CréAtelier au Swiss Creative Center: retour d’expérience "se médiatiser en 2.0" [fr]

[en] I did a workshop on Friday in Neuchâtel around "how to make yourself known in the 2.0 world". Basically, it was about sharing how I'd done it and what could be learned from it. The results were surprising to me, but I had a really great time and I think the participants did too!

J’ai animé vendredi un “CréAtelier” au Swiss Creative Center à Neuchâtel. C’était une expérience extrêmement intéressante et enrichissante, qui m’a donné l’occasion de jeter un regard nouveau sur mon parcours et ce que je fais.

Workshop Swiss Creative Centre

Pour ce workshop, Xavier m’a demandé la chose suivante: faire rentrer les participants dans mon univers en racontant mon parcours, et les lancer dans un exercice de “design thinking” à partir de là. Comment ai-je fait pour me faire une place en tant que blogueuse, me “médiatiser en 2.0”?

Ce que j’ai réalisé en me replongeant dans ces 15 dernières années en ligne, c’est que la plupart des choses que j’ai faites, je les ai faites simplement parce que j’en avais envie, et non pas comme moyen pour atteindre un certain but. Tout ce que j’ai “accompli”, au final, a pour moi un goût d’accidentel. Je n’ai pas cherché à me faire connaître. Je n’ai pas essayé de me lancer comme indépendante.

Du coup, je séchais sur la question de l’exercice de groupe: est-ce qu’on pouvait vraiment tirer de mon histoire des leçons pour “faire de même”? Il me semblait que ce que j’avais fait avait “marché”, rétrospectivement, justement parce que je n’essayais pas de faire marcher quoi que ce soit.

Ce qui me semblait ressortir de mon parcours, c’est l’importance des mes activités “en communauté” (= les gens) à côté du blog comme lieu de publication. Mon blog, en fait, était (tout comme mon site) un moyen d’étendre mes relations avec les gens que je connaissais en ligne. Il n’a jamais eu d’existence dans le vide. J’ai réalisé assez vite aussi qu’il y avait un écho fort entre mes activités en ligne et hors ligne: internet n’est absolument pas pour moi un lieu d’altérité. Ma vie et mes relations sont intégrées, online/offline.

Pour le travail de groupe, j’ai décidé de proposer aux participants d’imaginer qu’ils étaient des passionnés de chocolats à la tête d’une chocolaterie/tea-room de demain. Que pourrait-on faire avec ça?

Je voulais éviter de tomber dans le piège classique de l’entrepreneur-exemple qui vient raconter son histoire, dit “on ne savait pas du tout ce qu’on faisait, mais on a eu de la chance, ça a marché malgré tout, si vous voulez faire de même il ne faut surtout pas faire comme nous, ayez une stratégie, un business plan, et tout et tout”. Vous avez déjà noté ce paradoxe? Nombre des histoires de succès qu’on nous présente reprennent sous une forme ou une autre le refrain de “on savait pas ce qu’on faisait”. La mienne incluse. Et après, on essaie d’en tirer des enseignements pour quelqu’un qui chercherait explicitement à atteindre un objectif similaire!

J’ai donc donné les consignes suivantes à mes “chocolatiers”:

  • se détacher des objectifs
  • partager sa passion
  • qu’est-ce qui serait cool?
  • aimer les gens
  • online et offline

Peu après avoir lancé l’exercice, j’ai commencé à avoir un tas d’arrière-pensées. Je venais de leur dire pendant une heure que tout ce que j’avais fait, je l’avais fait de façon désintéressée, parce que j’étais passionnée, parce que j’avais un élan intérieur qui me poussait à le faire, parce que j’aimais les gens et qu’au fil des mois et des années j’avais créé des liens avec et que ces liens revenaient nourrir ma vie plus tard à des moments inattendus. Et je les lançais sur un thème imposé, pour lequel ils allaient devoir faire semblant de se passionner, et dans un cadre tout de même intitulé “se médiatiser en 2.0” — voilà un bel objectif, non?

Si je pressentais une petite dissonance entre ce que j’avais prévu en matière de discours et d’exercice, je n’avais pas vu venir ça aussi fort. Un exemple de plus de l’irréductibilité de l’expérience humaine: on a beau préparer son speech, sa classe, ou son workshop, le faire “pour de vrai” colore tout différemment. Je pense d’ailleurs que quand on enseigne des choses aussi expérimentales que ce que je fais habituellement, la capacité à improviser et à s’adapter à ce qui se passe dans la salle est capital, même s’il faut jeter son plan de cours par la fenêtre. Etre à l’aise avec ça m’a sauvé la mise plus d’une fois.

Les retours des groupes étaient extrêmement créatifs — mais se situaient tous au niveau entrepreneurial. On va offrir tel service, etc. Un exercice extrêmement réussi, au fond, pas celui que j’avais essayé de lancer! Peut-être que mon cadre n’était pas assez bien défini — ou peut-être aussi simplement était-ce impossible. Je penche pour la deuxième solution.

J’ai expliqué ça et soumis le casse-tête à la classe. Une proposition de la salle rejoignait exactement l’exercice “bis” que j’avais concocté durant le premier travail de groupe: un des participants allait se porter volontaire pour partager une de ses passions avec le groupe (première partie de l’exercice: comment communiquer une passion à des quasi-inconnus autour d’une table, les intéresser, les faire “rentrer” dedans?), puis le groupe allait réfléchir ensemble à des sujets d’articles de blog sur cette thématique, pour en préparer une petite liste.

Cet exercice s’est avéré beaucoup plus réalisable que celui d’avant. Mais la fin du workshop approchant, certains étaient perplexes. “Bon alors, comment je me médiatise en 2.0?” — “Concrètement, je fais quoi maintenant?”

Oui, c’est ça qui fait un peu mal. Le succès d’untel n’indique pas nécessairement le chemin à suivre pour autrui. Beaucoup de mon parcours (et de mon “succès”) est lié à ma personnalité, ou à des concours de circonstances. Comment on peut reproduire ça? Difficilement…

Toutefois, il y a, je crois, quelques “take-aways” exportables à partir de mon histoire. Quelques clés que je peux partager.

  • La base, ce sont les gens. Ecrire un blog dans le vide n’avancera à rien. Et quand je dis “les gens”, je pense à de véritables relations, pas à des contacts-networking empilés sous forme de cartes de visites.
  • L’authenticité. On ne peut pas bâtir ces relations si importantes sur une image. Il faut oser être soi un peu, se dévoiler, être un peu vulnérable. Cela n’implique pas la transparence totale, absolument pas, mais ça invite à laisser tomber un peu le masque et à être humain et faillible.
  • Suivre ses intérêts, partager sa passion. C’est lié à l’authenticité: si les montres m’indiffèrent, je ne vois pas comment je pourrais écrire un blog à succès ou devenir une référence dans le monde des montres. La passion contrefaite, on la sent à 15km. Il suffit d’ouvrir une brochure marketing pour s’en convaincre.
  • Et ça prend du temps. C’est Xavier qui a relevé ce point. Dans mon cas, des centaines et des centaines d’heures à chatter, à trainer dans des forums, à bricoler en ligne. Parce que j’avais du plaisir à faire ça — je n’aurais jamais pu y passer autant de temps si c’était juste une “stratégie”.

Deux autres articles que j’ai envie d’écrire suite à ce workshop: un récit de mon parcours (bonjour le cours d’histoire), et peut-être un autre sur la “blog attitude”, comme l’a joliment mis un des participants au workshop.

Merci encore à Xavier et au Swiss Creative Center de m’avoir donné l’opportunité d’animer ce workshop. Et si vous y avez pris part, j’adorerais lire vos retours dans les commentaires!

Lift12 Workshop: Lots of Clouds, Stormy Weather for Information Privacy? [en]

[fr] Je suis à la conférence Lift12 à Genève. Voici mes notes de sessions.

Live-blogging from Lift12 conference in Geneva. These are my notes and interpretations of Michel Jaccard’s workshop — best effort, but might be imprecise or even wrong! Hoping I don’t mangle things like last year

Cloud computing, data protection, etc… With Sylvain Métille of @idestavocats.

Know what you do, why, what are the risks and best practices. You have the choice to use the cloud or not. But it can be very difficult a few years down the road to know where the data is, but ou remain liable for that date.

Analysis limited to privacy issues. As close to real-life experience gets for lawyers: real agreements 🙂

Risks?

  • losing control of the data: not a specific risk, but reinforced with cloud computing — makes it harder to enforce your rights over multiple entities and jurisdictions
  • non-compliance with the law: headache. You end up in lawyer ping-pong or chess game. Have spent days or weeks in negotiations just about who is taking what kind of risks in connection with cloud storage of certain data, to reach an agreement. “Sorry, I can’t do anything on my side, strict compliance with the laws I refer to” — lawyer in the middle, ends up drafting something like what follows: Party A shall be liable and responsible under whatever law might apply to that party… blah blah. Idem for Party B. If there is a disagreement, parties should in good faith try to reach an agreement. Difficult!
  • Vendor lock-in (same, non-specific but reinforced)
  • Access requests by law enforcement authorities. State police is now very keen to have access to data that is on their soil. So as a Swiss company, if you don’t know where your data is stored… You could get sued outside your country, and the data center be asked to hand over the data. Example: sensitive data, third party locates where the data is physically and attacks (legally) there.

If keeping control over your data, and exclusive ownership, is critical to your business, important to know that this is extremely difficult to ensure if you use cloud computing. Eg. you might want to keep HR stuff in-house.

US Law: if you’re aware of a potential security breach, that is, that somebody not authorized might access the data, then you have to proactively disclose it to the market (even without a real data leak!)

Information privacy:

  • CH: Data Protection Act (easy to understand)
  • EU: directives/regulations apply to data treated in the EU or related to residents
  • US: state laws and sectorial

Two important ideas:

  • Data
  • Consent (is king)

Consent has to be voluntarily given and based on adequate information.

Different types of clouds. (1) locally, cloud = data transferred to a server. 10a DPA. steph-note: lost here, sorry.

(2) distant cloud. Accessible abroad. 6 DPA.

Swiss banking privacy cannot be guaranteed to customers who consult their accounts remotely (typically, from abroad).

(3) very very distant cloud (India, US)… Those countries do not provide “adequate protection”. Instead of legal protection, safeguards can be granted in a contract (official models). Safe Harbor Framework (USA) for data of private persons. Careful, need to be safe harbor compliant for Switzerland! Consent in the specific case.

Storing in the cloud also means that there is no 4th amendment protection under US law (because the data is accessible by a third party).

Means the FBI (eg) can actually pretty much know everything before the indictment.

lift12 1100307.jpg

Questions around a sample privacy policy. steph-note: photo above is the beginning, it goes on…

  • Your information: what is it? what I provided? what you know about me from my usage?
  • Personal information: what is it? taste in food? name of my mistress? Very subjective!
  • Carefully selected: how?
  • On our behalf: legal wording, finally.
  • Hosting for our servers: cloud providers.
  • Email distribution partners: spammers?
  • Delivery fulfillment services: another politically correct term for… mass e-mailing?
  • Customer service agencies: telemarketers.
  • Does not say how I consent. Just by clicking? You could sue under Swiss law and say “consent was not given”. You don’t know what you’re consenting to.

Companies tell their lawyers: please draft a privacy policy to make sure I can do everything I want to do, now and forever. Don’t try and cover everything!

Means the minute you enter the online world, you consent to anything that can be done to your data (unrealistic).

Personally identifiable information: anything that might identify you. Popular concept in the US. In CH, IP addresses as such are personal data.

steph-note: dissection of privacy policy with Michel, entertaining

Conclusion: with this kind of agreement the company can do pretty much anything. (It’s a B2B agreement.)

If you want to delete your data we will make it permanently inaccessible (we won’t delete it!)

steph-note: question that’s nagging me… what to think of companies who do not want to use Google Apps or let their employees use Google Docs? Are they right to worry, or not?

Best practices:

  • don’t hurry, prepare charts
  • align marketing/business/IT/legal
  • know what your company will do with the database down the road
  • force your providers to show you their own subcontracting agreements
  • be transparent in your legal terms
  • always have a plan B…

Conclusion: legal compliance is great but it’s quickly a headache. Cheaper pricing is not always the best solution.

Lift11: Michel Jaccard, Governances of multi-author and open source collaboration projects (best practices and legal tips) [en]

Lift11 Workshop notes. I do my best but all this is filtered through my sometimes imperfect brain.

Practical and legal issues. First, defining the scope.

Common question faced in their practice: what do I do with my employees who are spending paid time on Facebook? Can I run commerce online?

What are we talking about? Open collaborative projects. Two types:

  • OSS (software)
  • R&D and knowledge-sharing projects (Wikipedia, standard-setting bodies, consortiums, WTO, etc)

We’re going to focus on Software projects.

Basic question: is there a necessity to think differently in the online world compared to the offline world? Most of the time, in regulation, it’s not needed. Most legal rules can be applied, with some subtleties.

What makes open collaborative projects different from more traditional creative work efforts? IP laws have been designed around the idea of a single creative mind (Shakespeare and Mozart), but today, most projects result from a collective effort. Mismatch.

Issues — practical and legal.

Practical: massive number of participants, continuous updates for long-term projects, hard to keep track of all contributors (case of company unable to contract with a US company because they’d outsourced part of their work to an ill-defined community and it had become impossible to get back to the various participants), lack of control in cross-border projects, funding/sale of project (who does it?), enforcement of rights.

Legal: international => different legal regimes, no unified set of rules applicable to the project, numerous legal fields (IP, contract, corporate)

Multi-author (=> joint work, article 6 Swiss Copyright Act or “joint works” pursuant to section 101 of the US Copyright Act) — does each author detail a copyright on the joint work? Which law is applicable? you can’t claim ownership of part of the work. Default system in copyright law is unanimous agreement of all co-authors for what you’re going to do with the work… tricky. (This means it’s a little dangerous to launch into a collaborative project without some kind of agreement.)

Private international law: which is applicable, which jurisdiction, special local protection rules, privacy issues?

Contract law: who is party, is there a contract law relationship? Who is accountable of what towards whom?

When it comes to businesses you can put pretty much what you want in an agreement, not so with individuals.

Is having a “lead person” sufficient an agreement to interface with other parties?

Not securing the IP aspects of a software project can negatively impact the valuation of the company. Have agreements in place before anybody starts writing a single line of code…

IFOSS Law Review — took them 2 months to figure out a name, and 3 months to get funded, and the editorial board is a bunch of experts on the topic — couldn’t open a bank account! They ended up being funded by the Mozilla Foundation.

Needs: centralization of rights on the project to overcome some legal issues, minimum quality standards, governance on the general project.

What can be done?

Do everything beforehand. Governance. Make an agreement, but do you have the authority to do so? Everything need not be negotiated — acceptable rules for contributors, can be 3-4 pages. Just to say that the rules governing the community will be those the community comes up with.

*steph-note: sorry, going a bit fast and the topic is “out of my jurisdiction”, having trouble following*

3 types of governance rules (access, …, …)

  • access (no legal access regime by default)
  • assign IP to the community (= sale) — vs. license, which is very difference

Under Swiss Law, ToS that are 34 pages long are not enforceable, even if you make people click “I read and agree”. Will not stand in court. It needs to be concise. Good faith: if I don’t understand, I am not bound. It’s up to the person making you agree to make sure you understand what you are agreeing with. Swiss market is a bit difficult for online purchasing — often the terms are just in German! *steph-note: this sounds too good to be true, not 100% I understood this completely correctly*

Important to set up governance that will allow an exit.

WIPO. Approved “Open collaboration projects and ip-based models” project in nov 2010. Will analyze and compile existing models of Open Collaboration projects.

In 90% of situations Creative Commons works, but what’s missing is something similar to CC but which includes governance.

Badmouthing (with authorization): Business Model Generation, co-created with 470 ppl, but copyright Alexander Osterwalder and Yves Pigneur, and designed by a third guy. Trick question: who owns the IP? On the online platform, it says copyright Alexander. Now that they’re starting to be famous with the book, they’re pretty suable. It’s a total mess in terms of ownership. Would be problematic for derivative works where you need consent of all authors. But actually they even made people pay to be co-creators, and told them they’d get credit and receive a free copy. Nothing however about IP…

Wikipedia: another nightmare. user-generated and user-controlled. 5 pillars, but any user can modify the policies. Foundation reserves certain legal rights. They realized that the consensus stuff didn’t work and had to put in place committees etc. — would have been less trouble if they’d put it in place at the very start. *(steph-note: @anthere disagrees — might also be me not understanding well what was said, so take with a big grain of salt)*

Other example: Mozilla project. Governed as a “meritocracy”. Policies. 3 aspects: definition of roles and responsibilities, transparency, reciprocity.

Workshop: how to make it work? (Anne Heleen Bijl) [fr]

*Mes notes du workshop…*

1. chacun apporte une métaphore qui symbolise ses désirs pour le futur — 2020 (il y a une /vraie/ baguette magique si jamais on coince) — faire des sketches, pubs etc. datés 2020 sur tout ce que notre entreprise aura accompli de merveilleux. Wishful thinking. Faire émerger tous les désirs cachés concernant la projet.

2. moment eurêka – vision – small steps – concrete realisation

Attention, is le coeur n’y est pas, il faut faire autre chose! Ne choisir que des activités qui nous enthousiasment.

PMI: si on a des doutes, faire un PMI! Tout le monde participe:

– 3 minutes pour les points positifs, les avantages
– 3 minutes pour les points négatifs, les désavantages
– 3 minutes pour les points intéressants sans jugement de valeur (“qu’est-ce qui peut être intéressant”)

Autre méthode: moines dominicains. Deux personnes. On donne à la première un objet (jetable). Tant qu’on tient l’objet on peut parler (max 1-2 minutes, sinon c’est trop long à résumer). Quand on a fini on fait un pas en avant et on jette l’objet. C’est à la deuxième personne de résumer ce qu’a dit la première, jusqu’à ce que la première soit d’accord avec le résumé. Puis la deuxième dit avec quoi elle est pas d’accord, et avec quoi elle est d’accord, puis elle donne son opinion, fait aussi un pas en avant, et jette l’objet à la première, qui fait son résumé, etc. (Il faut partir assez loin, on continue le processus jusqu’à ce qu’on soit trop près pour continuer.) Ça marche à deux mais c’est vrai que c’est mieux avec un médiateur. Possible aussi avec des groupes antagonistes, en politique par exemple.

Idée: aussi faire en sorte que les jeunes coachent les vieux. Célébrer les succès.

Nearlings and beyonders can also be celebrated. (“good” failures)

Faire des excursions pour aller voir comme ça se fait ailleurs.

Une stratégie sous forme de mind map coloré (art map) est bien plus lisible qu’un mémo gris de 200 pages.

Donc une étape c’est de faire un art map de son projet pour que tout le monde le comprenne bien. Aussi pour tâches d’une équipe.

5 langues d’appréciation.

Exercice: le mur. 4 volontaires forment le mur. Le but c’est de séparer le mur au milieu pour accéder à quelque chose qui est derrière. Le mur ne doit pas coopérer. Pas beaucoup de place, on va éviter les solutions “physiques”. Très important: s’approcher du mur. Le mur est très sensible aux fausses promesses. Ce qui aide: demander au mur de quoi il a besoin pour pouvoir traverser, ou bien créer un avantage mutuel derrière le mur.

Pensée latérale: changer l’angle sous lequel on approche un problème. 5 façons:

– conversion: définir ce qu’on trouve normal et inverser (par exemple: on trouve normal que le chauffeur de taxi connaisse le chemin et pas le client, on renverse et les clients qui connaissent leur chemin forment les nouveaux chauffeurs).
– exagération: “tout Genève doit venir!” Exagérer le problème.
– wishful thinking: oser formuler ses désirs, complètement (baguette magique)
– choisir un mot arbitraire pour se stimuler (comme bananaslug)
– échapper à ce qu’on pense être normal, faire tomber l’idée dominante.

Les gens ne se sentent pas appréciés. Différentes langues (pas contente du gros bonus, aurait préféré un bouquet de fleurs). Il y a 5 langues différentes pour exprimer et recevoir la reconnaissance, et on a chacun notre langue favorite, une pour donner une pour recevoir. Si c’est dans une autre langue on ne le remarque même pas!

1. compliments (environ 20% des gens)
2. action pour l’autre
3. faire quelque chose ensemble, être là pour l’autre (majorité des gens)
4. contact physique (une personne sur 5)
5. cadeau matériel (pas de l’argent)

Pour l’histoire de la motivation et de l’argent, voir carotte et créativité ne font pas bon ménage.

Call For Screenshots: Facebook Privacy Settings [en]

I’m giving a workshop on Wednesday to a group of teachers on Facebook privacy settings. Of course, Facebook changed their privacy settings in December, so I’m having to scramble to get up to speed before giving the workshop. This is why I’m asking for your help.

I was pointed to an article about the new settings, but I’m sure there are other good ones out there: 10 New Privacy Settings Every Facebook User Should Know — please leave links to articles you found useful in the comments.

The main thing I’d like to as your help for is that I’d like a little collection of examples of privacy settings — mainly to help me understand what settings people are using, and possibly as examples to show at the workshop. I will anonymise any identifying information like e-mail addresses etc which might appear in the screenshots, no fear! Here are links to the various pages I’d love to receive screenshots of, if you have a few minutes to indulge me (e-mail firstname dot lastname at gmail — you know what my name is, don’t you?):

Don’t feel like you have to send me screenshots of all of these if you think it’s a lot — anything more than nothing is great for me. If you want to explain why you use certain settings, I’d love to hear about it too (in the comments or by e-mail).

A huge thanks to those of you who’ll take a few minutes to provide me with material!

Prochain Website Pro Day: fixons la date! [fr]

[en] I've created a poll to help determine the next Website Pro Day -- a day where we meet up, and set aside time to work on our professional sites. Even if you're not in Lausanne, you can take part: work remotely or organise a local hub!

Mise à jour: ce sera le 4 mai!

An Afternoon in San Francisco 85 Après WPD1, WPD2, WPD3 — il est temps de penser à WPD4! Si vous êtes intéressés, vous avez votre mot à dire pour fixer la date

WPD? Website Pro Day:

Si vous êtes un peu comme moi (consultant/indépendant dans le domaine du web) vous avez probablement quelque part un site professionnel qui erre, l’âme en peine, attendant depuis une année qu’on veuille bien s’occuper de lui.

Eh oui, comme on dit, c’est les cordonniers les plus mal chaussés, et les professionnels de la communication web qui ont les sites-vitrine les moins à jour. Pas pour rien qu’on recommande le blog, c’est beaucoup plus facile à entretenir, comme format.

Donc, pour la quatrième fois, on va remettre ça: prendre une journée, la bloquer, lui mettre des pare-feu, et la consacrer à la remise en ordre de notre présence professionnelle en ligne. Pour les Lausannois, je vous invite à venir le faire à l’eclau!

Si la formule vous paraît convenir, prenez donc une minute pour noter dans ce doodle vos disponibilités. Je communiquerai prochainement la date retenue!

Nombre minimum de participants: 2 🙂

Lift09 Workshop: Where will you work tomorrow? (Pierre Belcari) [en]

Workshop information. Watch the video.

Developing environments. Different solutions available at the moment in Europe. Evolution of the workplace.

Lift09 001

Where do we come from?

Office: individual offices, cubicles, open spaces

Hoteling: book work spaces when you need them, inside the company.

Lift09 002

Companies might try to encourage people to telecommute: save money on space, and improve work-life balance.

Evolution of technology has made evolution of the workspace possible.

Working from home? social interaction is lacking.

Lift09 003

Coworking: Gathering of people working independantly but sharing values and costs. Synergy.

*steph-note: I talked about eclau and Coworking Léman here.*

Xavier: FRIUP incubator. Very different from a coworking space. Very startup-minded. Need to leave after one year. Have to present a project to a committee who will decide if they can benefit from the incubator.

Nicolas: on the road.

Lift09 004

Workshop About Coworking at Lift09 [en]

[fr] Je participe à un workshop sur le coworking à Lift, mercredi après-midi. Si vous avez prévu de venir à la conférence, rejoignez-nous-y. J'y parlerai de mon expérience avec l'eclau. Si vous avez des aventures style coworking à partager, contactez-nous pour en parler au workshop!

The Lift conference is taking place in Geneva two days from now. Unlike last year, where in addition to live-blogging a whole lot of stuff I also held a workshop, an informal discussion, and gave an open stage speech (I was kicking off Going Solo), this year will be pretty low-key for me: just live-blogging and talking with interesting people.

If you’re not decided about coming yet, you might read what I wrote last year to encourage people to come to Lift08.

I’ll be actively participating in a workshop about coworking held by Pierre Belcari (I agreed to be co-host and talk about my experience setting up eclau here in Lausanne). It’ll take place in the afternoon.

Do join us if the topic interests you (“Where will you work tomorrow?”) and if you have coworking stories to share (or any alternate office arrangement stories) do get in touch with us so we can plan some space for you to tell your story.

Seminar on Social Media Adoption in the Enterprise [en]

[fr] Dernier jour pour s'inscrire au séminaire sur les stratégies d'adoption des nouveaux médias dans l'entreprise organisé par mon amie (et néanmoins experte de renommée internationale) Suw Charman-Anderson. C'est à Londres, ce vendredi.

My friend Suw Charman-Anderson is organising a seminar this Friday in London on the
adoption of social tools in the enterprise: Making Social Tools Ubiquitous. There are still some
places left. The sign-up deadline is tomorrow — act fast.

You’ll find a description of this seminar below. This is a chance to
learn about social tools in the enterprise directly from a world-class
expert who has practical experience introducing social tools in
various businesses. Want a peek? here are notes I took from her talk
last year
at the Future of Web Apps conference.

Overview
You may have heard that social tools – such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking and social networking – can help you improve business communications, increase collaboration and nurture innovation. And with open source tools, you can pilot projects easily and cheaply. But what do you do if people won’t use them? And how do you grow from a pilot to company-wide use?

Social media expert Suw Charman-Anderson will take a practical look at the adoption of social tools within your business. During the day you will create a scalable and practical social media adoption strategy and discuss your own specific issues with the group. By the end of the seminar you will have a clear set of next steps to take apply to your own collaborative tools project.

The setting
Fruitful Seminars take place in an intimate setting, with no more than 9 people attending, so you to get the very most out of the day. The are held at the luxurious One Alfred Place, and include tea & coffee, and lunch from the restaurant.

Who should come?

  • CXO executives
  • managers
  • team leaders
  • decision makers
  • social media practitioners
  • social media vendors

Or anyone in situations similar to these:

  • You have already installed some social tools for internal communications and collaboration, but aren’t getting the take-up you had hoped for.
  • You have successfully completed a pilot and want to roll-out to the rest of the company.
  • You want to start using social tools and need a strategy for fostering adoption.
  • You sell social software or services and want to understand how your clients can foster adoption of your tool.

For more information, check out these recent posts Suw wrote:

The second Fruitful Seminar, held by Lloyd Davis, will take place on July 16th: Mastering Social Media.

Not for you? tell your friends about it. Not this time, but want to keep an eye on what Suw, Leisa and Lloyd are doing with Fruitful Seminars? sign up for their newsletter. Otherwise… time to sign up!

LIFT'08: David Brown Workshop — Teenagers and Generation Y [en]

[fr] Notes prises lors de LIFT'08. Workshop sous forme de table ronde avec 4 ados de 16-17 ans, étudiants à l'école internationale de Founex.

*I took these notes at LIFT’08 in February, and am only publishing them now, I’m afraid!*

*Workshop notes with real live teenagers! No guarantee as to how exact
my notes are… etc.*

Panel with real teenagers LIFT08

Four teenagers from the International School of Founex

Trying to formalize things. A bunch of themes/apps to approach this session:

Social networks, IM, Music, Video/Films, E-mail, Blogs, Niche Web2.0,
Location based, Connectivity (what hardware?), Phone SMS, Own tools,
Wow and virtual worlds… Real world.

Friends/social circle, buying/e-commerce/for free,
advertising/marketing/messages, geographical distance, homework,
privacy security personal data, organising, fragmentation

Going round the room to see who is who and what their interest in
teenagers and the net is.

*steph-note: worried that the approach here might be a little too
“adult-oriented”*

Teens (seem like a highly educated, very literate bunch, critical;
international school!):

Chloe: Facebook to communicate with teachers, a lot for school. Not a
gamer, more of a social/pictures person. Maths homework via internet
(Mathletics). 2h a night.

Luisa (?): 16 — Facebook to communicate with each other, organise
meetings, not a gamer.

Elliot: not much of a computer-user, heavy mobile phone user
(text/calling), would play games (was denied electronics until he was
12). Facebook: good way of archiving who your friends are and what
they look like — good way to communicate by replying in your own
time.

Liam: typical: video games, music (not a hardcore gamer though),
Facebook to keep track of friends (social circle online and offline
overlap). Wikipedia saves your life for homework.

Elliot: FB = great way of controlling the photos of you other people
are posting on the internet.

Liam: used to use MySpace but now really identified with Emos… so.

Chloe: used to have a skyblog, had lots of french-speaking friends. In
the international world, more Facebook. Was one of the first in her
school to have FB, as one of her best friends moved to the US and they
had it there.

ELuisa: FB really helps you keep up-to-date with people you’ve met
over the summer. With e-mail, your friendship wears out.

Liam: regular e-mail is good for attachments.

Luisa: it’s weird to have your teacher as your friend. *steph-note:
they don’t want to know too much about their teachers lives*

Chloe: concerned about providing stalker material (cleaned up and
deleted many people she didn’t really know). Didn’t realise that
everybody in the Switzerland network could see all her info — changed
the setting, and is spreading the word around her, even to her
teachers.

My parents use the internet to work/communicate (use FB e.g.) so quite
open-minded. Used to ask for her e-mail password in case anything
happened, but Chloe doesn’t really think it’s necessary.

Luisa: keeping up on FB gives you something to talk about when you go
back — you’re up-to-date.

Never considered using Skyblog as public, and parents uncomfortable.
FB: more control and privacy, feels comfortable with it.

Elliot: couple of friends of mine rejected from universities based on
their FB page.

Chloe: Rumors?

Elliot: heard that some employers now demand access to your FB page
(but could be untrue). FB information is rather light-hearted, likes
and dislikes, etc — not really the business of the school or the
employer.

My question:

– how much of a threat do sexual predators online seem to you?
– do you feel that holding back personal information keeps you safer?

Chloe: not that concerned (from what I understand), doesn’t think that
holding back information keeps her safer — weirdos can get that info
anyway. *steph-note: good for her!* Weird IM people: blocks them.

Luisa: less concerned than she feels she should.

Elliot: more concerned about internet fraud. (E-bay.)

Question: buying online?

Answer: not much (trust, likes going into shops and talking to people)

Chloe: doesn’t like the idea of paying by credit card.

Luisa: amazon++ that’s ok.

Q: concert tickets

Elliot: yeah, tickets often available only online — got semi-scammed once.

(The panel seems divided on online shopping.)

Luisa: convenience vs. safety (giving your credit card number)

Elliot: quite wary of using the credit cards he has, because he knows
he’s being tracked quite closely.

Comment: the teenagers here have little “positive” experience of using
their credit cards to counter-balance the media scare about issues
like fraud or identity theft — which can explain their general
wariness.

Chloe: her dad and her do grocery shopping online on LeShop.ch, and
she’s comfortable with that. Useful.

Luisa, Liam: really weird to go shopping for clothes and food on the internet.

Elliot: gets information in the store and order it online.

Our panel doesn’t seem that familiar with the “go in town, take
photos, post them on facebook, get feedback, buy online” method.

Luisa: more “funny” pictures from changing rooms, but wouldn’t really
put them on FB.

girls: ask opinion about shopping for clothes to offline friends with
them, but wouldn’t do it via the internet. So much more fun to do it
offline. No fun to do it over the internet.

My question: plagiarism in homework

Answer: systems in place in school to detect it, don’t do it — know
people who have gotten away with it, but this is more something the
younger grades do. Doesn’t make much sense because you can’t fake oral
presentations.

Elliot: wikipedia not regarded as a good source.

Liam: because anybody can write what they want on it.

Got to be careful with what you find in wikipedia. Experimented with
putting BS into pages just to see they could.

Music creation and writing on the computer. Picture editing.

Consensus: online doesn’t beat the real world.

Luisa: a good photographer is not somebody who’s skilled in photoshop,
it’s somebody who takes a good picture.

Some consensus here that digital art is “less” than using classical
techniques. Don’t feel “creative” in front of a computer.

Comment: you guys actually look down to things that are easy.
*steph-note: spot on*

*steph-note: interesting how fascinated we adults are to have a chance
to actually talk with teenagers!*

*steph-note: conversation is interesting but going off-topic as far as
I’m concerned (about being critical in general, having role-models).*

Elliot: technology makes it easier to be critical and determine if
what is said in a lecture is a widespread view or not, etc.

Question: do you have any role-models? *steph-note: imho badly
phrased… need to be more concrete: who do you look upto? admire?*

Discussion about music downloading. Awareness that they have the means
to buy the music they like (wealthy enough).

Luisa: “the internet isn’t the only way of spreading…(the word?)”.
Doing things for real (building a schoolroom in tanzania) has more
impact on me than buying a cow through the internet.

Not much webcam use (just Chloe, friends in the states).

*steph-note: sorry, tuning out — could have done with a break but
didn’t push for it.*

Discussion about creative commons and copyright. No perception that
photographs you find in Google are not free of rights. Seems to be a
lot of confusion about copyright regarding images/photographs.
Contrast with discourse about music downloading.

Blogs: a fashion that has gone past. *steph-note: confirms what I
thought, and also why I’m not asked in for talks in schools as much as
before. I think FB and social networking in general are “replacing”
blogs for teenagers. In francophonia though, I guess FB hasn’t taken
off, so it will still be Skyrock. But it’s called Skyrock now, and not
Skyblog…*

Less use of MSN, but Skype and Facebook.

Elliot: in the UK, Blackberry

This bunch are the student council, go on humanitarian trips, etc. Not
the most tech-savvy necessarily, but talkative!

Gambling.

Data usage: this is Switzerland! Data is horrendously expensive, and
it’s not in the culture to use it.