RSS – Day 4 – Other Uses

Nov 19, 2009 Social Media & Network Challenge

RSS is so simple, it is hard to say anything else that hasn’t been said.  Except that RSS is not only for blogs and textual information, it is for podcasts & videos as well.

When subscribing to a podcast, iTunes will download the latest version. Just as RSS finds the latest and delivers it to you.  There are other services that will do that as well.

Here is where I take a sidestep.  I love learning, so RSS is a natural love of mine because it gets me the information I want right away.  First, my story, then, your challenge.

I was in a job.  A good job, but my direction was not clear. 

Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: ipod, Podcast, RSS, social media challenge, vodcast

Social Learning Podcast Transcripts – Top Objections Webinar & Twitter Troubles

May 21, 2009 Podcast, Twitter, objections, transcript

As I said in my latest tweet: “I LOVE doing the podcast (http://tr.im/gMIi) with @dwilkinsnh & the discussions we have before and after.  A hilite of my week.”  So true.  We not only have a great time doing them, but get to discuss, challenge each other and really hash out a lot of what people are thinking and struggling with.  Good times!

Thanks to Dave we now get our podcasts transcripted.  Today we recorded episode #17 so that will be coming out next week.  I didn’t want to go ALL the way back to the beginning of the year (excesssive) but I will start with Episode #14, the one right after the webinar on Overcoming Objections.

BTW – still the Slideshare of this webinar has blown me away.  As it stands right now, it has been watched 1835 TIMES in only one month!  Unbelievable.

Anyway – back to business.  Here is the transcript and the link to the Podcast on the web and to iTunes.

Social Learning Strategies and Trends Podcast #14 – Objections Webinar Followup & Twitter Troubles

Kevin Jones:  Welcome to Social Learning Strategies & Trends Podcasts. This is Kevin Jones.

Dave Wilkins:  And Dave Wilkins.

Kevin:  And Dave you are. Oh, you’ve been a busy boy Dave; you’ve been a busy boy. How many webinars did you do this week?

Dave:  I think the grant total was 6, and two or three executive briefings. So yes I am mentally drained at this point. [laughs]

Kevin:  I understand. I bet it’s a fun thing to have you in the house. You come home at night. Dave are you there? Dave I know that you’re here physically but mentally Dave?

Dave:  Right. Kids, be quiet! I don’t want to hear about your day wife. I’m going to bed.

Kevin:  [laughs]

Dave:  Yeah, a little bit. But you had a busy week too though. Right? I mean you were at least in one of those webinars with me.

Kevin:  Yeah, yeah that webinar was awesome; I mean not just, that because we’re awesome. But there was so much chatter on Twitter and so much in the chat room there.

Dave:  Oh yeah.

Kevin:  And we collected, I don’t know…oh shoot that reminded me, it is 8:42 right now. We haven’t been able to finalize the question of the day today.

Dave:  Oops.

Kevin:  Oh I got to get that out. But OK. Anyways, but we had a ton of people give us their real life questions.

Dave:  I couldn’t keep up.

Kevin:  Yeah it was huge.

Dave:  I don’t know about you but I was watching the questions coming out and I was I’m never going to be able to answer all those questions.

Kevin:  [laughs]

Dave:  We need to do another webinar just to answer the questions we got in the first webinar.

Kevin:  No kidding. I had a ton of people say Kevin I couldn’t be there for this one. Is there…you know, do you have the archives? For which we do, actually on our blogs.

Dave:  Right.

Kevin:  …and the email is going out. But seriously, maybe we should do that again with a couple of other ones. Because that was really, really well received. Because a lot people weren’t able to come that wanted to come.

Dave:  Right, right. Well it didn’t help that we were up against an event by Jay Gross that was global learning event.

[laughter]

Kevin:  Thanks a lot Jay.

Dave:  We have to better coordinate better with him. But…

Kevin:  You know what. Ours was first.

Dave:  Yeah. Dear Jay we had our schedule way before yours. Please don’t overlap next time.

Kevin:  You must cancel yours. Sorry.

[laughs]

Dave:  No, it’s true though, it was a lot of questions.

Kevin:  Yeah. It really was. And it was a lot of good, really good ones. The ones that we do are broader I think. They’re more, so for example one of the ones we did was: everyone was going to a play and be more social and waste time. That’s a very broad overview question. But a lot of people were saying this is the specific question that I had, this is the specific objection that I got.

And in fact I got a couple of emails this week, after that from two people saying here are basically the emails from my company.

Dave:  Wow.

Kevin:  And here are the exact questions or exact issues that they’re having, the exact objections. What do I do now?

And it has been awesome. The first one, the first one… Oh, I’m not going to name, because it was quiet.

Dave:  Yeah. You probably shouldn’t name either of them. [laughs] I’m pretty sure the companies wouldn’t be thrilled to find out that their folks are sending emails that are internal only. [laughs]

Kevin:  You know they’ re going to get used to that idea though. Really, going to have to. But, so…oh shoot, I thought I had it.

Dave:  Which by the way it doesn’t itself tell you everything you need to know about whether or not it’s OK to be accessing stuff outside work and a social network. And the very fact that someone sent you an email, right.

Kevin:  Oh I know.

Dave:  [laughs]

Kevin:  Yes.

Dave:  Like it’s so funny because people are like, you can’t get on Twitter, you can’t get on Facebook. We don’t want you accessing these other external sites. Don’t go to My Space, don’t go to Google stuff. Then someone sends you their email.

[laughter]

Kevin:  Yes, think of the traditional way.

Dave:  Yes, like really. You guys really locked things down there, nice job. All of your people can send email. Good job.

Kevin:  [laughs] Well done and you know honestly that was in both responses to them, that was one of the comments read was, they’re already doing it and you don’t know.

Dave:  Right, right.

Kevin:  Or you’ve got your head in the sand and you think that it’s not happening but it really, really is.

Dave:  Right.

Kevin:  The first one, ha, ha, ha so the first one, oh yes. I put it on my blog post; I put a blog post up, “How to Snub Twitter and Lose”. Basically what they’re saying was there are four of them.

First one, training information. What happens is this person sent a request to open up Twitter. They wrote back with this request I’m going to talk about. Then I actually got a follow up email after that that said that he went today, what do you call it? What do you call it Dave, when someone goes back and says, a rebuttal, no. You know what I mean.

Dave:  No. No rebuttal, no.

Kevin:  No it’s not rebuttal but it’s something like that.

Dave:  Slap in the face, no. Not slap in the face?

Kevin:  A rebuttal and they didn’t know what to do with that. They said, “You mean somebody’s challenging our authority? Oh no, what do we do now”?

[laughs]

Dave:  Oh that’s awesome.

Kevin:  Do we really need, I guess we really need to think about this. The first thing that he said was, the training information you need, or the rejection he got back was the training information you need can be received from other sources. Twitter may be easier but approved web sites give the same information.

Dave:  OK. In other words, we don’t give a crap whether you’re efficient or not.

Kevin:  [laughs]

Dave:  Hey you know what else works? Chiseling. Chiseling stone tablets also works. Maybe we should keep doing that.

Kevin:  [laughs] I love it.

Dave:  That’s awesome.

Kevin:  Then to oppose that, the fourth one. The last one, it says, “We will lose productivity if we open Twitter up allowing everyone to use it for non business purposes. This risk is high”.

Dave:  I see.

Kevin:  Doesn’t that directly contradict point number one?

Dave:  Yes. Yes, you’re going to be… it will be easier for you to use and you will be more efficient and productive except you won’t be.

Kevin:  Exactly. [laughter] Make up your mind.

Dave:  Wow yes.

Kevin:  No kidding.

Dave:  Yes well that’s suggests a lot of things to me. The most fundamental thing it suggests is people just don’t quite get Twitter.

Kevin:  Exactly.

Dave:  We’re a social media company here right? I had a conversation last night with someone I won’t name but on our executive team and they said, “I think maybe some of the people who may have used to have worked here maybe spent too much time on Twitter”.

I said, “Well define too much time because I have 700 professional colleagues on Twitter who I tap for news and expertise on what’s going on the industry. I’ve gotten leads through Twitter. I’ve established business relationships through Twitter. I’ve deepened my relationship with analysts through Twitter. I’m sort of not quite following you”.

[laughter]

Kevin:  Define, yes exactly. That is it. Define too much time.

Dave:  Right.

Kevin:  Define it. The other one, the other person that emailed me, it’s kind of the same response there. They don’t quite understand it. Also they’re coming back with a, well this is the reason we’re giving but there’s more beneath that.

I mean I don’t know how many companies I’ve seen giving the excuse of this is why we’re not doing it because of HR policy or it’s because of some other lame excuse. Really the real reason is they don’t know what to do.

Dave:  Right.

Kevin:  They are stuck; they are confronted with this reality and they are totally burying their heads in the sand.

Dave:  Yes.

Kevin:  With this one, it’s all about unions. It’s that if we open this up, unions may get to our people because we have to give them a say as well. Well…

Dave:  And they can’t get to your people via email today?

Kevin:  They can’t do it and that…

Dave:  Or instant messaging?

Kevin:  …was exactly my point. That’s exactly my point. That in my response, if I come on board and that’s exactly how I started up and what I say is I can get just about anyone’s email, all I need to know is that, you know, do they start their email with, for example, Kevin J or K Jones.

Dave:  Right.

Kevin:  And then if I am someone in the union, I have got someone on the inside and I can get the company list and I have got everybody’s email address whether they give it to me or not, done deal.

Dave:  Right.

Kevin:  Just like that. And then this person also said on his blog post that he was able to quickly go out to Facebook and to Twitter, I think it was, and find 380 people from his company immediately.

Dave:  Yes.

Kevin:  So, really the companies are just totally burying their head in the sand and giving other excuses when the real excuse is I don’t…we don’t know what to do and we haven’t thought about it, we haven’t thought about it enough.

Dave:  Yes.

Kevin:  So how do you overcome that? How would you overcome that?

Dave:  Well, I mean I think, you know, that research that person did already is sort of I think a step in the right direction, right, I mean the first thing we have to acknowledge is what you and I have already been saying so far on this call which is, you know, it’s a myth that we’re any less secure or any less inclined to share or socialize or goof off or whatever the reasons are and excuses are through Twitter or through say Facebook than we are through email or through the phone or frankly by surfing the web. Right?

And so, you know, it’s just a very disingenuous argument I think, right.

Kevin:  OK.

Dave:  So I would… I mean I think those things are good. On the Twitter front specifically though, I mean the other part to me that I am not sure people get entirely is it’s a much more transparent conversation unless you go to DMs, right, but…

Kevin:  Right.

Dave:  …initially, the initial contact that someone’s really afraid that the union’s going to start unionizing through Twitter. Well, you know, that’s going to be a hell of a lot easier to discover than them tracking down people’s personal emails and connecting with them there or connecting with them on Facebook, right.

On Twitter, I can just create an alert, you know, and create a search through TweetDeck for the company name or for the name and the word union. I mean I can do all kinds of interesting things and I could know the moment I knew the activity was happening, right.

Kevin:  Yes.

Dave:  And further like I am not sure legally, you can like…I mean so what if someone did contact somebody through Twitter, like for unionization, I mean you can’t stop behavior, right?

Kevin:  Right.

Dave:  Right, anymore than you can stop it happening from email or from a phone call and that would be union busting sort of activities, right.

Kevin:  Hmm.

Dave:  So you know, the reality is people are going to share and communicate in whatever the hell means they want to and frankly if they have cell phone coverage in their business and someone has an iPhone or a Blackberry, then they have access to Twitter anyway.

And that’s another fabulous point because that’s something that I thought of so many times is they have already have access to it and you try to get rid of that access, you try to shut it down, they still have access through their iPhone…

Kevin:  Right.

Dave:  …or their Blackberry, they still have that. What do you do? And honestly they will take a little bit more time because they will be on their iPhone which takes just a little bit slower…

Kevin:  Right.

Dave:  …and it takes a little bit longer to go through, so they are going to waste more time.

Kevin:  Right.

Dave:  So you had just created that dream. Well done. Good job.

Kevin:  Yes, and further they can access it from home.

Dave:  Yes.

Kevin:  Right? So I mean like, you know, do we think that union organizers or people who are, you know, trying to get to our people and find stuff out are only going to do it from nine to five when they are at work. Really, I mean is that really what we think? Right?

Dave:  So, and again I think it’s just people have not thought about it enough and have not realized because if you’re, if someone is not into  doesn’t understand social media, they  I mean honestly, it’s almost another world. And it’s a new  I don’t want to say it’s a new way of thinking about things, it’s a new  because I don’t want to  as Dave Ferguson the other day, we were going back forth. He said, “This is not the sun and the moon and the stars.” And I agree, it’s not. But it is

Kevin:  It’s just the stars.

Dave:  What was that?

Kevin:  It’s just the stars.

Dave:  It’s just the stars.

[laughter]

Dave:  But it is a different way of thinking overall. Because  I know when people  when people get into social media, they start to think of it differently about how to do things, about the way they interact, the way they communicate, and what they say and how they say it and who they say it to.

Kevin:  Yeah.

Dave:  And what they can say. And it takes your mind into something totally different. And people who aren’t there yet don’t quite understand that.

Kevin:  Right. Right.

Dave:  So they don’t even have a background of reference to that. And I think that’s one of our jobs, is to help people understand that. And one thing I said to  the second person that emailed me with the whole union thing  and I wrote this on my blog post  basically was, OK, the first thing, he’s going to go meet with the VP next week.

And so I said the first thing I would do is I would say, alright, here’s the scenario, and if we left it alone, this is what will happen, and be very, very personal about it. If they wanted to, they could do this, they could do this and that would have this repercussions

Kevin:  Right.

Dave:  …in our company, and we wouldn’t have a clue that it’s going on.

Kevin:  Yes.

Dave:  However, if we were to do this and this and this and this, we would not only be able to take some of the conversation and make sure it’s all internal, but then also have a view like you were saying, view into what’s going on the outside as well.

Kevin:  Right.

Dave:  But we really need to take advantage of that and not let it control us, but us control it.

Kevin:  Right. Right.

Yeah, to me that’s part of the larger argument that you and I have been making and that folks like Jay Cross and a lot of folks now have been making, which is this idea that you know, we’re not in school anymore, right? I mean when you work for a company, a lot of times now you work with a company as much you work for a company, right?

Dave:  Right.

Kevin:  And you know I’m not  I don’t view myself as the subordinate in the relationship that I have with Mzinga. You know, I bring my own weight and gravitas to my role as a professional, and I act accordingly. I act as an adult and I act as a professional for what’s in the best interest of the company and what’s in my own personal best interest, which 99% of the time aligns with what’s in the best interest of the company, right?

Dave:  Right.

Kevin:  And I think, you know, we still sometimes have this industrial mentality.

Dave:  Yes.

Kevin:  You know, that like, we have to coddle all our employees and we have to teach them everything they need to know, because they can’t think on their own, you know? I mean it’s this idea like that we’re still like  you know, we go through school sitting in a classroom waiting for the instructor in the front to tell us what we need to know, and we sit there like passive little recipients waiting for our heads to get filled with knowledge.

And then we leave and we go to the workforce and the workforce still largely treats people that way. And all of this social stuff, all this social media, is flipping all that mentality on its head. Right? Because now, I, as a consumer, I as a worker, I as a learner, I’m completely empowered. I can write blogs, I can create video, I can launch stuff, I can find stuff, I can create, I can make, I can network, independently of these institutions that used to be the source of control.

Dave:  Right.

Kevin:  And I think fundamentally, to me, that’s the issue, right, and it goes to what you were just saying. That people are  don’t know what to do yet, because they haven’t realized that the game is flipped. And so they’re still struggling to say, “Well wait, we still control, we still control.”

Well you know, you never did control, right? You thought you might. You know, maybe you had the illusion of it, but the workers were always the one that made things happen. So you know, I think we’re going to see a lot of battles like these emerge, and not just over Twitter and Facebook, but over the very construct of: what does it mean to be a worker, what does it mean to be an employer? What’s the power dynamic there and how is that changing, you know?

Dave:  Yes. Yes. I’ve seen the exact same thing. It’s the whole control issue. You would think that companies would be saying like, “Wow! You can create content and get it out to a whole bunch of people? Hah, look at that, what a great idea! Let’s enables. Let’s do as much of that as we can.” But, instead, it’s totally the opposite, “Whoa, wait a minute, you mean, you’re not allowing me to shove it down your throat?”

Kevin:  Something’s wrong here, we have to control this. And even, and I’ve said this before, but when I’ve talked to training professionals or learning professionals overall sometimes, they’re scared of it because they are not even in control. It’s not just, I mean, when we say a company, we’re talking about people, because that’s really what it comes down to, is people.

And sometimes, the people are us who don’t like to give up that control. We still want to have we still want to be in charge of the trainings and in charge of the content, in charge of the documentation, in charge of blah, di, blah, di, blah, instead of letting it go out.

Dave:  Right, yeah, and I mean, you know, maybe the right way to think of it is in terms of control structures within the company, like, learning and development for all of our claims to want to empower the workforce is, in fact, a control structure. We’re the bottleneck between the subject matter expert and the masses.

Kevin:  Yes.

Dave:  And, in some cases, that’s great, right? I mean at some places, that’s entirely necessary. I mean, you and I have both met enough people in our life to know some of them shouldn’t be talking to the public. Right? [laughter] So, let’s just be clear.

But, on the other hand, a lot of times, that’s a bit of an artificial barrier. Right? And, you know, finances is another control mechanism. IT’s another control mechanism. All of these things are simultaneously empowering mechanisms and controlling mechanisms and it’s that controlling part that I think most people are freaking out a bit, as you said.

Dave:  Yup. So, I guess, overall for these two guys who wrote, asking, “What on earth do I do? I think we really need to realize where a company is coming from. Number one, they don’t know what to do because they haven’t given it enough thought.

Kevin:  Right.

Dave:  All they have heard and seen is these people are going to waste time, or the meetings may get to us or whatever it may be and so they ixnayed it.

Number two, they’re thinking of control, the command and control structure issues you talk about. And, so we need to kind of step in their shoes and say, alright, if they’re worried about control, let’s show them how little control they actually have and how they’re losing control right now.

Dave:  Yeah.

Kevin:  And once they understand that, then let’s help them take control.

Dave:  Yup. Or at least influence, at least have visibility. And I would add a third item to that list, if you were done, were you done? Was there another one on there?

Kevin:  Yeah, I can only go up to two.

Dave:  OK, OK, good. I can only go to two as well, but I’ll build on yours and we’ll get the three that way.

Dave:  Good.

Kevin:  You know I would also point out companies that have already gone in this direction, so that this is my number three. You know, look at Cisco, look at Best Buy, look at Intel, right? These are companies who’ve jumped in with both feet. Look at the companies on Twitter and Facebook right now, right?

The Air Force empowers every, single airman in the entire Air Force to blog, respond to blogs, to Twitter, to be on Facebook. And what they did is they developed a guide, an Air Force guide on good behavior and what the expectations were. These are guys who are 18, 20, 22 years old that are empowered to speak on behalf of the Air Force when people are critical of the Air Force in their blog.

And yet, a company is afraid to let a worker be on Twitter? I mean, so, I think we have to give examples of, look, these other big companies like you and, in some cases, big government organizations have jumped in with both feet and nothing bad has happened. It’s going to be OK.

Dave:  Right.

Kevin:  You pat them on the head a little bit, “Don’t worry, we’ll be there if you jump into a deep end, we’ll catch you. It’s OK.

And then, the fourth thing I would say is, we also need to recognize that being on Twitter, being on Facebook, it’s great, it’s fun, it’s also not necessarily part of everybody’s job role. Right?

Dave:  Right.

Kevin:  I think we’ve got to be clear about that too. You and I are in a privileged position a little bit in that we are fullon knowledge workers, this is what we do, connecting with other experts in the industry is what we do. Talking to industry pundits is what we do. Knowing what’s going on is what we do.

But, if I’m the guy on the assembly line making widgets, maybe not so much. So, I do think that there is some, I think, proper reticence to open this to everybody in the company.

Dave:  That’s true.

Kevin:  But for those of us who are in the positions like we are and the folks who emailed you, of course that’s part of their job. And anyone who doesn’t think that, they just need to get their head examined a little bit.

Dave:  Even though there are some people who are clearly knowledge workers and some people who are clearly not, at least what we would think, what we would consider as knowledge workers. So, there’s the example of British Airways who put up a discussion board, for example, and allowed their attendants…

Kevin:  Their flight attendants and the flight crews, yeah.

Dave:  …to get on there and start talking. You know, that’s not really their job, their job is to go on a plane and to serve and to help and to assist and, you know, I don’t to minimize it by any means, but their job isn’t really to get on and to be knowledge workers as far as I understand.

But when you put up a discussion board, when British Airways did it, all of a sudden they have people talking, the attendants talking about cups and how the cups are breaking.

Kevin:  Right, right.

Dave:  And it’s been a problem forever and then, all of a sudden the person in charge of cups sees that and says, “Oh, look we need to make a change.” And they make a change and, bam, instantly it’s done and it’s taken care of and people are, “Oh, thank you so much.” But that wouldn’t be there. So, the people that we see as knowledge workers and those that aren’t, I think it’s starting to blend a little bit more and those who may not think of themselves as knowledge workers, if they’ve got some knowledge to share, they really are.

Kevin:  Right. Yeah, so I agree with that wholeheartedly.

Dave:  But, I agree with you on the other end as well, that there are some people that really won’t need it, for the most part.

Kevin:  Right. Yeah, and I think that’s interesting and maybe that’s a subject for a future podcast, but, you know, what is a knowledge worker nowadays? It’s an interesting question. And you know, I can think, you know, that’s a great example and I love that British Airways story.

There’s some stuff I’ve read about what FedEx and UPS are doing to capture expertise and information from their frontline delivery guys, none of whom you would think as knowledge workers, but guess who knows the most about the customer? Right?

So, when you think about, maybe, again, and maybe this is a future podcast, but maybe what we think about, you know, what kind of knowledge? Right? Because if it’s about the customer, your stewardesses and flight crews know more about them and the folks at the flight desk that book people and check you in and all those things, they probably know more than anybody else in the company about the customer.

Dave:  Exactly.

Kevin:  Right? So, it’s what knowledge, I guess is the question, right? That’s a great point, that’s a really good point.

Dave:  So maybe that’s next week.

Kevin:  Yeah, I think so.

Dave:  So, you know, we started this whole podcast thing, I’m thinking, OK, 20 minutes. And each time it gets, 20, 21, 22, 23  we’re at 27 now.

Kevin:  Yeah.

Dave:  It just keeps getting longer and longer and so I hope people don’t shoot us.

Kevin:  Let’s hope their commutes are long enough, which is a horrible thing to wish for people. May your commute be long. [laughter] Because I’m so egocentric, that I want you to hear me. [laughter] Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Dave:  Yes.

Kevin:  And, with that, let us be done. Let us be done. Good talking with you, Dave.

Dave:  Yeah, you too man, ’til next week, take care.

[music]

Dave:  Thank you for joining us today on Social Learning Strategies and Trends, with Dave from Mzinga.

Kevin:  And Kevin from Engaged Learning.

Dave:  You can join the discussion or ask us a question by emailing us at D...@Mzinga.com.

Kevin:  Or Kevin at EngagedLearing.net.

Dave:  Thanks for listening. We look forward to your questions and comments. Until next time…

Transcription by CastingWords

Tags: objections, Podcast, slqotd, transcripts, Twitter

Overcoming Objections to Social Learning – One Week at at Time

May 9, 2009 SlideShare, Social Learning SIG, objections, slqotd

Last year at DevLearn I presented a session about the top 15 objections to social learning and how to overcome them. It was a GREAT session. In fact, it was where Dave Wilkins and I met and where we started doing the podcasts, webinars, Social Learning Question of the Day on Twitter and other projects.

A couple of weeks ago, Dave and I did a similar session, but as a webinar. There were over 200 people that attended. We thought that was good and we were happy with that. Then Dave took the webinar, slides and audio, and put them on SlideShare. Over these last two weeks, to our surprise, the webinar was viewed OVER 1400 MORE times! We are blown away!

Obviously, there is a need for this. So, to fulfill the need, we will be taking one objection a week and discussing it on the Social Learning NING group. It will give more people more space and time to give suggestions, voice concerns and really network ideas together.

So come join the 230 other people in this network.  Tell us your real live objection here, and we will add it in the mix.  Then put in your two cents (or more if you would like) for each objection.  Together we can get some fabulous perspectives and solutions!

I have embedded the webinar once again just to give you a feel for some of the topics we will be talking about.

Here’s to solving all our problems (or at least a few of them!).

Tags: 15 objections, ning, objections, Podcast, SlideShare, social learning, webinar