Video: Webciety CeBIT keynote: How the web changes the organisation of business

For those of you who weren't at Webciety at CeBIT, Hannover, Germany on Thursday March 8, or weren't able to catch the live webcast of my keynote when it was first broadcast, a recording is now available.



The video lasts almost an hour which includes introduction, my keynote and a panel discussion of the themes it outlines. In summary it explores how the future isn't digital, it is self-organised, how and why the web powers disruption based on this and explores the role of the organisation in a world in which we can organise for ourselves more cheaply and effectively than ever before. It also recognises the challenge of 3D printing in this context - how this reveals where the means of production have always resided and what this tells us about the key tasks that must be taken on by the org of the future.

I've expanded a few more thoughts, specifically in relation to 'Loose Ties and Sufficient Organisation', which are detailed in my blogpost of Saturday March 10, 2012.

I have also updated the slides on slideshare to those I finally presented. I hope you find them useful.

How the web changes the organisation of business and the business of organisation

View more presentations from david cushman.

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Perspectives on Social Business... can we be open?

A few weeks back I got asked in to IBM to share my thinking on 'social business'. Of course I made it very clear that I thought the term somewhat unhelpful - and that I would prefer we talk about Open Business.

I also attended in not only my capacity as a thought leader (blogger) but also as a practitioner (MD Ninety10 Ltd UK and Co-Founder Ninety10 Group.com).

I'm hoping we'll get a bit more of both those things in the final edit we're still due to get from the day - on the Future of Social Business.

In the meantime, take a look at the videos below. Contributions from me on both.

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Video: My presentation at Social Media In Business

Here's the presentation I made at Social Media In Business (#SMIB10) at eBay/Paypal's uk HQ late last month.
Thanks to SMIB for giving me the platform. (update - video is now available to view!)

You'll also find the slides I presented to, below.

Untitled from SMIB EVENTS on Vimeo.

And here's the slides...

Using + social media = fail (smib)

View more presentations from david cushman.

All feedback very welcome!

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Video: My presentation at Being Social 2010

The Death of Advertising- and what replaces it - in 7mins! Yep, it's me doing my bit at Mashup's BeingSocial - held in London on May 13, 2010.

davidcushman 2 from Simon Grice on Vimeo.

Here's the full deck of slides I was presenting to (somewhat edited for the timeframe allowed).

View the rest of the videos from the event here.

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Wanted: Paid intern to work on a co-created movie

NinetyTen (my lot) has been helping Honda (a client) on a project to co-create a road trip movie.
There are lots of ways you can get involved. But the latest is rather splendid if you have some time to learn the magic of movies from April 19 to June 11, 2010.

Working with award winning director Claudio Von Planta (you may know him from his work on the Charley Boorman and Ewan Macgregor BBC bike trips Long Way Round and Long Way Down) and the agency producer, you'll be paid £1500 and be provided with accommodation in and travel to and from London.

You need to know your way around social media (if you found this while online, you are on the right lines) and be able to write a blog.

The job is based in central London, but you may be asked to attend the 35-day shoot around Europe throughout May.

You can come from anywhere in Europe, but you need to be able to speak English. Additional languages are beneficial (particularly French, German, Italian or Spanish) and you need to have the appropriate working
visa for employment in the UK.

If you, or anyone you know, should be taking part, send your CV to intern@liveeverylitre.com and describe why you'd be perfect for the project.

You don't need to contact me directly :-)

Here's Claudio talking about the project:

Interactive webinar with Gerd Leonhard and Alan Moore

Gerd Leonhard via Wikipedia

Two of the brightest lights to guide you into the networked world, Alan Moore and Gerd Leonhard, have buddied up to present a joint webinar:

Thriving commercially in social media and the networked society: An interactive seminar with Gerd Leonhard and Alan Moore

Both are acclaimed authors, bloggers and consultants to a wide-range of global organisations.

Places are strictly limited and priced at just $50. Gerd and Alan are both good friends of mine - and fellow collaborators at 90:10. Trust me - that's around 1% of their combined day rates - so quite a bargain.

But just in case you need even more of an incentive, there's a special discount code available on a first-come first-served basis. It'll bag you a decent 15% off the price. To get it just drop me an email.

The webinar is on Monday, March 1, 2010 from 1:00 PM - 2:30 PM (ET)

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Stowe Boyd joins the 90:10 Group

We announced it on the 90:10 site, and he's blogged it himself, but I couldn't let the arrival of Stowe Boyd, as part of 90:10's community of consultants, pass without comment on my own blog.

You see, Stowe has been an inspiration to me for quite some time.

I love his mantra:

"I am made greater by the sum of my connections - and so are my connections".

It's such a powerful expression of the power of the network; of the value of nodes connecting and the subsequent interaction; of none-of-us-is-cleverer-than-all-of-us. I quote it liberally, in presentations, online and in my book (The Power of the Network).

We met for a curry in London, a good few years ago - while I was still at emap/Bauer. We built on that in New York when we both spoke at Widget Web Expo there in 2008. I started writing the occasional post for his /Message blog.

We hit it off. We believe in the same stuff. He's wise. And good fun.

We've kept the connection live.

So it's fantastic to know a man of Stowe's global standing (he coined the term social tools in 1999, for example) believes enough in what we are doing with 90:10 that he wants to join us.

Every one of our consultants is someone I know and personally trust. And by implication those who join up trust me (and by association 90:10).

They also happen to form a constellation of stars with unparalleled knowledge and expertise.

We get to call on wonderful minds and they get to call on us - and we tell the world we trust each other.

If you don't know Stowe, find out more about him, and the rest of the 90:10 crew, here.

Social Business: The Show

Great to see my good friend Stowe Boyd responding to the blooming and booming interest in the world-changing stuff of social business with a new kind of event.

Social Business Edge is a 'show' not a conference. And it's powered by a cast of great minds (see The Swarm here). I'm delighted to say Stowe has asked me to join that Swarm.

Stowe himself is directing, Jeff Pulver (140conf) is producing.

It's on in New York on April 19, 2010.

As I keep saying, social business (and organisation) innovation is what the money has been waiting to follow; it's what our social tools are for.

It's how we are changing the world niche by niche.

And that deserves a great show. I'm sure Stowe will do it proud.

While you're thinking about such matters, a quick reminder that the Social Business Innovation Awards are now open for nominations.

Maybe the show should get one?

To whet your appetite, here's Stowe himself talking about social business in October last year at the LA 140conf.

"The Social Business will be more like a village than an army... where reputation is more important than title... connections more important than rank and authority derived from connections not from control."

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Director of Engagement at 90:10 Group

I'm looking for a Director of Engagement to join the fast-expanding team at 90:10.

You'll need to work out of our London office and be highly experienced in the very human skills of engaging communities in peer-to-peer (primarily digital) environments.

You will have been doing this successfully for a good few years now for a range of high profile brands and organisations and have the social media marketing case studies to prove it.

You must be able to demonstrate thought leadership in social media strategy and combine this with hands-on account management skills and high-quality presentation and leadership abilities acquired in 8+ years in marcomms.

You'll be brilliant at networking both online and off and bring with you a wide range of high-level contacts.

In return you'll join the senior team of a unique, multi-national, future-facing and rapidly expanding organisation with the freedom to grow and adapt a team under you. We offer a competitive salary, opportunities to develop your skills and travel AND equity to the right candidate.

If that's you, drop me an email david AT ninety10group.com with relevant links and personal details and I'll get back to you asap.

If it's not you, tell someone it'll matter to. Thanks!

Using + Social Media = Fail

I was at #Online09 (Online Publishing) at Olympia in London, to do a keynote in the Social Media Marketing theatre today.

I'm delighted to say (and perhaps its a sign of the times) that the room was packed - standing room only. They even stayed until the end :-)

I was kicking around what happens when you deconstruct the social media thang, into its social + media parts (I have blogged about this previously).

But I started from the perspective that the future is not digital.

When Gutenberg invented movable type (circa 1450) a new era was ushered in. Within 50 years there were 20 million books on the planet (to share among 450m people - I know there were 450m people at the time because I asked my friends on Twitter).

That's 20m in 50 years from a standing start (as described by Stephen Fry in his BBC show on Gutenberg). And that standing start included zero mass production techniques or technologies. Quite staggering.

And I wondered what the big prediction would have been in 1500 among the soothest sayers of the day. What next? More books?

Not likely is it.

Yet we keep banging on about a digital future.

1450 is also regarded as the beginning of the great age of exploration. The future was the renaissance, new forms of organisation (capitalism replacing feudalism) the destruction of the power of the old order (the Reformation across Europe). That's the effect of more books - it is what people did together with this new 'book' technology.

And right now, the future is not about new and better digital tools, or their prolifieration - it is about what we do together with them - the new self-organising future that dawns.

And that, and what businesses and organisations can do to benefit from all this, is what my keynote was about this morning.

Here's the slides - and, as always, your thoughts are welcome.

Using + Social Media = Fail

View more presentations from david cushman.

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Putting people first remains the winning strategy

 For many a long year, sensible CEO's have recognised that their greatest asset is their people.

Certainly it was something drummed into managers back in the day when emap was growing fast (I worked in what started as a few East Midlands local papers and ended up as a North American and European empire before it hit the great structural media slow down experienced everywhere else).

"Our people are our greatest asset".

The fact that we are undergoing huge structural change does not diminish that truth. The networked world doesn't mean that suddenly our digital towers of tech are our greatest asset, or anything similar.

No. People remain top of that list. The shift is that the ones creating the bulk of the value aren't necessarily 'ours' any more.

So lose the 'our'.

"People are our greatest asset".

Because successful businesses are now far from limited to the power of the people within the silo, those that, traditionally, they pay the wages of.

Now everywhere the crowd can touch your processes and supply chains, people both external and internal are your greatest asset.

Think of any supply chain within your organisation. What could be disrupted or improved on by the crowd - by people coming together online and from both inside and outside the silo to provide a wikifix?

There are far more external assets available than internal.

Adapting to the connecting, real-time power of social technologies means better connection with those external assets; greater contribution from them.

And if they bring you greater efficiencies and greater rewards through those contributions it is wise that we consider how they can be rewarded and what they seek by way of reward.

It may not (always) be cash. It may be the value and power of becoming part of something they care about.

But they are not there to be exploited.

Just as sensible CEOs always placed value on their people, so now must sensible CEOs place value on all the people their organisation interacts with and shares in the production of value with.

Putting people first has always been a winning strategy - the better connected world of the network just writes that large.

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How to make more pegs, more round, more often

Providing things that people need/want is at the core of any business. If there are round holes, you provide round pegs. That's the plan.

Trouble is, life is a little more complex.

The holes are rarely consistent in size or roundness. The pegs become best approximations.

So we take the hammer of advertising and marketing, mass media lowest common denominator comms of all forms, and bludgeon away. (image courtesy)

Sometimes some of the pegs even appear to fit. Hit enough, hard enough and long enough and - hey presto! Demand met.

Ahem.

Ok, more like supply supplied, then. All very wasteful. And noisy.

The fitness landscape of any complex adaptive system (from evolution to the economy) requires something, well, more adaptable.

It requires something more maleable - more open to change - to make a better fit.

If the pegs can be reshaped to fit the holes, they just drop in. No mass media hammering required. No energy wasted.

Businesses have always used the tools available to them to make the best approximation of those round pegs - market research, focus groups, the black-sweatered CEO's gut feel.
Those whose approximations are closest to round, find they need less hammering.

Now we have access to better tools - the social technologies that enable groups to form. That is, better access to people.

Now groups can form to wikifix a problem they share - such as your peg not fitting their hole.

Now you can let them, together, reshape your peg so it drops beautifully into place.

But it will only happen if you accept that the best people to shape a product or service to any fitness landscape you encounter are those who make up that landscape.

Advertising isn't (just) the tax you pay for being unremarkable (some products inspire such excited human interaction that the fitness landscape changes to accommodate them) it is also the tax you pay for trying to fit square pegs in round holes.

Hang up your hammers. Start opening your doors.

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Social + Media = Change

Let's deconstruct the phrase 'social media' and try social + media instead.

It helps me understand where the focus should be: 90% on the social, 10% on media.

That doesn't mean there's no role for the media side. It plays a critical one, without which the social doesn't get to happen - but it does reflect where the value lays, who creates it and how.

Social =

• The social technologies that connect us
  
• People
• Groups
• Hands and feet
• Action
  
• What we choose to do together

Media =

• That which flows through social technologies
  
• Content
• Distribution
• Mouths and ears
  
• Conversation
  
• What they would seek to do to us/get us to do

The media side is where we pass on messages from one to another, do the viral thing, create content and publish it - in social networks and on blogs and in tweets.

It is where we fulfil those mutliple roles that once were the sole domain of the media industry - we publish, we advertise and market (to our peers). We provide the distribution through peer-to-peer pass on. We do it all in networks rather than channels, in real-time rather than their time and many-to-many rather than broadcast from one-to-many, with the one at the centre.

It is a CRITICAL part of the mix. You don't get the social without the media. The Eighth Mass Media. Us.

To recap on The Eight Mass Media:

• We are the distribution
• We are the content
• We are the user journey
• We are how messages are transmitted
• We are the medium and the media carried within it
• We are the connections AND how the connections are made

In this Eighth Mass Media element we find each other - we discover those we didn't know we needed to know, we come together to serve a common purpose. We become communities of purpose.

And there is a great deal of value in this. We recommend stuff - our friends buy it or buy into it.

But the greater value lies in the new, fast, user-centric, efficiencies of the 'social' part of the phrase.

That is, that all our media-like activity brings us together with people seeking to solve the same problem or improve the same experience

And this is where the efficiencies happen.

A very small-scale example:

• A social technology (Twitter) is created (social)
• I (social) tweet a complaint about a brand (media)
• A person (social) representing the brand uses social technology to discover this (social)
• The person (social) contacts me (media)
• We engage in conversation (media)
• My problem is resolved (social)
• The person representing the brand (social) discovers a way to improve their current system - making it more efficient for brand and consumer (social)
• I (social) tweet my peers to say how pleased I am with the outcome (media)
• I (social) recommend the brand representative to my peers (social)

How does that scale?

Remember: The people who can make most difference to your organisation don't work for it. Adapting to the network means that they can.

So broadening the listening for what's wrong with your brand, as experienced by end-users, effectively delivers crowd-sourced improvements - R&D and NPD - in rapid iteration and at small cost.

Make no mistake - there is much more to this than reputation management.

Social + Media generates low-cost NPD, R&D, P2P Marketing, Advertising, Recruitment and all that reputation management warmth, too.

The process adapts the org to the expressed needs of the network (people) - it transforms your organisation into one in which the greater part of its energy is generated from beyond the organisation - and one in which that increased energy nourishes a growing, changing and responding org.