Something new…

I just wanted to write a post about the three hours it took me to teach a colleague how to publish videos on the intranet (and that only covers half of the work), and about that I’m looking forward to calculating a business case for the new solution we’ve been discussing for more then a year.

This morning, I got the amazing news: My project has been approved by the management board. We will build a new intranet. I started to work on the first proposals in November 2007  – so that were really really long discussions.

Now it’s signed; the main requirements we want to meet are:

• build a portal that’s accessible for everybody from every country we’re operating in
• introduce publication processes that talk with one voice to everybody (same content, same time, all audiences)
• introduce permission management and closed usergroups where necessary
• introduce group-personalisation to create different views on the content for different audiences
• enhance the corporate directory towards an enterprise network
• carefully introduce well planned blogs and microblogs with attractive authors
• provide wikis as collaboration-, documentation and knowledgemanagement tools (knowledgemanagement projects are running in parallel)
• use tags as additional navigation- and categorisation tools, introduce rss for easier and for flexible customization
• support and train employees especially with increasing their media literacy

Detailed planning will continue now, I will keep posting and I’m looking forward to comments and discussions.

Facebook Hollywoodifies Our Lifes. And it Shortens Them.

I read news from a friend diving in south africa, participating in the famous london gorilla run and celebrating his daughters fith birthday. – what a life.

 Another Friend is posting pictures from Bali, New Zealand, Australia – that are his three holiday-trips in one year.

And friend 3 posts in his statusnotes that he just arrived from Shangai after a short stop in Berlin, is now having food at Vienna airport, shortly before leaving for Barcelona.

Very glamourous lives.

Everything is so spectacular, it’s happening at breakneck speed – and watching makes you feel really poor.

Some distance puts a lot of shine and glamour on many things. So many nice things are happening so fast – it’s really impressive. If you look at the good things only, that is.

Doing that in real life, too, is plain bullshit bingo. But we could look at it as another benefit of using social networks: they make us clean up our lives as if we were attending a party and having a nice conversation.

That’s a pretty good reason to use them anyhow.

Blackberry addicted? Or just curious for life?

I heard two colleagues talk about blackberries on Friday; they talked about addiction, changes they bring into our lives and the stress you have checking for mail even in the evening or on weekend.

I think this is not something imposed on us by Blackberry or other mobile email technologies, this is an expression of how we look at life: Are there a lot of dangerous, bothersome, annoying things out there? Are we afraid of what is waiting for us?

Or are we curious for life, are we looking foreward to the things to come? A lot of my life is happening digitally that’s the way to stay in touch, to share something. And looking at work: I want to get things done, getting information earlier leaves me more time to handle things. So I want to get information…

I can’t know everything, I can’t care for everything and I can’t do everything at a time. But it makes me more comfortable to know that I should do something – even if I can’t or don’t want to do it right now. True relaxation is not excluding information, it’s ignoring it…

And efficiency, as we shold know, is not doing as many things as possible, but doing the right things at the right time (this is, once again, why we need information…).

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Too much socialising is quite antisocial

When I’m not sure if I like a website or an application I think of it as a persons who is talking to me. Sometimes that helps to make up my mind.

When I look at twitter, there is a multiple personality talking to me. Or somebody who is just namedropping, without actually saying anything. The more people you follow, the less communication is happening: you don’t see your real friends anymore you hardly care about what all these guys are saying it’s just noise going on…

This turns twitter from a communication to a publication media – the same antisocial stuff as your old tv station.

This tells me

• it’s in the responsibility of the user if a media is an information-, publication- or communication-media. That’s quite a lot of power and can also influence business models.
• I will unfollow all professional twitter users; they just waste my time for too little benefit.

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SEO self-experiment

I started an SEO self-experiment these days: How long does it take to promote a domain (without playing foul or spending money)? How long does it take search engines to react on changes (display new page titles, new meta tags)? How many new links do you get by entering web-catalogues, online-pr-distributors? How many links do you get by using social bookmarking?

The test arrangement

• registered an unusual domain (there are no other search results for this word then my own pages)
• set up around 100 pages with meaningful content
• followed the basic SEO-laws (use page titles, descriptions, keywords in decent length, use many internal links in the body text, name pictures etc.)
• creating three new web-catalog entries per day (I guess I’ll do this for about 3 weeks; it’s all manual work with individual descriptions)
• posting one article everyday on three social bookmarking services (delicious, digg, stumble upon)

What I’m checking daily is

• Number of search results for my domain name
• Number of links to my domain that search engines find

Softer facts I’m interested in are:

• which catalogues are the most efficient?
• which bookmarking services are the most efficient?
• when does it start to grow from alone, when do other users start to post links or bookmark stuff?

I’ll keep posting results on a weekly basis.

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Facebook selfdestruction

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I witnessed a major case of selfdestruction via facebook these days: a former colleague posted a few messages abou how curious he was on friday. He was waiting if Friday would be his day of success. If things were really that simple that you just have to tell people that you are the best. That he hoped that finally he would achieve something. He works in the lower management of a worldwide software company. Some frieds were curious and asked, but he did not tell any details. Until friday: that’s when his tone switched to disappointment. And afte having been asked a few times, he – as an actively employed manager at his companny, who even publishes his employer in his facebook-profile – confessed that he had applied for a new job and did not get it. That’s not only stupid, that’s really disloyal and reputation damaging towards his employer. Such a behaviour is a real personal career booster…

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Who is the Boss in the Media-Biz?

I’ve worked with many media companies in the print, online, and tv-business, and I’ve worked in media related positions in many companies from other branches.
There is still one question I can not really answer: Who is actually the boss in the media business (ok, it’s not the only question; probably I’m just in the right age to worry about that…).
Are there strategists who are really the big guys, who tell you were to go and what will happen in the next years? Actually I hardly met any strategists in commercial environments. There were a few who had a similar job title, but most of them where either vain outlaws who more or less sacrificed their job for the title (because it always proved to be a dead end road), very ambitious youngsters who disappeared as quick as they had risen, or some old and actually jobless friends of the CEO or the editor in chief or the CMO, who needed a job with a cool title and not too much work.
So should it be the marketing guys? Media marketing people are great in extending relationships, driving reputation and drawing nice pictures in consumers minds – and there is often a big gap if it comes to realization. I hate to say that they usually dont have a cue, but that’s actually the truth. And in most cases, they don’t care – because it’s not there job. If it’s just marketing, then it’s just making people think that something is great, it’s not making things great.
And what about the sales department? They are the guys who bring the money, we all want money, so shouldn’t we listen to them? That takes us very quickly to a very simple view of the business: It needs to be sold. And once it’s sold: Who cares? Advertisers wont get their money back, a few complaints can be handled. and if there is really some trouble – there are enough advertisers as potential new customers. If you remind them of what they actually sold or what plans have been made for the further development of the media, they either don’t remember or they ask you why it has not been done yet. And anyway: they won’t have time, because the have to be out there and sell something.
So there are the creatives left, the designers, the writers. For sure they have a lot of ideas, they know the product and they can realize what they planned; they are the ones who have to do it anyway. But do they know the commercial terms of the business? Have you ever met a designer who can really calculate his business?

The famous media persons are generally the creative ones, usually close to the editors, or some have formerly been editors.
The rich ones are rather from the business side.
That’s no so much astonishing, what bothers me more, is that there are still single persons around, we are still acting as if Mr. F in person had founded this daily newspaper or as of Mr. B. did really have anything to do with the TV Channels he owns, but we know, that it’s simply not possible to combine all this smartness…

That’s another reason why I switched more to online media, and to the more functional part of the media business. Do you know the big names? And do you have an idea of what they are actually doing?
I have the impression that – with highly movable and flexible media – our perception shifts from big guys to big things: We don’t bother what HE does, we think about what features IT provides.
Probably back in the days when everybody was just publishing newspapers, you had to invest a lot in vanity and you had top think about how to stand out personally. Now, there is more space to focus on your product: Make it be something special (that’s the creative part) and make people understand that it’s something special (that’s the sales and marketing challenge). – But still, you can stick with the product, you don’t have to worry so much about yourself.
Why bother? It’s not only that there are no clear paths and visions for your career, there are also no best practices. In a lot of companies I left, the people who stayed are now the big guys. Just because they stayed. In other companies, there were more almost-retiree-strategists than developers. And then, some companies consider you as their hero, if you can do everything: writing, programming, handling Xpress or Indesign, talk with the system admins and talk the business lingo – just because there is nobody else who can keep up with you.

Conclusion: Just keep on doing what you like. The rest is’nt woth bothering in our business. If you really want to question if you’re successful with what you’re doing – keep on doing it and ask again in five years. I think that’s a pretty average time period that should malke you notice some differences…

 

What ails media business models?

Media Business News Spun out of Control

John Batelle: You’re in the Media Business Now

Uphoff: Fixing Microsoft’s Media Business

One Google-search or one hour of light?

Last saturday I had a chat with one of the McKinsey Risk Managers. We were talking about our weekly travel schedules, waste of time and energy and about were we would expect first real impacts of the financial crisis, when he mentioned very interesting thoughts Mc Kinsey uses in their risk assessments: what’s the environmental cost of using online applications? We don’t have to pay directly for a search in Google, but somebody has to pay for it, so somehow the costs will come back to us…
The average energy consumption for a search is said to be the same amount a low energy lightbulb needs in an hour. And the white screen uses much more power then a black or darker screen would need.
And a Second Life-Avatar (I did not think of Second Life for almost a year now…) is said to consume more energy per day then an average real life human.

I’m not quite sure what to do with these figures, but they definitely make me think.

Intrapreneurship – sounds nice…

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I read the term “intrapreneurship” on a Xing-profile today .

Is it a way to prevent bore-out and frustration? Or is it just another term for getting the most out of your employees without having to pay for it?

I think it could describe quite precisely the attitude that is required if you want to make your internal media a success. I think of it as will and capacity to get things going, to set up something new even if you have to – partially – accept the borders of an existing organisation, and as the will to make use of the white spaces in an organisation that Tom de Marco describes in Slack. (If you really want to know what intrapreneurship is, check out the Social Camp in Vienna next week).

I want to make friends with some intrapreneurs, because they are definitely the kind of employees with whom you can create nice success stories with internal online media, collaboration tools or employee portals.

Hopefully it’s not brainwashing. This is another somewhat weird, but interesting nice piece and about intrapreneurship.

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Mash ups and the single page

It’s great to just casually collect information, bookmark something here and there, add a few tags. Highlight things in your Google Reader, add a note on Netvibes, store it on Secondbrain, read a few lines, open some more links and just continue.

That brings a lot of information, it really helps to create a big picture and it is a lot of work.

It actually meets many requirements we have in daily work (flexibility, global orientation, speed, always being ready for an alternative) and it fits to your working style if you are collecting requirements, shaping products, evaluating solution scenarios or doing other rather creative work.

Once you’re used to that style of working it gets really hard to forget the always growing always open network attitude and to focus on one idea on one piece of paper.

• First of all it is hard, because you have to exclude so many things. You can not touch on this perspective or that point of view – focus on one thread and try to make it understandable.

• The second reason why it is hard is because we also have to focus on one targetgroup. To whom are you talking, which of your many ideas and what part of that one idea is it that might be really interesting for them? You have to decide, you have to exclude the rest and you can not just start somewhere and wait for comments.

• A third source of trouble is: We have to get it done. We actually really have to finalize it. We can not start it, leave it open for discussion, add a few links and hope for people to use it as a starting point for their own thoughts. We are expected to tell a fully flavoured story, and we are expected to sell something. Most audience want to have a clear proposition and the end: what am I supposed to do now, what can I get.

A clear, compelling and competitive vision, neatly designed and written on one piece of paper – that’s what is expected in most senior management meetings.

If you can not deliver your idea in that shape – then it’s either you or your idea who is probably not worth listening to.

But are our products like that? Do we have a onedimensional linear backbone in our ideas that can be easily followed and tells everything?

Should we have that?

Is actually our reality still like that, is there anything we can describe in a distinct, not misunderstandable way?

And (here comes my alltime favourite question): Does it matter?

Does the grade of reality of what we describe as reality matter? Does it matter if everything is covered by what we say? And how do we want to know if the reallity we want to describe is also the reality that our counterpart is able and willing to understand?

We don’t know and we can’t control it; we probably only talk of the same thing when we say nothing at all. – Ok, that’s pretty philosophical.

I’m convinced that open, unclean, unfinished mashups describe way better what we are up to and what happens out there. But I’m also positive that it are the very simple stories that sell – they are the only thing you can buy; everything ellse is so undefined that you can not even attach a price tag to it.

So again: It does not matter. Don’t try to reduce complexity in your thoughts or in the way you look at things.

But find a single and simple storyline that tells a good story. That can be reused in many different ways. Tha can be understood by several audiences.

If it’s a really great story, it seems to address only a very limited part of your idea. But you can reuse it in every way you need and as often as you need it.

That’s economic, far more economic then one sheet of paper.

And it leaves enough space, spirit and energy for what you really want to care about.