Moving Day

Moving over to Tumblr today. Going to focus on food related posts. Check it at http://msylvester.tumblr.com

Interestingness - Looking at how we use tags to describe ourselves and our audiences

I am in the middle of helping a new client build a set of words (tags) that will be used to drive our matching engine and help them match talent to tasks within their organization. In setting the tone for the challenge of picking the right words I am constantly looking for metaphors and analogies that will help them understand.

I was just reading the forward to Malcolm Gladwell's new book, What The Dog Saw, and he spoke of 'interestingness' - which reminded my of that term as it applies to images, and how Flickr has a search term: interestingness. This got me to thinking that maybe the best way to help my client understand that the best tags for their audience would be those that pass an 'interestingness' test.

In the networks that we build, we have a set of tags that are presented to each user during the profiling process. These words are considered by the user, then selected by them - each word being given a weight, or importance. The collection of selected words shown on the persons public profile and used by our matching engine to match them with others of similar interests, passions, values, experiences, skills, strengths and objectives. You might think of the tags as brand characteristics. And in this particular client's case, I am strongly suggesting that they should consider them exactly like this, as developing brand identity is something this client is very familiar with.

Which brings me back to interestingness.

When you complete an online profile, you typically are not thinking about this dimension - "What of this profile makes me more or less interesting?" Why would someone want to get to know me better as result of the tags I have selected?

If we believe that a population can be defined by the language they use (Kevin Kelly says that communication is the heart of our culture) and that language in today's' Everything 2.0 world can be distilled into a set of tags or keywords, then is it logical to conclude that you can come up with a set of tags that can be presented to an audience, and if the tags have been considered correctly, they in fact will resonate deeply with the audience and in fact describe them nearly perfectly.

Maybe.

My counsel to clients to date has been literal and encyclopedic. Give them words that make a lot of sense, that describe them in detail, that challenge them to think deeply about the choices they make, to think about how they are seen by others. Yet, today, with this notion of interestingness in play, I wonder if my counsel to them should be:

Are they interesting enough?

Using your network to find answers to those pesky day-to-day problems - three recent examples

I had occasion the past two days to reach out to my network to get quick answers to some questions. The process was so effective I thought it would be good to share, as it illustrates the power of your network.

I used two networks this week for my questions, one, LinkedIn, the other, Twitter. I have 500+ in my network on LinkedIn and another 1000+ on Twitter (yeah I know, I'm a slacker). So, it seemed like someone ought to have the answers. What was interesting was that my questions were extremely different from one another, so I need to reach a diverse set of people.

The first question: "What have you seen as an effective way to market Webinars? (Then I gave a list of what I am already doing). I posted this on LinkedIn Answers (go here to see). Once you have posted your question (note: I think it is odd that it's called Answers, when what you post are Questions), you then select people in your network to be notified that you have posted a question. 

So, in this case, I looked at all of my contacts in Marketing, selected their names and sent the question along. It was also cross-posted on the main Answers site and within 30 minutes I was getting some really good feedback. Best answer and one that I implemented immediately was Tell A Friend. I added a button on our Webinar website and will be monitoring it to see how well that goes. 

When someone answers your question, you get an email, so you don't have to keep checking LinkedIn, and you can reply directly to the person (etiquette suggests that you at least say thanks). Once you have the question answered, you can close the question, it auto-closes after a week I believe.

My second question was, "I am building a map of all of the Marketing Communication companies in the known universe - I know there are more than 2500 subsidiaries to the 8 big holding companies, does anyone have a map, graphic, listing or pointer to help me in this project?" 

I received my first answer (and the best one) within 1 minute after posting - seriously, one minute. Within an hour I had several more pointers to roughly the same information. Seems that AdAge is famous for producing a map of the big companies once a year and it just came out last month, so was fresh in everyone's mind.

Again, the network came to my aid better than Google did, as I tried and tried and couldn't get my search terminology correct and was wasting valuable time.

I thanked all of my (new) helpful friends and it was even suggested that the Map I am creating become some sort of Creative Commons shared resource, as there really isn't anything out there with the completeness I needed for this project.

Finally I had a question today about managing my TODO list and I turned to Twitter as an experiment. I posted this:

@marksylvester Struggling with massive TODO list - tried tons of tools, none really worked. What's working for you? Stickies are threatening to bury me

Within 5 minutes I was sent plenty of suggestions of ways to deal with my list, and pleas from other followers to share the answers. It was interesting also to see that people who follow me on Facebook also posted replies (comments), as my Tweets are cross-posted to my FB account.

So, what's this all mean? Your network is a great place for informal learning and in that learning an ancillary benefit is that you get to meet new people and grow your network even larger.

I gave back to the community this afternoon by posting a fix I found to a troubling problem with Snow Leopard on my Mac and my HP Scanner - seems that tons of people have this problem and all of the fixes were tragically difficult, I was able to find something simple, sweet and tweetable. 

What goes around comes around.

How are you using your network to learn - what are you teaching your network?

A Communication Framework

How well do you communicate? Here are the 6 steps I use nearly every day that help me be more effective.

Fifteen years ago I learned from Andy Blum of The Trium Group how to craft an effective communication. I can honestly say that I use this technique several times each week and it has become 'embrained' in me (note: this word comes from an email exchange between myself and @monster344 Stefan Bucher)

So, what's the secret? First, you have to want to improve your communication skills. Seeing as how everything I have been reading lately speaks to being able to communicate, with peers, employees, partners, clients, the markets - it's a part of 'being social' that we could all become better at. I thought I would share something that has helped me tremendously.

Here is the framework. You can use this on any communication, to any audience. I will give an example or two at the end.

• Context (of the communication): The overall purpose, what you are trying to acheive
• Vision (of the communication): A clear and compelling picture of the future situation you are trying to create through the communication
• Strategy: How you propose to get to your desired future state, specific tactics
• WIFY (What's in it for you, the audience): How the purpose and vision will benefit the person receiving the communication?
• WRFY (What's required from you, the audience): Specifically, what you are asking the person recieving your communication to do, to get to the goal
• Next Steps: The most immediate and specific next steps that will be taken to move toward the goal (including by whom and when)

I guarantee that if you were to outline your next letter, sales brochure, employee newsletter, speech at the Chamber of Commerce, etc and used this technique you will get kudos for your well-prepared content. This technique really performs.

Simple example.

• Context: I am really hungry, I didn't eat breakfast or lunch and it's almost 3pm
• Vision: I am thinking that a Salmon Ceaser Salad at the Harbor would be perfect right now
• Strategy: How about we finish our meeting offsite and strategize while enjoying a salad
• WIFY: You have been really helpful during this session and I want to buy lunch
• WRFY: It's a bit chilly outside, so why don't you grab your coat and tell your team you're out
• Next Steps: Let's go, I'll drive

Simple, to the point and covers everything a communication should, but let me put something a bit more business-like out there as another example:

• Context: I think that we need to have a more 'socially focused' marketing plan for 2010.
• Vision: We ought to be able to attract 5x more qualified propsects if we did this right.
• Strategy: I have 'to-do' lists from several reputable books that I have just finished that would give us a great roadmap.
• WIFY: Sales wants more qualified leads and these 'social' strategies seem to be specifically geared to helping us in this area.
• WRFY: For the next week, we are all going to talk with our existing clients, and current prospects and find out how 'social' they are. What blogs, groups, twitterati, forums they pay attention to, this will help us in our targeting.
• Next Steps: We will have a kickoff meeting this afternoon, followed by a series of workshops all week to layout an action plan to get our marketing much more social.

Notice that this was not a lengthy process, it's simple, to the point and easily communicated. In fact, looking back over it, you could almost tweet it  ;-)

I would love to hear from you about your communication tips and tricks. I can always learn a new one.

Virtual Conferences need Virtual Communities to boost Virtual Connections

On Monday, February 22, I am going to be at the Virtual Edge 2010 Conference with my partner Kymberlee Weil (@alohakymberlee) who is on a panel speaking to the issue of Online Communities and Virtual Events.

We have been in a constant conversation about this topic for the past several weeks as she has been preparing her thoughts. There seems to be a flux in the force this past several months as we have seen a dramatic increase in the number of inquiry's from clients that want to integrate private social networking technology into a virtual event they are producing.

We first encountered this technology five years ago when Ziff Davis was doing a series of virtual events using the iCongo platform. I believe we did seven shows with them that year. The problem we were solving was simple - connect people that would never meet in person. That's the promise of social networking, making connections with people you do not know (yet). At an in-person event it is easier to make these connections, but just as difficult, as the basic premise is the same - you don't know them.

So, how do we learn more about people we don't know before we meet them, either virtually at one of these events, or in the realworld at a conference? I think that social media has given us some fantastic tools that can help us understand people in ways never before possible. Here are a few ideas that you might use in preparation for your next event;

1. See if there is a list of attendees, either on a Facebook group, a LinkedIn group, a private online community (such as introNetworks or one of the others.) Look for people you would like to meet for whatever reason - business development, professional development, potential employee or employer, or simple peer-to-peer discussion. Make a list of the ten people you want to meet.
2. Armed with this list start by Googling them. You will be surprised how much you learn in one search, but you may need to add Company name, City, Title, to narrow down the results, as you still don't know them, so won't know you have the right person ;-)
3. From these results look for links to Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter or their profile in the private social network, sometimes these are customized to include questions that are specific to the event. Read up on these folks, do your homework. Read their last 50 tweets, see what's posted on their wall, read their blog if they have one. This information will either give you valuable insight that will aid in your first meeting, or let you know that maybe this person will not be able to give you what you think you need from them.
4. Engage them before the event. Write them, email them, call them, @reply them to say that you are looking forward to meeting them at the event (either virtually or live) and give them some indication of what you want to talk about. However, here comes the tricky part, as up to now this has been all about you and if you have been paying attention to the 100's of blogs, articles, podcasts and seminars circulating out there, you should know that it is not about you, it is all about them!
5. So your plan now is find a way to serve them, how can you help them in what they are at the event for? What did you learn about them? What might they be interested in that you could point them towards, or introduce them to someone you know. This concerted effort to focus your first encounter on them, and not you, seems counter-intuitive, yet, trust me, this approach may give you the most interesting conversations that lead to amazing new relationships. Seriously.

People go to events to network and learn. We can talk about learning another time, but as far as networking goes, if you have a well thought out strategy before the event, you will get the most out of your time investment. Don't be the person that sifts through a handful of randomly collected business cards from people you bumped into. Be deliberate and be giving.

Note: I am reminded of my good friend David Nour's book, Relationship Economics, as he talks about investing in your relationships. If you have not heard of the book, you should check out his site and frequent postings on 'meeting people' and 'making connections.

An Evening with Chef Roberto Cortez

Chef Roberto Cortez

Each New Years' my wife and I exchange a present that has an importance and significance to each of us and has become a cherished tradition that we look forward to during the week between Christmas and New Years. This year she found the most amazing gift and something that I can share with everyone. It was a three hour private cooking lesson with Chef Roberto Cortez. You may not have heard of him - but you will. He was featured in Santa Barbara Magazine in December '09, which is how Kymberlee heard of him. He is known for his cooking classes in Montecito and private dinners for no more than 20 guests. He is also famous for the celebrities he has been a private Chef for including; Paul Allen, Antonio Banderas, Melanie Griffith and Eddie Murphy.

But he had never done a one-on-one lesson until now. Kymberlee convinced Chef that it would be a great experience for him and me, as I was a chef for many years before getting involved in software in the mid 80's (at Wavefront and now at introNetworks).

It started with a pre-class phone call on New Years day. Roberto called to asked what the focus would be on, as he was creating a lesson plan specifically for me. I said that I really wanted to focus on presentation and plating, as that is that part of the meal that typically eludes me. He said he would bring everything he needed and all I had to have ready was an open mind and willingness to see things in a different way.

Chef Roberto preparing Fontina Cheese w/Black Truffle Sandwich Garnish

The idea for the evening was to think about food differently, and to think more about the plate and the composition of the foods on it. To think of it as a palette for that anything else. One tip that was counter intuitive to me was to not think 'small plates' for the artistic 'small' portions, but larger plates to 'frame' the food.

He produced a series of six dishes and two desserts with ample instruction throughout the entire process. Over three and a half hours later we had consumed some amazing tastes and I had learned a lot of new tricks.

We started with the simple of idea of how to transform a soup into something more magical and interesting. Of course with this class being on plating and presentation, we didn't skimp on taste, as Chef had prepared most of the ingredients in advance, so that we could focus on the last steps of the process. He had prepared an artichoke broth made from roasted fresh artichoke hearts. From this he taught me the first trick, Foaming. He took the warmed broth and added about a tablespoon of unsalted butter, then using an immersion blender (stick blender) he worked on the edge of the broth and quickly whirled up at least a cup of foam on the top of the broth. He stressed that you really want small, tight bubbles, as they will last ten minutes, enough time to plate and get the dish to the table. The garnish for the soup was a simple grilled cheese sandwich made with fresh brioche using Fontina and black truffles (yea, I know, grilled cheese will never be the same).

The trick here is in the presentation. Using a pair of Bodum tea cups, he ladled the broth into them, then topped with the foam and finally the sandwich, cut into a finger sized bite, poised on top of the cups.

Artichoke Soup with Grilled Cheese Sandwich

The effect was perfect. The flavors sublime and the perfect start to our evening.

The next course was a salad, but I think that I will be thinking differently about salads going forward. This was a combination of many elements and gave us a better glimpse into Roberto's philosophy of dining. He suggests that after three bites of most foods we become bored. He calls it pallate fatigue. So, to combat this, he thinks hard about 'how' someone is going to eat the food and suggests that I do the same. Here is the final dish, and I show it now to illustrate this point. He serves the plate vertically positioned in front of the diner with the expectation that the salad will we consumed from the top down towards the diner. The flavors then combine in layers from light and sublime, with an emphasis on changing textures throughout.

Pear and Brie Salad ala Cortez

The first thing to go on the plate was a long drizzle of Maple Syrup, he says that the woodiness of the syrup would provide a solid base. On top of this he positioned a Pear Panna Cotta (small mound at the top of the plate), then a Brie/Basmati Rice Creme shaped in a quenelle form (the idea here is a playful deconstruction of the classic Brie/Pear Salad).

At the top of the plate you see a single line of walnuts, drizzled with walnut oil to further accentuate the woodiness of the salad. A simple vinaigrette was prepared with rice wine vinegar, fresh thyme and olive oil - it has exactly the right consistency as the olive oil was drizzled in drop by drop as Chef rapidly whisked it in. Finally a fine dice of fresh pear was scattered along the line of vinaigrette and syrup with a few sprigs of microgreens at the end (so it could be called a salad).

The idea then is to start at the top and work towards you, experiencing each flavor in combination, the textures blending smoothly together, giving the crunchiness of the greens and nuts a stark contrast to the creaminess of the Brie/Basmati quenelle and the zestiness of the Pear Panna Cotta.


Amazing, and we were only two courses in.

Chef then asked if I liked Risotto. I answered with an enthusiastic 'Yes!' and he then went on to say that he was going to change how I prepared Risotto forever. He started by saying to never use Arborio Rice, but instead to use Carnaroli Rice instead as it had much better quality for absorbing liquid while retaining it's shape and texture. He had par-boiled some earlier in the day and taught me how to finish it off at service.

He warmed the rice and slowly added stock to it, "cooking it like pasta," he said, constantly checking it until it was al dente. He then drained it and returned it to the pan and over the period of five minutes stirred in butter until a smooth emulsion had formed and a creamy texture had emerged. He added about a half cup of grated (domestic) Parmesan to to finish the Risotto. He noted that aged Parmesan tends to be too strong and overpowers the dish.

Next he showed me how to use the foam trick again - this time on a mushroom broth that he had made from Shitake Mushrooms. The broth was heated, a nob of butter added, and the immersion blender proceeded to do it's job, quickly.

He had also prepared a Syrah and fresh Ginger sauce as a garnish as well as small bit of Italian Salume diced into 1/4 inch pieces.

Risotto with Mushroom Foam, Syrah Ginger Sauce and Salume

Notice how the Risotto is covered in the Mushroom foam and encircled with the Syrah Ginger sauce. A straight line to offset the circles is made with the Salume and microgreens are added as a counterpoint and contrasting color.

The dish was amazing and probably the best and lightest Risotto I had ever tasted. Kymberlee does not eat Risotto (usually) as it is heavy and filling, this was the complete opposite.

But we were not done. Now it was time for a lovely bite of Foie Gras.

Here was another chance for him to go deeper on his philisophy of taste and texture. He had made a caramel that was barely sweet, but perfumed with Thai White Cardamom. This caramel was warmed and whisked to silky smoothness at service and placed in the bottom recess of the platter. He then brought out a small square of Fois Gras mousse that he had leftover from a Tasting Menu he prepared in LA on New Years Eve. What a treat. He finely minced some chives and dipped the square into the chives and set it into the swirl of caramel. He then took out a container of 1/2 inch squares of cooked bits of puff pastry. He makes all of his own puff paste (He was also trained as a Pastry Chef). He selected the perfect red bit of microgreen and perched it atop the chives and then put a pinch of sea salt on the top. (I offered him our hand harvested Kauai Sea Salt that we brought back from our recent trip to the Islands for our Anniversary).

Fois Gras with Cardamom Caramel

This may have been one of the most intruguing morsels of the evening.

Next, Chef wanted to teach me a technique called Pan Roasting. The idea is to slowly (on medium heat) cook a piece of protein (in this case a lovely piece of Black Cod) and build of layers of caramalization without overcooking the meat (or fish). Once the protein is 80% to temperature, you add in 2 nobs (tablespoon sized pieces) of butter, 2-3 smashed pieces of garlic (skin-on) and fresh herbs (this evening was thyme from the Santa Barbara Farmers Market that I had on hand).

Tilting the pan towards you, you use a spoon to baste the protein with the melted butter, you do this rapidly, completely covering and finishing the cooking of the fillet. This has the wonderful effect of doing what a few hours in an oven do with thorough basting. It imparts a sublte flavor and thin coating to the meat that is quite amazing.

We also did a Chicken Breast in this manner and I captured the technique using my Flip Camera.



After the meat has cooked, he takes it out of the hot pan and lets it rest on a plate for 5-8 minutes. This allows the meat to complete cooking. He had a great little tool that he used to check the internal temperature of the fish - a cake tester - a thin piece of steel that could be inserted into the cooked fillet, then placed against his lower lip. If cold, it was not done, if warm, it was done perfectly, if hot, it was overdone and he would have started over.

Black Cod with Ponzu Vinagrette

The assembly of the plate was to place the fillet in the recess of a large platter, then he added a bit of Ponzu to the thyme Vinaigrette and put a few spoons around the Black Cod. He then brought out a prepared mixture of Panko bread crumbs that had been roasted off with some Serrano Ham and Pancetta. (Just a hint of the meat in the crumbs). This was then sprinkled on top of the fish, giving it a crust that was exactly the right counter balance to the silkiness of the Cod.

I have to say, I have never tasted a fillet like this in my life. The chicken that he did alongside the Cod (so that I could see how the technique would work on a meat) was perfectly cooked in the same Pan Roasting manner, however with fresh Rosemary instead of Thyme in the butter basting.

This concluded the savory portion of the evening and so far I had learned quite a lot (and no I am not telling all in this blog.)

It was now time for Dessert.

The first dessert was an opportunity for Chef to talk more about his plating philosophy. That is to integrate surprise and uniqueness whenever you can. He brought out a small (four inch oval) Dutch Oven and placed it on a napkin in the center of the large white plate. This was then the palette on which he presented the dessert.

The dessert was compsoed of a simple square of coconut gelee that he had made earlier. A few toasted sesame seeds, a sliver of candied lemon peel and a chiffonade of mint leaves were placed on top of each square and then placed into the Dutch Oven. The cover was attached as the plate set before us. He suggested that this be served to each couple at a dinner party and the surprise of opening the oven to find this two incredible morsels would be a fitting end to a meal.


But, we were not done yet. Chef has a fascination with Chocolate, so much so that he has a chocolate sponsor Amedei and raves about them, as well he should. The final course and lesson for the evening was an amazing composition of sweets and chocolate that was stunning.

Chocolate ala Cortez

There was an amazing amount of complexity in this dish, but it was all about the final composition as our focus. In the upper left you see a quenelle of chocolate creme placed on a bed of chocolate cake powder. Three white dollops of thickened Yogurt are drizzled with Maple syrup and a trail of Malt Powder intertwines with a Glace au Chocolat Noir (dark chocolate sauce like you have never tasted before.).

The colors are enchanting, the yellow of the Maple contrasts with the white and darks and all pop off the plate. This was what I wanted to learn about.

After three and half hours of instruction, two hours of video and quite a few stills we declared victory. I wish that Chef was not leaving for his next adventure, this time to Berlin to work with a group fo designers on a completely new concept in high end dining, as I am sure I would love at least another class and a chance to have him prepare a meal for a group of friends. I hope that he returns to Santa Barbara, as he has quite a few fans here, and now two more.

We are convinced that we will be reading more about Chef Roberto Cortez in the coming months and years and will now be follwoing him on Twitter and reading his Blog.

Thanks Chef.

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.