o brave new world: Misc. Community

Understanding the Benefits of Social Media

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 01:42:29 GMT

Or, It's the People, Stupid

Just stumbled across this as I was browsing around looking for something interesting: Charlene Li's post "Web 2.0/social computing explained, thanks to Common Craft."

The video itself I think hits the right notes in terms of demonstrating the value of social media, such as bookmarking tools, to the uninitiated. If I had my druthers, I'd put together something similar in rolling out a suite of social networking services in support of enterprise communities, whatever the context.

Strikes me, too, that in this Brave New World of ours, we've got to break the mold of corporate-speak and do what we can to humanize, as Josh Hallett suggests elsewhere, the ways that companies relate with their customers. The long-term impact on the "bottom line" could be enormous, if we really begin to think about business in terms of relationships where both parties benefit not just from the primary business transaction itself (item or service bought/sold), but also from how they connect as people, whether on a professional or personal level.

Malcolm Gladwell of Tipping Point and Blink fame illustrates this point well. He asks, who do you think gets sued more often for malpractice? The doctors who make the most mistakes? In other words, those who are technically the most incompetent? Nah. It seems that when physicians err or are perceived to err in their practice, the most important factor that separates the sued from the non-sued is whether or not their patients like them. Yes, that's it. It seems that people like to be heard, like it when doctors take time with them, and like to feel like they're understood and cared for. Imagine that people could have such an expectation!

Now abstract this observation and connect it to the software business. Surely, if we want to talk seriously about "winning the hearts and minds" of <insert audience here> or changing perceptions about <insert product or company name here>, it doesn't take much effort to see how important it is to focus in on creating real and meaningful relationships with and between customers.

Of course, you may say, no company of Microsoft's size, for example, can scale in such a way as to have "meaningful" relationships with every single customer. That could mean hundreds of millions (if not more) individual connections. But here we can benefit from network theory--that is, the power of human, social networks to make a difference in people's lives, or more aptly, in the way they connect with the companies whose products or services they buy and/or use.

We are at Microsoft some 80,000+ employees worldwide, per the latest figures I saw in the newspaper or perhaps in Directions on Microsoft. Each one of us is surrounded by a web of connections, some personal, many professional; some very close, others more like acquaintances. Each one of those people is connected to their personal and professional networks.... and so on, until eventually, it becomes possible to be virtually connected to everyone on earth, in varying degrees--"six degrees," by some measures.

We don't have to know, nor should we even try to know, more people than we as individuals have a capacity to know without losing all value in our relationships because we have too little to give any one of them. We've only got so much energy to spread around, after all. But with what energy we have, we can have a personal (albeit indirect) impact on many, many more people by virtue of the interconnected networks that extend outwards from each of us individually. Add to it the influence and impact that all of those people can have on one another, and you begin to get a feel for the potential of business strategies that make community engagement and relationship building--not just "customer relationship management"--ineluctable components of success.

I think that if we take the time to build relationships with our "patients" and help them help each other and themselves, in the long run it will be the greatest of differentiators in the marketplace.

- dave

del.icio.us tags: social_media, Gladwell, network_theory, social_networking, marketing, relationships

TechEd07: Post Eventum Wrap-up-um

Wed, 13 Jun 2007 01:51:41 GMT

Somewhere between a certain developer named Doug from EMC and another named Bill from an aeronautical company in Kansas, I had probably a few dozen conversations with the attendees at TechEd, many in the 5-minute range, but several lasting 15-30 minutes or longer. These conversations were interspersed among several hundred customer contacts we as a group had during the 5-day event, judging by the 700+ t-shirts we gave away, and the 300 flyers we handed out.

Folks had a number of things to tell me, and I did what I could to open the eyes of the uninitiated to the promises of social networking technologies such as our beta of the social bookmarking/tagging app Tagspace. The response was overwhelming positive, which may stand to reason given the focus and perhaps technical bias of the folks in attendance at Microsoft's big technical audience summit for the year. But then again, they could've easily been indifferent, but in fact they weren't--the enthusiasm was almost palpable at times as people seemed to realize that there may indeed be a better way...

Additional Notes-'N'-Quotes

Briefly, here are some notes-'n'-quotes from the event:

Some of the folks at TechEd were tuned into social networking/media technologies, but the vast majority were not: it was something they saw on coming at them on their radar, but weren't really sure what to make of it or how to react. These folks were especially happy to receive our "SNS 101" overviews using Tagspace as the didactic tool.
Hittail.com is worth taking a look at for the manner in which it checks referrers and incoming search queries to give you info on the kinds of info people are looking for in coming to a person's site--"you can see where someone needs help," which is far better than "just shooting off a blog [post]," so you can produce better, qualitative interaction w/ site visitors.
On MSDN: Would be cool if "MSDN could do a query like Google Code"; would also be good to "see people who are credible, [for customers to] see people they find interesting." Podcasts and other media also desirable for commuters and for others who need/want to fill time with technical media away from the desktop/laptop. For one developer, MSDN perceived as useful as, e.g., a .NET Framework reference, not as a network per se.
Customers also looking for solutions for creating/embedding community experiences in their Web sites, beyond typical forums/blogs. SharePoint perceived as a potentially valuable tool for creating internal (if not also external) community-esque sites.
Top sources of info for many, when asked the question, "how do you get/manage info to do your job?", in rough order: Google, misc. reference materials, peers and colleagues.
Spam and noise are some of the key concerns for those who engage in using community resources... how to separate the wheat from the chaff?
On one interlocutor's wishlist: would like to see a 1-stop shop whre you can go and find all the stuff you need and "you don't have to look too hard to find something," including "a community of like-minded people who are willing to help one another."
What mix of Microsoft (the corporate voice) and the community would work well? Half-and-half, per one attendee, who also commented that personalization would be very beneficial provided it meant extremely well targeted content and communications. If the value prop for profiling and customer data collection is strong and it's clear what the customer gets in return, customers are willing to offer up profile info.
Notable quotable from an MVP for TFS, when shown Tagspace and following a discussion of the envisioned capabilities of the Web service/REST interface: "This is it! This is exactly what you should be doing!"
And what about integrating Tagspace into Windows Live Writer, such that when you put together a blog post, you also can authorially tag it off to the service and also provide a control so readers can tag it as well? (Such a good and simple idea, that Taylor had already started to monkey with a Live Writer plug-in doing just that.)
And, lastly, seemingly in the face of a thorougly critical take on the design of Tagspace, one Mr. Bernett said words to the effect of "Love the colors and white fonts on the dark background--can I steal this?" Which shows yet again that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, especially when it comes to Web design.

Thanks...

Thanks to everyone who stopped by our l'il booth at TechEd and took the time to chat with us about community, TechNet, MSDN, and the future; we'll be in touch with those of you who generously offered to get involved and help out with feedback, &c. Thanks to Tshak, Doug, Don, and Chris for making it a productive, memorable, and even fun event. And thanks as well to Paige for getting us all set up with the swag/chatchkies and ensuring everything was in place on time.

- dave

TechEd 07 Day 4: Dr. Dave and the Theory of Community Services

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 05:02:48 GMT

2:44 video of Don and me at TechEd 2007, or, a day in the life of a Microsoft soldier on the floor of huge industry tradeshow.

(More detailed write-up to follow. Got to get to bed. Must sleep. Must finish w/ TechEd tomorrow. Must get on plane and go home. Must go home.)

Dr. Dave and the Theory of Community Services

Video: Dr. Dave and the Theory of Community Services

TechEd07 Day 3: Are you still filming?

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 04:58:12 GMT

V. short video from Day 3 of Microsoft TechEd 2007. Just a little fun chattin' w/ the homies, Brandon and Henry, fo shizzle.

Mo' to come, yo.

Are you still filming?

Video: Are you still filming?

TechEd07: Words

Wed, 06 Jun 2007 05:31:33 GMT

Hey, so we're here in Orlando, representin' the crew back in Redmond, yo. We've had some solid interactions with customers from different companies and different parts of the country. While we haven't been able get into quite the depth that we might've liked so far, we have been able to give out a ton of t-shirts and other swaggy-swag.

My quote of the day comes from one Steve, an MVP whom Speaker7 (Doug) happens to know. He said, regarding our choice to implement REST using WCF as part of our new community services, "That will flippin' ROCK!" I asked him if I could quote him on it, and needless to say (so why do I say it?), he consented ... so there you have it, Ladies and Gentlemen.

I'll post much more about our travels, travails, joys and tribulations at TechEd07 tomorrow, but let me tide you over with this collection of TechEd pics on Flickr, as well as this little snippet of on-the-scene reporting....

Words? What kind of words?

Video: Words? What kind of words?
Word up.
- dave

TechEd 07 in Orlando: I'll Be There ... Will You?

Tue, 29 May 2007 21:34:54 GMT

Quick note to say, hey, I'll be at TechEd '07 in Orlando next week, June 3-8, and would love a chance to talk to folks in the community about our services, your community & information management needs, and ideas for the future. I'll be at the Resources Zone, working on the MSDN side of things (or 'round and about that general area).

A handful of us will be there, including Tshak, Don, Doug, and our special guest PM, Chris. Come by and say 'hi', and pick up a t-shirt; and, if you really want to get into it, allow one of us to interview you and, I promise, we've got some sweet swag to give you in return (such as you see attached to this post: a USB 2.0 4-port hub).

- dave

(beta blog x-post)

Really Living Community

Sat, 12 May 2007 01:31:12 GMT

No, not as opposed to "really dead community," like some sort of necropolis or zombie collective. Not really, that's not my intent.

<self-indulgent philosophical flight>

What I mean is: What does it take to make community a live and active, living, breathing aspect of one's life? I suppose by definition a human being exists in a community, unless of course you're talking about a hirsute hermit off in the woods of Idaho... Then there are those who may be in a community, but 'live' as ghosts, emotionally and spritually isolated, cut off from the concern and embrace of others, sometimes driven into deep paranoia and psychosis. (I can't help but think of the Virginia Tech massacre and what had to be going on inside the head of Seung-Hui Cho.)

Clues are all around us. I was reading an article on my new neighborhood, Ballard. This is the second article this week that's focused on the building boom going on in the area. A theme common to both articles has been the social impact of the influx of yuppie newcomers (among whom I must reluctantly include myself), and the concern that established residents have for being overwhelmed, and losing what they cherish most in the "old" Ballard.

So I'm thinking, what does this mean? Am I part of the problem in this new place I've chosen to call home? Every time I run through, wander around, or take time to explore the neighborhood a little, I am struck by how special it really is, and how lucky I am to be there with my girlfriend Carla and my two cats. I know that if I don't establish roots and become a part of the community, I will indeed be a part of the problem, will contribute little to the place and its inhabitants other than a few dollars on taxes, goods, and services. And what's more, I will be shortchanging myself of the opportunity to lead a fuller life than what I've been leading until now...

What goes on externally is a reflection of what's really going on internally. Whither my career? my life? what do I value most? How do I really want to make my mark?

We cannot be at our best, most productive, most useful--'happy' even--without the embrace of others, without belonging in a very real way to our "peeps." What meaning can our lives have if we fail to connect and share with others? What point is there to living a mean life of selfish indulgence? (When will I really understand this?) This is why the work I do for the communities team at Microsoft.com is so important. It's not about the technology--it never was, fundamentally: it's about the people and the relationships we form with them, wherever and however that occurs. It is one of those things that I'm having to learn over and over again.

</self-indulgent philosophical flight>

Hillary 1984 Epilogue: No Good Deed Goes Unpunished

Thu, 22 Mar 2007 02:07:46 GMT

Or, how to be creative, make a cutting-edge political statement, point the way to the future of social/viral media, but lose your job. Sigh.

Ironic ending to the "Hillary 1984" story? You be the judge.

- dave

Social Software, Politics, and Misc. Randomness

Wed, 21 Mar 2007 18:06:42 GMT

Well, guess that winter storm back in December blew away my blog as well for the past 3 months. That's one helluva storm!

So I'm back. Sorry for having been away so long. Been busy, like everyone else, and some things just had to fall by the wayside.

Any-hoo, what prompted me to write again are three things:

First, what's going on at work. We are heads down getting ready to push out some very interesting--and I hope very useful--social networking & online community services. In April, you'll see the word start to get around about our betas of four wholly new or wholly refactored old animals:
Secondly, there's been an interesting thread going around work that's been a reaction to the YouTube mashup video called "Hillary 1984." While some have definitely reacted to the political content of the video, others have commented interestingly on how this in no small measure demonstrates the little-'d'-democratic power of the new social and viral media technologies sprouting up on the Web. Both scary and exciting to see: political campaigns are less and less in a position to dictate the messages, terms, and images that define them or their opponents. When used well, this can mean a reinvigorated politics of (online) participation; when misused, this can result in a lot of noise and dis/misinformation (if not scurillous rumor mongering and libelous deceit). O, brave new world...
<shamelessPlug>I need finally to get the word out: My lovely condo is for sale in downtown Seattle! Prove the power of social networking and help me spread the word. Thank you.</shamelessPlug>

- dave

Wild and Windy Weather Notwithstanding: December Update on Tagspace

Sat, 16 Dec 2006 01:13:37 GMT

Seattle and the Puget Sound region have just suffered a major storm that's wreaked all sorts of havoc on homes, roads, commutes, and weekday routines. (Here are some photos of the storm's aftermath from the Seattle Times today.)

I found out the hard way that I ought not to have ventured to the Microsoft campus in Redmond this morning. The result was 2.5 hours stuck in traffic, first getting into it, and then struggling to get back home to where I live in Seattle. I was turned away from the building where I work every day at the garage by a facilities dude who was assessing what to do about a large tree that had fallen smack in the middle of the entry way. Trees were down everywhere, particularly around campus. Traffic everywhere on the Eastside crawled through the broken boughs of a shattered morning commute.

I think I was mostly freaked out about the bizarre accident that took place on 148th near Main St. I heard a loud crash and at first thought a tree might’ve fallen over into the gridlocked traffic (gridlocked from all the failed street lights, among other things). I craned my neck to see what had happened and caught sight of an SUV on the opposite side of the road facing the wrong way and resting at an odd angle on the embankment. Another car, a small white sedan I think, was just sitting in the middle of the road. Both had their front-ends crushed in. A lady emerged from one of the vehicles and immediately started yelling and jumping up and down, trotting up and down the sidewalk, apparently confused, adrenaline-pumped, and extremely agitated. I thought, “How in the hell did that happen?” Traffic had been moving quite slow, and it made no sense for there to be a front-end collision.

Now, at any rate, safely back at home, I thought it would be a good opportunity to catch up on some things, including my blog, which I've let languish for the past few weeks. I've been focused on getting some side projects taken care of, while doing what I could to get things lined up and ready to go for renewed development of our social bookmarking and tagging efforts in January, after folks take the usual end-of-year holiday.

These past several weeks since we launched a beta of Tagspace, the development team has been heads-down on doing some necessary but decidedly unsexy work on the backend services, largely to support better cross-platform integration in the months ahead. What this will mean, in practical terms, is that other community applications will be better able to plug into our services (and vice versa). Unfortunately, this has meant as well that we've not been able to make much progress on the social bookmarking front-end (viz, Tagspace). But by February-March, we expect to make significant strides in our customer-facing aspect, queuing up for development a new UI, improved performance, and a much-expanded set of features.

Wish us luck: the weather isn't our only challenge.

- dave

MSDN and TechNet Communities: Check Out Sean's Blog

Wed, 22 Nov 2006 00:28:52 GMT

I've had the pleasure in recent weeks to get to know Sean Van Guilder, a colleague over on the MSDN and TechNet side of the MSCOM house. We community product managers (Korby, Brian, and I) have been working as a v-team with Sean on defining some common community scenarios, basically trying to craft new experiences for IT pros and developers who come to TechNet and MSDN. The main impetus is for MSDN and TN to, on the one hand, be in a position to take advantage of the community services our team is developing, and, on the other, work with us on identifying and defining additional requirements they'll inevitably have.

Anyhow, check out his blog and, if you're a user of MSDN and/or TechNet, let him know what your needs and thoughts are.

- dave

Spinnin' Wheels

Thu, 21 Sep 2006 22:27:20 GMT

"The wheels in my head are spinning," Mr. Brunelle tells me, following a stimulating conversation we had yesterday about Web 2.0-related matters and some of our ideas/plans with respect to building new infrastructure to support Microsoft online communities in the months ahead.

Well, the wheels in my head are spinning, too. Hard to keep up with everything that's going on, and put some sort of intelligible structure on it with clear direction (which is one reason, between you and me, that I'm skipping the company meeting today: I wanted a chance to put some thoughts together). Here are just some of those spinning cogs:

The "long tail" of tagging suggests new methods for providing recommendations to users of the Web. This is something the inimitable Alex Barnett suggested to me mid-way through a meeting we had recently about tagging at Microsoft, and I'm glad to see that he took the time to fill out his thinking in a recent blog post on the matter. This has gotten the team of us thinking about how we can use tagging both to power recommendations to users, and at the same time provide alternative discovery metaphors based on the long-tail phenomenon. One: let's bust tags out of the cloud and display a person's tagging behavior/interests in the form of a graph by which users can potentially navigate. Two: let's then apply some intelligence behind the scenes to analyze tagger's respective graphs of tags to begin to identify clusters of shared interests. Three: let's then drive a set of dynamic recommendations to users so that they can more easily discover resources that may interest them as well as hook them up with communities of like-minded souls. I think there's some serious potential here. (Thanks again, Alex, for pointing this out.)
OPML, the outline format for XML, is fast becoming one of the principal currencies for sharing ideas and interests across the Web. Like RSS, it's a generally agreed-upon format for conveying information, but unlike RSS, it provides hierarchical structure of "arbitrary elements" that can easily be shared in the form of a file. Most commonly it's used to share lists of RSS feeds. Applications such as Grazr begin to show the potential for OPML to add more sense and meaning to one's experience of the Web. Ok, all that is well and good. What are we planning to do about it? I think it starts with the notion that a tag, as I've discussed with my colleague Taylor Parsons, can really be though of as a representation of a collection of "arbitrary elements"--really, anything with a URL that's grouped under tag "foo." Could be a simple Web page; could be a collection of Web pages; could be a person's profile and feeds; could be a group of individuals that share common interests; could be a collection of any of these in a hierarchy of nested relationships. OPML will make it possible to structure and share such collections. Now the thing that's potentially different here is that what I'm proposing is not just a listing of feeds, but rather any element that can be defined by a URL and put into a structured relationship with other elements. This is more or less where we're thinking of going as a next step once our basic tagging systems are in place (the Web gods willing). I'm wondering: would this be useful (I think it would be), or is it overthinking the benefits and/or overcomplicating the uses of the format? Are there instances out there of OPML being used in this way?
Just what is community and what are we trying to accomplish? My uber-manager, Sandy, put together his thoughts on this and put an interesting spin on it with his reference to college fraternity/sorority organizations. While I shudder to think that sororities/fraternities should serve as the model for anything (a-hem! just an opinion, Folks!), it is useful to recognize the importance and value of environments that give one a sense of "belonging" and connection. Now, this can certainly be taken too far, where close-knit communities can become echo chambers, elitist clubs, or worse still, tribal enclaves driven by us-versus-them modes of thinking. But in their healthier, more balanced manifestations, people who join in association, particularly around useful ideas, can do a lot of good, not only for the individual members who belong to the association and the institution of the group, but also for others outside of it, who can benefit from the output, knowledge, and innovation that comes from the "hive mind." It all starts with putting people in contact and harnessing their diverse talents and experiences in pursuit of a common cause, need, or purpose. This is the business we're in: delivering the technology that brings people together, specifically around Microsoft products, technologies, and services.

So those are some thoughts, some perhaps a little more self indulgent than others. I will be satisfied that I'm not wasting my time or yours, O Readers of the Vast Ether, if just a little bit of this sticks and helps spark imaginations and further discussion. I hope these spinnin' wheels aren't the kind that do a lot of spinning, and little else...