Ross Mayfield's Weblog

Stories of Thought Leadership

David Spark has launched a blog/podcast called Be the Voice, where he is capturing stories of thought leadership driving business growth.  We did a podcast at a cafe in San Francisco, which he summarizes:

• You can’t dictate collaboration within an organization. Find a small area where it would excel, introduce it, and then roll it out in concentric circles to other groups that have interest and can provide unique value.
• Collaboration needs a clear business purpose. You can’t have collaboration without a goal.
• Take all content out of email to build a company knowledge base of the revolving door of employees, plus a back channel on what the company thinks on a given issue.
• If one significant person changes their process to be more collaborative and open, it can change the process for an entire organization
• PR has evolved to add value in conversations and be agents for collaboration. It’s not just about connecting clients with press.
• When you ask for permission to market to your audience, immediately offer some value in return.
• Even if someone’s collaboration intentions is purely to promote themselves, still engage if there’s a connection to your brand.
• Collaboration needs to involve multiple individuals within an organization and not just one person, because that one person is just a resume away from leaving and taking that company goodwill with him.

Today David guest posted at Mashable on 12 Biggest Mistakes from Social Media Gurus, including mine.  Here's my favorite:

Over-architect a site with features and content without talking to your customers – Deb Schultz, social media strategist for P&G, fell into the trap of making too many assumptions about what an audience wanted and just started developing a site loaded with features and functionality. It’s what happens when you work at a big company and you don’t see outside of the four walls of the organization. Schultz admitted she should have spent more time talking with customers instead of adding more content to the site.

Podcast: Radiohead and Sharing Control to Create Value

Today the Radiohead album became available for choose your own price download, and the music industry will never be the same.  Yesterday I was interviewed by Aaron Stroud in a podcast for We Are Smarter Than Me, a wiki-generated book on unleashing the power of crowds in your business.  We talked about the pattern of sharing control to create value that is prevalent in new business models, the Radiohead example, and, of course, wikis in business.

Cross-posted to Socialtext.com

Web 2.0 Expo Podcasts

Dan Farber posted a full podcast of our panel on Enterprise 2.0 with Google and Zimbra to complement the brief video clip.  Stowe Boyd posted his talkshow, where I dialed in late enough for him to play a short conversation he recorded from the week before during Web 2.0 expo.  We then discussed adoption of Enterprise 2.0, and what might be different this time, and not.  Stowe suggests that since we have public examples like Wikipedia that are more visible, discoverable and persistent than email or IM, something might be accelerating.  We also talked about the role of rogue users today, and analysts for that matter.

Podcast with Tom Raftery

Last week Tom Raftery just posted his PodLeaders - Thought Leaders podcast that he recorded with me last week.  The conversation was over Skype from California to Ireland and he had to omit some sections because of echo.  But I like Tom's approach of using user-generated questions from his blog to make it more participatory.  For example:

Dennis Howlett
What’s the spread of take-up of SocialText? And what does a typical SocialText user ‘look’ like? - 11:12

John Collins
Enterprise 2.0 - what does it mean and is it a useful term to use? - 14:25

Ina O’Murchú
Where do you see the future lying with all the social networks evolving especially with regards to their interoperability? - 20:33

John Breslin
What do you think about Semantic Wikis - 22:55

Paul Watson
how do I migrate 1000 pages of my Wikimedia powered wiki to Socialtext. - 27:23

IDEO Prototypes the Future

The Palo Alto Art Center's exhibition, IDEO Prototypes the Future, should be of interest to readers of this blog.  Perhaps less than for the writer, as my mom is the curator, IDEO is a neighbor and I suggested the title.  Bias aside, this is a great opportunity to learn about the innovative practices of the world's leading industrial design firm.

Podtech has a great series of podcasts to complement the show.

• Gallery Walkthrough With IDEO CEO Tim Brown
• Innovation Gurus Discuss Creative Process (symposium panel)
• Geoffrey Moore of TCG Advisors on Art of Prototyping
• Designing for Business with Diego Rodriguez

The exhibition runs through September 10th at the Art Center.  Today at 2-4pm is design family day, where you can rapidly prototype with the kids.

Also related:

• Bob Sutton's blog
• Diego Rodriguez's blog

In parallel is an exhibition of interest for you Guttenberg nuts: Creative Commerce: German Lithographic Labels, 1920-1938

BusinessWeek Podcast

When I was in NYC last week I sat down with Steve Baker from BusinessWeek to chat about wikis.  The podcast is here.

Enterprise Podcasting with IBM

Podtech.net, the best podcaster in tech, has been making some moves to serve the enterprise.  They have been using our office as a war room, so it's fun watching them grow like gangbusters.  The big news is IBM has enabled Podcasting enterprise-wide.  John Furrier has an interview with the IBM corporate podcasting team.

When I gave a talk to some IBM researchers a while ago, it was the first time I was asked in a non-public forum to have the session podcasted.  Maybe it was just a brain suck, but it is a way of making meetings accessible through time-shifting, and with 130k employees it should become a vibrant stream of conversations.

BTW, my interview on Podtech from the beginning of the month is still in the top three.

Nobody Expects the Cubicle Escape Pod

Been too busy to mention that I was interviewed on the Cubicle Escape Pod last week on entrepreneurship.  Fun show, and the guys are working on some kind of KM-mod called Modcasting.

Funny how a stranger came up to me last week and said I must be really busy, given the dearth of posts.  Yeah.

Poicemail

I figure I should help prototype this whole Podcasting is the New Voicemail thing, and am asking my friends for help.

If you have my mobile number, please Podcast a ringtone for me. Keep it short, about 15 seconds. You can make it rude, add fart noises and the like, but when I answer it I will be sure to explain to those around me and hand out your URL. I'm going to use Ringo to add custom .mp3 ringtones to my Treo.

Double bonus points for something I can use for my answering machine, Carl Kasell style.

Shouldn't all this stuff be a feature?

Podcasting is the New Napster

I love the smell of disintermediation in the morning.  The new iTunes software update enables a little Podcasts folder.  Suddenly you get a clean aggregation of a selected fat heat of the long tail in an integrated experience.  iNow wonder if a word other than Pod should have arisen in the nomenclature.

Honestly, it's a boon for consumers.  Podcasting is the new Napster.  But I want something more.  Two things, actually, that could be summarized by the statement Podcasting is the New Voicemail:

• Non-proprietary extensions to syndication standards.  How great that a convicted monopolist has co-opted RSS?  How crappy is it that RSS is a standard of one.  Atom attracts users in the know and if Apple had a an inclusionary and fair process to deal with, the extension could be well formatted.  Anywho, I'm not in politics anymore.
• This is personalization, not socialization.  Give me Odeo in a heartbeat over this augmented MSM DJ.  Even if it is legal and free (given recent events, maybe the title of this post should be Podcasting is the New Grokkster), there is no social network here.  I am not a consumer and want to share...
  

Oh, and another very big thing.  Isn't anybody else concerned that Apple has introduced DRM into Podcasting?  Adam Curry's headline PodFinder show is in AAC format! (and I can't link to it).

I guess we should congratulate the company that we really want to love for engaging in social software.  This will be a boon for them.  And it will serve the best amateur producers.  But I don't want my MyTV (haven't talked to Adam Curry yet, sure he is a nice guy) that is TheirTV, I want OurTV.

UPDATE: Please see comments and BoingBoing for how wrong I was.  AAC is not DRM.  The AAC extension .M4P is DRM.  I apologize for any FUD or confusion.  I apologize to Adam Curry and Cory.  Further proof that you can be an idiot blogger, even if you frame things as a question.  But, funny things, those proprietary extensions, which is the first point of this post.