AbleBrains

For Every Thing Turn, Turn, Turn

My old friend @cedwardbrice DM'd me this evening and said, "Will you please add a new post to AbleBrains..."

Ok Ed, you got my attention. 

I haven't written a word in over 2 months so either there is a lot of stuff to talk about or I got nuthin!  And, I've been bitchin' and moanin' that my blogmuse left me.  But the fact of the matter is, some of my discipline has left me -- the creativity is there, the craziness is there, the design orientation is there but my discipline to get it down in words that are shareable???  Uh uh.  Which is not like me because I'm a reasonably disciplined person. But I have a theory. (of course you do Steve, what else is new?)

My theory is (and this theory may only be applicable to me, therefore, its irrefutably correct) that just like attention, just like authority, we gather it up to us and then apply it, but we don't have an unlimited reservoir of discipline. At least I don't.  Its finite and it needs to be parceled out to those things that are priorities in life. For me, that means the triplets, my family and my work.  After that, any discipline I have left over has to be spread to hundreds of tasks.

But isn't discipline a mind over matter thing?  Isn't it just a matter of applying yourself?  YeaaaaaNooo!
Yes, its a matter of applying yourself when needed but ever hear of burn out?  You know that feeling, you can't raise a paper to pen, can't bear another conference call... you may be disciplined but you can't bring yourself to do it?

hmmm is there a red thread here somewhere?  Something that ties the notions of attention, discipline, & the parceling of authority together? Well yeah, they all require the mental acuity to utilize them in a focused way. But that's just cognitive skills 101. 

Attention, Discipline and Authority Parceling are all subject to fragmentation.

So....

1. Interruption based marketing doesn't work because you're fighting for the already fragmented attention of consumers
2. We're overloaded with tasks and things to do! The constant struggle between family and work, heck the struggle to maintain a job these days, pulls at our discipline -- fragmenting it and preventing focus.  What a bad time to NOT be disciplined.
3. Just how many things can you be an authority on? Authority is the most fragile of the three.  The most subject to fragmentation because of the ego stroking effects of Authority. "Hey this feels good. I'll try to be authoritative on more subjects..." With few exceptions the more things one tries to be authoritative at, the less of an authority one actually is.

Which brings me to the title of this post.  What does a line from a Byrds tune have to do with Attention, Discipline and Authority?

Absolutely NOTHING. Except that I am writing this with 24.5 hours till 2009 - another cycle has been completed and another one about to commence.  So to you and yours may you have a wonderful New Year. And if 2008 has been rough for you or your hoping for some uplifts in the coming year... for everything, Turn! Turn! Turn!

AlwaysOn OnMedia: CEO Showcase: Sharethis

By now you probably all know the icon icon. You know, the one that enables you to bookmark and share content that you think is interesting. I has the opportunity to speak with Tim Schigel, the CEO of Share This and he shared some of his thinking on growing his company.   Share This was basically launched 2 months ago and already has garnered 120mm Page Views.  Their goal is to build an influence-based, trusted referral marketing network.  And you know, they have a shot at this.  Precisely for the same reason that I think Facebook will eventually get this right as well.  We're moving quickly to a marketing model that strongly leverages word of mouth.   Influence and Trusted Referrals (read: shared items from friends, colleagues and families), provide tremendous power in a referral marketing model.  From Tim's perspective, every time some person shares something with another person, he has the opportunity to serve up contextual ads as part of that share.  The biggest problem that I see?  There are an awful lot of competing ad networks, vying for eyeballs and real estate.  Can they scale enough to make their network worth something is the big question.

BTW, I am sitting here in the hallway at the conference on the floor because THERE IS NO POWER AT THIS CONFERENCE. I found an outlet behind a sign. Note to Tony Perkins... if you are going to have bloggers at an event, a few strategically placed power strips would be nice!

Jeff Nolan to Lead NewsGator SaaS Business

Jeff Nolan,a very good friend, has been promoted to run NewsGator's SaaS business. I'm so proud of his trajectory and wish him nothing but the best!  We worked together @ SAP and its wonderful to see him  rock this way! Good luckJeff!

Social Media Demographics in the Conversation Economy

Bruce Nussbaum writes an interesting post on the demographics of social media based on some BW research.  What jumped out at me was the following:

INdata shows that there are 6 types of social media participatants--Creators who publish web pages, blog and upload videos; Critics who comment on blogs and post reviews and comments; Collectors who use RSS to tag and gather information; Joiners who use social networking sites; Spectators who watch, read and listen; and Inactives, folks who are online but don't participate in social media yet. The demographics are very interesting.

Each slice of the population participates differently in social media. Some 34% of online users aged 12-17 still do not participate in social media. 42% of people 27-49 online do not. Some 5% of seniors--62 plus--are social media creators (compared to 34% for young teens 12 to 17. That strikes me as surprisingly high. Only 7% of boomers are creators

The question I have is what is the overlap? For example, I'd be classified as a Creator, and a Critic, and Collector, Joiner, Spectator and Inactive, depending on the circumstance and conversation.  Bruce actually poses the question, "Who Controls the Conversation?"  Its situationally dependent isn't it?  I mean when I'm at a party, talking to friends, some folks are conversation starters (creators), some are joiners who occasionally, chime in (Critics) and some are just wall flowers (Inactives).  I for one am all of these depending on the situation. 

Maybe, I'm thinking too literally here but can conversations be controlled? They can certainly be dominated but then that's not much of a conversation is it? One tends to actively participate in the conversations they are interested in... what about this post though?  Is it an act of a Creator or a  Critic?  I'm not exactly delivering an original post but am "commenting" on Bruce's post... which we see a lot of in the blogosphere so to get an truly accurate picture of conversation dynamics would require a more granular view - one that looks at the actual content components in the conversations and the dynamics among separate posts in different web geographies.

Join the Conversation

Ok... so I've been catching up on my reading since last week's major events so follow this train of thought (or links).  I was reading a post by Dennis on SAP's acquisition of OutlookSoft.  Toward the end of the post Dennis says:

SAP is a class act by any measure. Its ‘german-ness’ allows it to differentiate itself as a player that delivers quality. Not always (actually rarely) on time but quality nonetheless. It also has another quality Oracle doesn’t possess. Integrity. (Oracle people - feel free to flame…or join the conversation.)

I appreciate Dennis' comments about SAP and his call to Oracle to join the conversation.  Its what's best for our customers and the market.  So I followed the Oracle people link above to see if indeed the conversation had been joined.  What I found was a post on how to break this wall down.  Its good to see that Oracle admits they have a problem - its the first step to recovery :) but I think its being over-engineered. What wall are we talking about here? If its to create greater transparency between a company (any company) and a given market then I don't think the following does it.  I mean they are nice rules of engagement but, well take a look for yourself:

• For every 3 blog posts you write about your own stuff, write one that links and discusses another blogger's post.
• For every blog post you write, post two comments in the comments section of another blogger's post.
• Maintain a blogroll linking to external parties with your favorite blogs.

I guess one could apply guidelines.  They help.  But is there really anything formulaic about having a conversation with the market?  Dennis invited Oracle into the conversation... time keeps on tickin...

Moving forward with Social Media

I posted a few days ago about our upcoming social media summit. In it I posed some open questions to the community to help us focus  SAP's social media strategy AND execution.  Especially in the context of  the customer experience.  And Dennis Howlett provided his assessment of SAP's social media transformation as well.

I largely agree with Dennis' analysis. Especially this notion:

I believe the best way to assess transformation is through an analysis of what is happening in the conversations between SAP, its customers, observers, analysts and prospective customers. This is a much more complex landscape to navigate than that which exists today.

How far has SAP actually traveled? SDN has opened the door to developers and outsiders. Heck - they’ve even allowed a curmudgeon like me inside! But as Craig Cmehil explained to me, SDN has really proven itself as a valuable resource for engineers and implementation folk who are looking to discover alternative ways of solving problems or implementing functionality. In other words, SDN is an extension of the well understood forum that geeks have used for many years.

Absolutely on target.  I don't believe we have analyzed what is happening in these conversation. Like any nascent market research effort one begins with reporting...and that we are currently doing in spades. Even to the point where the company is using techdirt to assemble executive PR reports and that these reports includes relevant blog postings.  But to my knowledge we have not gone there yet.  The SDN team may have but and if so, that would be an ideal starting place.

But Dennis' statement about SDN "open[ing] the door to developers and outsiders" particularly rings true with me.  We've done a good job on development side (congrats Mark Y.) but what about the business side?  Our efforts have not been nearly as cohesive as those around the Developer Network.  I am hoping that what comes out of our summit is the recognition and go forward plan to develop and SAP Business Network - SBN, which would be a sister community to SDN and BPX and become a place for connected conversation among customers and between customers and prospects.  The  communities working together (in addition to our efforts around around product specific community) should provide a rich forum for conversation that leads to sales acceleration.   Well, that's the theory any way.

Help SAP Craft its Social Media Strategy

I've asked the team to start thinking about a unified Social Media strategy for SAP.  Its clear we have fantastic pockets of innovation underway with varying degrees of creativity and depth.. some clearly far ahead of our competition and some not.  I have this  gnawing at the back of my brain that we could be doing this so much better if we actually had  a unified strategy that plugs into our overall Go-to-market strategy.  Mark Yolton has nailed it on the community side.... how do we extend what he's accomplished to other areas of the business?  What else do we need to do?  What aspects of our business should we be looking at? Marketing? Development?  GTM? So I need your help in crafting an agenda.  What things should we be looking at? What items should we be considering when we pull this diverse team together?  This is an alignment exercise NOT an ownership exercise so what are the vectors we need to bring together to make this happen.  Please give me your input so I can make this effort as impactful as possible.

Social Media Today Rave on SAP's Web 2.0 Efforts

Mark Yolton forwarded me this rave around SAP's successful use of Web 2.0... this was authored by the Social Media Today collective.

Social Media Today also sent two bloggers to Sapphire Atlanta.  Jerry Bowles published a post titled "SAP to Enterprise 2.0 Community: We Get It"  ... Here is Jerry's original post

Kinda Cool: Map of Online Communities

Via Kotke.org - home of a fine line of hypertext products

Pipe Tips

Over at O'reilly