One Year Oracle SocialChat – The Movie

One Year Oracle SocialChat from mprove on Vimeo.

You’ve just watched – hopefully – my first short movie. Thank you! Here is a bit of the back stage story.

About 6 weeks ago colleagues from SNBC (Social Network and Business Collaboration) announced a Social Use Case Competition. It was expected to submit a video of 2 to 5 minutes duration on the Social Enterprise (our internal phrase for Enterprise 2.0). Hmm – I had a few vague ideas, but no script – no actors – no experience in film making. Really the best conditions to try something!

I chose our weekly SocialChats as my main topic. But if you don’t do Danish Dogma cinema, you still need a script. Hence I played around with the SocialChat’s archive, and all of a sudden a script and even the actors appeared in front of me. The words that you have just seen are weekly topics. Slightly abridged and rearranged to form a story.

Exciting, next phase. How to get it on digital celluloid? I have to confess I am still impressed by epic. (Keep in mind, epic was done in 2004.) And my actors – words – call for a typographic style already. The main part was done over a weekend with Apple Keynote. And I even found a wonderful matching soundtrack among my albums: Didge Goes World by Delago. I picked parts of Second Day and Seventh Day. Literally, the rhythm was set, and I “just” had to complete the movie. Tools used – apart from trial and error: Keynote, Pixelmator, GarageBand, iMovie.

Finally I want to mention that I am extremely thankful to BSC Music for granting permissions to use the tracks for this short film! Without this sound it would have been just an ordinary slide show.

SocialChat on Getting Things Done

mproveGTDIf you are no longer suffering under Infoglut, you can focus on the things that matter in your daily business. Whatever that is, you want to get them done. How do you Get Things Done – what are your productivity tips? was the topic of our 13th SocialChat at Oracle. Here are my tweets in chronological order:

  • @SocialChat wait a sec. – my avatar is not done yet!!!
  • bad planning is a challenge. No planning is even worse. But if you get into the flow all plans are forgotten and the guilt might come afterwards.
  • there are four buckets for your tasks:
    1. urgent and important
    2. important but not urgent yet
    3. urgent but not important
    4. neither urgent nor important.
  • As said: 4 buckets, get rid of the content of 1. [->try to avoid] 3. [->delegate] and 4. [->don’t do] and then work on the important but not urgent tasks. Then you have enough time to get the job done in high quality.
  • ToDo lists don’t work for me b/c my tasks have different scopes, life spans and priority.  But I like to check items off from a list when they are done. Celebrate success! (to a certain sense).
  • I would love to try GOOTODO – The basic idea is to send emails to yourself in the future.
  • And one for the road: “Without the last minute, nothing would get done.”  –– bye everybody.
  • Gootodo on lifehackerGood Todo website

PS: my bookmarks on GTD at delicious.com/mprove/GTD 

And next week in my series of SocialChatsThe Next Big Thing!

SocialChat on Infoglut

mprove101010How to deal with Infoglut? This was the question in our internal weekly microblogging chat a couple of weeks ago. Here are my tweets. Hope they make some sense without revealing the other parties. I fliped the order, so please read top down:

  • compared to 30yrs ago the border between information media and communication media went away. That makes it so difficult and pressing to keep on top of the wave.
  • You also have to distinguish between push and pull info channels. A library is ‘pull’ for example. You decide what you want to find, and you set the pace.
  • e-mail is ‘push’. It is easy to get flooded by the steady stream of incoming mails. There you need special habits to keep up with it
  • My RSS reader stopped counting at 30.000 unread items. Now I feel better. But the situation is ridiculous.
  • Top 8.5 reasons why the new Google News sucks
  • I have 5 twitter accounts. Both for sending other kinds of messages and following other kinds of people.
  • Pros for twitter. 1) It is a pull-medium. It does not make you feel guilty if you miss something.
  • Pros for Twitter 2) It is a communication medium, i.e. there is almost always a social story between you and the sender that adds relevance to the tweet.
  • Cons of Twitter: there is not space to really describe a thought and reasoning. Everything is chunked by the silly technical limitation of 140 chars.
  • I am interested if anybody has a clear notion of data, information, and knowledge?
  • Good catch. So to rephrase your definition: You need knowledge to create information out of data. Is then Twitter (or any other medium) an info medium or data medium?
  • I don’t know HootSuite, but in order to agree with you it must be a tool to capture and apply your knowledge to get the info out of Twitter’s data.
  • First the question is how easy it is to find the right info wells…
  • If you search for some real info it is easy to be flooded with data. It is quite time consuming to find the needle in the haystack.
  • And one for the road: I would say Neil Postman’s statement “we are overnewsed by underinformed” turned into “we are overinformed but underknowledgeable”.     cheers, bye-bye -Matthias

SocialChat on Video Conferencing

Social Chat #8 last week was on video conferencing. Whether they are or can be useful, or just nice to have. Read some of my contributions bottom up:

  • Find everything covered from today’s chat in Starfire, a concept video by Sun (1994) http://mprove.de/script/04/nng/starfire.html 
  • My parting remarks for today: 
  • Cisco pushes video conferencing to increase the need for bandwidth, in order to sell more routers. 
  • The shared working space is more important than watching people sitting around two tables – one real, the other virtual. 
  • Do professional video conferencing systems support shared whiteboards? Two or more teams in different cities working with additional media? 
  • Training and testing and learning is important to facilitate useful remote meetings. 
  • most of the people do not know how to conduct a proper video conference. 
  • You have a telly in the corner, too small to be useful. 
  • In addition, many conference rooms with state of the art video conferencing systems are not really suited for such. 
  • You spend too much time in preparing and fighting system errors instead of focussing on the content of the meeting. 
  • Most of the time the technology is too complicated to use with ease. 
  • … they can extend the time between real live meetings. To that extend they are saving real money. 
  • In my opinion video conferencing cannot replace meetings in RL. But… 
  • But I suppose you do net get a real sense for it without trying it yourself for several times. 
  • It is either expensive, and you do not want to waste you company’s resources. Or it is obtrusive, disturbing, and distracting. 
  • Video conferencing as presented in the video feels artificial to me. 
  • CBS feature on video conferencing http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dapC8Y1crEU 
  • Some of my OraTweets from the SocialChat # 8 on Video Conferencing – Nice to have or needed? 

SocialChat: Don’t stop making waves

mprove wavesSocialChat topic this time was on building professional networks, and how to promote yourself. Read my share bottom up:

  • And don’t stop making waves, where ever you are! 
  • Cons: Poor authoring tools in general. It is even worse to edit hyperlinks. And that should be key in the web! 
  • I have basically 8 blogs – Pros: others can easily pick up the content. And the simple chronological navigation. 
  • … so I’m not flattered very much when a headhunter approaches me and just says, “I find your profile on XYZ interesting…” 
  • I am quite visible on the net, … 
  • This is how you build trust and reputation over time. 
  • Slideshare is even better b/c you contribute something substantial to the community. http://www.slideshare.net/mprove/ 
  • I favor Xing http://bit.ly/aVZF5A because of the groups. They persist a little longer than the pages of twitter or facebook. 
  • You collect contacts as two generations before collected stamps. So where is the point if there is no increasing value? 
  • The problem with most of the social sites is: You do not aggregate a personal value. There are lots of casual chats. 
  • Some of my OraTweets from the SocialChat #7 on professional networking, tools, and self-promotion… 

SocialChat: Giving Back to the Community

Big companies feel the urge to give something back to the community. They support local and social activities with employee’s time and know-how. Oracle is no exception. Here are once again my contributions to our weekly SocialChat. You know the game. Read bottom up:

  • Famous last words: Share your shit! — Evening Talk by Tor Nørretranders at reboot11 (video) 
  • If you mention your company name along the lines: even better! 
  • But since you get something back personally — trust, friends, reputation – it is worth every minute. 
  • If you want to support your community the effort is much higher. 
  • 1day/year doesn’t change anything. And I doubt that it is even effective due to the management overhead. 
  • Even better: Do good stuff and let others talk, blog and tweet about it. 
  • My mantra: Do good stuff and talk about it. Rephrased today as: Do good stuff and blog about it. 
  • What about organizing un-conferences? Think TED. Or http://raumschiffer.de/ 
  • I mean I do not even mow my own lawn. Why do it at the kindergarden next door? 
  • What about building and managing online communities? e.g. the UX Forum at Xing 
  • If I am running a local non-profit designers group, does it count as an Oracle supported volunteer project? http://uxhh.de 
  • …or align our individual forces and abilities on less but larger projects. 
  • If you want to make a difference you have to commit more time on the project, … 
  • …rather limited. It is important but the impact on the local community and the benefits for the company is low. 
  • I am really struggling with today’s topic. I see the value of individuals spending a number of days on scattered social projects as… 
  • Some of my OraTweets from the SocialChat #6 on “Giving back to the Community”… 

SocialChat on Learning in Meetings

Learning and meetings. How does this fit together? If you exclude status meetings, jour fixes and team meetings for a while then there is a chance. Read my contributions to a recent Oracle SocialChat on the subject.  I wonder what happens if I copy a stream of tweets here. Of course, it is still in reverse chronological order, and you have to read your way bottom up.

!yojne. elpmaxe rof tfel ot thgiR .esrow eb dluoc tI
saihttaM-

    • Thanks you @aludding for facilitating the SocialChats. 
    • Here is another example of an icebreaker that I used recently http://www.slideshare.net/mprove/ixda-hh-kickoff 
    •  … and a very good & open discussion in the afternoon. no Powerpoint the entire day. 
    •  I’ve conducted a 1-day think tank. Opening video. mood maps, collecting ideas, clustering and sorting… 
    •  You have to utilize other components to set the stage right for brainstorming & collaborative learning sessions. 
    •  If you just use Powerpoint to prepare a meeting then you are already lost. 
    •  Presenting is not learning. Preparing a presentation is. Attending a presentation might be. 
    •  Powerpoint is a bad tool for learning. It is even a mediocre tool for presentations! 
    •  On the other hand workshops and attending good (interactive) presentations can stimulate learning and aha! moments. 
    •  Team meetings and status meetings are not suited for learning. 
    •  Next steps might be follow-up meetings and formal prose in wikis. 
    •  This is the first step after the meeting to really get something. This is the best and fastest way I know to keep the energy level up. 
    •  A very simple and yet effective way to capture the results of a meeting is to take photos and put them on a blog. http://bit.ly/axjhMT 
    •  3) moderate the meeting 4) collect the findings for later use. 
    •  but you have to use the tool ¨meeting¨ correctly. 1) set the expectactions right 2) have the right set and mix of people 
    •  … learn new facts and new point of views and get to something that was beyond your own abilities. 
    •  A meeting is also a tool for learning and eventually drawing conclusions. You meet with people, exchange ideas,… 
    •  (Ha, OraTweets can be 256 characters long! So I have to break them up fro Twitter) 
    •  I’ll share some of my OraTweets from the SocialChat #5 on Learning in Meetings… 
    •  The SocialChats are summarized and captured for later reference. 
    •  e.g. we had “Video conferencing – niche to have or needed?”, “How can we give back to the community?”, “How can we improve communication?” 
    •  Each Friday we have a one hour SocialChat in OraTweet. The topics are proposed and voted during the week. 
    •  Another idea to generate traffic and buzz for corporate microblogging are social gatherings. 
    •  Commenting on blogs creates OraTweets. 
    •  For instance status updates in OraTweet show up on your profile page in Connect (our internal Facebook) 
    •  One important factor for successful E20 microblogging is the integration with other social software. 
    •  Compared to Sweet at Sun http://blogs.sun.com/mprove/tags/sweet OraTweet is actually used. How comes? 
    •  We have a corporate microblogging system at Oracle called OraTweet http://oratweet.com/