Here is the monthly listing of my Fast Forward blog posts. I find it helps me with an archive and hopefully is also useful to you. There is a separate category for these summaries in my right side column on…

Peter Hambling, CIO of Lloyd’s of London, the venerable insurer, has made Facebook a priority for customer communications that required board approval. But more on that later. First, some background . . .

It's the nature of things. Some people look for ways to do things better — and that includes your employees. Some of your employees are questing for a better way to get things done. If there's a better way out there, they'll find it. That's a good thing because the thing they're trying to do better is their job. Serve your customers. Solve your business problems. Improve your operations.

It's always been true: Incremental innovation and process improvements have always come from those closest to the problem. It's the basis of kaizen, a system where employees continually improve manufacturing processes. It's also a founding principle of Six Sigma — tap employees' relentless, incremental quality improvements.

The same is true today in the way employees are harnessing consumer technologies — social, mobile, video, and cloud. They are improving how they do their jobs and solving your customer and business problems. And it's not just a few employees. In fact, it's a critical mass of employees. In a survey of more than 4,000 US information workers, we found that 37% are using do-it-yourself technologies without IT’s permission. LinkedIn, Google Docs, Smartsheet.com, Facebook, iPads, YouTube, Dropbox, Flipboard — the list is endless and growing. Many of these scenarios are complete do-it-yourself projects. Here are four small examples:

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A new study by Nora Ganim Barnes and Eric Mattson, Social Media and College Admissions: Higher-Ed Beats
Business in Adoption of New Tools for Third Year, suggests that US
colleges are studying the "rules of engagement" in the
online world in order to increase their effectiveness at recruiting prospective
students.  This is the third year
of their data collecting on this topic.

The longitudinal analysis shows that colleges
and universities continue to embrace social media as their adoption of blogging
again outpaces both the Fortune 500 (22% have a corporate blog) and the
fast-growing Inc. 500 (42% have a corporate blog). The latest research shows
51% of colleges and universities have an admissions blog for their school. It
is not limited to blogging. My alma mater, Tufts, has prospective students send
them YouTube videos.

There have been many reports of business looking
through social media to screen out prospective employees.  They should look to schools to learn of
more positive ways to use social media for recruiting.  Colleges are also looking at social
media for screening purposes. There was an increase in social media use for
screening in 2009 while a decrease in the use of search engines for the same
purpose.

Social networking, the
social media that was most familiar to college admissions officers in 2007 and
2008 is still the most familiar. Familiarity with social networking has jumped
from 55% reporting they were very familiar with it in 2007, to 63% in 2008 and
now to 83%. Fifty-five percent of admissions officers report they are very
familiar with Twitter.

This familiarity extends to
usage as 95% of college admissions offices used at least one form of social media
in 2009. Social networking is the most common form with 87% of admissions
departments using it. Fifty-nine percent have a school Twitter account and, as
noted above, 51% have a blog. In addition, more admissions departments feel
that social media is “very important” to their future strategy than Inc. 500
businesses (50% compared to 43%). Good for them.

The colleges are also
looking at social media to see what is being said about them. Fifty-three
percent in 2007 and 54% in 2008 report they monitored the Internet for buzz,
posts, conversations and news about their institution. The latest research
shows an increase of close to 20% with 73% of schools now monitoring their
school name. I wonder how that compares with business.

Barnes and Matteson at the University of
Massachusetts Dartmouth Center for Marketing Research have conducted a number
of studies on social media.  See
for example, Social Media in
the Inc. 500: 2007 – 2009. This one is another useful
addition to their work. 

 Here is the third part of my
notes from the TEDxBoston that occurred a few days ago. I have heard a lot
about TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) but have not attended before so I
was pleased to see how it worked. Here are my notes from the third group of
sessions. These
are live notes, only slightly edited, so please excuse typos, etc. After lunch
Muhan came back with two other musicians to perform another moving piece.

Next, Bill Staby covered how
to harvest ocean waves for usable energy. Their initial application is using
ocean waves to take the salt out of ocean water to produce usable drinking
water.  There is a lot of wave
energy available and globally 50% of the population lives within 100 miles of
the shore. Ocean waves are also consistent and predictable. Wind energy creates
waves but waves continue after the wind stops. Waves are stored wind energy and
available in many locations. However, the cost is still high compared to other
forms of natural renewable energy such as wind.  There are also a lot of regulations to deal with as the ocean
is not owned by anyone.  The wave
energy converters cannot be seen from the shore, unlike the issues with wind. They
are doing pilot programs in South Africa.

Sapir Ng showed how his
group is working to convert an abandoned subway tunnel in Boston into a cultural
center and many other things. Susan Rodgerson discussed how she has involved
kids in large-scale art efforts through Artists for Humanity.  Her group employs high school students
who come to their center and make art for businesses. They pay the kids and
also hope to generate over 40% of their operating budget through this work.

Scott Kirsner, discussed how
we need a cultural revolution.  He
began with the example of the art deco district in Miami Beach. I have been
there several times and appreciate this effort. Scott next talked about how
many New England college students leave the area after school or after they
become successful. He wants to connect students with startups who stay here. He
listed many successful examples of firms that stayed and grew, including the
most successful IPO of 2009.

Scott listed several groups
that support this concept of linking students with startups in the Boston area.
One group he started links students with innovative companies. It is called
Innovation Open Houses. Scott wants other companies to participate. He listed
efforts at a wiki – neinnovation.com/students – to compile a list of
participating companies. The site says, “We have a pretty simple job description here in New England: attract the
smartest young people from around the world, and create opportunities for them
to solve important problems and build big businesses here. It's just what we
do.”

Connor White-Sullivan now provided
a session on how the revolution will not be televised. Connor is a recent collage
graduate from UMass Amherst. He conveyed how watching a TED session showed him
how the Web has changed everything. So he wants to help use the Web for good. He
showed a graphic that showed the separation of political values in the US into
extremes. The political middle is very lonely place now. Connor, working with
others, built a group to support greater interaction between people and the
government and allow both sides of an issue hear each other. This site is
called localocracy.org.

Frank Reynolds discussed the
changing face of neuroscience. Frank taught himself how to walk after he was
paralyzed when he realized there were no medical answers.  The doctors told him there was no
recovery from his condition. So he studied neuroscience and spinal cord
injuries. He got himself to walking again through his own research. Now he
wants to provide this for others. 
Frank discovered there were silos of information in his area. Scar
tissue often covers over healthy tissue. With the right work, this healthy tissue
can be recovered and people can recover. 
They have been successful with monkeys and now hope to get FDA approval
to work with humans.

As I wrote at the end of my
part two notes, this TEDxBoston session provided access to a diverse set of
themes, some are not directly related to the major themes of this blog but I
wanted to share with you how a TEDx session flows.  The common theme is thinking outside the normal and creating
innovation. I felt that the message across most of the sessions was that innovation
becomes effective when it involves innovative way people are engaged with new
ideas and technology. I think this is very related to this blog.  I was pleased to attend and will be
looking at the TED site for more. 

   Here is the second part of
my notes from the TEDxBoston that occurred yesterday. I have heard a lot about
TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) but have not attended before so I was
pleased to see how it worked. Here are my notes from the second group of
sessions. These
are live notes, only slightly edited, so please excuse typos, etc.

Cesar Hidalgo from MIT began
this segment by covering global economic development. He said that one of the
issues is that diversity is not spread evenly. He introduced several principles
to address global economic development. First how many capabilities does a
country possess, rather than resources. He used legos to represent capabilities
in his visuals.

Here is more on Cesar’s lego
theory of development thanks to Eric Andersen. Typically, GDP is seen as a function of
just a few inputs (i.e. different types of putty using Cesar’s imagery).
These are capital, labor, and some kind of technology input. The types of
labor and the types of capital are more or less interchangeable (just as putty
is). Of course, economists know this is a massive simplification of the world,
but it is useful in helping describe an extremely complex reality.

Cesar
proposes a new approach that will help take into account a bit more of the
complexity that's out there in the world. He calls it the "lego"
theory of development. If we look at those countries that are wealthy, we see
that they produce products that require many different types of inputs or legos.
Further, wealthy countries don't specialize in one or two products (in
contradiction to a simplistic interpretation of comparative
advantage) they export many different types of goods. If a product is very complex, it can be best produced
by the few countries that have all the requirements.  You need to match capabilities with product requirements for
growth. How do you accumulate capabilities?

Another principle is
having the capabilities centralized. The industrialized countries have a great
concentration of capabilities in a centralized manner.  He showed how this increased
concentration of capabilities occurred in Malaysia as the economy grew. Cesar
feels that diversity of capabilities predicts growth more than traditional
inputs. This would argue for increasing the diversity of capabilities through
effective education.

Felice Frankel, a
photographer, provided a session titled more than pretty pictures. Felice
covered three main ideas. She said the process of making a visual
representation clarifies an idea. This process requires decisions that
encourage reflection. Second, the process of making a representation should be
collaborative. Third, the process of making a representation teaches. This
third principle is her real passion. I certainly agree with her points and there
has been a lot of research on this concept.  Muhan Zhang next very movingly performed a Mongolian
instrument.

John Werner and MacCalvin Romain
covered learning out of the box. MacCalvin told us how his creativity was
criticized in elementary school. However, he was shown that his interests could
turn into a career through Citizen’s Schools. John discussed how US education
is following behind the rest of the world.  He discovered that schools tried to keep the community
outside of the schools. Fifteen years ago he and others started Citizen Schools
to help expand the resources that students are exposed to.  John gave examples of bringing business
teams into the schools to create more learning opportunities.  He said there is a lot of potential for
people to help. Eight million people do jury duty each year, What if there was
education duty?  If we just two
percent of the scientists helped we would double the amount of science teachers
available to our kids. Good ideas.

Bill Walczak shared more
good ideas on education. His group started a charter school in a community
health center in Dorchester. They involve students in the health care
professions there. He said that Boston ninth grade students who do not go to
one of the three prestige Boston public high schools have a 7% chance to
graduate from high school. At the school in the health center they have
achieved an over 70% success rate through the involvement in the community
health center operations. This is a great model for integrating high school
with the community and a growing professional field. Now it was time for lunch.
More to follow in the next post.

This TEDxBoston session
provided access to a diverse set of themes, some are not directly related to
the major themes of this blog but I wanted to share with you how a TEDx session
flows.  The common theme is
thinking outside the normal and creating innovation. I felt that the message
across most of the sessions was that innovation becomes effective when it
involves innovative way people are engaged with new ideas and technology. I
think this is very related to this blog. 
I was pleased to attend and will be looking at the TED site for more. 

Identifying 10 online professionals that are making a difference in the industry was as fun an exercise this time around as when we first did it in 2009. Twitter remains a truly diverse medium with people using it to communicate on a wide variety of topics; mostly useful, but at times less relevant in a business context.

I have myself previously complained about noise on Twitter and proposed a simple quantity-rule to get around it.

Just like last year, the list includes some familiar faces as well some names new to Twitter and perhaps new to you as well. For each of them I have picked a selected tweet to give you a taste of their style. Enjoy!

1. @BGleba: Beth Gleba is currently Employee Internet Portal Project Leader at IKEA based in the Greater Philadelphia Area. She’s been with IKEA since 2001 and has developed their award-winning Intranet by focusing on key employee roles and required information needs.
   

   I like it! “We let (internal com) our blog comments be anonymous, this allowed comments to soar!” #10CCM Nicole Foster.

2. @bjfogg: BJ Fogg is the famous Stanford innovator. He appears on Fortune’s list of 10 gurus you should know and has spent the past years in the field of persuasion, including work on Facebook and mobile (and both). As our 2007 and 2009 Aarhus Conference keynote speaker, he’s made significant contributions to our programmes. He’s once tweeted that he regrets 20% of his tweets.
   

   “Email cheapens our lives” I explained at a Stanford event in 2007. One reason: Email can undermine our closest relationships

3. @BrianBentzen: Brian Bentzen is online communications manager at Servicestyrelsen (The National Board of Social Services) in Odense, Denmark. Moreover, he has previously acted as Lecturer of Communication Studies and worked at a local digital agency.
   

   Content Farming – SEOs Get It, Journalists Don’t http://bit.ly/aY9dLT #contentstrategy #SEO

4. @ernstdecsey: Ernst Decsey has been working for UNHCR in Geneva Switzerland for the past 12 years. As part of the intranet team, he uses Twitter mostly to share recommended articles.
   

   Medecins Sans Frontieres: Social Media Lessons from the Haiti Crisis http://bit.ly/aUn8qY

5. @healthythinker: Jane Sarasohn-Kahn founded THINK-Health, a strategic health consultancy, in 1992 after 10 years as health care consultant in firms in the US and Europe. Jane focuses on the nexus of health and technology.
   

   Phonecare works – remote telecare for people with cancer, pain and depression; FCC #broadband implications #mhealth | http://bit.ly/d7uEbZ

6. @izahoor: Zahoor Hussain is a busy and recognized UK consultant. He co-founded a business which was later acquired by digital agency LBi. Zahoor is very good at engaging in conversations on Twitter and also regularly shares pointers to interesting reading.
   

   Defining & Defending The Meaning Of “Community” an Open Source imperative http://bit.ly/9kTH7W #cms

7. @kreidy: Kathleen Reidy is a respected Boston-based analyst at The 451 Group covering content management and collaboration technologies. I haven’t yet been successful in getting Kathleen to speak at one of our events, but hopefully it will work out in a not too distant future.
   

   technical founders / CEO / CTOs – if you hire a high-profile marketing exec, let him/her do the briefings – really

8. @lwelchman: Lisa Welchman is the founder of WelchmanPierpoint, a Baltimore-based consultancy. She has pioneered the field of Web Operations Management by distinguishing Web strategy, governance, execution and measurement as it pertains to large Web sites.
   

   opps. was it a Freudian slip to say For Web Managers and the Managers that “mange” them…..? hmm

9. @markgr: When Mark Greenfield is not at conferences, he is busy as the Director, Office of Web Services at University of Buffalo. Mark is also an Associate Consultant with Noel-Levitz, a US higher education consulting firm. He was first introduced to our community at the recent conference in Philadelphia and has accepted an invitation to speak on the higher education track at the  Aarhus 10 conference.
   

   Why do so many high profile blogs make it impossible to print? For that matter, the same applies to many websites #petpeeve

10. @stephlemieux: Stephanie Lemieux used to work as taxonomy practice lead at Earley & Associates, but just announced that she has started as Director of Search & Content Mgt at the Yellow Pages in Montreal, Canada.
    

    in a presentation on using a wiki to display enterprise metadata to users – divorce management from presentation layer #EDW10 #metadata

This list enables you to easily follow all 10 on Twitter.

Who do you follow on Twitter? Whose tweets do you hate to miss? If you think we have left out any unmissable online professionals, please feel free to drop a comment!

On September 14, Forrester will publish Empowered, co-authored by Josh
Bernoff and Ted Schadler, its sequel to Groundswell.
 Groundswell was about
social technologies empowering consumers, the new book demonstrates how
empowered customers place demands on companies, and how it takes empowered
employees (refered to as HEROes – highly empowered and resourceful operatives)
to meet their demands. In this book, the authors tell the stories of some of
these HEROes, like Mark Betka at the US State Department, the Twelpforce team
at Best Buy, and the Rob Sharpe, who transformed sales training at Black &
Decker with his own internal YouTube.

I got a preview of the
approach as Forrester shared a review copy of the report, The
HERO Index: Finding Empowered Employees by Ted Schadler and Josh
Bernoff.  Here is apartial quote
form the summary. “The HERO Index is a new tool we have
developed to measure just how empowered and resourceful your own employees are.
Our data reveals that some industries (like technology products and services)
and job descriptions (like marketing and nonretail sales) harbor more HEROes
than others. Your new job is to find the HEROes in your organization and to
encourage and support their innovative applications.”

I like this approach.  There has been too much effort to simplify jobs and automate
processes. What first appealed to me about the early stages of knowledge
management was the attempt to empower employees with the right information to
excel at their jobs. The same opportunity was what re-energized me when
enterprise 2.0 came along. To research this report,
Forrester surveyed 4,364 US information workers — people who use computers or
mobile devices in their jobs — in November 2009.

The reports points out that the
same Web
2.0 technologies that empower customers are available to empowered
employees in (I would add) enterprise 2.0. They then offer many cases of what I
would call enterprise 2.0. For example, Sales trainer Rob Sharpe at Stanley
Black & Decker created his own internal YouTube-type sites to share
insights.  Employees working with
clients can use can use cloud technologies to share project
schedules or background materials.

These efforts are
often light-weight from an IT perspective and are originated by people form the
business units rather than IT.  In
fact, they found that reveal that 39% of HEROes use productivity tools not
provided by their IT departments. 
These employees often do things at their own expense. For example, they
found that 23% of HEROes use a smartphone for work and more than half of them —
12% — paid for it themselves. In addition, 13% pay for all or some of their
monthly data plan.  They do this
just to enable them to do their job better. No wonder they should be
considered heroes.

I am looking forward
to this book. In the meanwhile the Forrester report is very useful to help you find HEROs
in your organization, help then succeed and/or become a HERO yourself. 

Groundswell technology comes to consumers first. At home, we get social, mobile, video, and cloud services pitched to us 24×7. Facebook, Android, iPad, Foursquare, Google, YouTube, Office Web Apps, Twitter. The list is endless and growing every single day. Empowering technologies like these will always come to consumers first. Why? Because it's a wide-open market. A single developer can build an application that changes the world from their broadband-connected bedroom.

All this technology puts tremendous power directly into the hands of your customers. Your customers often have more information than your sales team — or medical staff — does. They can also whack your brand from their smartphone, with video even, while waiting impatiently in line. They can get a recommendation from someone in their business network while listening to your pitch. Customers are empowered by information and connections. You'd better make sure you give customers better information than they can get elsewhere.

The only way to do that is to empower your employees to directly engage the needs and expectations of empowered customers. Only empowered employees can solve the problems of empowered customers.

Fortunately, your employees are not standing still. People are problem solvers. Left alone, your innovative employees (we call them HEROes — highly empowered and resourceful operatives) are building new solutions using these same groundswell technologies — and many others besides — to solve customer problems.

In fact, 37% of US information workers — employees that use computers for work — use do-it-yourself technology to get work done. Personal mobile devices. Unsanctioned Web sites like Skype or Google Docs or LinkedIn or Smartsheet.com. Unsanctioned software downloaded to a work computer.

Read more

This is the third in a series of my
notes on the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, June 14- 17. This post covers
the second half of afternoon portion of the workshop, Enterprise 2.0 Black Belt Workshop. Here is the description. My notes follow.

“Planning and executing a comprehensive
Enterprise 2.0 program requires an honest assessment of your organization and
strong strategic planning. In this full-day workshop meet the vanguard of those
who are currently engaged in implementing Enterprise 2.0 within large
organizations. Learn firsthand from practitioners who have tackled adoption,
architecture, change management, community management, education, governance,
and the realities of living an Enterprise 2.0 transformative experience.”

Bryce Williams Eli Lilly, and Richard
Rashty, Schneider Electric, covered positioning enterprise tools in the
enterprise as not just another tool. 
I started late taking notes here. Bryce offered an interesting idea:
work out loud. If you find something useful be sure to share it. I really like
this concept.  Someone asked about
when to share inside and when to share outside the enterprise.  Bryce said that as he is working in a
pharma firm, this is a big issue. 
He said they focus more on content than tools in setting policy. They
try to trust employees but guidelines are still necessary.

Some one said that more smart people work
outside the organization than inside so it is good to turn outside at times.  Stan Garfield mentioned that the E 2.0
Adoption Council is a good example of a useful outside community. 

Many people are using unsecure consumer
collaboration tools. Rich said thousands are doing this at his firm. There are
open Facebook groups for his firms. Senior execs did not believe him and were
surprised when he showed them. 
Rich also said that he uses employee retention as an ROI for internal
collaboration tools as more engaged employees are more likely to stay.

Kevin Jones, NASA, and Bart Schitte
Saint-Gobain, discussed mitigating real or perceived risks around enterprise
2.0.  Bart started. He said his
firm was created in 1665 by the prime minister of Louis XIV in order to bring expert
glass making to France. They kidnapped some Italians to bring the core
technology.  Kevin said he is a
social media guy at NASA and not a space guy but his kids think he is cool for
working there.

Bart mentioned how there are more privacy
protections in Europe. For example, you cannot track actions to the people who
performed them.  This is an issue
for social media and this transparency is one of the benefits it brings in my
opinion.

Kevin asked for biggest fears that the
audience hears. He got these and others. What if someone enters the wrong
information? I do not have time for this. Compliance.  Why would I use these tools if I am already productive?  The network is not in place. We do need
this. You are going to give us more liability for e-discovery.   It does not do what I want so why
should I use it? I need to be careful about what I say. Why is the search not
like Google? We do not want negative comments posted.  I do not want to look stupid.  What if what I say will be used against me? If I contribute
it will be perceived that I do not have enough work to do as I have time to do
this.

Bart said that these concerns are more US
oriented.  He did say that he hears
these types of concerns from senior executives: too expensive for value, people
will waste time, do not like the term “social.” HR is concerned about
protecting personal data and related liability issues. One employee will attack
another and the victim will sue the company. It will give the worker’s councils
a channel to attack the company.

On the positive side employees said this
is a great way to increase their visibility and they can tap into the wisdom of
others. On the concern side, there will be pressure to participate and they
will be judged badly if they do not. What if my confidential information is
compromised?

In Europe some people do not want their
picture displayed, as that is confidential information. In some places people
will be judged based on how they look. Bart said he had to negotiate with HR
for a year over this issue and pictures are not displayed in public sites.

Germany is the most controlled country on
privacy issues. Any time there is a new user policy the worker’s councils have
to approve it and they use this as a means to renegotiate other issues.  So the companies avoid new policies.

Now Bart and Kevin started on how to
address these issues. Kevin said that many of these issues are not really problems.
His favorite counter is to ask how you deal with the issue now.  He said there are already resolutions
for most of these issues. Employee policies are generally already in place for
90%.  On one hand I agree and
issues like these get raised with every new communication technology. But there
is more power here and more transparency so there should be some further
refinement. Also, guidelines on how to most effectively use the tools are
needed.

Kevin said that 90% of the issues are
people related and not technology based. 
Some issues are real and need to be negotiated. He suggested to get all
the stakeholders involved in the discussions. Bart said he got legal involved
on a user charter. It had five pages of legal warnings and one page of benefits
at the end.  He suggested to edit
it.

I expressed a concern over making legal
or anyone group the bad guys or bottleneck. There was some discussion on this.
Some people said to gain some momentum and they bring the groups in. I think
the opposite is better and that you need to get all the stakeholders upfront.
The bottleneck is often the group that was not involved up front. Of course,
every organization is different. If you think that some group will oppose you
no matter what, they you should want until it is too late for them to stop you.

Kevin said the every user needs a
personal why to use the system. This is where one on one conversation helps. He
mentioned that IBM has 1,400 evangelists. Luis Suarez explained this more. They
have evangelists work across projects to promote viral exposure. Kevin said it
is useful to think of all the objections and write blog posts addressing
them.  These are great closing
points to a useful session.