Social Search in the context of Social Learning

(Written as an explanation of introNetworks' Smart Search for @marciamarcia)

Do we know what are people looking for?

Thinking of how someone would potentially search the enterprise network before the network is built is a critical piece of the puzzle for those contemplating putting in a social network (or more appropriately, a knowledge network).

This thinking comes in the form of a series of Users Stories that articulate how a variety of people will take advantage of the knowledge network in explicit detail. What types of problems will they expect to solve, what type of knowledge can they easily extract, how effectively can they sort through thousands of individual profiles to find a finite set of skills in seconds? Every organization is different and one size will not fit all situations, making these User Stories as targeted as possible.

Is there a better way to capture profile information?

Extracting information that will be the basis of the knowledge network and searchable as described in the User Stories becomes the next challenge for the network designer. It is important to be able to customize the user profiles so that experiences, skills, challenges, values, expertise, personal and professional interests are user-submitted in an environment that is trusted and doesn't leave users feeling vulnerable. In this type of environment they are open, honest and forthcoming. It is vital that the profile be rich in content and completed in the context as described by the various user stories that have been compiled. When users give weight to each attribute in their profile by attaching importance, the overall quality of the network is increased tremendously.

Searching smarter.

With thousands of these nearly encyclopedic profiles that have been designed to capture the essence of what’s important to the specific needs of the organization, the potential to drill down with finite search criteria becomes a matter of a few clicks of the mouse. Imagine being able to isolate the population of 12,000 employees down to the 145 people with expertise in task management, and further tighten the criteria to those that also have a background in the energy industry and have taken a course in Delegation – which nets a much smaller list of 12 people. This is a much more actionable list and also allows the searcher to learn even more about these 12 people before reaching out to them, as the profile contains much more information than was searched for – this allows the user to use reasoning and experience to find the one or two perfect people for a project, or to pose a question to, in minutes, not hours or days.

Planning for actionable business intelligence

We believe that thinking ahead, knowing what your users will be searching for, and how you will use that information to further the goals of the organization are critical to the success of the design, implementation and sustainability of an enterprise knowledge network.

Getting out from behind the desk

I have just arrived back in Santa Barbara from a whirlwind three day trip to NYC to visit clients and prospects. Having time to meet people face to face has become very rare in this time compressed age we live in. We are a networking company, and focus on helping people improve their relationships with their clients, employees, partners and prospects - yet we rely on GoToMeeting, GoToWebinar, email, Twitter, and our own client Community to stay in touch.

How refreshing, exhilarating and more effective it is to talk face to face. Yet, it is not scalable, especially when there are so many people to interact with. We were able to accomplish two substantial interactions each day, and had ample time to dig deep on issues related to Community that an hour online session doesn't allow for.

When we do online meetings, either presenting or attending, there is a 100% chance for distraction. Other windows, email, Blackberries, IM, people walking into the office, etc - all compete for mindshare. When you are in a live meeting you have a better than 99% chance of having 100% attention - though there is more and more the new aspect of distraction of Blackberries vibrating all over the table during the meetings - but social / business etiquette aside, you can look into people's eyes so much better.

It is estimated that 50-70% of communication is non-verbal. Being able to watch body language, facial expressions, all combine to give greater context to the conversation. I know that the meetings this week and the gains made in the individual relationships are more than 50-70% better as a result of us being there in person.

So, what did I learn? Get out more often. Make it a priority, no matter how much I hate dealing with the TSA, taking off my shoes and refilling my Metro Card at the Subway - being directly connected to the people that are helping us grow our business, that add life to what we do everyday is the most important thing to remember.

Great End to the Learning 2009 Conference

Well this has been a great week - many blog posts to come - but most important, the final party featured the top Beatle tribute band in the country, Fab Faux - wow. 1,300 attendees rocked the house with 90 solid minutes of excellently performed Beatles tunes.

I was able to record almost the entire set - hey, I had to dance a little bit, and it was hard to record and tap my toes at the same time. These were all shot with a MinoHD camera - the blog doesnt' show the whole width of the HD (must fix that someday...), so double click and it will take you to YouTube and you can watch it in it's full glory. Audio came out great!

Here you go - 12 songs, in their entirety, starting with Back in the USSR.





































And the Encore

Community Manager - That's a Job? You bet.

I keep coming back to an analogy that I have made many times in the past several months that may help us all. Remember the first web site you saw? Was it in ’96, ’98, earlier? That website was an act of faith on the part of someone who convinced someone else that they (the organization) needed one. So they got some smart technical guys to code up the site and viola – they were ‘on the world wide web’.

This was status quo for about a year, most websites didn't change content, didn't manage traffic, didn't really do much of anything except trumpet the fact that they were ahead of the pack. This changed over time as people saw that the content needed to be freshened, and that audiences demanded more. Going back to the original developers become very expensive, especially to do things like text changes.

A new job was born – the Web Master. Someone who became facile at the rapidly developing set of available tools. This job DID NOT EXIST prior to this time. Now when you ask an organization about their Webmaster, they may tell you they have two or three or a team of 12.

We are at such an inflection point today with online communities, social networks, social media and all of the related technologies. This explosion in the tools, the rapid adoption across the general population (some reports suggest that 1 in 6 will be using these tools globally by 2012) and the ease at which a social media strategy can be implemented has us at another inflection point. Enter the Community Manager. Once you have discovered your social media strategy, built it out and launched it, you will definitely need to focus ongoing attention to the care and feeding of all of the aspects of it.

This reality is causing many to postpone efforts or to try to find another way. I would suggest that is like planting a garden and hoping you don’t get any weeds, that none of the plants need watering and that you never have to prune them if they do live. It is not realistic.

That is why we will focus on understanding the work related to running a successful online community this Thursday with webinar to listen to a panel of professionals discussing what they know a lot about: Managing Online Communities.

For the past seven years at introNetworks, our focus to date has been on crafting and launching the community, with a more casual approach to managing, or tending it. In the past six months I have been focusing on why such a casual attitude and I believe that in most cases people just don't know what to do. Many are making it up as they go along, as they have been tasked with task of managing the masses, and don't have the background or temperament or more importantly, the time to do the job well.

That's why this month I thought we would focus on answering these five questions:

· So what does a Community Manager do all day?

· Why is having a community manager so critical?

· What are the characteristics of a great community manager?

· What is appropriate to expect from a community manager?

· What happens when you don't have a community manager?

And to help us better understand the answers, we have these experts joining us:

· Moderator: Jim Storer 


o Co-Founder, The Community Roundtable,
blogging at JimStorer.com

· Rachel Happe 


o Co-founder, The Community Roundtable,
blogging at TheSocialOrganization.com 


· Howard Wahlberg


o Asst. Executive Director, Community Manager,
the National Science Teachers Association

· Amber Naslund

o 
Community Manager, Radian6,
blogging at AltitudeBranding.com and AmberNaslund.com 


· Mark Sylvester
 (me)

o Co-founder, CEO, introNetworks,
blogging at MarkSylvester.com 


Each of these people has an amazing back-story – all have been involved in some sort of online community or social media activity for quite a while. They are dealing with issues in their community on a daily basis and are helping to light the way for the rest of us to follow.

Join us in the conversation. Or follow along on Twitter, #introchat

Register here.

PreWebinar Sound Bites - a quick conversation with Mark Oehlert

I had the chance to chat with this month's webinar guest speaker, Mark Oehlert, the Innovation Specialist at the Defense Acquitition University yesterday and was inspired by what he had to say. I can't wait for tomorrows webinar when we will be able to dig into the topics even more.

The Webinar title is: "How To Overcome the Top Three Challenges to Building an Organization Dedicated to Social Learning" - and it is overarching enough to allow us a lot of latitude in where we go. You can register for the free webinar here

Not to preempt the talk (much), but the 3 Challenges are Fear, Control and Trust. Mark speaks on this topic a lot and has a lot of passion for it as I could tell in our short talk.

Here are some quotes I took down as fast as I could that could be longer conversations in their own right:

• Social media efforts are not culturally neutral - they will change the organization
• Disruptive Discovery - I will let Mark discuss this one live
• Have an Organizational Development and Change Management professional on the team
• "The truth of the organization instead of the organizational chart"
• and my favorite: Do you trust your employees

Mark has a strong take on this topic and I am sure we are all going to learn a lot from him.

You can still register for the free webinar here

Tweet What You Eat - Sunday Inspiration

Last week was my daughter Melissa's birthday and I had to be out of town so we missed our traditional dinner out. My wife suggested that instead of going out, that I cook instead and offer to cook her favorite meal.

"Great idea," said my daughter when I suggested it.
"So, what's your favorite meal?" I asked.
"Well, do you mean what would I want as my last meal, or what would I like to eat every day?" she replied.
"Doesn't matter, pick one."

She picked BBQ Beef Ribs, Mac and Cheese, Spinach and Chocolate Cake. Excellent.

So, yesterday I started the ribs by searing them after rubbing them with a nice mixture of spices, then placed them in the crock pot to simmer in a quart of bloody mary mix - a secret tip. I only let them slow cook for about 4 hours - just enough to tenderize, but not have the meat fall off the bones. Seems that she really likes them when she has to work a bit. After four hours I pulled them out and put them in the fridge. I then took the broth, some minced onion, Hawaiian sugar and balsamic vinegar and boiled it down for about three hours until I had a wonderfully piquant BBQ sauce that I will use to baste them when I finish them off about an hour before service.

The Mac and Cheese, while a wonderful comfort food, was begging for an 'interpretation'. My wife Kymberlee had sent me a link to a restaurant in NYC that only serves Mac and Cheese and I thought, well, what would they do on such a momentous occasion? I guess an answer would be to do a Lobster Mac, but that is a bit upscale, so I came up with some inspiration from a TV show, The Worlds Deadliest Catch, on the show you see how trecherous it is to catch crab. This led me to deciding to do a CrabMac. One thing I didn't tell you about the conversation with my daughter was that her first answer was, "Can dinner just be Bacon?". That's my girl. As Tony Bourdain said when he was here at the Arlington Theater two months ago, "Everything is better with bacon."

So here is the recipe for my (soon to be famous) CrabMac and Cheese.

• 3/4 pound Elbow Mac (old school) or Cellantani (a corkscrew variant of elbow mac), cooked for 11 minutes in rapidly boiling salted water, I used the Cellantini
  
• 1 pound fresh dungeness crab claw meat. Trader Joes has this amazing fresh crab that comes in every morning.
  
• 6 green onions, diced with 6 cloves of garlic, minced and sauteed with 6 slices thick bacon cut in 1/2 inch diced
• 4 cups Bechamel Sauce (melt 4 tablespoons butter, add 4 tablespoons flour, blend until thoroughly cooked, about 4 minutes, add 4 cups of fat free half and half, yeah I know why bother with fat free... add 1/2 teaspoon dry mustard, 1 teaspoon sweet paprika, 1 teaspoons salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper - whisk until velvety smooth)
• 2 cups grated extra sharp cheddar cheese

Blend the cooked and cooled pasta with the crab and bacon/onion/garlic mixture. Mix so that everything is well distributed.

Mix the cheddar cheese with the Bechamel Sauce until well blended.

Add the sauce to the pasta and blend well. It should be soupy.

In a casserole dish place half the mixture and put another cup or so of Cheddar Cheese on it. Cover with the remaining pasta mixture.

Cover the top with a bit more cheese and Panko crumbs, or breadcrumbs if you don't have Panko.

Bake for 45 minutes at 350

To compliment the Ribs and the CrabMac I am going to serve steamed asparagus, sauteed spinach and leeks and peas and carrots that I am going to make using petite carrots and sugar snap peas I found at the local produce market this morning. Hopefully the triad of vegetables will counter balance the meaty, cheesy, carbolicious goodness of the main courses.

Dessert will be a Triple Chocolate Fudge Cake served at room temperature to fully appreciate the rich flavors of the chocolate and extra strong black coffee, which is a great way to finish this rich dessert.

I am writing this several hours before dinner, so there are no pictures, except the ones in my mind of everyone licking their lips, wiping their fingers and helping my daughter celebrate the one day of the year that is uniquely her own.

Happy Birthday Melissa.

Everybody's talking about Learning

A week or so ago I was encouraged to write an extended post about what I tweeted about, which was a surge in conversations related to Learning, Training and Education.

In talking with people from a variety of industries and market segments one thing that has struck me is that there seems to be a focus on education that I don't recall noticing in the past. These conversations are not exclusively from educators or professional trainers, but managers, directors and C level executives that are concerned with the skill level of their employees, the knowledge about product offerings and use with their customers and partners and providing expertise to their prospective clients in the form of webinars, white papers, and connections in a business focused social network.

We have been focusing on learning, both formal and informal, for some time here. You can watch some of the webinars we have sponsored to get a sense of our interest out there in the market. This emphasis on 'social learning' is growing (it seems exponentially) and there are so many great questions from people searching for solutions.

I just heard that Learning 2009 is going to be focusing a conference-within-conference on Social Learning, and a topic of much discussion at this week's Annual Conference of the USDLA was on how social media (of all types) plays into a blended learning agenda for organizations.

Other evidence of the surge in interest in this area is the monthly virtual events that are being produced by Dr. Tony Karrer's Corporate Learning Trends initiative - you can sign up for the June online (free) conference here. The one this month was extremely informative that was hosted by Jay Cross, you can read his take on the experience here.

Why all the interest?

My take is that in these challenging economic times we have to maximise the resources we have available to us, and the most expensive one is our people. Making sure that they have the information to do their jobs is a primary concern, and it is accelerated by the fact that so many companies are working with reduced staffs, so people are having to do things that they have never done before. They are relying on their networks of connections to help them solve problems - but as those networks have collapsed, it becomes important to build new ones. That seems to be why they are calling us.

Education is important, finding a way to make it most effective for the money spent is a critical part of the strategic discussion. There are a lot of resources out there for you, I especially like this site eLearningLearning. It's very helpful.

Three Things You Must Know About How Distance Affects Your Organization

I just got off the phone with Reggie Smith, the President Elect of the United States Distance Learning Association to go over details for Wednesday's (4/22) Webinar. We discussed how this webinar series is geared towards education of the audience, not education in the traditional sense.

For the past several months we have been doing this series of conversations with noted authorities, experts, thought leaders to learn from them in an interesting format. As this series evolves, we are getting better at both delivering a message and finding ways to engage the audience more effectively.

Last month we used TweetChat to have a back channel going on during the webinar, it worked great. This month we will do the same (using #usdla).

So, what should we expect from this month's conversation?

• A brief history of Distance Learning
• A focus on Corporate Learning (as opposed to K12 and Higher Ed)
• Best Practices and Anecdotes
• Alignment of Learning to an Organization's Strategy - and Some Tactical Tricks
• Backstory from the Booz Perspective (Reggie is a Booz Consultant & President of USDLA)
• Statistics from the USDLA Archives
• Thoughts on Integration of and Participation in Distance Learning (Mgmt and Learners)

This ought to be plenty to get us started. If you are interested in any of these ideas, join us for the Wednesday Webinar. You can register by clicking here.

We will post a replay at http://www.intronetworks.com/webinars.aspx later that day.

introNetworks inSight - an experiment in communications

Today, after a lot of discussion we have launched a new video blog called inSight that will be crafted each day, be short, and interesting (well, if not, you will tell me).

This first one is just me getting my feet wet. I tell you, sitting in an empty room staring at a red light is challenging. I think I did this ten times. But, practice makes perfect and I am pretty sure that in a week or so, I will be able to whip these out quickly.

Kymberlee (my partner and President of introNetworks) is also going to be doing inSights as well - she has a completely different point of view (think mars and venus) and I am anxious to hear what she has to say.

I was encouraged by a client today to be much more vocal about our software and how it is (or could) be better used by clients - he suggested that he would watch everyday if he could get a tip or two. In fact, he said he would 'weep for joy' if it helped him run his community.

Well, Michael - start crying.

Here then is the episode #201 of introNetworks inSight. Please use the comments to tell me what you would like to hear about. (I see that when I put the YouTube embed code here, it clips the HD (shot with MinoHD) - you can see the full view here.)

The World of Twitter - some tips learned in 72 hours.

Just putting the word Twitter into the title of this post will ensure that at least five new people will auto-follow me - strange? You bet.

So if you have not heard of Twitter, you can move on now and get back to your regular life. If you are new to Twitter then you may want to read on as I have some things that I have found that will either make your life wonderful, or have you pulling out your hair by the fistful.

I don't want to do a newbie guide to Twitter, there are a ton of them around, think of this as an advanced beginner roadmap to some of the places I have found along the way in the past 72 hours. Telling you about them may help you on your Twitter journey.

IPhone Apps

I worked with Twitterific from the time I got my Twitter account until this weekend when I loaded up Twitterverse. Hands down a 1000% improvement. If you have the iPhone, you need this.

Web-based Apps

I have a Twitter gadget installed on my iGoogle page, but it requires that I have that page open, and I don't want to be SO obsessive as to be refreshing that page over and over and over. So, I got a clue from @moehlert about finding good Twitter clients (what you call anything that lets you Tweet that is not at Twitter.com). If you look at a tweet and pay attention to the line at the bottom that says:

Mark Sylvester about 5h ago via twhirl

If you click on the last word it will take you to the web page of that client and you can go from there. So, I started paying attention to the people I follow to see which clients they use. I thought that if @timoreilly was using a specific client that would be a great start. He is. When he is not posting from the web, he uses an AIR application called twhirl. I love it. I can leave it open on my desktop and it is nice and unobtrusive, in fact, you can set transparency on it, so it fades back even better. Try it.

Twitter Chat and Groups

Ok, this is where it starts to get really scary (I mean interesting). Remember chat rooms? Sure you do, but you may or may not admit being in them. This is the same idea but on steroids. There is something called a hashtag in Twitter that lets others search on a word easily. There are tons of search tools, both built in to the clients and at Twitter itself. But both of these are childs play if you really want to seriously drink from a firehose.

People are starting to set up Groups (more on that later) and organize times when they all get online and chat. Each tweet has a #hashtag in it so that it will show up in the various search tools that people use. It is a mad free-for-all during the online chat, with archives posted for those that miss the melee. For example. I checked on the #journchat this week and wow it was amazing. I only had an hour for each, and just watching the activity was inspiring. You can join in a Chat at this site but you have to know the #hashtag. (Try typing anything in the search box).

These are serious and fun at the same time - professionals taking an hour out of their week to discuss their profession or avocation or general interests. There are 100's of them (who knew?). You can find these groups here. But I didn't even know this site existed until today. I found that several of the people I follow had the #journchat tag in their posts on Monday evenings, so I checked it out. Really interesting.

Great thing here is that you can jump in, or not, and learn a lot, which is what Twitter is so good at, right?

I am sure that there are more sites devoted to Chat and Groups

Tweet Grid

Ok, so let's say that you stop everything, join a bunch of groups, start following a ton of people, embed #hashtags in your tweets and generally give up the majority of your day doing so, then what. Well, you can then sign up to get the NORAD display of all this activity and put it on your biggest monitor and completely give in. NORAD display? Have you seen the wall to wall monitors in the command centers in the news, movies or TV? Well, there is a site that you can go to and put in all of these #hashtags and have a realtime update on all of them at the same time. Go to TweetGrid and click on example grid on the far left, that will give you an idea of what you can do. So, imagine tracking everything you are interested in all at once.

I asked @marciamarcia last night how she did it, as I have noticed her tweets are cogent, inspired, thoughtful and fast. She said that she is an accomplished multitasker and says that this is the best source of lateral thinking she knows of. Well said Marcia.

Summary

So, this is just in the past 72 hours that I have updated my phone, my desktop, my #hashtags, my Twitter Groups and Chat and I am feeling a bit overwhelmed but in a good way. I feel like I am more connected than ever before and coincidentally I run a networking company, so have not ever had a feeling like I was not connected.

Finding Your Hidden TED Talk

Courtesy rom's photostream - View of the TED Stage from the Loge

Note: Having just returned from the TED Conference and had a bit of a chance to decompress I am struck by how much I wanted to write all week, yet relegated myself to short tweets when I had a moment or two. TED is the very definition of an immerse experience, so it is only now that I can start to put down some of the things that have been swirling around in my head. I am going to seriously apply myself towards writing a lot in the next week or so, I took some notes specifically for that purpose. There are many recaps of TED, tons of tweets (#ted) some great images (Flickr ted2009) if you want to vicariously experience one the most amazing experiences on the planet.

Finding Your Hidden TED Talk.

At TED we experience more than one hundred presentations on the main stage and at TED University. They are 3, 6, 9 or 18 minutes long. You can see them at TED.com and get a sense of the caliber of these talks by watching just a few. I suggest you pick a topic and watch 2 or 3 in a row. You will be hooked.

One of the things I learned from Chris Anderson when we first started working with him in 2003 was that his feeling about the attendees at TED is that everyone who attends could easily be on the stage. Each person has done something amazing in their life and that the beauty of TED is being able to meet and be inspired by each and every attendee, whether they were onstage or not.

Which brings me to the notion of finding your inner TED Talk.

Can you distill your life's work into an 18 minute talk?
Can you be vulnerable?
Can you tell a story you have never told before?
Can you tell and not sell?

In thinking about what makes a TED Talk special, I have come up with a formula that makes sense to me - were I ever to be on the main stage. Like all good formulas, it has three parts.

Visual

A great TED Talk has strong visual elements to it, both imagery, but the words can evoke strong representations that can conjure up images to illustrate the points being made. A powerful part of an effective TED Talk is seeing something you have never seen before or seeing something familiar from a different point of view. When you think about your own story, your own TED Talk - how do you paint a picture with your words?

Easy

Another aspect of a perfectly executed TED Talk is that no matter how complex, obscure, convoluted or arcane the topic, the speaker communicates in such a way as to make the ideas digestible and easily absorbed. I have listened and learned from bioengineers, Nobel Laureates, poets, educators and people much, much smarter than me - and the best ones were able to breakdown the topic so that I could find the takeaway in it. (This doesn't mean that you don't have to stretch your mind to keep up, the burden is not just on the speaker, but on the listener as well)

and finally,

Smart

A great TED Talk is one that when complete has you feeling smarter having heard it. Each of us that are dedicated to lifelong learning appreciate a new nugget, an insight, an unexpected piece of inspiration. When you are considering your own TED Talk, what will be the part that gives people this feeling?

Visual, Easy, Smart.

I am sure that there are many takes on a great TED Talk and having been a part of my wife's TED University talks (as a supporting player), I can tell you that this three part formula really works.

But don't wait for TED to get your talk ready. You never know when you will have your moment to tell a story you have never told before, be vulnerable and possibly inspire others with your ideas that are worth sharing.

(Note after rereading) I guess the obvious first question would be, "Mark, what is your TED Talk about?". I am going to have to ponder that and get back to you.

Yes, We Can - Reflecting Four Days Later

I am reflecting on the emotional roller coaster week I had, starting with all of the Inaugural festivities. The energy, enthusiasm, sense of hope and optimism seeped into every part of me - including work to a large extent. Things are tough right now for everyone and that is an understatement. You don't need me to echo what we are hearing in wall-to-wall coverage on the news.

Yet.

More than five times since Tuesday I found myself saying, Yes, We Can (no exclamation point) in conversation. And saying it with congruence and conviction. I can't remember ever really doing that before. Those who know me understand that I am an optimist by nature and usually resonate a can-do attitude. Yet this is different.

I started thinking about it today because of the reaction I have gotten when I said, Yes, We Can, in conversation. It has been remarkable. People do a double-take, as it seems out of context, but they think for a fraction of a second, pause, then look back at me and say, Yes We Can. Wow. Powerful stuff. Even as I write this I am chilled by the emotion that these three simple words evoke.

Yes.
We.
Can.

I learned from Tony Robbins what an incantation is. He taught us to start each day with a positive message that we can repeat while running, shaving, walking or just getting ready for our day. He has one he loves, I have one I love - and what is unique about repeating the mantra is emphasizing a different word each time you repeat it. This has a powerful effect. It causes you to think and focus on each word individually. I thought I would share it. Repeat this to yourself.

Yes, We Can
Yes, We Can
Yes, We Can

Did you sense the difference? I have been thinking about Yes for sometime now. It seems like we are drowning in a sea of No's. Why not just shout out YES YES YES. (Well, people might stare at you...) What about We? Sometimes we feel all alone in our struggles, especially in tough times, yet in tough times, isn't that when we should be relying on one another to get through each day. And Can. I love that affirmation. Positive, Active, Actionable. Can.

Yes, We Can.




(Note: After posting this I did a Google Search for Images related to Yes, We Can. Over 11 Million hits. Look here)

"Point Break Live!" - too much fun in Hollywood

Last night we traveled down to LA to watch the spoof play, Point Break Live! - this sendup of the 1991 Keanu Reeves/Patrick Swayze film was the perfect way to celebrate our friend Chad Nell's birthday. He and 27 of his friends joined him at this extremely fun and boisterous play.

Full details of the play (you should go if you are in LA) are here.

From TheaterMania: The Off-Broadway spoof Point Break LIVE! has stormed into Los Angeles, attacking its audiences with hilarious commentary on the ridiculous 1991 action-thriller Point Break, which starred Keanu Reeves as an ex-football-playing FBI agent and Patrick Swayze as a surfing thief. The theater experience recreates the entire film, complete with surfing episodes, violent robberies, and atrocious dialogue.

There didn't seem to be any issue with taking pictures or video, so I thought you might like to see two sequences - the sky-diving sequence, when Johnny Utah (Reeves) has to jump out of the plane and the closing sequence when Utah finally catches Bodhi (Patrick Swayze) in Australia before surfing the 'big one'. The part of Keanu is played by an audience member who gets selected at the start of the show. The guy that got picked actually was perfect for the part.

Sky Diving Sequence

Surf Sequence - complete with water cannons and wind machine!

"Transforming the way people learn"- SITE Ambassadors Program launches

This quote from the new president of SITE, the Society of Insurance Trainers and Educators. Sandy Masters kicked off our conversation this afternoon at the end of the initial meeting of the SITE Connect Ambassador program.

The Ambassador Program was developed to coincide with the launch of their new online Community, SITE Connect, created by introNetworks. Her idea is to enlist the help of enthusiatic volunteers in the organization to manage the ongoing conversations and activities of the community.

This is a great idea and I love the name, Ambassadors. It has a great tone and sets them up for success. It has a cleaner ring than Community manager, the current name for that role.

Sandy is actually volunteering herself as President and is devoting her efforts full time to SITE for her term. She is actually carrying on an initiative set out by her predecessor, Karen Scott, and is very passionate about the power of community to connect the members.

Specifically they have 1000 members in the organization, but only 250 get to the annual meeting, they believe that SITE Connect will engage all of the members, not just the meeting attendees. The Ambassador program is a great strategy to assure success of the community effort. I applaud them of this innovative approach.

Predicting the future is tricky business...

This is the opening line in a post by Mike Prokopeak this evening in an Executive Briefing at Chief Learning Officer Magazine entitled, Direction for Uncertain Times. In this post, Mike goes to two of CLO's columnists, Elliott Masie (industry luminary and an introNetworks customer) and Josh Bersin (Founder of Bersin and Associates) to "gaze into their crystal ball". They state what we are all hearing from all sides it seems, layoffs everywhere, and subsequent massive retrenching with a focus on survival.

Yep. But they offer a ray of hope, and that's the part that got my attention.

They say:

While the ride will be rough, Bersin and Masie pointed to significant opportunities in the coming year for innovation. Both said social learning and social networks will grow more important and organizations will mature in their approaches.

“It won’t be a ‘what is it and how do I do it’ discussion,” Bersin said. “It will be, ‘We’re doing it; we’re trying it. It’s working in this group; it’s not working in that group.’”

So, to my earlier question today about being part of the problem, or part of the solution, I am encouraged that these two folks, who are right in the thick of it, are suggesting that the adoption of social learning and social networking will play an important role right now in the midst of this crisis. This moves the needle towards us being part of the solution.

Josh also said:

"learning organizations will move to a more centralized model that is tightly integrated with talent management. That’s going to be an imperative for everybody at every level to understand: what talent management is and [how it will] play a role in that strategy,” Bersin said.

I have had many discussions with clients about how our smart social network could help them in talent management, even though we don't normally talk about nor position ourselves as a talent management tool - that is a crowded marketplace already. I'm just saying, that the way we have approached the problem, it looks like we might be an innovative solution for that space as well.

(Note: it feels like I have to be online 24/7 these days to take it all in, there is so much change occurring all around, with really smart people weighing in on their specific area of expertise by the minute. I feel like each day is a Master Class, and there is no single Master to look to.)

The Problem or the Solution

Yesterday I passed along a link to a post from Karen at Bersin and Associates entitled, E Learning Takes a Hit. In it, she talks about the reduction in budget and staffing in Learning and Development organizations:

It is true that L&D organizations have modified their training delivery methods - but not toward e-learning. In fact, the proportion of training hours taken online has dropped for the first time ever, partly due to recent budget and staffing cuts. (See the recently published "Corporate Learning Factbook' report for more information.) This is somewhat ironic, since many companies originally turned to online learning to save money from their classroom programs. But companies have found that the investment in learning technology, content, and internal staffing adds up, and so they are switching to coaching, collaborative programs, and other less costly methods.

She then goes on to say:

The proliferation of social networking tools such as communities of practice, wikis, and blogs is helping this trend. Companies are recognizing that group exercises and facilitated communication improve not just the learning experience, but also social connections with the company.

Which got me to thinking, are we (introNetworks and others like us) part of the problem or part of the solution. On interesting quandary. I am talking to CLO's and people in Training and Development every day and talking about the solution that social networking provides, as Josh mentions in the final part of his post:

So if your company is facing budget constraints, try looking at coaching and collaborative approaches. These can be relatively inexpensive - and yet highly effective - methods for learning.

This leads me to believe that my continued focus on how social networking tools can be applied towards coaching and collaboration is indeed a solution for these firms, the problem is that because they are effective there is less of a reliance on old(er) methods of training.

Thanks for the brainteaser Karen.

"The genius of the AND vs. the tyranny of the OR"

You may have heard this quote from James Collins in the past, if not, let me introduce it to you. I heard Jim speak when I was with Alias|Wavefront (a Silicon Graphics Company) at an all hands meeting in Mountain View. This was just after his release of Built To Last. He is now best known for his book, Good To Great, which everyone should have on their shelf.

The quote again:

"The genius of the AND vs. the tyranny of the OR"

This stuck with me the first time I heard it that day in '95 and I have repeated it often, in fact today I mentioned it in a conversation with a prospect. He was thinking about various social media strategies that he wants to pull together and is struggling with making a decision. He was locked in the OR land - this OR this OR this OR this... that is a vicious cycle. What I love about this philosophy is it's liberating tone of voice. I suggested to him (after quoting the quote), that he enjoy some AND for a while and think about doing this AND that AND this AND that.

With this specific example, social media tools are becoming ubiquitous and in many cases free as well, so the barrier to entry to testing the waters would allow someone to try this one AND that one, rather than this OR that. Make sense?

I bet you have a lot of AND / OR discussions during the day, especially in this trying times. See if you can turn one of them around today and make it AND instead of OR.

Institutional Memory - Social Memory

I was thinking this morning about memory, how much we retain as individuals, how much we retain as groups. Are you familiar with the term Institutional Memory? Here is the definition from Wikipedia:

Institutional memory is a collective of facts, concepts, experiences and know-how held by a group of people. As it transcends the individual, it requires the ongoing transmission of these memories between members of this group. Elements of institutional memory may be found in corporations, professional groups, government bodies, religious groups, academic collaborations and by extension in entire cultures.

Institutional memory may be encouraged to preserve a group's ideology or way of work. Conversely, institutional memory may be ingrained to the point that it becomes hard to challenge if something is found to contradict that which was previously thought to have been correct.

This got me to thinking about Social Memory, and interestingly enough, there was no mention of this in Wikipedia. I guess it doesn't make a lot of sense actually, but I am planning on visiting family members this evening that I rarely get to see and know that there are hundreds of hours of 'Social Memory' piled up waiting to be shared. Yet, I will only have a couple hours. How do we capture this valuable knowledge? (Note: I am taking my new MinoHD camera to capture as many stories as I can.)

Which led me to think about the amount of knowledge that is walking out of the 100's of businesses that are laying off people by the thousands. What is happening to the Institutional Memory in those companies?

One of the ideas I have been talking about with our clients recently is how effective social media is in leaving artifacts of conversations, in the form of forum postings, discussion boards, presentations, white papers, twitter streams, blog posts and countless entries into Wikis.

If we consciously strive to make these types of conversations more discoverable, for all the obvious reasons and this new one, as the repository of Institutional Memory, then we have uncovered one of the biggest ROI's for spending time and money on implementing these tools in the workplace.

One line in the Wiki entry intrigued me:

As it transcends the individual, it requires the ongoing transmission of these memories between members of this group

Ongoing transmission. This implies that there is an overt and deliberate strategy in place. Most of the conversations I have suggest that most Companies are not thinking about how to manage these conversations. They are content to 'let it happen organically', yet in reality, this is rarely the case. I call them Conversation Starters (or Conversation/Community Managers), they are like the ideal cocktail party host - keeping things moving, making sure everyone knows everyone else, and that people don't sit on the couch and not talk to anyone.

For us to have an Institutional Memory, we need conversations. We need to help people find the right people to talk to. We need to collect those conversations. We need to revisit them, as they capture the true culture of the Company.

Kevin Kelly at Learning 2008 said, "Conversation is the foundation of our culture". Does your company have a Culture of Conversation?

Brunch at Cafe Luck

On Sunday we took dear friends (Bruce and Lynda) who are just moving to Montecito, over to our new favorite place, Cafe Luck. You may recall I posted about this new place less than ten days ago. I thought this Cafe worthy of reposting, as it was thought by all of us to be one of the best lunches in recent memory.

Salade Nicoise

This is a classic French Bistro and had a smaller menu for Brunch than at Dinner. By classic, I mean traditional preparations, like the Salade Nicoise above, fresh tuna, brined white anchovies, etc. We also enjoyed the Beet Salad and an Onion Soup that had as much cheese outside the gratin bowl and inside - delightful.

The entire meal can be seen over here at Mobile Me

Croque Madame

This dish is well known to anyone that has lingered over an espresso on the streets of Paris late at night - or late in the morning. It is the French variant of a Ham and Cheese sandwich, but that is where the similarity stops. This immense piece of french bread (from D'Angelo's) is slathered with a (I think) Bechamel Sauce, then layered with the thinnest slices slices of ham possible. This whole thing is then covered with shredded cheese and broiled perfectly. What makes this a Croque Madame and not a Croque Monsier is the addition of a sunny side up egg. Viola.

The Chef (David) came out to the table and had recognized us from the last visit (I was the guy with the video who had interviewed him). He talked for a bit, then left, but came back with a 10 inch square card with the restaurants name printed on it and a pen. He asked if we would draw something, sign it, then he would post it on the wall. Wow, we made the wall! I drew a little something, then the waiter brought over another card for our guest Bruce, who is an Art Center graduate and quite an artist. So, now there are two cards on the wall from us!

You can see a few cards from other guests above the framed photos on this column.

If you do decide to enjoy Cafe Luck, make sure you tell David that you read about this on marksylvester.com - he was not sure if being blogged about was a good thing or not.

January introNetworks Webinar Guest - Verne Harnish

For this webinar we have invited a special guest, Verne Harnish, the noted author and expert to talk about his thoughts on innovative new "community" or "networking" technologies that aid in helping customers connect with and help each other in the process, help you.

Verne writes: "What do Google, Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, eBay and Wikipedia have in common? They all utilise a new reality of the information age - whoever leverages the most brains wins! Figure out how to do this better than your competition and you win big.

The subtitle of James Surowiecki's best-selling book "The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economics, Societies, and Nations" is another take on this new strategic weapon. It's no longer sufficient to have just a smart executive team. You need to launch initiatives to access the collective wisdom of your employees, customers, and the broader world around you. You not only have to understand and apply this theory to your business, you need to start doing it immediately." - you can read the article here.

About Verne

Verne is the founder of two world-renowned entrepreneurship organizations, the Young Entrepreneurs' Organization (YEO) and the Association of Collegiate Entrepreneurs (ACE), Verne is presently founder and CEO of Gazelles, Inc., which serves as an outsourced corporate university for mid-size firms and hosts a faculty of well-known business experts including Jim Collins, Geoff Smart, Jack Stack, Neil Rackham, Seth Godin, and Pat Lencioni and sponsors best practices trips to GE, Southwest Airlines, Microsoft, and Dell.

You can register here for the Webinar

The 21 Times Phenomena

I was talking with a co-worker today about strategies for modifying our behavior (think New Years' Resolutions) and I was reminded of a phenomena that I call '21 Times', basically if you want to change something, do something new, add something to your routine, do it 21 times and by the 22nd, it will be a part of your DNA.

Simple. Yes, and no.

To really work, you need to be aware of each of the 'times' - "This is the 16th time I have not procrastinated", "This is the 17th time I have not procrastinated", etc. It is this explicit 'calling out' of the repetitions that turns an idea; I would like to not be a procrastinator, into a part of who you are.

So, we have all experienced self-help programs, you can get help for free, or spend thousands on sitting at the feet of gurus, yet when we get back to our own reality, how well do we implement the teachings? I bet on reflection we would all say, not so well. Me too. Unless you really want to change. So that's a big part of it, willingness. My 21 Times strategy is just an easy to remember tool that helps you when you really want to make a lasting change.

I have seen this work in my own life many times. Seriously.

Tony Robbins talks about Learning Strategies and how it is a simple 3 step process to learning anything, like a foreign language or how to do better sales forecasts.

1. Immersion. If you can go to a foreign country for a month, great. If you can go off site for a week, awesome, if you can get away and immerse yourself (take a class, an online seminar, whatever takes you away and bathes you in the new ideas)
2. Stepped Repetition. This is what I call the 21 Times Phenomena. You need to repeat the thing you want to learn over and over and over, I say 21 times is the magic number.
3. Find a Peer Group. Once you have done 1 and 2, you will want to be around others that will support you going forward, like be in a Spanish Club, or a Morning Networking Group for Sales Executives - you get the idea.

Simple.

Some examples of how the 21 Times Phenomena have showed up for me;

At a golf lesson, "Mark, I want you to take your club and hit 7 balls, rest 2 minutes, then hit 7 more, then rest 2 minutes and hit 7 more" Do the math, that's 21 times that you are hitting the ball a specific way (after getting coaching from the instructor). Great way to get better. Hey, you still have to hit it 1000's of times to get good. I am just talking about cementing the learning.

At a exercise session, "Mark, for the next three weeks I want you to do this set of exercises, then we will meet up again" - 3 weeks is 21 days. After doing them faithfully, I was hooked. And exercise became a part of my regimen.

Two examples, but I bet if you thought about it, you would see that the 21 Time Phenomena has shown up in your life, you just didn't know it.

Dinner at Cafe Luck - Santa Barbara

We have been wanting to go to Cafe Luck on Cota Street in downtown Santa Barbara for sometime now. It is the latest from Lucky Jeans founder, Gene Montasano, who also has built Lucky's and Tre Lune in Montecito and Ca Dario, Bucatini, Ca Dario, Joes Cafe and D'Angelo (Bakery) in Santa Barbara. An article in the local paper was enough motivation for us to call and make Friday night reservations - an hour later we heard from good friends that they were back in town, so we suggested we all meet for dinner that night.

Cafe Luck is a French Bistro style place built on the site of the former Mousse Odile, a charming French restaurant run by a pair of sisters. Old time Santa Barbarans will remember it as the place to stop for a light breakfast after shopping at the Farmers' Market on Saturday. I used to have lunch there all the time when I was with Wavefront (around the corner).

The menu has a lot of seafood on it, Oysters, Mussels, Crab, Lobsters, Sardines, Salmon as well as some classic French preparations, Daubes, Bouillabaisse, French Onion Soup, and apparently the Chef's favorite, called the Lucky Plateau - a three plate tower overflowing with seafood (for 4 it looks like.) I wish that there was a website to point you to, so you could see the menu.

The video captures the lively ambience of the cafe as well as some shots of our appetizers. I just received a new Mino HD (Flip) camera from Kymberlee and this was my first chance to use it. It is small, lightwieight and easy to use - I need to work on framing, editing and will be integrating it more into my blogging.



I started with the Sardines, amazing flavor and texture, two beet salads were enjoyed by the others, the small beets were perfectly cooked and the greens dressed lightly.

Our entrees arrived right on time, we had the Mussels with Frites (perfectly crisp french fires, served French/Belgian style with a side of homemade mayonaisse), Tuna ala Niscoise (a seared piece of Ahi in the style of Nice), and the ladies had the Lobster, served with buttery steamed leeks and grilled baby artichokes.

Everyone cleaned thier plates and commneted that the portions were just the right size, I actually used a couple of slices of the fresh bread to soak up the fennel enfused broth that the Mussels had been steamed in.

We passed on dessert, but made note to come back soon and work our way through the menu with some more friends. This will be a great place to catch a bite before the Santa Barbara Film Festival which begins at the end of January and has it's main theater right around the corner.

New Years Tasting Menu

We invited dear friends over for an evening of tastes and merriment. Neither of us had made plans until about noon on the 31st and we all decided to have a low key evening at home - with me cooking a multi course tasting menu. My low light food photography needs a lot of work, so I don't have the shots of the meal in progress that I would have liked.

One of the great things I enjoy about cooking is not knowing what I am going to cook until the last possible moment. I am sure this sounds odd, but in most cases I really don't have an idea of what to cook until I see the food in person. That's how it was for this meal. I was at one of Whole Foods' superstores (can't wait for one to be here in Santa Barbara) and did a wander of the various sections looking for inspiration. Once I had done a complete loop of the store I sat down to compose a menu. I knew that I wanted to have small plates, try several different flavor combinations and challenge myself a bit. I also knew that we were not going to be back in Santa Barbara until about 6pm, with our guests arriving at 7, so I could not have things be too complicated. Once in the house, I had 60 minutes to prep.

Let's begin.


Dave and Melodee happen to have lived in this house before us, which is how we found out about it in the first place. Dave is a very accomplished wine enthusiast and was in charge of the pairings. Amazing. We started with a Pierre Joulet Champagne and accompanyied it with:

• Warmed Marcona Almonds with Rosemary
• Artichoke Hummus and Crackers
• Andouille Sausages with Dijon
  
• Sundried Tomato, Olive and Peppers Crustless Quiche with Siracha

This we consumed standing up while I was a whirling dirvish, pulling together the rest of the meal. I had assembled the quiche and had it in the oven about 7 minutes after getting in the house. You can make this easy appetizer yourself;

• Crustless Quiche. Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees. Take 1 cup 1/2 and 1/2, and blend in 2 eggs, 1/2 teaspoon sea salt and 1/2 teaspoon pepper. Set aside. Thinly slice 1/2 red pepper, pit 10 sun dried black olives, dice, then slice 4 small artichoke hearts. Mix these together and set aside. Take a small rectagular baking dish that is about 1 1/2 inches deep, spray it with a olive oil coating, or rub with a small about of EVOO. Put the vegetables inside and cover with the liquid. Place in the oven and bake for approximately 30 minutes. You will see it rise above the rim, don't fret, it won't spill over. When it is slightly firm to the touch, in the middle, take it out and set to cool for 15 minutes. Unmold onto a plate and carefully slice into 1/2 inch portions, place on a plate, garnish with dots of Siracha, microgreens and serve. Note: you can add a bit of cheese to this, any type of vegetable with work as well.
  

While everyone was enjoying the starters, Kymberlee set out some small salads that she had picked out at Whole Foods, we had;

• Greek Salad of Peppers, Onions, Olives, Feta
• Japanese Forbidden Wild Rice Salad
• Vegetable Quinoa
• Marinated Antipasto of Fresh Vegetables

• Seared Scallop Skewers with Fresh Basil Pesto

I wanted something warm with the salad course and took bay scallops (the small ones) and let them soak in some pesto for 30 minutes. I placed six each on skewers, then seared them for about 1 minute on each side - you have to be so careful with scallops to not overcook them. This bit of warm goodness was a great compliment to the salads.

Dave had brought out an amazing wine to enjoy with the next course


I will encourage him to comment on this post to speak more about it and the others served.

The next course was the challenging one, as I didn't have a lot of time, and it was the most complicated;

• Seared Duck Breast with Plum Chipolte Sauce
• Portobello and Peppers Rissoto with Saffron
• Medallions of Eggplant with White Miso

The duck was a classic preparation, score the breast, sear it breast side down for 5 minutes, turn and sear for 2 minute and place into the over for another 10 minutes - when done, let it rest for 15 minutes. The sauce had been selected from a wall of dipping sauces at Whole Foods.

The risotto was on autopilot this whole time, kinda hard to do, but I had to multitask quite a bit to make this whole thing happen. If you are diligent you can pour in the broth, stir and manage the risotto without burning or overcooking it. Once it was done, I folded in the fresh parmesean.

I put a small mound of risotto on each plate, surrounded it with slices of the duck breast and drizzled the plum sauce around the edge.

The eggplant is one of our favorites, because it is easy to prepare.

• Medallions of Eggplant with White Miso. Turn on the broiler first. Then slice a Chinese Eggplant (the long narrow type) into 1/2 inch slices and place into a hot saute pan with olive oil. Sprinkle with sea salt and herbs de provence, turn after 3 minutes and cook the other side, when done place on a paper towel to drain. When cool, spread a very thin layer of white miso on each medallion and place on a baking sheet and put in the broiler for 1-2 minutes til bubbling and brown on top.

The flavors of the duck, the risotto, the plum sauce and the eggplant blended perfectly with the wine. I had told Dave what the meal was going to be on the ride back from the market so he had time to think about the pairings in advance.

The main event of the evening was next, a play on surf and turf:

• Ginger and Sesame Marinated New York Strip Steak
• Skewered Tiger Prawns
• Seared Scottish Salmon
• Chili Ponzu Sauce

I think everyone loves a crusty piece of steak and a succulent bit of seafood. Don't you? I made a marinade of sesame oil, fresh grated ginger, hawaiian sea salt (from a friend in Kauai) and cracked black pepper. Each protein rested in this for about 90 minutes before I grilled each item. I sliced the steak and placed three or four strips on each plate, with a skewer of shrimp. Kymberlee had the Salmon and shared with everyone, I had not had Scottish before and it was very moist. I drizzled the ponzu over everything and garnished the plate with radish spouts (I like their peppery bite).

Here is the wine that we savored during the main event;


By this time the kitchen was a disaster area, but I had a table full of satisfied diners. I excused myself to tidy up while everyone retired to the living room to relax.

For dessert we had one of the most amazing bottles of wine ever, a late harvest Syrah that was in a bottle that didn't have a lable, but had been signed by the vintner.


This accompanied a selection of sweets that Kymberlee had picked out at Whole Foods with some gingerbread men that we had left from Christmas.


I have to say that this was one of the most memorable New Years' Eve events for me. Being able to share a quiet evening with dear friends, talking, laughing and eating together is one of life's simplest pleasures and one we don't do enough of.

Happy New Year everyone.

Melodee, Dave, Kymberlee and Me