Nicolas Negroponte sent out a recent e-mail plea to former Give 1 Get 1 (G1G1) program participants.  I am a proud participant.

At the end of 2007 I, like many others participated in the Give One Get One program of One Laptop per Child (OLPC). 75,000 laptops went to Rwanda, Ethiopia, Mongolia, Cambodia, Oceania, the West Bank, and Haiti.  An additional 75,000 laptops came into the USA as part of the "get" side of the equation.

In light of the recent disaster in Haiti, the OLPC group is gathering used XO laptops to send to Haiti. If you or the child to whom you gave the laptop is no longer using it then kindly send it to the address below (even if it is broken).

OLPC FOR HAITI c/o Exel
615 Westport Parkway #500
Grapevine, TX 76051

75% of the schools in Port-au-Prince have been destroyed in the recent earthquake. Because of the XO's unique features (sunlight readability, solar powered, water resistant, drop proof), it is also an ideal tool for relief work.

==========================

I do have to agree with the usefulness of the laptop.  It's a great travel PC if you don't need anything sophisticated or can live on Google apps for productivity software.  I have often used mine for writing in the bright southern sun.  I could see how useful it would be as a disaster relief tool.  As such, I will be sending mine in.  I encourage you to do the same.

Comment (0)

Recently, one of our employees endured a poor customer service experience.  So what to do?   Like many, they turned to social media to vent their frustrations in attempt to elicit a response from the company.  We also recognize that every story has three sides: both parties and the truth which lies somewhere in-between.  As a result, we will only focus on the response from the company in question and the lessons learned as they relate to customer service and social media.

Some pertinent background information:

The customer felt they were left stranded all day for a service appointment originally scheduled for the morning.  The customer felt the customer service representative did not allow them to ask questions related to the resolution of the situation.  And the customer did not appreciate having to call a third party in order to attempt to resolve the situation. Ultimately, the customer did not need to be on premise for the day which was counter to the information given at scheduling.

The company in question touts customer service as one of the differentiators for conducting business.  The company has a social media presence in terms of a FaceBook fan page and several Twitter accounts.

Since the FaceBook  FAN page did not allow customers to interact with the company, the customer resorted to tweeting.   The customer decided to tweet at least once a day until receiving a response OR getting tired of bashing the company. It took the company ONE WEEK to respond. The initial contact came from a Sr. Executive (name and position withheld without release permission). So after a few e-mails and phone calls from a senior leader of the company's customer service team, the customer was informed that the matter would be used as a learning experience for their representatives.

The key points of the learning experience:

1. Provide accurate appointment data such as time, presence required, and fees to the customer.
2. If the company can not provide #1, then provide flexibility to the customer such as a courtesy call before the appointment. If that's another company's responsibility - work out an agreement with the 3rd party because,
3. Don't make the customer call a third party. The company is the contact and should handle any communications with the 3rd party.
4. Ensure customer service representatives listen to the customer's concerns or questions. And ensure they don't provide vague unhelpful information.

Lessons from a social media perspective:

The rest of the story becomes a great case study for what to do/not do in terms of using social media for business development. About two hours after hanging up the phone with the Customer Service leader, the same Sr. Executive whom initiated contact sent a follow up e-mail to the customer. He kindly suggested the customer delete their tweets and any related posts. The customer kindly declined. Here are the lessons learned for utilizing Social Media as a business strategy.

1. If you are create a social media business presence, be prepared to respond via social media For example:
   • Visitors to your FaceBook page may not want to be a "fan" or "like" everything about your company. Provide contact information access to your company there OR allow people to post content.
   • If using a Twitter account for your company, be prepared to respond to tweets and questions in a timely fashion. If you are just squatting on the Twitter handle - disclose that.
2. Establish some sort of "brand reputation" or "monitoring" strategy. This can be an expensive solution such as Radian 6 or a cheap "roll your own" solution with Google Alerts. It's not hard and it will allow you to catch issues before they become serious problems.
3. Treat every faux-pas as a learning opportunity. In this case, the company did that. Unfortunately they dropped the ball when they requested it go away. Embrace your mistakes. Show the world your company cares and adapts to legitimate concerns of the customer. This will only help your brand and improve your transparency.

Comment (0)

There are many opportunities this week for some great learning opportunities.  Best of all, they are all FREE!  I'll be splitting my available time between two major initiatives this week: Social Media Tools Week and LearnTrends 2009.

How to participate in either conference

These aren't your typical conferences.  They are conducted using a web conferencing tool.  Not that a web conferencing tool is earthshaking new.  The meat of the conference happens in the social media based communities.  For Social Media Tools Week, this is in the back-chat channel occurring on Twitter and Google Wave.  Feel free to use ChickenFox's Conversation Dashboard.

For LearnTrends, this will happen in Twitter as well as the LearnTrends Ning community.  Be a casual observer, or an active participant.  The choice is up to you.

LearnTrends 2009

LearnTrends is an online conference created by Jay Cross and his peers.  This year will focus on Convergence in the Workplace.  From my experience, its a great place to hear new ideas from the pioneers of informal and social learning.  The conference sessions this year will run Tuesday Nov 17 through Thursday Nov 19.  All you need to do is register to attend.

All presenters are asked to save half their time for questions and discussion with you. LearnTrends is hosted on the Elluminate platform. Show up a few minutes early to download Elluminate's Java start file. All sound will be Voice Over IP. No telephone links. If you want to speak, you need to have a headset to avoid audio feedback.  Link to online event. 

The Twitter hashtag is #learntrends. Tweet away but please use Elluminate's chat function for questions for presenters.

Social Media Tools Week 2009

A similar type of venue to LearnTrends.  Come hear some thought leaders in the social media space in a packed schedule.  Contribute your thoughts in the back-chat.  This conference runs all week.  Again, all you need to do is register.  Even though it has already started, its not too late!

Discuss the conference on several platforms:

Google Wave search the public timeline (with:public SMTW)

Twitter hashtag #SMTW

Comment (0)

It's been a busy few weeks with some looming project deadlines, so I received a nice pick me up on Tuesday when Google informed me that I was receiving my Google Wave invitation.  Now two days later, a whole bunch of my Wave friends and I are wondering what next?

My Irish friends are keen on discussing the upcoming Ireland-France play off match.  Well, that and posting where they are all going for a pint via the map and voting gadgets while my day is just getting started.

My learning and development peers and I have been discussing how we believe Wave will be a revolutionary tool for distance learning because of its ability to provide a rich collaborative environment for breakout sessions.   So then I started wondering - how would this work on my mobile phone?

I haven't had the opportunity to test it on my old Windows Mobile or Android phones yet, but I did fire it up on the iPhone.  It gives a warning screen that it’s “not a supported browser”, but you can bypass that and it’ll run.  It's missing some of the features of the normal version of Wave, but works well.

Then I discovered App-It.  App-It is a web page at www.AppIt.us.  It's quite simple in that it is a list of links to Google apps, like Gmail, Calendar, Talk, Latitude, voice, etc.  Just make Wave shortcut, by clicking the (+) button in your browser and “Add to Home Screen”.  This creates an icon on the desktop for convenient use.  Now I'm in Google heaven as I use these apps on daily basis for my business.

Are you a Wave user?  if so, what are your thoughts?  How have you used it so far?

Comment (0)

Friday September 25, 2009 will mark an inflection point for social media events in Atlanta.  The question is, in what direction are we trending.  Atlanta has several Social Media events already.  They range from small meetups to multi-day unconferences such as SoCon.  New Media Atlanta is the new kid on the block and brings with it lofty aspirations and polished marketing.

First, lets look at how the event was marketed.  This is important because there were a lot of people in attendance.  Many of them paid what they considered to be a reasonable sum of money to attend.

The New Media Atlanta conference is a high level, business dialog about how social media is changing marketing and messaging – and in fact, changing the nature of all communications.   We’ll talk about strategies to leverage its power to build your company, product, brand, service, etc.

Have you been curious about what social media can mean for your own business?

Are you interested in learning from a group of experts who have the experience to guide you along the way long-term?

Does a chance to meet some real-world social media leaders, authors and speakers appeal to you?

This conference is meant for you and other business owners who are engaging in social media but haven’t quite made the leap to exponential success.

Maybe those people (myself included) should have honed in on the words "high level" because this is what the morning was... High Level.  Unfortunately, the event hosts exacerbated the problem by starting late and kicking the event off with a good hour of "thank-our sponsors."  Even though, the marketing was beautiful, the event well coordinated, and the facilities fabulous - serious credibility had been lost before the kickoff keynote speaker took the stage.  And it had already seeped into the conference backchannel conversations (on twitter and backnoise).

To make things worse, the opening keynote tried to adapt his presentation because of the sentiment trending in the backchannel.  He stated "the conference sucked so far."  This was followed by two more presentations that were either retread presentations from another event or a glorified "look at me" show.   The backchannel toxicity escalates further.  Thank goodness it's lunch time.

Lunch provided a welcome respite, needed food and drink (since both were banned from the auditorium), and the chance to speak with the closing keynote speaker - Chris Brogan.  Chris was kind enough to chat with everyone and sign copies of his book "Trust Agents."  Unfortunately, it was not good enough to keep me at the conference - especially since it was being live streamed.  So I, and a whole bunch of other people, left the conference.

I'm not sorry.  I got to avoid the Friday afternoon Atlanta traffic.  I still got to watch the conference, although I was not there in person.  And I was still able to follow the backchannel - which was still toxic.   Content wise, the afternoon picked up.  The panel was good, and Chris Brogan did not disappoint.  Here's why - he addressed the backchannel.  He made it part of his presentation, or a better term would be a conversation.   I am sorry that I did not go to the after party.  and skipping the Atlanta traffic was worth it.

I know many people were disappointed with the conference.  It's a real shame because if the content issues are addressed, this could be a great event - especially since the people organizing it know how to market it and make it look good.  I don't want to say the "Lipstick on a pig" line, but I do live in the South.  Do I feel like I got my money's worth?  The answer would be "no."  Admittedly, I left early.  However I blocked a day off from clients and I paid for the event - so there were some significant investments made.  Leaving allowed me to recoup about 40% of that.  Would I go again next year?  The answer is maybe.  It is contingent upon the content.  I will also be asking a lot more questions about the content before agreeing to go.

So in a nutshell, here are the salient points about the conference:

1. Don't start late with a bunch of advertising
2. consider putting your keynote speaker first - especially if you have a high powered panel later.
3. If it is going to be "high level" content, don't bill it as a business solution solver.
4. If you are going to bill it as business oriented, have more business representation present (from multiple industries)
5. Encourage your presenters to bring "fresh material", I don't want to see last years presentation - again.
6. Pay attention to the backchannel and adjust as needed
7. Kudos for putting the event together and executing on it.  Event planning and execution is hard work.
8. Bowling shirts are COOL.

Over the next few days, I'll be post ing a few more blog posts related to the backchannel conversations.  This topic has many facets for exploration, and the one I want to discuss is its role in learning and development.

Were you at New Media Atlanta?  What were your thoughts? What's your feedback?  What were your snarky backchannel comments?

Comment (0)