I went to the film Inception a few days ago and was mesmerized by the complex plot and the ideas that gurgled and sometimes exploded into my awareness.

I liked the movie but I experienced some confusion as I felt the ideas about dreams and dreaming where very relevant, however I couldn’t quite understand what did the movie have to do with my world.

Two days later I began reading a series of posts by Brian Solis because I was searching for his ideas on the concept of “pay it forward”. What I discovered on his web site were a series of posts about the movie Inception.

Here is how he introduces why the movie triggered his thinking about the movie’s connection to social media.

Inception served as a catalyst for rethinking social media and how we use it to socialize not just our marketing efforts, but our business overall.

The way in which he linked the ideas in the movie to how social media can be applied in the business world, helped me understand social media adoption within organizations and the cast of actors that is needed for success. He also has numerous links to other very relevant, resonant and significant (RSS) posts and articles that he covers in his new book Engage.

Below is an excerpt that talks about how the concepts of inception and extraction relates to listening. The concept of listening is a subject close to me as I’m searching for more effective ways to explain why social listening is so important to the development of social media strategies.

I love this explanation as it gets past the tools of listening into the figuring out of what to do with what you are hearing.

Such is the framework necessary to lead the socialization of business. While today social media is led by a champion or team of evangelists that “get it,” its path remains a bottom-up process of forcing transformation through evangelism and experimentation. Eventually social media will lose momentum before its promise can be fully realized however. A team consisting of a visionary leader supported by capable specialists across the fabric of the organization is imperative to fully realize the opportunities and responsibilities that unfold with social immersion.

The Production of Social Media Requires a Dedicated Cast

Penrose Stairs illustrate the impossible objects that can be created in lucid dream worlds

As discussed in Engage and also Charlene Li’s new book Open Leadership, it is this listening, really listening, that opens leadership to change and ultimately true collaboration and co-creation. It is through this unique understanding of the cultures, landscapes and the themes that fuel connections and communication. This incredible insight inspires relevant engagement and supporting constructs that galvanizes and empowers customers and peers to become stakeholders in all you do.

The “extraction” is the research, listening, and sifting for insight. It’s not enough to monitor conversations through keyword searches. It’s not enough to measure “automated” and mostly inaccurate sentiment. It’s not enough to track activity in terms of mentions, followers, likes, and comments. There’s a difference between listening and hearing and to extract the information and intelligence necessary to inspire your ideas requires you to hear what it is that moves individuals and communities.  Extraction is the guiding light to create more meaningful engagement strategies based on the recently introduced concept of relevance, resonance, and significance (RRS), social media’s critical path. And, it’s through extraction where we uncover opportunities for inception.

Listen to Brian Solis talk about his new book here.

Brent Learning Community, Presentation, networks

I really enjoy reading books about emerging technologies, social media, learning and professional development. I also read plenty of fiction, especially fast paced, well written crime fiction in settings I’m not too familiar with such as South East Asia, Britain, South Africa, the far north etc.

I’m very pleased with the books I bought this summer and I few that I’ve received as gifts.  I’m reading these books simultaneously and employing many of the ideas in projects I’m involved with.  Perhaps in the fall when I’ve digested theme properly, I’ll take the time and write a post about what these books meant to my learning and work. Here are a few of my summer reading books with a few comments to go with each book.

Community: The Structure of Belonging: Peter Block – This book has changed my thinking about community and community work. I’m finally recognizing (after all these years) that you can’t problem solve your way to building community. I sailed into uncharted territory when I read this book, but by doing so, it’s awakened my sense of discovery and personal commitment towards building a community that I want.

Trust Agents:Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust, Chris Brogan and Julian Smith - Lessons about trust as the cornerstone of your practice. A very timely book to guide my work with non profit organizations.

The Diamond Cutter: The Buddha on Strategies for Managing Your Business and Your Life, Geshe Michael Roach and Lama Christie McNally – My daughter Meghan gave this to me on Father’s Day. She knows how much I enjoy Buddhist teachings and this one promises to be an excellent read. It’s about an ancient book based on the diamond industry and how you can practice your business successfully by following key life principles. I’ve put it aside for now but I keep it close by for quick references and inspiration.

Open Leadership: How Social Technology Can Transform the Way You Lead,  Charlene Li - Charlene’s book, The Groundswell introduced me to social media strategies for engaging your communities and stakeholders. Her newest book takes the next step and is helping me understand the changing role of leadership in the world of the social web.

Six Pixels of Separation: Everyone is Connected – Connect Your Business to Everyone, Mitch Joel – Understanding the changes brought about by the social web and how the businesses (other sectors as well) are  implementing successful strategies to survive and thrive.

The Abundant Community: Awakening the Power of Families and Neighbourhoods, John McKnight & Peter Block – This book is deepening my understanding of communities and the strengths of residents to change  their lives and their communities. Like Peter Block’s book on Community, the Structure of Belonging, this book will be a constant reference for me in my social media work.

Drupal for Dummies, Lynn Beighley – Drupal is the platform of choice for my partner Alain Hurtubise (iAutomate) and I’m glad he chose Drupal. I’ll never be a web design and developer but with this book I can learn the basics of supporting Drupal based web sites and teaching staff and volunteers how to manage their web site – without paying costly outside experts who don’t know anything about your business.

P.S. The bookends are core samples taken from the mines in Sudbury Ontario, my home town. Having worked in the mines before starting my career in community & social media work, the bookends remind me of the lessons learned from growing up in a mining town.

Brent Learning Community, networks books

I am very pleased to report that I’ve struck a business alliance with a friend and colleague from Edmonton Alberta.

Mark Holmgren and I met quite a few years ago in Edmonton Alberta. I had taken on the challenge of launching and managing Edmonton’s first inner city street youth program and Mark was an Executive Director at a inner city housing project that served homeless and hard to house inner city residents.

Mark is a highly sought after consultant (Mark Holmgren Consulting – MHC) serving the non profit sector throughout Alberta and for a time in southern Florida. Over this past year, Mark and I resumed our relationship thanks to the wonders of the social web. It didn’t take us long to recognize how aligned we are in our desire to help non profit groups adopt social web strategies for strengthening their services and deepening their relationships with stakeholders.

Mark and I will focus our business alliance on helping non profit organizations develop and execute their online communications strategies to engage their supporters, donors, users and partners. Our collaborative work will include the design & development of websites, and the deployment of social media tools to engage stakeholders and meet organizational business goals.

Our first contract together is delivering a social media strategic plan to a collaborative, rural-based organization, Return to Rural.

Return to Rural is an exciting project aimed at attracting and retaining early and mid- career families to the rural remote communities of the Special Areas and MD of Acadia No.34 region (Southeastern Alberta).

The return to rural philosophy is built on the idea that by blending technology and community, it is possible to create an environment where anyone can live their dream life in a rural community.

MHC has also been contracted to deliver two learning workshops related to social media in the late summer and fall by another client.

If your organization needs help understanding social media and developing strategies to reach and engage your stakeholders, give Mark a call at 780.244.8686 or email him at mark@markholmgren.com

You can reach me by calling (905) 751-6075 or emailing me at brent at socialmediatools dot ca

I am in the final stages of designing a new web site for Social Media Tools for Work & Learning.

My blog has served me well but my new Drupal powered web site will enable me to showcase more of the work I’m doing with organizations and still offer all the benefits of a full blogging platform. Stay tuned!

Brent Business, Learning Community, Presentation, Services Mark anticipate

I grew up in the 60′s. The values we aspired to back then are closely aligned with the values and philosophy expressed by many social media practitioners and leaders in business, non profit, education and other sectors across the spectrum of society and around the world.

This is post originating from Louise Suarez a Knowledge Manager, Community Builder & Social Computing Evangelist in the IBM Software Group division has stirred me up like no other post. He puts forth a personal insight that others around the world have being hinting at and writing about for some  time.

Maybe it was just the way he shared his story or the fact that he connected the best of what was happening in the 60′s and 70′s with how the social web is enabling creativity and innovation in people who who care about our future.

The post is a heartfelt revelation from someone immersed in the social media world within IBM. The accompanying video interview with Alexandra Wheeler (Starbucks’ Director of Digital Strategies) on the topic of social strategy and social philosophy underscores Luis’s contention that adopting a social philosophy is an integral ingredient to any social media strategy.

We need some fresh thinking; we need to break the barriers of how business has been conducted in the last few years; we finally need to break free from that financial yoke and eventually strike for that sustainable economy that everyone keeps talking about, but that doesn’t seem to come along as quickly as we thought. It keeps slipping away from our fingers, when we know it’s just so close to us! We need to stop thinking about social strategy and push more along the lines of social philosophy.

Because, after all, who wants to live in a world like today’s, yes, like today’s (With the current financial crisis and all) in say 30 to 50 years from now? Would you be willing to make the same mistakes we have made in the recent past and go through the same painful experiences again? And again! And again!! Would you? Would you like your children to inherit such unsustainable world? I am not sure about you, but I wouldn’t, and somehow something tells me that I will be around, like most of you folks out there, to witness what it would be like. And, for sure, I would want to see a better picture than what we have today! Otherwise, why bother altogether, don’t you think?

Brent Business, Learning Community, Presentation ibm, knowledge, starbucks

Here is a short and crisp video about online fundraising in Canada. Non profit organizations will be turning more and more to social media strategies to financially support their Mission. This video captures the key data and the trends – well worth a few minutes viewing.

Did You Know CH.O from CanadaHelps on Vimeo.

Brent Learning Community, Research, purpose fundraising canada

My colleague Mark Holmgren (Anticipate) has written an insightful post about his experience attending an Imagine Canada Forum held in Edmonton. Imagine Canada is doing a series of Provincial forums and Edmonton was their first stop.

Here  is how Imagine Canada describe it’s cross country mission.

First, in its role as convener of a national dialogue on how to strengthen the collective voice of the sector and develop a common agenda for action, Imagine Canada will use this draft framework to facilitate a nation-wide conversation about what is driving change in the sector and what actions must be taken to maximize the contributions of the sector to Canada and the world over the next decade.

I haven’t being following Imagine Canada’s work but after reading Mark’s post, and the Framework for Action document, I’m going to delve deeper into their resources and cross Canada campaign.

Read more…

Brent Learning Community, Presentation, Research, Services imagine innovation strategy

Net Change Week 2010 – Robert Egger keynote from MaRS Discovery District on Vimeo.

My charity rocks, it’s a rooting tooting, awesome, knock em dead, rock and roll, sweet baby James of a charity. Maybe not his exact words, but Robert’s genuine passion, sincerity, pride, anger and commitment flowed through every word he uttered in his keynote.

I was guest blogging at the Net Change Week and was lucky enough to sit in on a speech that altered my view of the social benefit sector and has re-stocked my own passion for change in my community.

Robert Egger is the Founder and President of the DC Central Kitchen, the nation’s first “community kitchen”, where unemployed men and women learn marketable culinary skills while donated food is converted into balanced meals. Since opening in 1989, the DCCK has distributed over 20 million meals and helped 700 men and women gain full-time employment.

I think his message was a bit like the Matrix movie. Take the blue pill and continue believing that the non profit (he hates that term – as I do) sector is just fine. Take the red pill and see how the non profit sector has being convinced into believing that’s all it can be and should be, as after all, it’s the business world that really counts.

Read more…

Brent Learning Community, Presentation, purpose

One of the reasons I embrace social media is that it enables conversations to continue. Indeed, I am of the opinion that a community is a continuous conversation.

The Planning Forum for York Region sponsored the first Community – Funder Roundtable. The goal was to begin an ongoing dialogue with funder and policy makers about building our York Region community. Michael Johnny, Manager of the Knowledge Mobilization Unit at York University welcomed everyone and explained what we hoped to accomplish.

To help participants understand the challenges and envision a future where funder groups and community groups work in sync with eachother, the planning group brought in Liz Weaver from the Tamarack Vibrant Communities organization. Liz is also the lead spokesperson for the Hamilton Round-table on Poverty. The Hamilton Round-table has done incredible successful work combining support from the grass roots, government, corporate and community service sectors. The collaboration amongst stakeholders in Hamilton is a success and we (the planning group) felt that we could emulate their process or  at least learn from their experience.

Read more…

Brent Business, Learning Community, Services, networks rooundtable dialogue planning community

Beth Kanter is one incredible lady. I learn so much from her blog and her numerous social media channels. In this interview you can see her eyes sparkling and the electric energy that flows out of her with every question asked. The video is long but you can cherry pick which sections you like.

I was interested in hearing about her new book “The Networked Nonprofit“. I am using this term in my posts about social benefit groups becoming a networked organization.

Beth Kanter says, “Go Slow, But Go!” from Communications Network on Vimeo.

Running time of this episode is 27 minutes. To view selected sections, use the guide below to forward to the time indicated:

• Beth Kanter may not be human (or what 100,000 Twitter followers get you.) (00:27-3:30)
• Disciplined use of Twitter and what you can expect to get 3:30-8:00)
• Why incremental approaches make sense for your social media experiments (8:00-14:44)
• What about the skeptics in our midst? (4:44-17:04)
• How program and communications staff are partnering for greater impact (17:04-20:00)
• What does the future hold for foundations and social media? (20:00-23:50)
• What is Beth’s new book about? (23:50-2625)

Related Posts:

From the Balcony to the Dance Floor – incremental changes over time

Brent Learning Community, Presentation bethkanter socialbenefit

Are you a leader in your social benefit organization? Are you interested in learning more about the basic building blocks necessary for supporting a dynamic, engaging web site that reaches out and deepens relationships with your stakeholders? Are you thinking about how to move your organization on to the social web dance floor but not sure where or how to start? Read on!

I’m sure you appreciate the impact social technologies are having in all sectors locally and around the world. Your leadership role now includes managing how your organization connects, networks, and collaborates with your diverse stakeholders. Also, your new role includes learning how to listen to your stakeholders in new ways so you can adapt and respond to a rapidly changing environment.

Read more…

Brent Learning Community, networks, purpose dancefloor balcony socialbenefit blocks