Interested in your thoughts on the book “The art of Community” by Jono Bacon

Has anyone read and rates “The art of Community” by Jono Bacon ?

I stumbled upon this book via some of my colleagues – Jono tweets over at @jonobacon and he is the community manager of open-source operating system Ubuntu.  Jono maintains an interesting blog here.

Here’s Jono talking about how me builds community and about his book:

Even more relevant today – Gerd Leonhard’s advice on capturing new opportunities for yourself and your company

Great post from 2008 which business futurist Gerd Leonhard linked to on Twitter again today.  This post was actually created by Hootsuite which allowed me to cross-post to this blog.  The post required tidying up to make sense – which I’ve done here now – so I am thinking that Posterous is probably doing a better job than WordPress of sharing links to to your blog.

Anyway, here’s a direct link to the post from December 2008: 6 survival tips to prepare for a tough 2009: time-wasters will become life-savers

Should people “live tweet” during an event or presentation?

I recently attended a course called “Presenting with Confidence“, delivered by Steve Herzberg.  Steve is a teriffic bloke, and is someone I would describe as “keeping it real” – his style of delivery is guaranteed to have you laughing, and learning.  I mean this seriously: the good thing about Steve’s course is the relaxed and confident manner in which he presents his material - he’s throroughly prepared, and the printed material you receive is professionally produced and rich with content.  There’s a great interview with Steve here you can watch and see for yourself here just how well he communicates.

Steve and I often discuss the business value of  using “social networking” tools, and we have had some excellent debate about the value of these tools in a business context.  One such tool I believe in passionately is Twitter, and I was explaining to Steve the increase in “live tweeting” at an event or conference, and how this is transforming the behaviour of both speakers and attendees at these conferences, and adding enormous value to attendees and others interested in the event.  For more on the concept of “live tweeting” have a read of “Live Tweeting: bird-brained or brilliant“

Some interesting questions arose during my discussion with Steve about the value of live-tweeting, including:
- is it distracting for the presenter (who doesn’t get to meet the eyes of their audience who are all typing away)?
- is it distracting for the audience, because their attention is diverted from the content being delivered to the rest of the “Twitter stream”?
- does it demonstrates a lack of respect for the speaker, who deserves your full attention?

Personally I have derived enormous value from the collective contribution of others “live tweeting”", particularly after the event when I can catch up on what other’s were saying.  However I have also been distracted by it, and missed some of the content being delivered by the speaker.  I can also appreciate that a speaker unaccustomed to their audience “live tweeting” could interpret this behavious as a lack of respect.

What is needed is education and understanding of current and emerging practices.  Live tweeting is here to stay, many events now encourage it, and attendees are asking for it.  The choice is yours to embrace it or not – I would encourage you to explain to others the benefits as you see them, and let them decide for themselves.  There are no rules – but I believe we should be mindful of speakers and respect them, and show them the value that is being added (to their brand and their content)

What are your thoughts?   Do you agree “live tweeting” an event adds value or not?

Today is the launch of the book “The Perfect Gift for a Man – Stories about re-inventing Manhood”

Today is a very special day for me, as it marks the launch of a new collaborative book I have contributed to in support of an important cause – improving the mental health of young men.   Special mention should go to the hard work of local Sydney bloggers Gavin Heaton and Mark Pollard, and to the 30 people from a diverse range of backgrounds and experience who have written stories for the book.

The book is called The Perfect Gift for a Man – 30 stories about reinventing manhood.  Here’s the front cover:

You can preview and order the book here.

Some of the contributors have recorded a personal video message about the book.

This is a very important cause – please tell your communities about this book, and consider buying a copy for a man in your life who may benefit from it.

For more background on this project, the Mornings with Kerrie-Ann show interviewed Gavin Heaton and Steve Crombie here:

The Perfect Gift for a Man book – interview on Mornings With Kerri-Anne from Tony Hollingsworth on Vimeo.

New Blog Post: Coffee Mornings – Single Origin Roasters, Surry Hills

Finally got back to Social Media Coffee this morning – the atmosphere and crowd was as energising as I remember it back in December last year. I was greeted by one of the chaps offering tastings of their new Timana Colombian Coffee – delicious – prepared via plunger, it was very smooth, not at all bitter to taste. I’ll be back.

I was pleased to be able to catch up with the charming and adorable Beth Etling from startup The Insight Exchange. Unlike any tradtional events company to date, Beth has joined forces with futurist, entrepreneur, keynote speaker, strategy advisor, and bestselling author Ross Dawson and I look forward to attending their first luncheon event next week – The Power of Influence. Contact me (leave a comment) if you’d like discounted tickets to this event.

Another highlight was introducing the team from the award-winning artisan baker Brasserie Bread to coffee mornings. I recently met Brasserie Bread’s CEO and Director David James and online comunity manager Mei Tan – these guys are really interested in educating and engaging with their valued customers and embracing social media as a way to do so. Just this week they have started a new blog, and joined Twitter. They have had a Facebook page for some time now – it’s really encouraging to see traditional “bricks and mortar” businesses like Brasserie Bread be open to embracing these new forms of communication.

I really can’t fault the service at Single Origin Roasters too – there must have been 60 people there this morning and they were hand-delivering our coffee and breakfast orders in impressive time. Well done guys.

I look forward to making more regular appearances and getting to know people at this event – every Friday from 8am.

New Blog Post: Social Media Coffee at Single Origin Roasters, Surry Hills #fb

G’day folks, I feel compelled to blog about this morning’s incredible experience: Social Media Coffee, held at Single Origin Roasters cafe at 64 Reservoir St, Surry Hills.

This event, which had the atmosphere of the “unconferences” like BarCamp and WordCamp – is a good excuse for a get together for some very bright minds operating in all things online communities, digital and social media.  I thank my Twitter pal Neerav Bhatt for introducing me to this event. A quick Twitter Search later, and I was locked in.

Two hours later, and after pretty much constant chatting meant I managed to meet some inspirational people, such as:

- Beth Etling, ad:Tech’s Marketing and Content Director;

- Sarah Peacock, dmg World Media’s Marketing manager

- Matt Moore,  Knowledge Management specialist at Innotecture;

- Neerav Bhatt , professional blogger.

- Neil Phillips, Principal Consultant at Uniqueworld;

- Scott Drummond – Communuity Manager at Sports Hydrant.

Another key takeaway was Matt Moore kindly referring to me several interesting resources:

- the interesting IBM blogger Jasmin Tragus – who writes the wonderwebby blog.

- James Robertson from Step Two designs – a vendor-neutral intranet and content management consultancy.

- David Allen – Getting Things Done.

What I love about unstructured events such as this one is the directions conversations can take and topics covered.  The above group was just a small snapshot of the people there today – in fact there were more than 100 people there, plus a fantastic band playing.  The cafe itself and in particular Gav and Nick (the cafe’s friendly proprietors), was a sublime experience, and will be posted about in The Food Zeitgeist soon.

Update: 15th January 2009, via Ben Cooper on Twitter I stumbled upon this great video, by Scott Drummond, which captures well the experience that is Single Origin Roasters:

 

Single Origin Gypsy Friday from Scott Drummond on Vimeo.

Online Communities – presentation to primary school community

I recently presented to my local school on online communities and the implications for our children.  This was prompted by my desire to share some of my own experiences with social networks with other parents who may be curious yet somewhat inexperienced in this area.  Particularly with our children having greater access and in many cases greater abilities than our own in navigating through and communicating with others on these networks.

I’ve embedded the presentation below: 

Attending BarCampSydney4 today

Today I’m very excited to be attending my first BarCamp I’m not quite sure what to expect, but I see there’s 160 people registered for the event in Sydney so I’m looking forward to it.

I’ve put together a few points I’ll be discussing at the event, embedded as Google Docs Presentation here:

Update: 27th November 2008.

Reflections on BarCamp Sydney 4

Its been a couple of weeks now since I attended BarCamp in Sydney.  Well it was a fantastic day, for so many reasons.  Firstly, as Steve Herzberg highlighted at his fantastic presentation over at Craig Bailey’s SBTUG last night, you get out of your comfort zone at a conference like BarCamp (or “unconference” as I have learnt it is actually called – because everyone contributes not just a selected group of speakers – fantastic idea!)

Anyway, Steve Herzberg put up a slide last night which articulates how I feel about BarCamp:

“The only way a human being can grow is to work outside their comfort zone” – said by Percy Cerrutty

Well, with BarCamp you certainly are out of your comfort zone:

- you wont know many people

- you are expected to present your own talk or at least contribute vocally

- there’s a high proportion of people of above average intelligence in attendence, people such as software developers, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists

However, if you get out of your comfort zone, get along to something like this, and participate, the rewards will flow:

- increase your knowledge

- meet new and interesting people

- increase your own personal brand

- generate news ideas which may turn into new businesses and opportunities for you

I look forward to the next BarCamp and I encourage anyone with an interest in technology and the Internet, to get along.   See http://barcamp.org/ for more information.

You should be on Twitter – creating serendipities and building community

Twitter is an incredible tool for so many reasons. If you don’t know what Twitter is, watch this brief video to get a good overview (the video only skims the surface of it though)

A couple of reasons I enjoy using Twitter is it creates serendipities and builds community. Only today, we were celebrating our school’s 90-year anniversary. I noticed Malcolm Turnbull was in attendence so decided to send him a notice on Twitter (I am wondering if he is actually using it or employs a ghost writer. See for yourself by visiting his Twitter profile here.)

Here’s where the serendipitous moment occurred. Later in the day I checked my email and noticed that one of my Facebook friends (a past-teacher from the school who has relocated overseas) had “commented on my status” I realised immediately, that although this person wasn’t even on Twitter, that they had seen my status update which had automatically been sent to Facebook via the Twitter/Facebook application. This person was pleased to be reminded of the event I was attending and had said so in their comment. I was really chuffed by that moment, as it showed how something so simple as a Twitter update (sent from my phone with an investment of time of no more than a few moments) had put me back in touch with them, and caused them some happiness and fond memories.

Creating serendipities and building community – two good reasons you should be on Twitter.

All the world’s a Twitter – join the conversation!

Hey there folks, it’s been quite a while between posts, with Megan back at University studying full time, a busy work/family life, and Twitter, writing on my blogs has been affected. Not that I haven’t been spending time online – there’s plenty of good reason to do so, and Twitter is one of them.

Twitter? This site is increasingly becoming a daily port of call in my online travels. I joined this interesting social networking site a few months ago (hat tip to my mate Aaron Saikovski who first mentioned it to me over coffee late last year – Aaron will be presenting at the next SBTUG, and just announced he will be joining Microsoft from 4th July – congratulations Aaron.

I find Twitter fascinating because it connects me in to a “conversation” – you get to control who you listen to, talk to, and it happens in near real-time. If you “listen” to people you are interested in, it can yield great benefits – access to current breaking news, interesting links, and new connections with people across diverse geographies.

It reminds me of LinkedIn Answers but “turbo-charged” in that you’re likely to get responses to a question in minutes rather than hours.

I recommend you visit http://www.twitter.com/ and create an account. Even before doing that, check out this post which provides an easy-to-read guide to Twitter.

For an even quicker overview of Twitter, check out the CommonCraft video below here.

Recently people have been talking about http://www.plurk.com/ – Plurk seems to be similar to Twitter, only more graphical in that it shows posts on a timeline, with categories for each post designed to show a posts intention or mood in greater clarity. One to watch for now – if anyone has tried it please let me know.