www.nickhodge.com

Great show, and I hear the chat was hum­ming to. Major ups to @duncanriley for spend­ing nearly 2 hours with me online in a wide-ranging dis­cus­sion. I hope y’all learnt something!

Show Notes

Good even­ing! Wel­come to #under­stil, “Conked Out & Stoked”

 

 

1. [at 8:30pm] The Over­ture
   1. Tonight we have spe­cial guest: @duncanriley
      1. Duncan Riley, Man­aging Editor, Inquisitr.com
      2. Also weekly column in crikey.com.au
      3. Notice you are nearly a year old
      4. How many story leads from twitter?
   2. Meta-backchannel Pro­du­cer is Dekrazee1: thanks! dir­ect Qs to her in the chat, and we’ll get ‘em sent to us via the meta Backchannel
   3. As there is no Stilgher­rian Live, we’ll see where this ends up tonight. Aim to fin­ish at 9.30pm. But with Duncan, who knows? 
   4. I know we are com­pet­ing with Jon Hamm and Mad Men
   5. Red Cor­dial Cath­arsis was good for me: got lots of energy into work­ing out what is going on at work, and in this weird space
   6. shout out to @Delic8genius for being a sound­ing board, with some think­ing and support
   7. @fibendall on @cameronreilly

   8. This show, I intend to stick to the knit­ting: The Employee Exper­i­ence of Shar­ing, and other ran­dom­ness with @duncan­ri­ley
      And cover some other streams from pre­vi­ous shows and creek beds I’ve waded through 

   9. Next week: Anzac Day week: “The Lost Uncles” … 4 per­sonal stor­ies, not geo­pol­it­ics
      1. more than just Gal­lipoli and the Anzac Birth of a Nation Legend
      2. Not Kokoda. One is a defeat, the other a win. 
      3. step through the exper­i­ence of 4 per­sonal stor­ies

   10. @duncanriley: any fam­ily involved in any AU wars?
   [at 8:35pm] Conked Out & Stoked
2. Who did their home­work?
   1. 1. Apple and SM … strict policy vs MSFT … open
      2. (cf Cluetrain)
      3. Are Apple’s products good enough to speak for themselves?
      4. What hap­pens when they have an #amazon­fail (they’ve had a few, @stevejobs replied to: eg, iPhone price drop of US$200)
      5. @duncanriley .. your thoughts? did you do your home­work?

3. The Six Ten­ets  for Employ­ees in Social Media

 

1. 1. The com­munity expect Trans­par­ency and Hon­est Voice
   2. You are always on. No mat­ter the day/time, people will expect you to be a rep­res­ent­at­ive when called upon
   3. You are still a per­son: That said, organ­isa­tion much leave lee-way for people to be people. Dur­ing and after work hours. Being a face means your face is first, not the brand
   4. You are just a single voice. Each SM voice is just a voice; not the formal pos­i­tion; just a voice in the caCO­phony from the organisation
   5. Listen­ing: Maslow: every SM inter­ac­tion is tain­ted by your per­sonal self-interest; pay etc. This is nat­ural. There will be conflicts
   6. It is about your Repu­ta­tion. Asso­ci­ation with a lar­ger organ­isa­tion is about Repu­ta­tion / Con­gru­ence / same wavelength?
      1. @dek: selling your soul to a large organ­isa­tion; what does this really mean? (dek sez: Not quite selling your soul, but when someone with a repu­ta­tion, who was inde­pend­ent pre­vi­ously, joins up with an organ­isa­tion to use their fame/notoriety to spread the word, I don’t know how to react to them any more. I don’t know where they end and where the corp starts. There is an ele­ment of trust erosion — scep­ti­cism comes into play. Eg — Scoble with his new gigs last year and this year.)
2. Social media: no dif­fer­ent to real world?
   1. vs: four sci­ent­ists sub­mit­ted papers to the Sen­ate Com­mit­tee on the Car­bon Pol­lu­tion Reduc­tion Scheme (CPRS, which includes the ETS) 
      1. http://www.aph.gov.au/senate/committee/economics_ctte/cprs_09/submissions/sublist.htm
      2. (they are CSIRO employ­ees, vs. policy)
      3. The rebel sci­ent­ists can­not com­ment on their decision because they are pub­lic ser­vants. But a CSIRO source said they could risk cen­sure and pos­sible career reper­cus­sions by tak­ing such a pub­lic stand against the Government’s con­tro­ver­sial green­house reduc­tion targets.
      4. http://www.canberratimes.com.au/news/national/national/general/csiro-climate-experts-defiant/1486721.aspx
   2. @duncanriley: notice you did a sim­ilar thing when we tested the audio…
      1. what was it that you made that con­nec­tion? is it just in there?
3. Social Media. Blerk. Blerk. Blerk.
   1. From ‘social media’ (tech­no­logy) to ‘shar­ing cul­ture’ (activ­ity)
   2. shar­ing. con­vers­ing. know­ledge shar­ing. hyper­in­tel­li­gence. hyper­con­nectiv­ity
      1. I notice Mark Pesce has shif­ted from Hyper­con­nectiv­ity to Hypershar­ing? 
      2. ref­er­ence @mpesce share this lecture: http://blog.futurestreetconsulting.com/?p=125
   3. shar­ing cul­ture is world where people use inter­net tech­no­logy to share (read/write. write=share)
   4. We are inform­a­tion rich; time poor. By timely shar­ing, we save time.
   1. 1. suc­cess of Google, and why twit­ter works as ‘lazy web’
      2. shar­ing is a part of our nature: we tell stories
      3. shar­ing of stor­ies: Abor­ginal dream­time (cul­ture), Arthur­ian Legends (culture)
      4. usu­ally, held back inform­a­tion (inform­a­tion is power)
         1. now, inform­a­tion is largely free. 5 minute expert on >2million top­ics, thanks to the wiki­pe­dia hive-mind
      5. Time is the new power
   2. maybe, by just shar­ing, the rela­tion­ship between people will change. will change the organ­isa­tions and sys­tems that exist today
   1. http://www.hydrapinion.com/index.php/work/2009/04/13/will-someone-please-burst-the-twitter-bu (Ian Grayson)
      1. Not burst­ing the bubble, but stop­ping the shyters
      2. easy: just don’t fol­low them. Leave in the people you want to listen to
      3. Get­ting out of our play­ground. Pass­ive aggress­ive? Just the nat­ural extension
   2. bene­fits arise from those who share. Listen to them.
4. The Chal­lenge for Agen­cies and Tech­no­logy Com­pan­ies
   1. This is not a tech­no­logy sell. You can­not buy “a social media” no more than you can buy a “web 2.0″
   2. This is a cul­tural change pro­cess; it must be an embed­ded part of the cor­por­ate culture
   3. This is not a part of Cor­por­ate Affairs/PR (directly)
   4. As per @fibendall, this is best handled by com­mit­ted cust ser­vice people; or out­side enthu­si­asts — with coach­ing (PR)
   1. With clear guidelines
   2. @duncanriley: what is the pulse from the US?
       
5. Tonight’s case study: #amazon­fail … where are the social media respond­ents from Amazon?
   1. http://markprobst.livejournal.com/15293.html (ori­ginal source) anonym­ous “Ash­ley D” from #amazonfail
   2. http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6651080.html
6. 1. #amazon­fail twit­ter storm, blog­ger storm: not going to com­mon on the root issue.
   2. http://www.inquisitr.com/21785/amazonfail-how-one-company-will-lose-millions/ (6% loss over 2 days; NASQ largely stable) — future quar­ters will show if any rev­enue impact.
      1. @duncanriley: I’d be selling AMZN stock when the NASDAQ opens Monday morn­ing US EDT if you hold any, if not for the hit on sales they’re about to take, but because they were stu­pid enough to do this in the first place, whether you agree with the polit­ics or not.
   3. http://neteffect.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2009/04/12/amazonfail_and_the_politics_of_anti_corporate_cyber_activism
   4. the shit­storm in the social media space, without com­ment on the con­tent. The response.
      
   5.  http://blog.seattlepi.com/amazon/archives/166384.asp?source=cmailer
      1. 1. Pulled in senior people (Sev-1) error 
         2. “I’ve spoken to an Amazon.com employee who works closely with the sys­tems involved in the glitch. The employee asked me not to share his name because of com­pany policies on talk­ing with the media.”
         3. watched it unfold with­in the organ­isa­tion, and extern­ally on twit­ter
   6. ‘glitch’
      
      1. MSM response from msm-PR. OK, but not the only response
      2. ~50-60K books clas­si­fied as Adult
   7. the issue is the impact on the repu­ta­tion of Amazon. Less trust. More dif­fi­cult to meas­ure, but not impossible
   8. oh, it doesnt mat­ter: social media is small (wrong)
   9. oh, it doesnt mat­ter: it will not effect us fin­an­cially: the jury is out, but poten­tially less than the pun­dits might say

3. CONKED OUT

    1. His­tory

        http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/0220b174-eb98-11dc-9493-0000779fd2ac.html?nclick_check=1

1. Indi­vidu­als vs. Com­mon Good (Gold­man Sachs $5b share offer » off TARP » get indi­vidual salar­ies)
   1. http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=a276IqV3sdnc&refer=home
   2. “return the $10 bil­lion it received in Octo­ber from the U.S. Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Pro­gram and shake off com­pens­a­tion and hir­ing restric­tions imposed on banks that took gov­ern­ment aid.”
   3. Chief Exec­ut­ive Officer Lloyd Blank­fein
2. @duncanriley: small-l lib­eral, neo-libertarian, neo-liberalist: what is your per­spect­ive on #gfc
3. Rat­ings Agen­cies
   1. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/SEC-chief-need-tighter-apf-14938817.html
4. Gen­eral Mar­ket
   1. “The Fed’s snap­shot of busi­ness con­di­tions around the nation sug­ges­ted that a slide in areas like man­u­fac­tur­ing could be slow­ing.“
      1. http://finance.yahoo.com/news/Hints-of-stabilizing-economy-apf-14939304.html
5. Credit Mar­kets
   1. Credit? what is it and why does it need 
   2. @duncanriley: can busi­nesses star­tup and sur­vive without credit?
   3. frac­tional reserve bank­ing: keep­ing cer­tain amount of hold­ings vs. loan­ing out
   4. Mark Aniel­ski as well as some polit­ical thinkers such as Row­botham and some eco­nom­ists (such as Hyman Min­sky) argue that this sys­tem of money sup­ply has char­ac­ter­ist­ics sim­ilar to a pyr­amid scheme, where the newly indebted are com­pelled to induce oth­ers into debt to pay off their own debts.^[41] It is there­fore argued by a num­ber of mon­et­ary reformers that frac­tional reserve bank­ing and the asso­ci­ated expo­nen­tial growth of money in the eco­nomy “forces” the eco­nomy towards indebted con­sumer­ism.^[19]
   5. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Minsky_moment (august 2007) … debt vs. fin­an­cial spec­u­la­tion (housing)
   6. The cur­rent prob­lem, accord­ing to Pres­id­ent Obama is the lack of credit in the system
   7. In con­trast, a liquid­ity crisis is triggered when an oth­er­wise sound busi­ness finds itself tem­por­ar­ily incap­able of access­ing the bridge fin­ance it needs to expand its busi­ness or smooth its cash flow pay­ments. In this case, access­ing addi­tional credit lines and “trad­ing through” the crisis can allow the busi­ness to nav­ig­ate its way through the prob­lem and ensure its con­tin­ued solvency and viab­il­ity. It is often dif­fi­cult to know, in the midst of a crisis, whether dis­tressed busi­nesses are exper­i­en­cing a crisis of solvency or a tem­por­ary liquid­ity crisis.

1. Post-traumatic Stress
   1. The stress the west­ern world exper­i­ences as it has not got a cul­ture of stress

   2. Usu­ally life is bru­tish and short. There are no hos­pit­als, no gov­ern­ment look­ing after you. Life on the whole is pretty darn grim for major­ity of the population.

   3. Here we are dis­cuss­ing “ETS” “NBN” and other things on our minds

   4. Philo­sopher John Gray: ‘We’re not facing our prob­lems. We’ve got Prozac politics’

       

   5. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/philosopher-john-gray-were-not-facing-our-problems-weve-got-prozac-politics-1666033.html

      1. “But the actual response, I think, and this is partly to do with the way demo­cracy works and the way the mass-media works, is to avoid con­front­ing these admit­tedly intract­able prob­lems, because there is actu­ally under­ly­ing des­pair. It’s Prozac polit­ics. If you say actu­ally, pos­sibly, we’re past the tip­ping point for pre­vent­ing a two-degree change. That’s des­pair: ‘I can’t get out of bed. I’ll get drunk. I just can’t take it.’ So it’s a very fra­gile men­tal resi­li­ence we’ve got here.”

@duncanriley: are we head­ing for a new system?
Yes, the #gfc is still here.
Yes, next stage is the devalu­ation of hous­ing prices in AU, espe­cially if first home buy­ers scheme is cut back; super changes (less prop­erty trust invest­ments) and unem­ploy­ment rises too far.
The impact will be in the high end first.
@duncanriley: your predictions?
1. Next week: Anzac Day week: “The Lost Uncles” … 4 per­sonal stor­ies, not geo­pol­it­ics
   1. more than just Gal­lipoli and the Anzac Birth of a Nation Legend
Don’t for­get to thank @deks and @duncan

 

After what I would say has been an inter­est­ing week, I spent my hol­i­day on Thursday writ­ing the below notes. These notes were the base script for the #under­stil epis­ode broad­cast on Thursday night. Sadly, due to a com­bin­a­tion of Ustream.tv weird­ness and user error, the last half was not recor­ded. There­fore, please review the notes.

I use Google Docs to store the script so I can share with Dekrazee1 (the show’s Meta-Backchannel pro­du­cer) and poten­tial guests.

The bold­ing of text assists me in read­ing whilst on screen, and where the key points are. Usu­ally, I attempt to flow the words through a river of conversation.

Thanks to Stilgher­rian, Cameron Reilly, Bron­wen Clune, Mark New­ton, Leslie Nas­sar and Avril Hodge for the craft­ing of this show. Yes, I did mis-pronounce Anarcho-syd… whatever, and some other words too. I blame my coun­try school english.

A shout out to Jeff Sandquist, Frank Arrigo, Mike Sey­fang.

And a thanks to Mark Pesce for speak­ing inspiration.

Sorry there were no kit­tehs!

Responses  to the IRC Chat

• People com­men­ted I was “selling” or “shilling” Microsoft. Yes, and that is the point made later. There is no avoid­ing it for employ­ees involved in social media due to Maslowian pyr­amidical juxtapositioning.
• Apple vs Microsoft. If you read Cluetrain, it pre­dicts the doom of com­pan­ies that “don’t get it” (albeit it in the lat­ter points, which many people don’t read) I had framed this whole show on People Ori­ented Social Media; and in that con­text, why is Apple suc­cess­ful vs. Microsoft. It answer is no means simple. And really a them vs. us con­ver­sa­tion is not cor­rect. It is about products and per­cep­tions of Microsoft. The prob­lem is Microsoft’s to solve; and I am a small part of this long term change.

The (first part) of the Episode

1. [at 8:40pm] Red Cor­dial Cath­arsis
   1. This show is going to more per­sonal than the last show. This is all about me. And Social Media
      1. which launches me like a North Korean ICBM/Satellite into the same stra­to­sphere of @stilgherrian and @cameronreilly
   2. The ques­tion for Social Media: is this about my employer? when on social media, how much of your employer’s kool aid are you shilling?
   3. Red Cor­dial & Lem­on­ade.
      1. His­tory.
      2. Link to red cor­dial and “hyper­activ­ity” more by asso­ci­ation rather than spe­cific cause/effect
      3. Red Cor­dial hyper­con­nectiv­ity
   4. Cath­arsis; from the greek to cleanse/purify/clarify
   5. tonights show is “Red Cor­dial Catharsis”
   6. This tweet, 7^th April: Nick­Hodge: @gedulous when I was at Apple, we had to drink Kool Aid. At Microsoft, we drink Red Cor­dial. They have dif­fer­ent effects.
      1. ‘drink­ing the kool aide’ comes from the 1978 Jon­estown mas­sacre in Guyana where 918 people died drink­ing cyan­ide; valium; phen­er­gan mixed in with fla­vor aid. Jim Jones, cult leader; Jon­estown bene­vol­ent com­mun­ist com­munity. Apostolic Social­ism (@cameronreilly?). Blindly fol­low­ing an author­ity to the bit­ter end.
      2. This is *not* a pos­it­ive brand con­nec­tion for a Microsoft employee to make, even based on per­sonal experience.
      3. incor­rectly found and quoted; this and many other tweets, blog com­ments, flickr images, vod­casts and pod­casts cross the line. What line?
   7. “To a Social Media Prac­tioner” http://www.nickhodge.com/blog/archives/2960
      1. 1. That post may have been wrong. It is time to speak up
         2. what promp­ted this post?
         3. what did I mean: the professionalisation/businessification/amwayification of social media in mar­ket­ing and PR
         4. I didnt and dont want to become one of the Social Media for­mu­laic shysters
         5. I use it to con­nect to people. Friends, asso­ci­ates, fam­ily, work
   8. (quote from social media bible #1: Cluetrain Mani­festo. Mar­kets are Con­ver­sa­tions)
      1. The first of the 95 Theses: People http://www.cluetrain.com/
         1. Defin­ing con­ver­sa­tional mech­an­ism, imme­di­acy (vod, pod & twitter)
         2. Blog­ging: pub­lish­ing; vod+pod casting
         3. All have feed­back mech­an­isms, dif­fer­ent latencies
   9. I am very much a per­sonal brand-ist social media type
      1. People Ori­ented Social Media
      2. Not a tech­no­lo­gist, nor a #fister, nor viral sock puppet
      3. people, first and fore­most. see, feel and touch people. Respond­ing human face.
      4. I am a cluetrainer, with a healthy level of prag­mat­ism
      5. Com­pan­ies are centuries-old legal con­structs; to change this we must change deeps parts of our exist­ing sys­tem: bey­ond the scope of tonight’s show. Prag­mat­ism
      6. nickhodge.com first registered in Nov 2000, on the net since late 1996
         1. Per­sonal Brand­ing is the first and only para­chute for worker-droids. Was once called your “name” or “reputation”
      7. not @mpesce MSM (TV/radio) hog, spoke to 10,000’s people per year
   10. Cla­rify my pos­i­tion state­ment: Microsoft is a sur­pris­ingly great employer
       1. Many years ago, I never envis­aged work­ing for Microsoft.
       2. I made a con­sidered choice to work for Microsoft. I can see how I am a small cog of a big change.
       3. Per­spect­ive: being paid 50% of what I once earned as a sales-pointy-haired-manager-droid. I sold my soul more to be a sales droid than at Microsoft.
       4. inter­view loop: Frank Arrigo and Jeff San­quist (2005 Chan­nel 9, Robert Scoble’s boss, dealt with the fal­lout) “sold me on the new msft“
          1. http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/15.04/wired40_microsoft.html?pg=1&topic=wired40_microsoft
       5. Really, really like to thank Mike Sey­fang @fang really put me on the Cluetrain road
          1. Home­work: Apple. Cluetrain or not? Are their products their only voice? My con­ten­tion is that they fail this test: yet are highly successful.
          2. vs. Microsoft, “high cluetrain IQ mark” since 2004, high share-of-voice; the mar­ket con­ten­tion not as suc­cess­ful. WTF?
       6. Built audi­ence of >750K touches per year.
       7. Did some pretty non-MSFT ran­dom things (eg: inter­view danah boyd)
       8. Twit­ter: now at nearly 2500 fol­low­ers.
       9. Com­par­ing to other organ­isa­tions, sur­pris­ing free/liberal
   11. Com­pli­ance with the Blog Smart Policy (and other com­pan­ies have sim­ilar)
       1. #1 – Be Smart
   12. For those of us in Person-orient Social Media Front, where is that line between an indi­vidual and their com­pany? Does there need to be the ques­tion. Is there any answer?
       1. “out of hours in per­sonal time” you would expect your employer not to sit on my shoulder when I vote, act on my per­sonal mor­als, how I live my left, the choices I make, where I live, products I buy, food I eat.
       2. Works is where I choose work. They choose to employ me for my skills and exper­i­ence. This is the basis of the employ­ment con­tract: my time, their money; and their rules on their time.
       3. Not everything MSFT does, nor has done do I neces­sar­ily under­stand nor agree with.
          1. Zune. sw/service good (in US) ; but as a strategy WTF?
          2. Xbox when los­ing money. WTF?
          3. Why did we func­tion­ally sta­bil­ize popfly.com?
          4. I con­tend that no employee would 100% agree with everything. It is impossible
          5. I like google search, email and reader. I like my Mac.
          6. Trans­par­ency and hon­est expect­a­tion expects me to call it as it is.
       4. How­ever, this is merely my per­spect­ive. I don’t know and see all. No one can. Not even a CEO.
       5. In the hir­ing pro­cess, you get “cul­tur­ally” assessed and screened by HR and hir­ing man­ager
          1. Usu­ally, will this per­son fit into team
          2. A pub­lic face, is also “can this per­son rep­res­ent my organ­isa­tion?”
          3. Aim is to obtain an employee who fits into the org.
       6. My con­tract says “9:00am to 5:30pm” … and com­pli­ance with the codes of con­duct, con­fid­en­ti­al­ity, eth­ics, busi­ness con­duct — and laws of AU and US.
          1. and con­tract says “other duties as assigned”
          2. pure 9–5 in social media doesn’t work
          3. even less so than plaus­ibly deni­able pro­ver­bial week­end bbq
          4. hav­ing two per­so­nas: work name and per­sonal name: doesn’t work. It smells of fakery
       7. “Pub­lic face” of MSFT in the social com­munity means any­thing I say, is there forever and can be quoted. mali­ciously
          1. Paid for: media inter­views, demos, present­a­tions, deal­ing with customers
       8. Bene­fit of “work­ing for yourself”
       9. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchosyndicalism
       10. Self-managed indi­vidual labour
       11. But, you are many times work­ing for a lar­ger entity. Their money, their rules.
   13. For me, today was a formal leave day. I sub­mit­ted the appro­pri­ate elec­tronic forms, memo + cov­er­sheet; had it signed off and everything is kosher.
       1. how would you know that?
       2. Am I now speak­ing on behalf of my employer or myself?
       3. why would you need to know that?
       4. did that stop me doing work, any­way? (ASP.NET MVC assist­ance twit­ter, 22 work emails)
          1. says more about me than any­thing
          2. i like to help people and I care about how people’s use msft’s products
          3. to a greater extent, I really worry about what people think of me
   14. As Social media “face” are you “on” 100%
       1. Before, this were CEOs and execs with long PR train­ing and a cadre of PR people
       2. Through MSM, care­fully craf­ted. Risk/reward for this representation.
       3. Com­pany SM types minor Inter­net Celebs
       4. The Social media paparazzi is here: Val­ley­wag, and others
       5. Quotes like above will come back to haunt you, like naked pic­tures on Facebook
       6. Even things after­hours that are legal.
       7. swear­ing? pro­fess­ing your dis­like of foot­ball? does this cross the line? do people have impres­sions of Microsoft? do they build up?
   15. Let’s revisit point 94 of the 95 theses:
       1. “To tra­di­tional cor­por­a­tions, net­worked con­ver­sa­tions may appear con­fused, may sound con­fus­ing.”
       2. My con­ten­tion is that “to the social com­munity, in a ‘the mar­ket is a con­ver­sa­tion’, the con­ver­sa­tions from a cor­por­ate may appear and sound con­fus­ing“
          1. comes from 100% on, expect­a­tion of trans­par­ency, hav­ing a human voice and being real.
       3. A cor­por­a­tion is not, nor ever, of one mind
          1. In the Borg’d-hive mind, there are many, con­flict­ing voices.
       4. The risk is that now the voices are amp­li­fied and radi­ated by @mpesce’s Hyper­con­nectiv­ity

1. [at 9:04] The People Ori­ented Social Media Con­tract
   1. Jux­ta­pos­i­tion: Maslow’s Hier­archy of Needs
      1. Abra­ham Maslow’s Hier­archy of Needs, Dunning-Kruger Effect (dumb people think they are smart) Godwin’s Law of Usenet, Dun­bar Number
      2. Simple Model to under­stand people’s phys­ical and emotional/mental needs
      3. The lower levels influ­ence the higher levels.
   2. Every­one who earns money is tain­ted by the source of the moo­lah.
      1. money feeds our fam­il­ies, gives us shelter
      2. as I have found, it doesnt define who we are.
   3. The sys­tem is fun­da­ment­ally dis­con­nec­ted
      1. The Social Com­munity expects real people, real voices, trans­par­ency, human voice, call­ing it as it is
      2. Orgs want people to be engaged in SM (some­times as it is cheaper, some­times as it is hip, some­times as it is sold to them, not neces­sar­ily because of cluetrain)
         1. fol­low­ing guidelines sim­ilar to msft’s
      3. All con­ver­sa­tions from an employee will be tain­ted by Maslow
         1. you can­not always say what you really think (unless you have balls as big as @leslie_nassar)
      4. Com­pan­ies have codes of con­duct
         1. To aid employees
         2. To pro­tect themselves
         3. com­pli­ance with the vari­ous laws, pro­tect other employees
      5. Indi­vidu­als are not per­mit­ted to be people, and are there­fore break­ing the cluetrain com­munity agree­ment
         1. koolaid effect
         2. 100% on
         3. employee needs to retain some form of employ­ment, per­sonal brand
         4. ‘the organ­isa­tion’ fight­ing the non-conformists
   4. Res­ult: we have an unre­solved con­flict. We are not of com­mon mind. There is no con­tract.
      1. The Cluetrain is largely cor­rect. Maybe more and more right as time goes on. who knows? It is a journey
   5. Employ­ees in Social Com­munit­ies: My argu­ment now is that there is no line. It has gone. If it did exist, it is dis­ap­pear­ing as fast as MSM
      1. There is an under­ly­ing web of con­nec­tion between the voices of an organisation
      2. The organ­isa­tion you work for shouldn’t but does own you. Social Com­munit­ies do not see a dif­fer­ence, either. I am not say­ing this is right — its sad real­ity.
      3. In the caco­phony of voices, there will be a theme of com­mon­al­ity (Maslow), not sin­gu­lar chior. Social Audi­ences will need to find the sig­nal in the noise. No one voice is the sig­nal. Don’t hold me out as your evid­ence that msft doesnt get this, likes that, says that google reader is the shiz. That is my opinion.
      4. True Social Con­ver­sa­tions involve you, the listener, to cla­rify. Check. Dis­be­lieve. Research. Use the hyper­con­nectiv­ity gif­ted by Ceil­ing Cat.
   6. Two case examples:
      1. @Leslie_Nassar exper­i­ence in a microsoft con­text? (ignore mini-microsoft )
         1. Biggest balls, cour­ageous. He will be OK. He’s a grown up.
         2. If I became a “FakeSteve­Ballmer” or “FakeSteve­Jobs” or “Fake­BillGates”, and dis’d com­pet­it­ors, fel­low employ­ees and management?
         3. whilst I might become a social media hero and front-page news, and may partly soften per­cep­tion people have of microsoft: it actu­ally doesnt com­ply with msft’s formal policy and codes of con­duct
            1. Expect to be coun­selled and prob­ably shaf­ted for did­ling expenses later on.
         4. a strange con­flu­ence: social media crowd LOL (me included) — but implic­a­tions are dire. We are deal­ing with big­ger issues
      2. @NewtonMark (Mark New­ton, Net­work Engin­eer, Inter­node)
         1. on Insight on SBS, clearly stated “not the state­ments of employer”
         2. but how much will the real Sen­ator Con­roy sep­ar­ate mark from inter­node. does it matter?
         3. Comes from cluetrain from @simon­hack­ett
         4. Kudos to Internode
   7. I have no magical clos­ing state­ment or argument.
   8. For me, the situ­ation is clear. I am 100% on. My voice is added to the greek chorus. I will con­tinue to be myself, my voice, my opin­ion.
      1. I am paid by MSFT to talk about its tech­no­logy. Please be aware that I sit on the sharp Maslowian Tri­angle. I will do my con­trac­ted job
      2. One day I will step over the cor­por­ate line, or an unfore­seen situ­ation will appear that may res­ult in a major FAIL.
         1. And When Red Cor­dial of hyper­con­nectiv­ity has over­taken the hyper­activ­ity, I will fall on not on my sword, but my keyboard.

A really big thanks to Kate Car­ruth­ers for com­ing to the digital cot­tage for the in-studio interview.

Show notes:

Thanks to all who watched this epis­ode. Just like Stilgher­rian Live in its alpha broad­casts, I am start­ing to get some cent­ral themes and sec­tions for the show sor­ted out.

Largely ignor­ing the chat this time was easy thanks to the won­der­ful @dekrazee1; the meta-backchannel pro­du­cer. Her role was to watch the chat, and for­ward on any ques­tions, points or where tech­nical glitches occurred through a spe­cial backchan­nel IM session.

My hobby is the study of his­tory, so research­ing and talk­ing his­tory is fun. An intel­lec­tual chal­lenge, keep­ing my non-geek syn­apses firing.

The flow of Epis­ode 3

• An hour of them­atic music (ie: related to show’s topic) from the 1980s
• Lead in video clip, again them­atic and from the 1980s
• Let­ters from the Pre­vi­ous Show
• Lud­dites vs. Lollards
• Main Topic of the Show, with a them­atic video/advertisement in the middle
• Close about 5 minutes before Stilgher­rian Live’s plinky’s appear

There is a need for a call-to-action some­where; and deeper ques­tions dur­ing the show. Or it might be just cool to leave it as-is so people can ran­domly chat about ran­dom stuff.

For next time:

• Get the record­ing correct!
• Ensure video play­back works, even when cued correctly
• Up the video qual­ity on the broad­cast strean when my face is on the camera

In a strange con­flu­ence of the digital uni­verse, two of Australia’s lead­ing inter­net thinkers: Stilgher­rian (Stilgher­rian Live) and Cameron Reilly (G’Day World Live); con­duc­ted live broad­casts last night.

The round out the ser­i­ous­ness, I broad­cast and recor­ded my second “Stilgherrian’s Under­study” show

Some for­warn­ing. I do swear. I do use tech­nical words. Great music is included, and I do dis my present employer. And I have much to learn with this broad­cast­ing caper; includ­ing get­ting thoughts out clearer. Almost scrip­ted. Thanks to @stilgherrian for the inspiration.

Things for next time:

• Music cor­rectly sequenced at the begin­ning, and thematic
• Open­ing sting of some sort
• Don’t drop words, and put thoughts into clear lin­ear thoughts.
• White bal­ance at the beginning
• Anim­ate and vocal­ise more
• Deliver jokes better
• Determ­ine a mech­an­ism to make it true Q&A (maybe ques­tions beforehand)
• Learn switch­ing pro­cess between videos and cam­era to make smoother
• The record­ing does some­thing weird at 19:34 when I played the music video