Alisa Miller from Public Radio International shares how our world view is shaped (or mis-shaped) by the media. 

Clay Shirky, professor at NYU who consults on the impact of the internet and technology on culture and economics, gives a thought provoking speech at this year’s Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco.

He observes that for today’s generation, “media includes consuming, producing and sharing.” And that “media that’s targeted at you, but doesn’t include you may not be worth sitting still for.”

I think he’s mostly right. (I can’t say entirely, because I do still enjoy the guilty pleasure of plopping myself in front of my big screen Mac, mowing down jalapeno cheese puffs while being completely obsessed with the latest season of Survivor.)

But I do agree that people want to be involved. We no longer want to be entirely passive receivers of information – we want to receive, then give back. Whether it’s posting a silly shot to lolcats, uploading a video of last night’s escapades to YouTube, or displaying our latest photo shoot on Flickr.

Sharing is at the core of what people want to do. (But please keep Survivor going….)

I read a fantastic article today called Community: From Little Things, Big Things Grow by George Oates (a member of the team that created Flickr).

She talks about how you develop a meaningful online community….that above all, it takes time to nurture, to set the tone and grow.

Oates explores several themes…that online communities should:

• be a space for play and exploration
• have a personal voice and unobtrusive design
• create a flexible space that allows members of the community to design new ways of using it that the creators never thought of
• provide the option to remain anonymous (though acknowledges that if you don’t “out” yourself eventually, you’re viewed suspiciously)
• and that you shouldn’t create too many rules or guidelines

While I read the article I couldn’t help think about how the discussion applied to an internally-focused online community.

Do people want to play when they’re on their intranet? Do corporations want them to be “exploring” – maybe not. But for the most part I agree with her community advice. It takes time to establish any sense of community, whether online or not. And above all I think it takes a personal stake….people can’t just build the community then abandon it. You have to invest personal time to establish a true community.

In evaluating our intranet….and constantly looking for ways to make incremental improvements, I figured our team needed some mantras. A direction. Clear priorities that would act as our touchstones for deciding whether or not to pursue a change.

So here they are:

Share it now. Find it fast. Make it mine.

That’s it.

Employees collaborate – share ideas, documents, photos, videos and other assets…in short, information. They should be able to do so easily. Now. What can we put in place to make this a reality? An internal YouTube, a simple wiki for reference information (based on open source MediaWiki), etc.

People want to find information, assets, whatnot, quickly. We need to facilitate that with a kick-ass search functionality and intuitive/simple navigation.

And of course it’s important to tailor the information to the individual. Primarily push-comms is SO 1990’s. It’s all about making information readily available for people to subscribe. RSS is key. A flexible software framework, paramount.

Now…it’s about delivering against this vision. We’re on our way. Slowly chipping away at the easier wins, and the key areas.

1. Smaller niche communities of people who are passionate and active versus big crowds of casual connectors
2. A shift in marketing and PR from messaging to people to joining conversations and going to the communities, rather than creating all sorts of new communities (I’ve got social networking fatigue….pls stop creating more networks!!!!!)
3. Mobile, mobile, mobile….phones! Laptops are mobile-ish, but we want smaller machines we can talk into, text on, watch videos, search maps….and on and on.

Where’s that leave internal or external communicators for that matter?

• Including RSS so people can decide for themselves what content they want to tune into
• Employees who are part of various communities and interested in putting themselves “out there” and open to discussion, rather than just pushing messages out passively
• Optimizing content for handhelds. Yeah, we’ve got to do that.

My top three must-have internal comms tools for today’s workforce:

• RSS/news aggregator: employees should be allowed to choose the information they need and find relevant to get their jobs done 
• Blogs/Forums: people want to express themselves, connect with other like-minded people (or be challenged by out-there thought), share ideas, get their questions answered….and of course, this community would include the ability to post audio and video
• wikis: an easy to edit source of information, collaborative space, an enterprise reference to act as the cumulative body of knowledge of a company or organisation (I’d also include team wikis that would allow for permissioning and levels of security.)

If I got to choose three more:

• Social network: people want to connect, share ideas, find one another easily…in a work setting this isn’t just about getting together to share music, but to find the people with the expertise they need to help with projects and getting work done better (if you can’t afford to get this in-house, you can create bio pages on a wiki as a stop-gap measure…it’s worked well for me)
• Internal YouTube: Who doesn’t love video. It’s becoming increasingly relevant, especially in brand-driven companies. If you don’t  have video in your presentation, don’t bother.
• Internal Flickr: Especially for big multinational companies, photos are a great way to create a sense of community. It’d also be a good way to share assets instead of shared drives or emailing them. 

What are your favourites? What are you doing at your companies/orgs?  

Tomorrow is my last day as an Intel employee. Sad? A little.

Excited for what’s next: DEFINITELY!!!

While I’m a bit schmultzy, I’m generally more into what’s next. (When I was little for instance, I would excitedly tell my mom that “next year I’ll be 10!” And she’d tell me…”but you’re not even nine yet.” Which was true, but I was right too…..there’s a part of the year when next year you’ll be two numbers older than you currently are.) I’m rambling…but this just to say that I was always, or rather, always wanted to be ahead of myself.

I have, in the past two years at Intel, been frustrated by many things. I ranted about our ridiculous corporate vocab, excessively text-heavy boring-ass PowerPoint presentations, and our often incommunicado executives. BUT…then I’d go to conferences, talk with other communicators, see other people’s intranets and realize that despite it all, we have it pretty good at Intel. We’re not perfect. But we know it and there are a ton of brilliant, hard-working people always looking to make things better. It’s been a pleasure working with these people. I will miss them…though I’m certain through FaceBook, LinkedIn, Friendster (yeah I still have that old page), and getting together over drinks (my preferred method of “social networking”) we will stay in touch.

Thanks Intel….it’s been great. I mean: The time elapsed over the past eight quarters resulted in a strategic impact upon my qualifications and overall enjoyment. So thanks.

“Our business results are propelling our strategy”

It was bullet number 534 on a PowerPoint prezo I sat through the other day. I jotted it down because I had no clue what it meant and thought I’d ponder it some more later.

Week later.

Still no clue.

There is hope however…because generally when someone slaps up some meaningless string of buzz words together on a presentation, people in the room smile and nod like they know what the heck the person means. Not in this meeting. Someone actually dared to ask what it meant. Sad thing though, the person presenting couldn’t clarify.

So…can anyone take a stab at what this means? Corporate-speak translators needed!!!

I don’t know, I haven’t met your CEO.

I don’t think all CEOs should blog unless they want to, are prepared to relinquish some control, and can write without all the corporate babble!

Here’s a CEO doing it right: Ted Leonsis–former vice chairman of AOL (now chairman of Revolution Money). In an interview with Debbie Weil, Ted answers 10 Qs that talk about why he blogs, his scariest blog moment, ROI, and more.

I was talking with some colleagues at Intel and some folks from a local health & sciences university today and was reminded: a blog post doesn’t have to be long. In fact…I prefer them short.

I’ve been having a lot of blog guilt lately since it’s been a week (or more—gah!) since I’ve posted. And so I’d been humming and hawing over what I should talk about, and just hadn’t got to it.

So today’s reminder is a good one…not just for me…but also for we comms folks who are encouraging our execs to blog…as many execs worry about the time commitment and what they’ll talk about.

It doesn’t have to be long. Or serious. Or thought-provoking. It can just be whatever’s on your mind.

So here goes: I’m busy. Haven’t been blogging. Got a new job. Will start it at the end of October. Am THRILLED!!!! Did I mention busy? Did I mention THRILLED!?!

So there it is. Blog on!