Author Archives: Suw Charman-Anderson

09.02.08
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Blogging Web 2.0 Expo Europe

UPDATE: The blogging programme is now full, so we are no longer accepting new applications.

Alongside Stephanie Booth and Nicole Simon, I’m organising the Web 2.0 Expo Europe blogger outreach programme which we’ve snappily titled “Blogging Web 2.0 Expo Europe”. The idea is to gather together a community of enthusiastic bloggers who are interested in writing about the event and spurring their readers/colleagues/friends to sign up. In return, they’ll get a complimentary pass to the conference worth, well frankly, lots of dosh!

You probably already know about Web 2.0 Expo. It’s aimed at web designers and developers, product managers, entrepreneurs, VCs, marketers, and business strategists who are embracing the opportunities created by Web 2.0 technologies. It takes place in Berlin, on 21 – 23 October 2008, and keynote speakers include John Lilly (Mozilla), Martin Varsavsky (FON), and Tariq Krim (NetVibes).

The way the blogging programme will work is that we’ll ask participants to do these few things between now and 6th October:

  • publish at least 4 Web 2.0 Expo-related blog posts, podcast episodes or videocasts, e.g. announcement of the event, speaker information, speaker interviews, or any other event-related stuff
  • encourage readers, friends, and/or community to register for the event
  • display the Web 2.0 Expo logo on their blog, with a link to the registration page, until the day of the conference

We think that’s pretty easy, but to help you along, we’ll provide participating bloggers with:

  • event badges
  • a discount code to share with readers, colleagues and friends
  • access to information about the event suitable for re-blogging, such as announcements and speaker information/interviews (when possible)

In return, bloggers will get a full conference pass to either use themselves or give away to readers.

But that’s not all… The five bloggers who have done the best job of promoting the conference, measured both by effort and referrals, will be upgraded to a Premier Blogger Pass with full conference access, e.g. to the press room, to speakers for live interviews and other goodies we are in the process of putting together. We will announce the winners of the Premier Blogger Passes and confirm Complementary Passes on 7th October.

But wait! Even that’s not all! As participants’ discount code will be unique to them, we’ll be able to tell how many people they’ve referred to us, and there will be something special for the person who has referred the most attendees, counted right up until the moment registration closes.

What type of bloggers are we looking for? We want to spread our net wide, so we will welcome blogs, whether monolingual or bilingual, in any of the major European languages. (Indeed, we’ll be trying to ensure there aren’t too many English-only writers!) Size doesn’t matter – whether you’re the biggest Czech tech blogger there is or have a small but enthusiastic audience who you think will be just chomping at the bit to get hold of a discount, get in touch. We’re after passion, enthusiasm, and persuasiveness: It’s your ability to persuade people to sign up that counts!

We’ve a limited number of places on the programme, so act now, and we’ll let you know as soon as we can whether you’ve secured a spot.

We’re aiming to kick things off properly next Tuesday 9th September, so please do email me right away if you’re interested.

One thing to note is that not only might things change as the programme develops, but they may change in direct response to your feedback. We’d like to know what you think about this outreach programme, so do leave a comment and give us your thoughts.

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08.30.08
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Welcome to the new Strange Attractor

Yesterday afternoon, Strange Attractor migrated from using a very old installation of Movable Type to using a shiny new version of WordPress. We’re very happy and excited that this has happened as it’s going to give us a lot more flexibility in the long run to install plug-ins and do cool things.

You might notice that things have subtly changed, e.g. there’s no preview button on the comments now, but hopefully you’ll find the site quicker to load, easier to comment on, and generally better in other ways that we haven’t quite figured out yet. The site may change more over coming weeks as we tinker with it. (The very fact that we can tinker with it makes Kevin and I very happy!)

Thanks to Hylton Joliffe and the team at Corante for making the transition so smooth!

08.28.08
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The Guardian: Breaking the email compulsion

I have an article in The Guardian today (in the paper and online) about email, how it’s getting out of control and what we can do about it. It contains some of my thinking on email, operant conditioning, and how social tools can help us reduce the amount of email we send (and therefore, hopefully, receive). Here’s a taster:

Back in the early 1990s, email was a privilege granted only to those who could prove they needed it. Now, it has turned into a nuisance that’s costing companies millions. We may feel that we have it under control, but not only do we check email more often than we realise, but the interruptions caused are more detrimental than was previously thought. In a study last year, Dr Thomas Jackson of Loughborough University found that it takes an average of 64 seconds to recover your train of thought after interruption by email. So people who check their email every five minutes waste 8.5 hours a week figuring out what they were doing moments before.

It had been assumed that email doesn’t cause interruptions because the recipient chooses when to check for and respond to email. But Jackson found that people tend to respond to email as it arrives, taking an average of only one minute and 44 seconds to act upon a new email notification; 70% of alerts got a reaction within six seconds. That’s faster than letting the phone ring three times.

Time out
Added to this is the time people spend with their inbox. A July 2006 study by ClearContext, an email management tools vendor, surveyed 250 users and discovered that 56% spent more than two hours a day in their inbox. Most felt they got too much email – by January 2008, 38% of respondents received more than 100 emails a day – and that it stopped them from doing other things.

Dr Karen Renaud, a lecturer at the University of Glasgow, and her colleagues at the University of the West of Scotland discovered that email users fall into three categories: relaxed, driven and stressed. “The relaxed group don’t let email exert any pressure on their lives,” Renaud says. “They treat it exactly the way that one would treat the mail: ‘I’ll fetch it, I’ll deal with it in my own time, but I’m not going to let it upset me’.” The second group felt “driven” to keep on top of email, but also felt that they could cope with it. The third group, however, reacted negatively to the pressure of email. “That causes stress,” says Renaud, “and stress causes all sorts of health problems.”

Read the rest on The Guardian website or in the paper.

Thanks to everyone who helped me out with this article, especially Tom Stafford who was my original inspiration!

08.20.08
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CIO Magazine: Social networking stands to benefit businesses

I got back from holiday to discover that my article for CIO Magazine, Social networking stands to benefit businesses, is now up online. Here’s the opener from it:

Mention social networking and most people immediately think of sites like Facebook, MySpace or Bebo which let people create lists of friends, send messages to each other, share photos or music, join groups with like-minded-individuals and just generally keep in touch.

Images of industriousness rarely spring to mind, yet many organisations have realised that it’s not all just super-poking and games of Scrabulous, and want to use their own social networks for the benefit of their businesses.

The potential for social networking tools to connect huge numbers of people has been clearly illustrated. Companies want to harness that power themselves, and not just for marketing or recruitment, but also for internal communications and collaboration.

One HR executive recently, rather mournfully, said to me, “Fifty per cent of our staff are on Facebook. Why can’t we get that kind of buy-in?” Although Facebook is primarily a tool for organising your personal life, people also use it for business and, increasingly, companies realise that they have to provide such tools internally or else employees will communicate over the web, potentially risking sensitive company data.

Another significant driver pushing companies to adopt social networking tools is the need to locate expertise within companies whose employees are dispersed across many locations and time zones, a problem exacerbated by restructured offices that emphasise teleworking and hot-desking. It was this, along with the emergence of Web 2.0, that formed the backdrop to IBM’s exploration of social networking.

Read the rest on the CIO Magazine site.

08.08.08
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Discounts for Going Solo Leeds & Web 2.0: Practical Applications for Business Benefit

I’m sure you’ll all be very excited to hear that I have special discounts available for both Going Solo Leeds and Web 2.0: Practical Applications for Business Benefit. You lucky, lucky people!

Going Solo Leeds
I have one free pass to give to the first person to email me, and five 20% discounts. To use the latter, just go to the registration page, create an account, and then use the code “iknowsuw” (without the “). The code will stop working after five uses, so use it quickly! UPDATE: The free pass has now gone!

Web 2.0: Practical Applications for Business Benefit
If you mention my name when you book, you’ll also get a 20% discount! (There’s a comment field on the registration page you can use if you are going to book online.)

Both really fab events, and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if they fill up quickly, so book now if you’re interested!

08.06.08
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Autumn events

My diary for the autumn is chock full of conferences, many of which I would highly recommend to anyone interested. Here’s where I’m going to be:

Fruitful Seminars – The Email Problem and How to Solve it
Wed 3 Sept, London
Email is becoming a problem, with people sending and receiving hundreds each day. ‘No Email Days’ don’t help, nor do inbox size limits. So just how do you reduce email and improve people’s relationship with their inbox?

There are still places available for this seminar, so if you’re interested please sign up now!

dConstruct
Fri 5 Sept, Brighton
Going as a punter and very excited to be seeing Steven Johnson.

Fruitful Seminars – Making Social Tools Ubiquitous
Wed 10 Sept, London
Social tools help improve business communications, increase collaboration and nurture innovation, but what do you do if people won’t use them? And how do you grow from a pilot to company-wide use?

There are still places available for this seminar, so if you’re interested please sign up now!

Going Solo Leeds
Fri 12 Sept, Leeds
I shall be reprising the talk I gave at Going Solo Lausanne, When Passion Becomes Profession (Balancing Work and Life).

Enterprise 2.0 Forum
Thurs 18 Sept, Cologne
A conference mainly in German, but I shall be keynoting in English:

Keynote: Potentiale und Herausforderung bei der Einführung von Social Software für die interne Kommunikation und Kollaboration, or Potentials and challenges of the introduction of social software in corporations for internal communications and collaboration enhancements.

Unicom, Web 2.0: Practical Applications for Business Benefit
Wed 1 – Thurs 2 Oct, London
Conference hosted by Dave Gurteen about the business benefits of blogs, podcasts, wikis, online video and other collaborative technologies. I’ll be presenting:

The Email Problem and How To Solve it

* Occupational spam, cc/CYA email and fractured conversations are causing email overload
* Constant interruption reduces people’s ability to focus and attain a state of flow
* Attempts to reduce email usage via “No Email Days” are ineffective
* The email problem is psychological, not technical
* Social media can help reduce email by providing alternative ways to work, collaborate and communicate

Be2Camp
Fri 10 Oct, London
An unconference bringing Web 2.0 tools and ideas to the built environment community. I will probably present on the psychology of email.

Web 2.0 Expo
Tues 21 – Thurs 23 Oct, Berlin
TBC – keep your eyes peeled.

Electronic Laboratory Notebooks
Wed 28 – Thurs 29 Jan, London
Examining electronic data gathering, storage and sharing using electronic lab notebooks. I’ll be giving a presentation:
Collaboration and communication using social tools

* How to use social software to both organise your own information and to share it with others,
* Collaborate with team members and across teams/departments
* How to improve communication and reduce reliance on email

08.02.08
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Is the problem ‘social’?

So here’s the thing. Some businesses are getting quite into social media, having realised that these tools are really rather useful. But I think it’s fair to say that social tools aren’t a runaway success – I’m certainly not seeing any evidence of massive adoption from my vantage point. I’m not fighting off clients with a big stick, for example, and the people I do talk to have little budget and are frustrated because they’re not getting the buy-in they would like.

I wonder why. There are all sorts of reason why, once the tools have been installed in a business, they fail to proliferate, and I’ve spoken about many of these before. But could there be a reason why businesses are slow to even evaluate social tools?

The week before Kevin and I got married, we rescued a lovely ginger cat who was lost on the main road outside our flat. We managed to reunite him with his owner a few days later and then went off to be married.

Foggle/Orlando
A couple of weeks ago, Orlando’s owner, Monica, invited us round to dinner, and we had a lovely evening talking to her about her time programming Ferranti Pegasus valve computers at UCL. When she asked me what I do, I said I was a social media consultant and I explained what that was.

Monica thanked me for the explanation, saying that she was glad I had elaborated as she had thought, and I hope she forgives me for paraphrasing, that ‘social software was something awful, like social workers’. That really made me think, and I haven’t quite got to the end of where that throwaway comment has led me.

Is ‘social’ the problem with social software? Certainly in the UK, ‘social’ has some rather negative connotations: Social workers are often despised and derided as interfering, and often incompetent, busybodies. Social housing is where you put people at the bottom of the socioeconomic heap. Social sciences are the humanities trying to sound important by putting on sciency airs. Social climbers are people who know how to suck their way up the ladder. Social engineering is getting your way deviously, by using people’s weaknesses against them. Social security is money you give people who can’t be bother work for themselves. Socialism is an inherently flawed system that is prone to corruption. Social disease is venereal.

Whether or not you agree with all of those descriptions – and for the record, I don’t – you have to admit that the word ‘social’ does have a bit of a bad rap. I wonder how much that influences people – in business and elsewhere – to dismiss ‘social media’, ‘social networks’ and ‘social tools’ before they have even found out what they are and what they’re good for.

07.23.08
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CIO Magazine: It’s not just Facebook

My article about social networking, It’s not just Facebook, has been published in this month’s CIO Magazine.

In it, I talk to Alastair MacKenzie and Brendan Tutt from IBM about how they transformed their internal phone directory into something much more useful and interesting using tags. John Meakin from Standard Chartered Bank tells me about how his company is using the Facebook app WorkBook to create an internal social network. Kevin Marks from Google discusses how he keeps track of the people he meets and talks to as the Developer Advocate for OpenSocial. I also hear from a woman – who asked to remain anonymous – who had a less than pleasant experience when her colleagues, and her bosses, flocked to Facebook.

All in all, it’s 2000 words of social networky goodness that you should seek out at the earliest possible opportunity! (Before you ask, it’s not available on the CIO Mag site, but I’ll look into putting it up here in due course.)

07.07.08
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Two dates for your diary

As promised last week, I’ve got the dates for my next two Fruitful Seminars in September. The third seminar is still up for grabs, so go and vote now!

The Email Problem and How To Solve It
Wednesday 3rd September 2008

As we move towards a knowledge-based economy, email is becoming an unavoidable part of business life. But not only do some people have to deal with hundreds of emails a day, many of them unnecessary, the ‘always on’ culture of the Blackberry means they can never escape their inbox.

Reducing people’s dependence on email is easier said than done, however. Arbitrary rules like ‘No Email Days’ or tight inbox limits just add to people’s stress and don’t reduce the amount of email people send. This is because the problem with email is psychological, not technical, so such solutions treat only the symptoms and not the cause.

Social media expert Suw Charman-Anderson will take a look what’s at the root of the email problem, and how it can be solved using social tools. During the day you will hear an alternative view of email and will be able to discuss the issues you face in your own company. By the end of the seminar you will have a thorough understanding of the behavioural problems related to email and a clear set of next steps to take.

Who should come?

  • CXO executives
  • IT executives
  • Managers
  • Team leaders
  • Decision makers
  • Social media practitioners
  • Social media vendors

Or anyone in situations similar to these:

  • You are responsible for managing email infrastructure and have problems such as over-full inboxes or unnecessary file duplication across accounts.
  • You have observed poor ’email health’ amongst team members, perhaps including obsessive email checking coupled with delays in processing email.
  • You are concerned about unhealthy patterns of email use across your business and related inefficient use of IT resources.
  • You are an executive or manager who just can’t cope with all your email, much of which is a waste of your time, and you want a better way to work.

Making Social Tools Ubiquitous
Wednesday 10th September 2008

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 apply to your own collaborative tools project.

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.

If you want to be kept up to date with Fruitful Seminar news and discussion, then please do join our Google Group. And don’t forget to sign up to Lloyd Davis’ social media masterclass on 16 July!