Technology will not save the world. People with vision will.

Implicit in any proclamation that technology will solve big problems (in the world or in our businesses) is that first a human being, or group of us, will conceive, organize, develop and then use technology to solve that big problem.   When technologists and alpha-geeks leave this piece out we are leaving out what is so [...]

Moment of Truth: We are all Marketers Now

Attending the recent Forrestor Roundtable on the future of the Social Web I made an offhand comment that we are all in the business of marketing now – whether we like it or not.   Here is what I meant:  The ubiquitous, always-on nature of the Internet has turned many elements of our business inside out [...]

Networked Democracy: Video Interview with Jascha Franklin-Hodge

This is a cross-post from Radar
While in NYC I interviewed Jashca Franklin-Hodge, CTO and Cofounder of Blue State Digital.  This is a three part series that explores how technology affects our political process.
Blue State Digital was born out of Jascha’s experience helping Howard Dean’s seminal run for the White House in ’04. and is the [...]

Pirates and Poohbahs Unite!

Yesterday I was lucky enough to attend a Forrester round table on the future of the Social Web put together by Jeremiah Owyang and hosted by SAP (thanks to both for an incredible job).  It stimulated a lot of thinking I have been doing about change – the next few posts are inspired by the [...]

Evangelist’s Toolkit: Facilitating the Conversation

Here is one of the  tools that I use to help mobilize energy and stay on a productive path during an engagement:

Divergent thinking describes a mindset where anything is possible, new ideas are welcome from all quarters, where issues and opportunities are freely discussed.   It is the realm of strategy and planning.
Convergent thinking is strictly [...]

Twitter from Wachovia; save our ship

I stumbled on the Wachovia Twitter page.   It is strange to read these little tweets from a sinking ship in real time.
On Sept. 18 we hear that all is well at Wachovia:
CEO Bob Steel posts on wachovia.com, reaffirms company is strong, stable, well capitalized, check it out here: http://tinyurl.com/3s7kg7 09:01 AM September 18, [...]

The Harder Stuff – Leadership, Culture and Change

I often refer to the “harder stuff” as shorthand for leadership, change, culture and implementation so I thought I would reproduce a post I made in Radar last week titled, “ Getting Web 2.0 right: The hard stuff vs. the harder stuff…” – along with one of the comments that I took issue with:
I had [...]

Interview: Customer Service is the New Marketing

During the Web 2.0 Expo in New York I filmed a series of interviews. The focus was always the same: how can traditional business look to get the benefit of social technologies? This interview is with Lane Becker of Get Satisfaction (Disclaimer: OATV, O’Reilly’s VC arm, is an investor in Get Satisfaction).   [...]