Berniejmitchell

What I do love is the smell of is the connecting, pushing the envelope, the fact that you can tweet and a room fills up in a day. That all the “non-believers” have to turn up and play because you can find them something to go to at anytime of the day or night so there is no escape! They can set aside their deep scepticism of twitter being lots of noise (what an accusation) or that facebook is taking us one step nearer Skynet and Sarah Conor needing to save us.
Many in my network have said that Social Media grew up in 2010, others won’t come near London this week because they want to diligently side step all the social media navel gazers, and I don’t blame them.
Very soon companies will find out that they can run a community on facebook or that no one gives a toss if your community is on ning rather than a custom build platform and there is no more charging people “who don’t know any better” £250k a year for starting conversations that were there already.
The smell of Social Media Week I don’t like is the “Ugly Betty” type people running around Soho and Shoreditch saying ‘Soho House’ or ‘Shoreditch house’ at the end of every sentence in place of a full stop. if they were any more insincere they’d implode. They love to pitch and it usually looks like this slide deck here (c/o @TwankersUK) a stunning example of current “best practice”. (Did I just say best practice? Dough.)
I loved the concept of ROI being return on involvement and that certainly works in an inter-connected and inter-dependant tribe, community or network. However, when a 17 year old account manger on £13k a year sells this idea to a carpet shop or a drinks company of course the whole thing is going to take a dive. The reason it does not work is that it is a sale, a transaction and billed as a silver bullet that will save the company. I have met people this week who, quite frankly should know better, salivating over the fact they can “open their doors” and then gas the people who come in into writing them a cheque for something, anything.
People misunderstand “partnering” too – “hello you know lots of people and so do I!’ ‘Lets sell to each others networks (we can call it a member benefit) – that will kill the vibe and make us rich. Or the call we all dread – can you promote this to your database? Yeah sure! I’ll email my Meet Up of bloggers, that will make them feel really connected and valued.

Meanwhile somewhere under the noise, bullshit and hustle there are people connecting, learning, sharing, discovering inventing, fixing boats, remembering their 18th birthday party at Maxim’s Paris, solving problems building niche communities, being productive and sharing baby video with family all over the world and, best of all making their art. That is what the SMELL OF MY SOCIAL MEDIA week smells like in the morning.

What is your tech for?

Over the holidays I was watching the movie “It might get loud” where three generations of guitar legends Jimmy Page, The Edge and Jack White compare their stories. This really got me thinking about three things to do with technology, here we go.

Two heads or one?

Jimmy Page explained that his famous twin necked guitar was built so he could play Stairway to Heaven live on stage. The song had originally been written and recorded in a studio setting with different guitars forming each part of the song.
To recreate the song on stage he would have had to swap instrument so the legendary twin neck guitar was born.

The Edge vs Jack White

Jack cherishes the pure and honest sound of a simple guitar, the Edge is known as a “guitar architect”. Jack likes to keep things simple and raw; in the film he states that you just need a stick and a string – he ‘pulls’ the sound from his guitars.

The Edge uses a lot of tech to ‘push’ the notes further; he spends hours searching for the sound by tweaking buttons on his equipment. Jack searches the space on his guitar to make the sound and The Edge searches the space after the sound arrives from his guitar.

Passion and connection

The Edge talks that he was worried in the mid 80′s that he was witnessing the end of the guitar in popular music. People were automating music and removing the connection and expression – instead of connecting faster the technical side was getting in the way. All three musicians talked about authenticity and connecting to their audience, if you play the same song at the same time and tell the same joke between every song people know you are a fake.
They cited passion, honesty and competence as key components in music.

Why do you need all that stuff?

At TCS we love to say we live in a digital world but it would be nothing without a woman or a man. Is all your technology speeding up space and time in the right way or is it a distraction? Are you are making your world simpler or are you creating something to hide behind, are you moving closer to people or are you alienating people? Are you creating genuine growth or a quick sale?

Will it make you a rock legend or a one hit wonder?

This post is also on TCS Digital World Blog

I love this silly video!

This really caught me eye c/o fellow foodie @princess_misia

Sometimes I want to rip my eye lids off and use them as ear plugs. Bland events about bland business issues with bland people selling bland global solutions. Actually the last line is not mine, a few years ago I accidentally went to one of those breakfast visitor days, you know the ones where the member is obligated to bring someone and begs you “please come, I have to bring someone or else….” You go, mainly to save your mate from being excommunicated (and you never know do you?) 60 people show up, two people join, the group and you end up with a pocket full of business cards that you are not sure what to do with.

Anyway, a smart copywriter chap stood up for his sixty-seconds, instead of ‘pitching’ he commented on the publishing industry and I recall him saying, “if you are still using words like ‘Global’ and ‘Solution’ to describe yourself you need to have a think.” Not many people knew what he meant, especially the man who stood up to talk about his ‘global business solution’ without a hint of irony or challenge, I don’t think he had heard the smart copywriter chap speak 14 lots of 60 seconds before him.

I thought that ‘smart copywriter chap’ was right then and I am convinced he is right now.

As technology, thought leadership and media has picked up speed from a gentle thousand miles an hour to a million miles an hour some people have been left standing in a cloud of burnt rubber.
Similar to EMI still trying to sell CD’s or get the Christmas number one there are people still selling what they have left in the cupboard at the office — they are stuck somewhere between the Filofax, flash websites and a smart phone, but nearer the Filofax. Even if they have lost the paisley tie they are out stalking ‘newbies’ to sell them ‘solutions’.
I don’t think you can sell solutions anymore. If I have just been shot in the chest you would call a paramedic and call that paramedic a solution.
Except I would not, I would call it first aid.
Franchise holders love to sell solutions, really the solution they are selling is the solution of getting a return on the spline rupturing large investment that someone in a leather chair in the States told them would make. They also still think you can sell ‘solutions’ by having more people than is really needed in a room and selling AT them.
Really the days of rolling a hand grenade into a packed room and getting the people left standing to write you a cheque are long gone, and you can’t do this on Linkedin, Facebook or Twitter either.
This is why I am also done with persuasion, the best people in my world are intelligent straight up yes or no people. They don’t wreak of scripted questions like, “What would it be like for yourself and your company if you could double your turn-over in the next 6 months?” Neither do they use terms like “business opportunity” or “commission only”, they have read Dale Carnegie but don’t quote from him directly for conversation.

This is where the fun is…

There is the breed of people who are always working harder to seek out where the fun is, they are not innovators or risk takers, they are the people who have really done their homework, know their craft and are problem solvers.
These people don’t chase big names, they chase big problems, and they don’t have lots of rubbish badges on their web page or write ‘working in partnership with’ on everything they own.
Instead they spend the time getting to know people and are honest about how they work, rather than your average “International-Global Solutions” corporation with an address in St. John Street Farringdon that is really an ‘in-tray” on someone else’s desk.
You know they co-work, that they hot desk in a club in town and do most of their best work on their already knackered i-pad on the train. They are brilliant because they are insanely interested in what they do and spend time with likeminded people, they interact with ease with both corporations and micro businesses. They don’t need an elevator pitch and they don’t require you to have one either.

Interconnected and interdependent people, this is where the fun is.

Never underestimate the value of getting a group of people in a room.
One of the most interesting conversations I had at techMAPbxl was with Misha Chellam he commented that he has yet to find an event that really enables “accelerated serendipity” – this is from the man who was part of the team that filled TEDx Brussels the week before! While I believe 100% in community and serendipity, even I could do with a hand sometimes so I really understood where he was coming from. Let me be clear here, we don’t mean selling more ‘stuff’ faster, rapidly increasing your database or a forced networking event. One of the closest solutions I have encountered is by my mates at Likeourselves, this is the stuff of another post.
We are looking for good conversations and some intellectual return. So how do we connect with people that will help us and let us help them? For example investors at an event, a developer that knows the niche code you need or finding that new employee who has most of the skills and ALL of the right charisma for your organisation.
There is no silver bullet that will save the day and I think that trying to speed up space and time is a very misguided aim.
There was inspiration in all the brilliant techMAPBXL presentations and Steven Van Belleghem ended with a ‘take away’ by encouraging us to do something simple and accountable that you could label ‘serious fun’ and it comes with a side order of “accelerated serendipity” invited us to tweet:-

“As from today I am serious about {insert what you are serious about} #techMAPBXL”

I tweeted “as from today I am serious about posting blogs on time!! #techMAPBXL”. The guilt has been eating me since I got off the Eurostar in London on Thursday night.
Sharing within your network or community lets others know what you are up to, it also measures the level of commitment you have yourself and that commitment is reflected back in the community. The world is getting more and more humanised and this commitment I speak of is important down here with a little guy like me blogging to a huge global brand being committed to their customer.
2011 will see increasingly ‘humanised’ campaigns, as shared by Scott Gould in the #techforgood London event this means putting the customer at the centre of what happens.

Of course the huge risk about sharing what you are serious about with your community is that what you want will happen and then what would you do?

This was first posted here.

Next Tuesday is the Be2camp Education event at Maxwell Winward LLP in the City.

So. me. After school I wanted to do photography but somehow I ended up working in a bar throwing bottles around, luckily at the time this dubious skill carried a lot of social currency in Essex. This led to equally dubious qualifications that looked like codes on luggage labels – HND7061 with sub categories entitled “management and business institutional operations”. The purpose of my place of education Westminster Catering College confused me; on one side it was a factory for very average people being conditioned for very below average jobs and on the other side it developed highly talented people who had flair. I fitted in at neither side.
Instead I excelled at cooking beef stew and running events as SU President but failed my accounting and management exams with remarkable reliability.
Later I thought I would be a teacher; I even went to University with the intention of graduating as one, in the end I decided just to graduate.
Roehampton University taught me so much really good stuff about education that it put me off being a teacher completely. I read books called “New Labours Policy for Schools” in fear and calmed myself down by reading Kafka, Orwell and Huxley.
What has all this got to do with the construction industry?
The journey for the Be2camp event started earlier this year with the #140conf Europe Meet Up called “Constructing real time education.” We assembled a panel and attempted to combine three different conversations about education, Web 2.0 and construction. For me there is a point where the rubber meets the road on these topics and it needs to be developed. The conversation from the event has been going ever since and now we are going bring it home.
There is a very fuzzy social media world; you might even call it a second life, where everything is great. However, how do you use cool tools to solve problems and build community? One example is Greater Manchester Police on twitter.
How do you bridge the gap between TED.com and Paul and Rajesh snorting crap drugs in Hackney? Don’t they understand how their actions are influencing the house prices and the economy?
While all this is going on schools are paying for people cutting corners over half a century ago, so are we learning to clear up the past or learning to build a future?
Truth is I don’t know where to begin, what I do know is that causing a cross over in discussion about how tools and techniques in one industry can be applied to another – most of the these are around communication and process – will save millions.
We live in an interconnected and interdependent World and the more we learn from each the better is will be, and cheaper probably…..

#Be2camp is next Tuesday – numbers are limited and tickets are free so please register quick by clicking here.

Speakers and The BED10 Pecha Kucha line up click here.

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