Inspiration April - Installment #3: Ignite

My third installment of Inspiration April was the inaugural Ignite in Vancouver. Ignite is similar to Pecha Kucha, except only 15 seconds per slide versus PK's 20 seconds.

On to my experience:

Most of what I produce at work is 9/10th experiment, so I appreciate the kinks and bumps in a first time event. For an even better experience next time, I'd suggest brief introductions for each speaker to help them feel welcome and set the context for us. And if possible, it would be great to only use the Ignite logo slide once at the start of the night, instead of the required margin/footer throughout each presenters' slide deck. (I can't help it - it's the Presentation Zenista in me.)

And my light bulbs:

1. Loved the reference to Ignite being like corporate karaoke. Definitely going to host a get-together with that moniker.

2. From @alywise and @nataliesisson, "governed by the rule of the spirit". Applicable not just in social media but also in communities of professionals. I also loved the "have fun and be bold" message at the end. Reminded me of this Goethe quote: "What you can do, or dream you can do, begin it! Boldness has genius, power and magic in it."

3. From the Ford Mustang launch (way back in the day), they held ''smile contests'' of people sitting in the display Mustang showing off their pearly whites. I think there's a way to engage customers in that sort of thing (maybe invite customers who wrote a kudo story in for a picture, then share the pictures with employees). From this Wharton article, putting a face to a name can motivate employees.

4. Also sparked from the Ford Mustang talk, and related to gnoming, it would be neat to create a movement where your company's had it's picture taken when employees went on vacation/conferences etc. Imagine an online gallery of photos from all over the world with said cultural artifact and smiling employees! And not just for the staff intranet - open it up to customers and look out you have a lovemark movement started.

5. From Patty K's talk (the public speaker who went to a conference in her pyjamas), connecting Maslow's need of belonging back to our caveman survival days. If we didn't fit in we'd be tossed out of the cave as tiger-snacks. Interesting tension between that and the linchpin era.

6. From @brucenix, who talked about disruption and adoption in the movie industry, with a services page that could do double duty as non-bums-in-seats-user-enabled-learning within organizations. His very first item is "keyword research and tracking" - I'd love to chat with the learning department monitoring their staff intranet's search history to look for opportunities. Or maybe I'm behind the times? Imagine... "so far this week there have been 75 searches for X; let's create a main link on the homepage and also suggest resources Y, Z and G that would also be useful". It's like internal Google Adwords, but linked to helpful resources for employee productivity. Wowza!

7. From Garrett Wasny, who nudged me to better utilize Google Alerts.

8. From Eric Smith, who shared his four sales secrets. How about hosting a sales jam, where sales folks from your company are invited to give a 5 minute talk on their top sales tips? Webinar-it, podcast-em or do it the old fashioned way, but what a great way for employees to share their tips and techniques peer-to-peer.

9. From @shanegibson, who told the story about Blenz' CEO and the Twitter-lengths he goes to for a wow customer experience. I think there are a ton of local business heroes passionate about customer service, and I'd love to create an internal event with them on the speaker line-up. We could get some great cross-pollination happening between industries. (Bonus tip - I hadn't heard of backtweets - a must have for anyone monitoring their brand on Twitter.)

10. Special thanks to @davemacdonald and @finstoryteller to the great conversation throughout the evening (and book recommendations).

I'll do my best to attend the next Ignite, slated for the end of June.

Inspiration April - Installment #2: Pecha Kucha

My second event in "Inspiration April" was Pecha Kucha Vancouver, Volume 10. This was my third Pecha Kucha night and I was not disappointed. Never heard of Pecha Kucha? Click here for more info.

Observations about my experience:

1. I'm a compulsive note-taker when it comes to things like this. Could I just sit and enjoy the show like everyone else? Noooooo. There I was, Moleskine and pen out, scribbling by the light of my BlackBerry. Couldn't see well enough to mind map, which meant sketchy notes (pun intended).

2. I love how unexpected Pecha Kucha is; it really is like a box of chocolates. What you can count on is inspiration and relevant, cross-pollination-worthy-tid-bits.

3. I don't spell very well when live Tweeting during fast moving presentations.

4. I need to do a few more Twitter searches before the event. I thought I had the right hashtag and hoped to connect with Twitter folks who were there. In hindsight I should have had a broader search running to see who else was there that I might have known, like the cool @coryripley.

And my learnings:

I captured my key take-aways from the presentations in this mind map (zoom in to see). You'll see light bulbs for ideas and quotes I'll cross-pollinate in my work and my reflections in bold italics. Warning to the linear folks out there - it's a big map!

I had some links embedded in the map but they don't appear in the PDF. Here they are:

http://www.theforgotten.ca/

Project note

Video of Steph's presentation

Next up in "Inspiration April" is IgniteBC. Look forward to sharing my thoughts from that event.

Inspiration April - Installment #1: F5 Expo

I've coined the fourth month of 2010 "Inspiration April" as I'll be attending a pile of events from which I plan to glean gems and insights. It's my cross-pollination in action.

Today was the first installment - I attended the F5 Expo. Here's a quick summary of my experience and insights:

Experience first...

1. Wearing jeans was the best decision ever. Spent a good chunk of the day on the floor because of lack of seating.

2. I mind mapped on my laptop instead of on paper. I was able to keep up to the speakers and love that my notes are ready to be shared with my colleagues. I added light bulb icons to my key insights which helps me quickly filter when I'm looking over them (e.g. for this blog post).

3. I kept trying to connect to the wifi that didn't exist (really? at a conference about social media etc?) and ended up draining my battery. Next time I'll kill the wireless or use it more sparingly so I don't end up forlornly plugged in along a random hallway.

4. Loved the suggested questions for when we're meeting people during the day (ask what social media sites they're on, share your Twitter handle). Very useful tip for other events to break people from the same-old "what do you do" intro.

On to the insights...

1. Tod Maffin was incredible. This is the second time I've seen him speak and he outdid himself with a very raw and thought-provoking keynote. My biggest take-away was when Tod asked the question how we, as managers, can reverse the damage our multi-tasking demanding world is inflicting on employees. He meant it literally, pointing to brain damage caused by multitasking, which I must investigate further. One solution was to create a culture where it is okay to ask for help. It's not something typically encouraged at work and it was sobering to think of the unintended negative consequence on culture when managers don't. Another great solution is to be crazy. He showed this Apple commercial as inspiration.

2. At the Social Media and Metrics panel, I liked the POST acronym used in approaching social strategy (reminds me of learning-related projects). Here's more info on POST from Forrester.

3. I session-hopped over to Cloud Computing where I heard about something called the Patriot Act and how it affects what we can legally do 'in the cloud' here in BC. There is much talk in the learning world about cloud-based LMS' but this was the first time I had heard about any kind of legislation that might restrict options. More research necessary here.

4. One neat idea from the Video Marketing panel was a choose-your-own-adventure style video. We do this with e-learning already, but typically with graphics/text scenarios. I think this would translate really well to engaging employees in the customer experience. The other tidbit here was that we're moving away from the lone viewer at their computer to more of a 'living room' experience. I think we need to be mindful of that dynamic inside organizations with future media productions.

5. The final keynote of the day was Malcolm Gladwell, who talked about how the internet beautifully takes advantage of the strength of weak ties, but how it lacks the necessary ingredients for true revolutions: strong ties and trust. It reminded me of what many folks, such as Chris Brogran, have been talking about. How we can start the connection online, but to really make it matter we have to connect in person. Then there was the recent video from Craig Newmark who is pondering the online trust problem. I also loved how Malcolm said that we can't have both anonymity and trust, as while anonymity allows freedom of expression, it doesn't facilitate freedom of action. I think that carries over into organizations. It's hard to take action from anonymous information, but when you can get the right people face to face you have the opportunity to start working towards a new direction. Like this example from the brilliant folks at Anecdote.

This wraps my first installment of Inspiration April. Thank you to the people I met at #f5expo who added to my experience!