It’s always nice to meet folks from twitter. People I talk to like I’ve known them forever but have never met are especially interesting to meet in real life. Sometimes you meet people completely opposite from what you know them to be online. The surprize is pleasant in most cases. And when I find a cool bunch of people, I whip out my camera.
This is a blog response to: Where have all the good people gone?
It doesn’t matter what your background is. In fact someone from a different background can bring new ideas or new ways of doing things that can often work out very well. I’ve seen successful engineers in marketing, accountants in HR, lawyers in publishing.
Look at Jeff Bezos who was a banker turned bookstore technopreneur. Closer to home, Tony Fernandes was a bean counter who went into music and then started an airline. Moral of the story, your foundation should be in finance. No I’m kidding. I believe success lies in their ability to see opportunities and have the balls to get out and do it. But don’t get ballsy unless you’re hired for a top job with “Chief” as a prefix. Ballsy junior execs are almost always shown the door. Exceeding expectations don’t work for you when you’re working for someone in your first job after college. That is why Bill Gates took his balls elsewhere and started Microsoft. He would have been sacked at Commodore for sure.
If you don’t have balls, never mind. As long as you’re related (by birth or marriage) to someone with balls or has a lot of money. You know, you’re lucky you’re in Malaysia. Here it’s often who you know, not what you know – if you want things to move fast. But to stay ahead, you will need to know your stuff or have the money to hire people who know their stuff (make sure they don’t have balls so you don’t have to worry about getting stabbed in the back).
OK, Shazali isn’t really an entrepreneur he’s a corporate general. Does the above apply? Hell yeah. Even though he didn’t startup Celcom with this own money, his job is still very challenging, he has to take Celcom forward – which is like steering QE2. You make one mistake, you can take forever and a day to make a u-turn. If there’s an iceberg straight ahead, all the very best to you. So it takes a lot of balls to tell everyone where the boat should be heading.
Change seems to be the buzzword this year. The magic ingredient for progress. I strongly believe the telco industry has to change the way they operate, how they serve their customers and who they hire for the job. If the industry hasn’t made progress or innovated in awhile, does it make sense to continue poaching from within? To me, what’s coming out has been pretty “sei pan”. Time for a change. While we’re at it, time for 4 day work weeks and more transparency in the workplace also. ©
Was a great night. It had taken 7 days to pull together by essentially 4 people who hadn’t slept much. Most of the planning was coordinated through twitter with updates posted to the hub on posterous. We also had great sponsors, P1/ruumz pushed the message out for us continuously and during the event the twitter community raised the volume so loud, you could barely see any tweets from Malaysia that didn’t come with the #smckl or @smckl0 hashtags
What is SMCKL all about? Read: 10 Interesting Facts About Social Media Club.
The following video was put together with pictures taken by Vernon Chan (@vernieman), Nigel Sia (@nigelais), Reuben Lau (@reubenhot), Christopher @spinzer Tok and David Wang (@blogjunkie)
I met up with Derrick recently before the Lenovo media+blogger event to catch up on the things Lenovo is doing with social media.
In this video, hear Derrick speak about Lenovo’s views on social media, their last social media campaign, how he measures success, who in the organization should own the medium, reaching bloggers in the community and Facebook in the work place.
While companies are blocking Facebook, Lenovo is encouraging its staff to get on it. I sometimes wonder why companies are afraid of social media. Reminds me of the 90s when the internet became widespread and companies forbid access or limit the access to only a few. I am glad I saw internet happen while in JWT. We set up the first digital agency in the country and we were pitching new media before any agencies did and most clients didn’t want to touch it. LOL. I learned then what I’m seeing happen again today. When companies don’t understand what to do with something new, best thing to do would be block first then wait and see or hope it goes away. Here’s an article I think companies blocking social media sites should read “How to Extend Your Customer Experience Through Social Media” from Harvard Business Publishing. Also check out the link in that article for Intel’s Social Media Guidelines for their staff.
24-Hour Singapore Bloggerthon. Pre Event:
24-Hour Singapore Bloggerthon. Post Event:
Niki Cheong, a guy I met on twitter helped me once. I was at a hair salon in Bangsar getting my hair done. It was a Saturday and it’s usually a parking free day in my area so I didn’t think of paying for parking in Bangsar. When my stylist told me he needed more time to finish, he asked if I got another hour on the parking meter. I had not fed the meter at all. I quickly ask on twitter if I could get away with it and Niki replied telling me not to risk it. One of the guys at the salon offered to rush down and feed the meter for me and it was just in time.
Twitter has been an amazing crowdsourcing and networking tool for me. I’ve got help from @LonnieHodge in Guangzhou when I wanted to get from Hong Kong to Shanghai on a budget. @Demonick helped me bring a gadget back from Singapore. And when I was shopping for a netbook, people were sending me links to where I might find the information to help me decide. In return, I do my part to help other people with information and I would meet up with them when they visit KL. I had the honor of meeting @mikechapman recently. Mike was a random stranger on twitter. I use tweetdeck and I have a column to catch all mentions of Malaysia. Late last year, right after the US Presidential election, Mike was in Malaysia and he tweeted about Malaysians loving Obama too. I chuckled, tweeted back and asked if he voted. We started following each other and exchanged tweets. When he came back to KL recently, we met up and had a great time talking and exchanging ideas. These are some of my many adventures.
So when Niki, who is a journalist at The Star, organized a talk on social media for the Public Relations Consulting Association titled “Adventures in Social Media” he invited David Lian and me to be on the discussion panel. David and I were asked to share our experience as active users of social media. The discussion would follow a presentation by Michael Netzley and Niki himself. Micheal Netzley gave a presentation which wasn’t too technical or too basic. Niki did one using Prezi which impressed a few people who haven’t seen prezi before.
The view from the stage
I recognized a few professionals in the audience and I was bracing for tough questions. There were almost 200 people in the room and if I didn’t die from adrenalin poisoning, I thought I would die from the stares if I had no answer to a question. Thankfully the questions were easy.
So my adventures in social media has led to an adventure in speaking on a panel. I wonder what else it will lead me too. All aboard? Let’s go.
Michael Netzley’s presentation. Intro:
Case study #1
Case study #3
Case study #4
Case study #5
We know everything can be hacked. I know a couple of guys who have got their hands on it.
I interviewed Neo and Morpheus a few years back in some dodgy hole in the wall they call their “setup”. Morpheus talked about how they were trying to make sense of the mess code named ‘The Matrix’. All the dead ends, power surges and a pain in the ass bug that duplicates itself into many forms and scattered all over the place. Rubbing his temple frequently and popping some blue-colored pill he continued, “there was one night Neo thought he had a cold and blew his nose and blood came forth. Neo was over-clocking his mind working on the code and his brain was melting through his nostrils. I made him ‘unplug’ for awhile. There was nothing else we can do but switch the run time routine to a walk time routine.” Fortunately, all was good a few minutes later and the code was hacked on schedule.
When the interview ended, Neo said something I will never forget “everything becomes open source eventually.” We all live in different worlds. My world is not the same as your world, well maybe a bit of it overlaps with yours and everyone else on this earth. So the guys are currently working on the video tutorial which will be up on YouTube soon. In it, you will find simple steps on how to hack the universe for the source code to your world.
©Carolyn
Related article: The End is Near
Robin Bloor is a twitter friend full of witty tweets. Follow @robinbloor for a good time.
A friend disagrees that social media is just another channel and what I would like to know is, how different is it from direct mails, tv, radio etc.? A channel is a platform used to either deliver and or receive a message. It can be one way or interactive. A channel is not a message, which can take the form of text alone, images alone, sound alone or all of the above.
Everyone seems to think twitter is social media and social media is twitter. *Facepalm* right? Then again, it’s also not limited to Facebook, Plurk, Digg, YouTube etc. Social media existed way before that buzz word came along. Chris Pirillo had a good example. He said even dogs are into social media. When they are taken to the park to mingle with other dogs, the park is their social media. Closer to home, a game of mahjong is social media. That is because it is another channel of communication.
Have you got a different point of view? I’d love to hear it.
New to social media? Even if you’re a seasoned user, Jeremiah Owyang’s Social Media FAQ is worth a read. Jeremiah’s list focuses a lot on twitter probably because it is driving a lot of the conversations we hear online today. The one question I get a lot of is FAQ #5 and I found Jeremiah’s answers make a lot of sense. Here’s an excerpt.
Social Media FAQ #5: How Do I Talk to my Executives about Social Media?
I enjoy feedback, but was surprised to see a few votes come into my uservoice page, one suggesting I help convince management on how to deal with social media.
Your job: To convince your peers, stakeholders and executives that don’t use social media (or don’t believe in) on why social media may be important to your business.
I’ve actually written about this before, so I’ll highlight some of the previous posts that I feel are helpful:
Start with Technographics
First, obtain the technographics of your market segment (we’ve made a sample free), if your customers are using social media tools, then you’ve a strong business case. Secondly, we’ve already concluded that decisions are based on trust, and trust is highest among peers, not from marketers. This disruptive change is enough to kick start the thinking gears of your executive.
Ascertain if this is right for your company
It’s important to note that social media may NOT be the best for your market or company, if the inactives are a significant amount of your technographics, or you’re in a very conservative industry, you may be ready to deploy a listening program, but may not want to participate. I really believe that social media isn’t for every company, and you’ll have to do an internal reality check to see if this is the case for you.
Focus on value, not technology
Next, don’t focus on tools, instead focus on the end result: value. How To: Effectively Talk to Execs and Clients about Social Media. This post teaches you how to talk about the end results of what’s expected, ever lead with “we want to start a blog”
Learn how to talk to immigrants about natives
Getting Your Digital Immigrant Executives to Understand the World of Digital Natives Frequently, the decision makers, are my parents age, and often their technographics usage is very low. I’ve found talking about Generation X and Y as the new workforce a quick way to open their eyes about the changes in communication.
Be prepared for the business questions
Lastly, before you go to your execs, be prepared to answer the tough questions, the one Legal, the CFO, the COO will ask. Be prepared.
This reminds me of a recent statement made by a self-confessed “non-expert in social media” consultant in a huge PR firm. He said, “If you sell to a human being, you should be in social media.” Well, I agree that he’s not an expert. Social media isn’t for every company. While you can do it, does it make sense?
Enjoy the read and have you yourself gotten any FAQ on social media and a POV to share on it?
Apparently there’s this Rahman Code that guides the selection of Prime Ministers in Malaysia. Nah, it’s just a coincidence. Right? I asked my muslim friends including Amir himself and was met with “What, you haven’t heard of this before?” Well no, seriously, I haven’t. Amir by the way gave a brilliant presentation at the recent Pecha Kucha Night in KL.
Now I’m wondering if there are more “codes” running the country. Enjoy the video, celebrate our filmmakers while they’re still alive (that’s Amir) and long live Najib.
What is Pecha Kucha Night?
Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds
