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March begins with superb sun in Cork.  Monday starts with follow-up from the inspiration of Friday & Saturday.  Life moves on. There is a balance to be struck between the new and the old.

Twitter introduced me to LikeMinds2010. @drewellis just asked me “What did you think? We want to improve things for our online audience.” I began my response, but it was too hard to do justice to Like Minds via Twitter.

My first impressions of Like Minds:

(1) I found out about Like Minds by accident, at the last minute.  This meant I was always playing catch-up. I already had plans for how I was going to spend Friday & Saturday. Meant I tuned into Exeter while strolling through the streets of Cork.  I was tuning in and doing research at the same time.  Exciting and frustrating.

(2) My first contacts with Like Minds was via #likeminds. Hash tag contact: I could look at the stream of tweets from people travelling to Exeter from USA, London, even Bristol. This got me into the mood. I started following a few people.  Why did I pick those particular individuals? Probably because there seemed to be a mixure of information and personal stuff in their tweets. I was curious to find out whether these new media heads would be friendly to outsiders.

(3) The amount of background stuff was awesome. The Like Minds website and live streaming resources were so impressive.  I began to treat Like Minds as a case study in cutting edge use of media. With very little information, I imagined, empathised, fantasisied… I decided I would treat Like Minds 2010 as a case study in my education.

(4) I realised gradually there were many layers to Like Minds. This was not simply a conference: it was some sort of movement. It was also a partnership between commercial heads (big brands and marketing companies) and non-for-profit people.  Public and private sector.  And there seemed to be a fundraising for good causes element.  Like Minds got more and more interesting the more I found out.  And I was able to suss all this out while rushing round the streets of Cork, doing my normal business.

(5) A few people contacted me via Twitter. They seemed perfectly normal enthusiasts. I felt I would have been among some of my own kind if I was in Exeter.  I’m puzzled: why Exeter?  There is a story here.  I’m the kind of person who’s most interested in the behind-the-front warts-and-all story.  The biography of Like Minds is somewhere waiting to be written. I now realise that LikeMinds2010 has a history and context.  It’s an event in a story that began in the past and intends to change the future.

(6) Better declare an interest: I spent the best years of my life in UK. 30 years 1975-2005.  I love the place.  I have reasons for coming back to Ireland.  But I still love so much about UK that I come over all nostalgic, almost tearful whenever I dwell on how much I miss places like Devon.  I’m attracted by Like Minds because it might give me an excuse to pop over (hopefully on Ferry Julia from Cork to Swansea).

Enough @drewellis… you have opened up a floodgate…  My readers won’t all share my passion for new media, media people and building communities of conversation. I have a meeting with Mary Corbett, Life Coach, in Radisson Hotel in 45 minutes.  But thank you so much for tweeting me back.  I would love to stay in touch with you.

I’m always on the look-out for the next big thing.  Suppose I’m one of those horizon watchers.  That’s how I picked up intelligence about a gathering of new media heads in Exeter.

@chrisbrogan tweeted to say he was on a plane to London.  I wondered if that at London Ontario Canada or London England? That was how I found out Chris was on a plane crossing the Atlantic. I assumed he’d be going to London.  Great surprise to find it was Exeter.

If Chris Brogan from USA was in Europe, who would he be talking to? What’s up? That sort of curiosity led me to Like Minds 2010 via #linkminds on Twitter. I started following that hashtag, and sent a few tweets to others on their way to the conference. It was only after I’d latched on to an individual I trusted that I bothered to find out who was sponsoring the conference.

Isn’t this the way the world works these days?  You begin with someone you trust. You follow them. You grow your world through a pathway of strangers…

Which brings me to the photographs of Paul Clarke.  Yesterday morning, he tweeted a link to his opening shots.  A Flickr set is here. I wanted a feel of what was going on in Exeter, some images, more than words.  Tweeting Paul I was able to open a line of communications. We discussed copyright and creative commons. Paul kindly made his photos available for me to show them to you.

The un-conference is over now.  But it’s given me plenty to think about.

2.0 Prodution did the video work to support the event… @rokkster highlighted their role.

I was also in touch with @robertpickstone, @sarknight, @jeremygould

Sometimes a blog post gets to me.  it  creeps under my guard and impresses me so much I feel like commenting.  When there are already comments there, I feel I’m joining in a conversation…

Here’s the blog that set me off… “Fire Your Director of Social Media” by Paul Dunay.  Paul interviewed Brian Wallace VP of Digital Marketing and Media for RIM.  This is what I said in my comment.

“Greetings to you all from Cork Ireland, where I’m considering all your points.

I found you via Twitter, but while reading your post and comments my tweetstream moved on, and I can’t remember who gave me the link. [Isn't that the world we live in! Ideas, inspirations fly in for somewhere, and you easily lose track of where they began.]

The word that came to me was “Catalyst” – certainly not “co-ordinator”. I found the view that “it’s also good to have that one person who mulls through everyone’s content and lightly sculpts it into the company’s trademark voice” wonderful. Horrific really. No way could you do anything valuable by developing such a voice, I’d say.

What’s needed …
… I submit is diverse voices, a multitude of voices, all of which smell different – as if they truly came from individuals. The crowd outside your organisation is suspicious. We expect bull. We expect your company voice to lie, over-promise, under-deliver. Our starting point is scepticism. You have your work cut out to grow a garden of flowering voices within the business. But it’s worth striving for.

I suggest…
… you’ll have a hard time if you stay within the notion of developing within. It’s in the meeting of the internal folk with external customers, stakeholders, suppliers, and lurkers that hope lies. Use the outsiders to develop your insiders. Cultivate the external as much as you cultivate the internal staff for all departments.

Enough. Never meant to go on and on. Probably repeating myself. But thanks. It’s fun to be sparked off.”

This experience fits into a project I’m working on.  So it was good to clarify a few thoughts.  What do you think?

I’ve often wished business leaders would come out with their ideas in public.

Many of those who’ve made it to the top of organisations are very talented thinkers.  They’re not simply organisational twisters who reached the top. They could be thought leaders outside their business.

It’s not as if we have too much good thinking…

Michael O’Leary, RyanAir, is in the news today.  Of course he is an incredibly successful publicist.  He’s also showing the power of business people to think ahead.  Lots of business leaders simply support all the political parties in order to keep lines of communication open.

I’d like to see more active engagement by them in public debate.

I’ve been working with a new client.

It was the client who suggest the means of communication between us. Anthony Creswell, owner of Ummera said “Do you use Google Wave? We could use that.”

“Oh dear” I said to myself.  ”This a very advanced client.  How can I keep up to speed?”  Fortunately this was followed by the thought “this a great opportunity: I can learn while I work.”

The great thing was Anthony was willing to invite me to Google Wave. GW as we’ll call it, isn’t freely available yet.  It’s in trial phase.  Google are letting people help them fine-tune it.  Wonderful business practice.  After I got my email invite, I simply clicked on the link and I was into the Wave.

Like everything new, it confused me.  I needed the client to coach me.  I’d say it took me about 15 minutes of concentration to reach GO.

The rest is history and can wait for another time.  I really want to highlight the value of letting your client lead you into a new world. We all do this whenever we start a new project.  The client knows so much. In this case the client not only knew the world of smoking (salmon, duck, eels – you name it Anthony Creswell will smoke it), he knew the world of communication processes.

Next client:
A few days later I met another new client.  I found myself suggesting we use Google Wave to save us time, involve others who’d need to be consulted and let us learn a new  tool.  So one client led me to add value to another.

The working world we live in eh?

PS: For the record, on this job I worked for two smokeries Ummera & Uig Lodge. I feel I have a vested interest in their success.

Yesterday I found myself having a very interesting conversation with Mick Hull from VoxPro Communications.

I was in their company headquarters in Cork for a conversation about social media… Twitter, Blogging, Facebook and the like…

Frustrations shared…
We started swapping stories about the frustrations we’d had leading up to Christmas.  I told him about one infuriating experience I’d had.  He told me one of his.  [Actually his was an epic, and I admired how he'd kept his cool throughout.]

One story set off another.  We found we’d had a series of awfully distracting, time-consuming experiences – while try to buy things from businesses.

Source of the problem…
What emerged in the conversation was the shared realisation one key component.  The staff who dealt with us were not empowered to sort things out.  They had to refer to a manager, who wasn’t there.  They had a policy or procedure that prevented them for satisfying the customer.

The poor old member of staff was constrained.  Prevented from taking action that Mick or I would have taken – if it had been our business.

Business leaders…
Disempowered staff are losing you business.  If only your staff could act to make the deal happen, your turnover would be up.

Leaders disempower their staff.  Whenever a front-line customer service person doesn’t do what’s needed, it’s down to the owner/leader of the business.

I found myself saying “many businesses deserve to fail – they are badly led.  I feel sorry for the staff.”

Empowerment is a buzz word.  A cliche.  I can’t think of a better word now.

Leaders beware…  Customers notice.
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