Big thanks to the crew from GeekFest Dubai for the chance to speak last week. The crowd is super-switched-on and made for a great – and intimidating – group to present to that night. With so many people who really ‘get’ stuff you know that you have a great chance to really spark some interesting discussion and get some amazing input on your ideas. That said, the flip side is that this is also the group that will quickly see through your crap if you don’t bring your A-preso.
Thanks to BUiD for hosting me today. Here’s the deck from today for those there and those who wished they were. Disclaimer: it’s an ongoing learning artifact for me, meaning: work-in-progress.
Summary: Social Media” is a tool and a topic. It is a challenge and an opportunity. It has the strange ability to be all around us but remain elusive to some, and a mystery to many others. The subject of this interactive session will be to demystify social media and answer the question, “How can I use social media effectively to build and promote my own personal brand to start or grow my career through building a Personal Learning Environment – and do so in a way that is manageable and effective?”
Check the full post for the slide deck.
I wanted to give my take on Ravit Lichtenberg’s RWW’s post “10 Ways Social Media Will Change in 2010″ and give a Middle Eastern spin.
1. Social Media Will Become a Single, Cohesive Experience Embedded In Our Activities and Technologies: “While I do agree that “everything we do will be gathered and streamed together, allowing people to view their world of activities as if it were projected in front of them, open to change, review and input at any point in time from any device or online tool,” this applies only to those people that actually opt-in to multiple services that then aggregate that activity. Otherwise, as the majority who seem to confine their social media activities to Facebook, their activity will be aggregated and collectively streamed in totality based on the structure of the site. Facebook has recently defaulted to open this means that more and more people will be publicly sharing, and since Eric Schmidt doesn’t give a damn about people’s privacy, then the Google behemoth will also exert publication preference on people as well. We will be more open whether anyone asks us or not. The statement that, “Users will access content from any device or platform, co-create and mashup their photos, videos and text with traditional content while interacting with each other” is wishful thinking since the majority are not creators and remixers, but viewers and perhaps commenters. Social Media in the Middle East is even further behind in terms of the participation hierarchy, so interaction around mashups will just be inching into the region by the end of 2010 for early adopters.
It’s no secret that Barack Obama used technology as a critical element in becoming the first Internet President. Obama as made an integrated social media presence coupled with effective and sophisticated voter database management the new table stakes (I just wanted to get this term in somehow) of a successful election campaign.
Buoyed by his successes south of the border, the Liberal Party of Canada is taking a page – or system – out of the Obama playbook.
To paraphrase Charles Dickens, in both the best of times and in the worst of times, the job market is never easy. Just showing up and being there is never enough. You need to distinguish yourself for the value and benefit that you will bring to a company. You need to communicate you value in a clear Personal Brand Statement. Just like companies and products need a clear positioning statement, so do you.
If you are a registered googler and are logged-in while googling, then starting today you can shape the search. From the Google blog: Today we’re launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to…