Monday, February 27, 2006

Social networking 3.0

Just had another thought - what about the 80% of the world that has no technology - social networks that do not rely on any technology at all.

Are we being arrogant to say that bloglines and new media are the only way to propagate social networking?

Are we using labels too frequently?

Are we not missing something?

I think that to succeed, we have to figure out the best of the offline and the online world. Only a true integration of these two worlds will be the ultimate meme.

Tango anyone?

Social Networking 2.0

Just had a thought - read below and then come back here. Here's what I am thinking - what if blogging goes to the level of thinking.

Voice recognition software and wireless make blogging just a conversation with ourselves ... our thinking out loud is our statement to the world.

Neural mapping gets to the point that we don't have to say what we are thinking - we just think it and it gets recorded somewhere to be consumed by other thinkers that are (classified as) thinking the same thing.

It will happen - just a matter of when and what happens to human-kind on the way there. Technology will always here there but will society as we know it survive.

read\matrix.

Social Networking 1.0

lat week I bought this document from Forrester, 'Social Computing: How Networks Erode Institutional Power, And What To Do About It'

Charlene Li states that, 'The goal of the report is to be the foundation piece for a key area of research for Forrester. So if you've had a chance to read the report, I'd love to hear what you think of it.'

Ok - here goes ...

There isn't much new in the paper that hasn't been discussed within the past year. It does sum up some conclusions but again, I think that big agencies (in this case, Forrester) is looking to cookie-cut something to sell to marketers.

Forrester is still trying to make a killing - while social networks are trying to make a difference.

But here, the real problems of design and development of data collection and feedback methods that can solve critical challenges in on-line social behavior, content creation, and retention are not quite there yet.

Sure, web sites CAN collect data from site users and feed that data back to users to create an enhanced and thriving on-line community but sophisticated integration of this data into the content and structure of a web site can't help solve the problems of bad behavior, lack of participation and difficulty of finding content in a growing collection.

Perhaps these solutions work best for contextual communities that contribute to a shared resource; tools must be as specific to the kind of content the community is organized around; the display and collection of community data must be at the core of the underlying site programming and infrastructure to be effective; and community interaction is noticeably improved by the implementation of community tools provided to both contributors and a larger audience.

When the authoring difficulty is low (like in blogs, for example), quality control problems and a general impoverishment of the social environment is a noticeable consequence, although other tools may be used to counteract this effect.

Tools are then needed to promote social responsibility, encourage greater user participation in the community, create better site navigation, filtering and user awareness.

Collecting and utilizing this data facilitates more informed content creation and consumption within a growing contextual knowledge base.

Status and reputation metrics give members a sense of their place in the community, while referential data and associated metrics serve as valuable filtering mechanisms, enabling users to find compelling content quickly and to guide others.

The use of these concepts allow community sites to grow the knowledge base of user-generated content faster, while still providing scalable means to navigate valuable information.

Speaking in context: People don't interact in these defined and explicit ways that social software sites such as Friendster, Tribe, LinkedIn and Orkut try to shoe horn us in to. Quantifying people in a profile cheapens the person and in the end tells a not-so-real story about that person.

Connect millions by digital lines that are clear and precise, and they'll figure out some way to overcome the system's limitations and bring it into genuine sociality.

Something will emerge .... just can't tell what yet.

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Ambient intelligence and the organization

The origins and basis of technology acceptance and resistance in a grassroots organization becomes complex when examined in the light of how technology has been used in the past, how it may be seen as a tool of oppression (stealing jobs, creating monotony, etc.) and how these experiences affect staff emotions and attitudes about new technology in the workplace (collaboration tools, blogs, anonymous feedback).

Beyond the features and characteristics of the technology and the usability issues that are normally babbled about when developing or introducing new technology, a deeper look shows that there were many issues of power, organizational dysfunction, and experience with past technological transitions that affected staffs' vision of themselves and their workplace.

It not the same as it use to be.

Research and just plain experience suggested that change associated with new technology often is carefully planned but with little or no consideration of the ways the change will affect people in their everyday work lives.

IT department, please note - avoid value judgments about the apparently irrational behavior of workers: don't construed their espoused attitudes and behavior as skillful maneuvers to maintain orderly situations and processes in the workplace (read\status quo).

Seemingly irrational negativity about the new corporate blog or the new intranet becomes more understandable when examined in light of the history of IT departments within organizations and specifically at how earlier experiences challenged the professional relationship between IT and the rest of the organization.

Let's face it - we have all worked at organizations where IT-ers are considered to be short thinkers and one of the main barriers to change.

But ladies and gentlemen, all is not a failure

Ambient intelligence appears poised to cause remarkable changes in the way people live. With digital information, the ease of interaction between humans and computers can be greatly increased by broadening the interface media available and allowing for mobile and portable communication free of inhibiting wires and stationary units.

Additionally, new forms of ambient intelligence will allow computers to adapt to their user's preferences. The result of ambient intelligence is ultimately a more empowered user with the benefits of added convenience, time and cost savings, and possibilities for increased safety, security, and entertainment.

As I have said, technology has the potential to significantly impact business and government influence, as well as our own private lives. There are huge gaps ready and waiting to be filled.

User adaptive interfaces, a very important integral part of AmI, are also referred to as 'Intelligent social user interfaces' (ISUIs). These interfaces go beyond the traditional keyboard and mouse to improve human interaction with technology by making it more intuitive, efficient, and secure. They allow the computer to know and sense far more about a person, the situation the person is in, the environment, and related objects than traditional interfaces can.

IBM's Pervasive Computing Lab, MIT's Media Laboratory, Accenture's Technology Labs and Microsoft's Hardware Devices Group are some of the organizations working with AmI/pervasive computing.

Keep an eye on them ...

Wednesday, February 22, 2006

Geospatial web

We assume we can learn almost everything about almost anything at the touch of a PC keyboard. But the digital revolution is hardly over.

Now, the digital realm is exploding into the physical world. Already it means online maps loaded with information about the physical world, and someday soon, that physical world itself will be tagged and teeming with data for the asking:

What is that building? Who is in it?

Where is my dog? Can I send him a signal to come home?

Who is that man? Where is he going? Which social group does he belong to?

The implications are huge, exciting, and scary and the result will be a world alive with information. Hear about the ambitions and implications of the "geospatial web."

Listen to Mike Liebhold, Senior Researcher at the Institute for the Future, Christopher Allen, Founding Partner, Counts Media and Peter Morville, author of "Ambient Findability" discuss this interesting topic

Windows media ¦ Real Audio

Monday, February 20, 2006

Off Topic - Blog Funeral?

I was Gawking and saw some interesting stuff. Read on if it's interesting but honestly, it's really about a bunch of so called Web 2'ers who aren't making enough money for themselves ... I don't think they get it. Thank gawd they don't.

'.. don’t know about you kids, but we’re thoroughly hungover from this blogfuck stuff. Last Monday brought New York mag’s cover story on blog hierarchy.

Thursday had Slate’s Daniel Gross telling us that blogs are so over, due in no small part to that silly New York article.

Late Friday, Trevor Butterworth at the Financial Times chimed in with his aptly titled thinkpiece, “Time for the Last Post

And Sunday brought good ol’ William Safire’s “On Language” column for the Times magazine, in which he explored — what freaking else? — funny words in the blogosphere.

So, have you all had your fill now? Frankly, we’re spent. The media meta-analysis (which reads like an organized masturbation session) is enough to make us prepare our resumes and rediscover pants.

Which was probably the whole idea. Very tricky.'

Blog-Profit in 60 minutes or less

You can do it this way or take the Richard Soderberg challenge ...

+ Web Mobs?

Sure - there are several examples of positive web mobs. Txtmob.com has some good examples. Even big biz is getting into it ... Emily Turrettini over at textually.org reports that

'Nearly nine in ten major UK brands are planning to shift more of their marketing resources to mobile platform over the next two years, according to new research, reports Netimperative.

An independent survey of 50 brand name companies commissioned by mobile technology firm Airwide Solutions, found that by 2008 89% of brands will use text and multimedia messaging to reach their audience.


Two fifths (40%) of brands have already deployed text messaging campaigns, and 18% have deployed multimedia messaging (MMS) campaigns.'

Tuesday, February 14, 2006

China, the Internet and U.S. corporate responsibility?

Preaching to the choir?

The Committee to Protect Journalists was allowed to testify before a U.S. Congressional committee and said that,

'Western Internet companies should use the leverage afforded them by superior technology and market dominance to resist demands made by governments such as China seeking to censor information or identify and persecute those who exercise their right to free expression.'
Gas on the current flame?

Read on

Social Networks

After Smart Mobs and Flash Mobs comes a possible next generation of social networks. Birds of a feather meet on content of common interest. Without knowing each other in advance, they can meet by chance. Web Mobs do not have to leave their home.

They do not give up their anonymity.

Web Mobs meet on Web pages. This isn't new but maybe there is something here ... like meeting in the hallway ... informal power is becoming a power that needs to be dealt with, understood ...

I have read about organized crime using these features as well as this one. And then there are the avatars like FaceCommunicator. Not new but it will be interesting to see where this goes ...

And I have a hypothesis - Capitalism (read: globalization and the equitable sharing of opportunity) is failing the developing world because the people there are excluded from the formal system of property rights, business organization and identity that the modern economy requires. There is no Rosetta stone here to decipher .. we see this happening.

Only one billion people live in countries with fully functional property rights systems. Of the five billion people outside that "global economy," somewhere around 500 million are elites whose families enjoy property rights and have structured or supported the system to exclude the other 4.5 billion people.

And it's that 4.5 billion people who, with no chance for ever improving their lot, become the audience for extremist messages, whether from Osama bin Laden or the Shining Path.

Think about this: If 4.5 billion people do not have a legal address, title to their home, or the ability to set up a company, how can development spending result in progress?

Clearly, free trade will only serve the interests of those 500 million elites and increase inequality.

Macroeconomic restructuring is meaningless. This is where internet tools are filling the gap.

Hernando de Soto understands this but then again - so did Sheik Ahmed Yassin.

Closing the divide?

It would seem that in 2006 technology was everywhere, that we all spent our days checking emails, sms, chatting and talking on cell phones, but is it so?

Is it a privilege for those who have access to technology? Are kids around the world with lesser access to internet, cellular phones and other communication, also getting less opportunities? let them talk ...

Sandy from Hong Kong - 'In my eyes, the city is well equipped with information technology. Our lives can't be separated from it. No matter where we are, especially in school, computers become very important to our lives. Computer is a necessity; so the government put in a lot of resources to develop our skills in using it.'

Makda from Addis Ababa, Ethiopia - 'Here in Addis, Internet cafes are very common, but not many people can afford to use them for a long time. They usually use it only to cheek their emails, not to do long searches. Plus the connection is usually slow and irritating, many youths are really interested in web stuff, but when I give it another thought the majority don't have much knowledge about it. Which is really depressing, there is a lot to learn from it and from the people you meet from the Internet.'

Eddy from New Delhi, India - 'My city is known more for its architecture and history than its foray into technology. But is the situation changing? Yes, it is. Today, New Delhi, like the other metros of India, is being revolutionized to be a technological hub. Cyber cafes, the latest mobile phone models, and all kinds of gizmos - all these at unbelievably low prices when compared to the west - are to be easily found. The situation has improved vastly over the last decade. Technology is everywhere - Even the Internet has technologically improved, with more numbers of people using cable, instead of Internet through a telephone connection. We still can't compare New Delhi and New York but what we can say is that we are catching up fast.'

Erwin from Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania - 'In Dar Es Salaam, the thing that youth don't have is money. Most of our youth don't have money to go to the Internet because it's expensive. Another thing is we have few information centers in rural areas so youth lack information because there are few libraries, few Internet cafes and also in Dar Es Salaam there is poor technology. Many youth don't even know how to use computers and we have network problems.'

In 2006, the number of Internet users in developing countries will cross the 600 million mark, surpassing industrial nations for the first time. By some estimates, more than 75 percent of the world’s population now lives within range of a mobile network.

Yet the long-heralded promise of balancing the digital divide remains out of reach for most of the developing world. For the information poor, economic and social gaps are in fact widening both within and between countries.

Radio is the Internet of Africa

I have been talking with several people lately that ask, 'What about the digital divide - What about Africa and the developing nations?' Well .. There is allot going on and allot wrong with what's going on.

Aiming to give poor communities access to the benefits of information technology, the United Nations Development Program (UNDP) announced plans to support an innovative project which aims to put cheap and energy-efficient laptop computers in the hands of the world's most disadvantaged students.

The $100 laptop project (check the URL), is 'designed' to give children in developing countries access to the knowledge and educational tools that could lift them out of poverty. What?

A community reporter who addressed the WSIS meetings reminded the audience that in the rural areas and small towns that constitute the Third World, there are other effective forms of communication technologies besides the Internet.

The developing nations are a world far removed from the high-level discussions at Tunis, where the Internet has sometimes been held up as a magic bullet to meet the world's communication and information needs. For poor countries trying to juggle a host of development priorities with scarce resources, the Internet often seems like a solution of the elite.

Listen up - The 400,000 citizens of Luxembourg have more bandwidth than the 800 million people in all of Africa. Think about it. Think about how long it will take and the challenges (read: telecom monopolies and ministerial corruption)

He who wants to put his money where his mouth is should look in a new direction.

Simplify. Adapt. Work with what is there.

Community radio is Africas Internet. It reaches the most important audience -- the illiterate, the migrants and hungry. Health information like where medical teams are or HIV/AIDS information, security information, education or simply how to grow food. That's the primary way to reach Africa.

Governments still fear the empowerment that radio can offer to groups who previously had no voice but that's the hook. Community radio is about empowerment! This is where developmental dollars can add a big impact.

Community radio primarily serves the poor so private sector financing is rare. Advertisers don't target their listeners and the local radio staff don't get paid.

Most rural radios get information from government sources and NGOs,but they don't know how to combine what the community is saying with the official information.

How one turn a fact sheet into a radio script? Interesting challenge but well worth it. Africa is so steeped in oral culture that the only limit is peoples' creativity. And there is plenty of that.

Radio fills an important role in bridging the gap between the traditional pastoral and the digital economy. Radio is part of both worlds and unless it is shared by both, it simply talks to itself.

Friday, February 10, 2006

Creative Mentoring?

Googled 'mentoring' and I got 160.000.000 results.

Where are the tech mentors, blogging mentors, IA mentors, design mentors. Are there only mentors in the traditional businesses? I had a mentor at Novartis, where I use to work but it was different - management mentoring is used to make you conform or weed you out.

We have an intern in here - Yanan, Lu- from China - first time out of the country and what a rush of creative perspectives she has. She is starting to teaching ME some new views!

I have leaned allot about (and dispelled allot of my self-induced myths) about what's it like to be a twenty-something in China. Well, allot like the twenty-somethings in allot of places but the perspective coupled with a bit of cultural originality - it's extremely interesting.

Is there such an person as a 'creative mentor'? I think I found one.

Comments -- problems

OK - comments should be fixed ... drop 'em and drop 'em hard! Let me know if CoComment works on this pop-up ... if not, I'll change them.

PS - that's DD on the side bar pics!

Wednesday, February 08, 2006

txt MOB 2

Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen just said on CNN interview, 'The attacks are being organised with sms and blogs. We're fighting a war in cyberstace.'

Just thinking - Social Usability

Alexandra is hot on usability. Her friend states that 'the web designer is dead. long live the inter/action designers!'

OK - I get that.

There must be something after movement to finally accept usability as a norm - social usability? - social architecture? No - that's similar to about American university reform in the 1960's.

Here's the issue as an academic would look at it:

"Does the internet empower communities or perpetuate the status quo? Can universal internet access resolve education, employment, and other social gaps? Findings show internet connectedness may have only a minimal impact on community capacity due to constraints such as family transience, difficult domestic circumstances, inadequate project resourcing, and poor literacy. Internet ubiquity may not be a strategically useful social objective unless contextual limitations are recognised and addressed."

Huh?

Again, the discussions are about the internet and not the impacts.

Social usability - how do we measure it? what are the KPIs? What is the EVA? There is certainly a positive net present value for social awareness but is it a negative or positive NPV for social design.

Design has the perception that it requires something tangible - a website - a product - a space.

Social usability can be defined on a broader plane - the unforeseen social acceptance of all three plus the memes that are generated.

Self-fashioned pundits have used the term social interfaces over and over and over again - all as a foil to sell the client something. Cookie-cut and sold again.

I think that society is getting more unique that standardized. It is getting diversified instead of consolidated.

There's something here - deeper - not yet describable - something like the internet was 20 years ago ...

Still thinking ...

Where is the political will to change?

"Non-governmental organizations, especially those operating outside of the industrialized world, are rarely in a position to have a sophisticated technology infrastructure. Unless the NGOs in question focus on information technology, chances are the computers and networks they use combine donated hardware, a mix of off-the-shelf commercial software (which may or may not be legally acquired), and far too little time deal with technology hassles"

Tipped off to read the WorldChanging blog and what Jamais Cascio has to say about 'NGO in a Box' and I must say that this is good BUT...

I have met recently several people that are ready to take the NGO world further. At the WSIS meetings held in Geneva and Tunis, I was quite amazed at the passion for change but in the act, it will be the will of top management overcome the barrier to change. My recent experience working at the UN allows me to state the following observations:
  • there is certainly a void within the NGO/International organizations to successfully promote communication, channel convergence and knowledge sharing
  • people are being recruited who have skills, ideas and methods but do not have the authority or political backing \read: powerless to affect change
  • senior management has expressed their interest in 'moving forward' using new world tactics to reach their constituencies
The big questions are:

  • do the senior managers within the NGO/International Organisation have the will to lead change within their organisations;
  • do they understanding that when we talk about technology, we are not talking about IT departments;
  • do they understand that Communications is a high priority within the framework of planning, priority setting, up-stream, down-stream and horizontal information flow? \read: relationship building

Big questions. Answers are out there. But the answer is not technology - it's the will to change.

... nod to Euan Semple for the tip ...

txt MOB

Whoever figured that mobile phone / text-messages were always a "good thing" for 21st century political organizing might consider this...

According to an article in the New Zealand Herald,Syrian protesters who burned and looted the Danish and Norwegian embassies in Damascus were encouraged to organise by the Syrian authorities, and received text messages from Islamic study centres urging them to gather.
"The sheikhs told us to send five text messages to every true Muslim we knew urging them to participate," said a student from the Abu Nour Islamic Institute in Damascus. SMS is also being used as calls for boycotting Danish Products

This should come as no surprise. The networking powers we produced have created a situation that requires a great deal of attention. As the networks create or expose voids in the systems of institutionalization, it is up to us to determine how, positively, the social networking of the smartmob or flash mob is to be used.

borrowed from PersonalDemocracyForum

Tuesday, February 07, 2006

2006 predictions

10. The resurgence of the UI designer. With so many tools and services shifting to a DIY delivery model, the status of the UI ("user interface") designer in the tech-business ecosystem naturally will rise. I met some lately and they impress me.

9. Fusion of community/customer bipolarity . Expect a new form of social measurements or analytics to inspire creative community creation. A community of like-minded users will go a long way toward filling the void ... social impact is the new killer app!

8. Alphas emerge. I saw it on the week-end in the mountains with some very inspirational people but in its most Darwinian expression, the rewards will come to creative minds who have been early to embrace the trend. That's good news for the alpha workers -- the ones who always lead, because it's in their nature to do so -- not so good news for others (you KNOW who you are)

7. Experts emerge so the alphas won't get ALL the love. In this new world of blogging and personal journalism, subject-matter experts have an advantage.

6. Welcome to the new breed of entrepreneur. Just as eBay created new jobs for the e-comm savvy, new solutions will inspire alphas and experts to go it alone - into business for themselves. And they won't chase VC funding the old school way - the barriers to entry will be far lower. I'm not sure where this ethically compares to the 'making a killing' of the dot.com era but its smarter, isn't it?

5. New social maladies. As I noted above, this is a very bright light for societies. In 2006, there will be public discussions on many areas of life where either government or business has abandoned the individual. Citizenship vs. consumerism?

4. New personal maladies. Think: Attention Deficit Disorder meets Chronic Fatigue Syndrome -these will get renewed attention in the media.

3. I talk allot about this one ... Organizations and government will finally compete . As the debate on "abandonment" ensues and the feeling of helplessness increases, a number of organizations - 4profit and nonprofits - will compete with government for the same space.

2. Opportunity for the traditional actors. The battle begins to bubble and empowerment will begin on the outer edge of the organization: employees on the front lines vs. customers on the check-out line.

1. The Queen will emerge. Yes, someone will emerge as the voice of this new era, and she (I'm guessing it's a she - perhaps Anina for candidate?) will have both the business sense and the humanity to speak to the lighter and darker sides of the issues. She may or may not have ADD, and she may or may not challenge the the ol' boys, but we're betting that she's a champion of spirit, charm and collaboration. And she's a dish to boot!

Blogging starts a boomerang effect for organizational change

Internal executive blogging is internal only, obviously. But external executive blogs have major internal effects too. The E-mediator blog talks about the boomerang effect of corporate executive blogging, and it's a discussion worth thinking about for those organisations about to start blogging.

"...external executive blogging is an efficient management change mechanism useful to co-orient organisational members towards new strategic objectives. The feedback loop will mobilize an external force to influence employee sense making which has a different effect on their internalization of the messages from the top. External audiences and media influence provides a powerful force in terms of employee acceptance and strategy elaboration. As they are secondary sources they often twist the change narrative away from corporate language towards more comprehensible sub cultural languages that resonate with employee lifeworlds."

comments welcome

just opened them up ....

Thanks for the Lift

Just reading some ofthe comments about my LIFT06 presentation. Just want to say thanks to Laurent for the invite but mostly to the commentors out there who appreciated the show and were kind enuf to say so. Talked withsome - others not - but I'm sure we'll 'meet' again.
Cheers!

Tofflers counter argument ...

Just thinking ... the introduction of new technology will displace the hierarchies established by old technology and disperse power democratically to majority of the populace. Said something like this below.

In the years to come, such a revolution will greatly impact every aspect of human life in the planet. Alvin Toffler called this technological revolution is called the 'third wave' and has discerned its characteristics in his book 'Powershift' as follows:

"The electronic infrastructure of advanced economies will have six distinct features, some of which may have already been foreshadowed. These half-dozen keys to the future are: interactivity, mobility, convertibility, connectivity, ubiquity, and globalization.

When combined, these six principles point to a total transformation, not merely in the way we send messages to one another, but in the way we think, how we see ourselves in the world, and therefore, where we stand in relationship to our various governments.

Put together, they will make it impossible for governments--or their revolutionary opponents--to manage ideas, imagery, data, information, or knowledge as they once did."

Rest my case.

Political nudging?

Beyond the increased flow of goods, economists acknowledge that globalization has corresponded to a profound shift in the role that knowledge creation and innovation play introvert productivity and global economic growth, a phenomenon referred to as the knowledge economy.

Knowledge - unlike commodities - can be used multiple times and by more than person withouthout losing value, and it has marginal distribution costs. These facts open the possibility of an economic production factor with compounding rather than diminishing return.

The productiontion, distribution, and use of new knowledge and technological innovations has been a major contributors to increased productivity, the upgrade of physical capital, and the creation of new, high-value-added jobs.

Increases in human and technological capabilities are, in turn, major sources of new knowledge and innovation which then feed economic growth. From this perspective, technological innovation and new knowledge are both the engine and the product of economic growth.

But developments that are supported within an information society set broader social changes resulting from the convergence of technology and communication technologies, their assimilation throughout society and their use for communication, collaboration, and the sharing of knowledge.

As laptops wirelessly connected to the Internet, PDAs, low costvideo cameras and cell phones become more accessible and embedded in society, they offer the potential to restructure organizations, promote collaboration, increase democratic participation, improve the transparency and responsiveness of governmental agencies (as well as communities ..) to make education and health care more widely available, foster cultural creativity and enhance the social integration of individuals with different abilities and groups of different cultural backgrounds. Cartoons in Denmark? Hmmmm

But without our help ... national policy makers struggle (or are reluctant) to create conditions that support these developments in their countries and to craft policies and programs that cope with them and harness their effects to support economic growth and the public good.

Economic growth? Singapore.
Social development? Finland.

Policy leadership will be the key to any successfully development strategy particularly if these efforts are to contribute to economic and social transformation. Has to be. We can't do it all.

Check this out - successful development in Finland was guided by a clear vision of how the availability of new technologies could increase economic productivity, improve the quality of life and enrich the culture.

This vision was founded on broad-based consensus among public and private stakeholders (you and I) and as a result, it coordinated distributed efforts across sectors to accomplished shared goals.

Investment of time and effort to create such a vision at the national or ministerial level will have huge operational paybacks.

Do they need a push? Any volenteers from the blog-o-sphere? Call me ....

Monday, February 06, 2006

Communication Event in Geneva

Just saw a note over at a blog by Richard Gaunt in London and Glenn O’Neil

The
International University in Geneva (where I teach) and the Geneva Women in International Trade are organising a forum for Communication & Marketing Professionals: “Managing Communication Programs at a Global Level: Challenges and Issues”. This event is taking place in Geneva on 16 February at 6 p.m. (Mövenpick Hotel, ICC, Rte de Bois 20, 1215 Geneva)

more info here

Sunday, February 05, 2006

Back with a Bite

What can I say? Although others have said this (allot) this week-end, I have to repeat it. It's been an interesting start of the year - but let's start now. Just did LIFT06 and it was a good time. Listen to what I had to say. I think that Laurent and his team has done a great job of making some people pay to get into the room and making them listen to some other people that he invited to talk in the room.

I've been hibernating lately but I'm happy I got out for this one.

Finally met Robert Scoble in Geneva (late - here's the pics at Stephanie's site) and on the week-end (again, thx to Pierre for the use of the chalet). I learned lots this week-end. Chats with all of the people including Thomas Madsen-Mygdal and Euan Semple sorta opened my mind .... and options.

ps ... changing over to wordpress, I think ...