moment of the day"? Do you really want someone following your GPS map online, or do you want them to just call you up and say “Hey where are you?” Is it ok for us to not know every move you make?

 

So I’m on a charge to reclaim some of that personal privacy for myself, right after I open this pack of Orbit raspberry mint gum and enjoy this delicious diet Pepsi while sitting in my office in Folsom and awaiting 6:30pm when I’ll be at Hana Tsubaki drinking sake and enjoying some fresh unagi after which I’ll head back to my house and update Facebook, myspace and Twitter about what I’ve just done.

 

* I use a lot of company and product names, and they are all trademarks and/or copyrights of their respective companies. All credit goes to them.

3 Comments Permalink Tags: privacy, social_media, social_networking
Heath Buckmaster
4

Most of the people participating in this part of the Intel Community are IT folks. We all share some common skills and backgrounds, and likely degrees in similar things like Information Systems.

 

We also share a commonality in the workplace - we work in a cost center. IT, in most cases, is not a money-maker for a company. Product divisions create things, sales and marketing divisions sell things, but IT just keeps it all up and running. Money doesn't flow through IT, it flows TO IT to pay for the networks, phones, servers, clients, software, websites, etc.

 

So when it comes time for cost-cutting, the cost centers are the first on the chopping block. So how do you keep your employees going when all around them budgets are being cut, headcount actions remain a possibility, and the economy around them pours through instability?

 

Now keep in mind we're not perfect - we don't always do things as consistently as we should, but we try.

 

Here are Heath's Five Suggestions for IT in 2009.

 

1. More consistent communications - get the CIO and the senior IT leaders in front of people talking about what's going on within the IT. Be open to listening to your internal blogs and forums environments where people tend to be more vocal, and actively participate in these "new" communication styles. Communication shifts, and we have to shift with it.

 

2. Regularly scheduled on-site social events. We've had a catered breakfast and two lunches this year for all of IT on site. We also did an "Amazing Race" competition that brought teams together from all parts of IT, complete with catered BBQ lunch, some exciting video game playing, and wacky relay races. Get people away from their desks and provide opportunities to socialize with their peers. I know people who work in a 3 aisle radius, but there are a ton of other people in IT that are just as cool and just as interesting - give me an opportunity to meet them.

 

3. Embed the fun at a department level. A number of departments have purchased video game systems and are setting up game time over the lunch hour for their teams. Right now I'm participating in one with my entire program team, and I got feedback from one of my employees that this has gone a long way in bringing fun into the workplace. You don't have to go out and spend hundreds of dollars on a gaming system, so bring in a board game to your staff meeting, and instead of spending an hour on passdowns, spend an hour flying around Park Place* and Boardwalk* with your team.

 

4. Reset your expectations if necessary. The world is not the same as it was in the dot com boom. Companies are shifting their spending to research and innovation, and growth is slowing. You can't expect that people will maintain the same level of passion they had before if you aren't actively encouraging it and promoting it. If you're a manager, you can't keep raising the bar if people feel like they are beaten down by outside influences. Be realistic about what your team can achieve and set REAL stretch goals.

 

5. Focus on strengths, NOT areas of development. People in IT will always have something new to learn, but let them do that when they are ready for it. Focus on what they are good at and talk about those things. Get them into jobs that accentuate the positive and not punishment for the improvement areas. Yes - make sure people have the basic skills for the job and interact positively in the workplace, but if you've got someone who is superior at programming and not at public speaking - stop trying to put them in front of the customer and let them code to their heart's content!

 

Give it a shot and see what happens in your team! IT has a strategic place in the growth and development of any company - but you have to make it happen.

 

I welcome all feedback and comments about what your organizations are doing to keep the motivation and the passion in IT.

4 Comments Permalink Tags: it, it@intel, heath_buckmaster, motivation, passion, cost_cutting
Heath Buckmaster
2

All My Communities

Posted by Heath Buckmaster Jul 23, 2008

 

There are so many social/networking/professional tools out there, but they all have a common purpose (or should), and that is to create a community.



 

  • Professional tools target professional communities - many of them based on the knowledge of a technology, software, product suite, etc. That might be an [ERP community|http://erp.ittoolbox.com/], professional group affiliation, or one based on a programming language like C#.
  • Networking tools create a wider set of communities - perhaps based on common interests like group affiliations ([Camping/Hiking Clubs|http://www.thecampingclub.com/index.html], Religious Clubs, Fan Clubs, etc.). They focus less on a professional grouping and more on overall populations, but still with the intent of connecting people.
  • Social tools tend to focus on interactions that, in my opinion, are a bit more coffee shop, telephone, local park. In other words, they are less about connecting people and more about chatting on day to day stuff. They don't necessarily focus on people who might want to coordinate a camping trip or ask technical questions, but they offer an online watercooler for socialization and gossip and play.

 

 

Each tool has a user base, with some overlap, but they tend to tailor their offerings based on the type of user they really want to visit. Take a look at MySpace, for example - you can completely customize your profile with music, videos, flash animations, colours, whatever. You can't do that on something like LinkedIN because that's not primarily what it's about.



 

 

When I'm at work, I focus on the Professional or Networking tools - places I can go to ask questions about a technology problem I'm having, or to find someone who not only likes the Sci-Fi Network* show Eureka but wants to chat about geek gadgets for the digital home.



 

 

When I'm at home, I think less about work and so I shift my focus to Networking and Social tools. I'm more inclined to look for people who want to chat about the latest episode of American Idol, or perhaps go read the latest deliciously sarcastic blog from TV icon Bobby Rivers.



 

 

I'm part of any number of communities that are dynamically created based on my hobbies, interests, and likes. It's exponential the number of communities I'm a part of on any given day, but I thought it might be interesting to figure out just how many.



 

 

So here's what I consider to be 10% of the communities that I am a part of:



 

 

First, I will boil it down to the lowest common denominator and eliminate things like: human being, on planet Earth, inhabitant of the Milky Way Galaxy, and anything that would be consistent with every other person on the planet.



 

 

So what does that leave... US Citizen, NC Native but CA resident who lives in the Sacramento area, employee of a high tech company, team manager, user of an overloaded laptop. Alumni of a college that gave me a BSBA in Information Systems, formerly a member of a professional organization at said college, alumni of my high school and the marching band, child actor (

used to be in a lot of plays when younger

). Camper, book reader (

sci-fi, horror, comedy, adventure

), bike rider, gardener, writer of books, lover of reference materials/trivia, bicentennial quarter collector, RPG game player, movie watcher (

sci-fi, action, comedy, thriller

), music listener (

ambient, jazz, soft pop, 80's

), caretaker for three cats. Sushi eater, coffee drinker, non-American sports car driver, and lover of diet Pepsi* vanilla.



 

 

Now that I write all that out, I don't even think that's 10% of the communities I'm a part of. I can think of a hundred other aspects of my personality/life that would lend themselves to larger communities...so how is this at all useful?



 

 

The example that I'm prone to use when asked about the value of Social Networking/Communities is this... I want to find people of any gender and any race, working at the same place I do, who like to eat sushi for lunch, who are fans of Stephen King novels, have some experience in wiki's and online document repositories, and have a background in organization development. And then I want to schedule a lunch with those folks so we can discuss putting together an internal website on org development BKMs, and after we're done talk about the latest novel from our favourite horror writer, all the while enjoying unagi and maguro.



 

 

That, to me, is the power and usefulness of the community. Where do you find value?



 

  • Company and/or product names are copyrights and trademarks of their respective companies.

 

2 Comments Permalink Tags: social_media, networking, communities, social_tools
Heath Buckmaster
3

I've got profiles everywhere these days, and not just on the internet, but on the intranet as well. I'm sure we've all got a variety of external faces, whether on Yahoo, MSN Spaces, Facebook, myspace.com, LinkedIn*, or the myriad of other social networking sites out there.

 

But what about on the corporate intranet? It can get just as complicated there, especially if you are trying to find someone who knows something about something that no one in your organization knows anything about!

 

We're starting to see social networking tools for the enterprise show up in evaluations, and I really do hope we implement something within the company - there's incredible value in knowing that I could search for organization development and find a person who is in another division that did an OD project last year that's exactly what I'm trying to do now. But we're not quite there.

 

Right now I've got a pseudo-profile on my internal blog, another on our internal wiki, another on our document collaboration environment, another that's part of my email signature line, and I'm sure there's yet another floating around somewhere. If someone wanted to know what I've been up to for the last 12 years at Intel, they would have to look around in three or four different places to get the full story, or just ask me for a copy of my resume.

 

Part of that is my fault - I just need to pick one place to keep updated and point everything else to it, but the problem there is that now I'm sending people to sites that might not be their PREFERRED location for social networking. As an external example, let's say you've got a personal blog on wordpress.org, but you've also got a myspace account and another on MSN Spaces. All three have blog functionality, which do you pick? Do you post to all three at the same time, or do you point people to one or the other? What if one of your friends prefers MSN Spaces, but you keep sending them to wordpress.org to read your blog?

 

It's profile overload! Not only do you have profile/personal info in 10 different places, but you're trying to communicate redundantly based on other people's preferences. Stop the madness!

 

I'm now to the point where I'm shutting down my profiles on sites that are just secondary or tertiary, and if people want to know who I am and what I'm wearing, they will go to the one site that has it all, because realistically, whichever site you choose will have another competitor in 6 months that everyone will flock to and add 500 friends they've never actually met before. In my mind, I'm seeing a group huddled together moving in unison from one corner of the room to the next as the latest social media site pops up.

 

Will it settle any time soon? I doubt it. There are many competitors that are getting into niche areas and offering more for your money (which in most cases is free). It's a challenge outside and a challenge inside. At least within the company you can create a "mandate" that says here is the site to create your profile and it's what the company is going to use.

 

Maybe some day everyone on the planet will have an ID number and their own website. I want to be 0100100001000101010000010101010001001000.com.

 

  • Websites and locations mentioned in this blog are trademarks and properties of their respective companies.

 

3 Comments 0 References Permalink Tags: social_networking, social_media, communities, profiles
Heath Buckmaster
0

Over on the IT @ Intel blogs, I talked about whether Corporate Blogs Really Matter some time back. Several of you provided comments and questions, and I wanted to take a moment to answer a couple of them.

 

Michael commented: "I like reading about what you are thinking about, and how you are making a difference in the lives of Intel staff."

On this topic, I did a two-part post on what we were doing to build a technical community within IT. You can check out these posts at the following links: Building a Community Within IT, and Lets Jam. Those posts are pretty extensive, and talk specifically about how we're making a difference in the lives of IT employees, so I won't repeat that here.

Yvan commented: "I would like to hear some of the management problems you encounter when doing your job."

Here's a specific one that has been a challenge - Many of the employees who post here on the IT @ Intel blog are not directly part of the IT @ Intel program, and therefore don't have social media/networking as part of their job description. That means we have our normal jobs but also participate in this stuff on the side. Making the time for posting and commenting is one thing, but being recognized for it is the bigger challenge. How do you make sure that your manager sees your blog as strategic for Intel and not a waste of time that takes you away from your job?

I've personally been very lucky that part of my job is focused on community development (you can read about that on the links above). On my annual performance review I have an entire section of accomplishments that are directly related to work I've done in support of social media. My manager didn't ask me to put it on my review, I did it because I felt that it was important - but I still had to educate him about it and the value it provides to the company.

Sometimes middle and senior management just don't "get it". Unless they themselves are participating in the community they don't necessarily see the value it brings. To them it's just a diversion from what employees are actually paid to do. But what if the company saw it as a strategic advantage vs. a perk or side effort? What if the entire company, every employee all the way up to the CEO, was actively involved in being a spokesperson for the company?

Paul O., our CEO, is a blogger on our internal systems. It's not a weekly or monthly thing, but he does it, and it's something that employees appreciate and look forward to. Our CIO recently kicked off his first blog as an attempt to change the way he communicates to IT. It's been a huge success already. As soon as we start to see blogging as another form of communication like using the telephone, sending an instant message, or walking down the hall and speaking to a group of people, then it doesn't become a diversion/distraction, it becomes part of your life/job.

Personally, I hate talking on the phone - I'd much rather have someone communicate to me via an email, a blog post, or a face to face conversation.

The way that we communicate as people is changing - blogging is one of those new ways. Making the switch from tapes to CD's was a big change; rotary to touch tone changed the way we dialed; learning how to send a text message instead of calling someone was huge; what's the big deal with blogs and forums??

 

It takes time to educate management on the value of social media, and it takes time for them to formally recognize it and make the time for it. But if you can get there, and you can start to use social media as a strategic advantage for your company, then you've got it made. It just takes the time to sit down with your boss and say - "Here's how my participation in this activity is adding to Intel's bottom line. And here's how it helps me do my job better." Speak their language, and the change will happen.

 

 

Keep the questions coming - let us know what you want to hear about as it relates to IT @ Intel.

0 Comments 0 References Permalink Tags: social_media, social_networking, creating_change, community_building, it@intel, influencing_management, strategic_advantage

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