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.