American gigs

As part of my mini-tour of the USA, in a couple of hours I’ll be delivering a couple of internal sessions for leading school design firm DLR Group, here in Santa Monica, California.

The first will be a presentation which will have virtual attendees from eleven other of their offices around the country, then the second session will focus on their specific use of social platforms as an organisation.

DLR Group recently participated in what we hope is the first of a series of conversations with DK of MediaSnackers. He explored with DLR Group the opportunities that exist in social media and social networking, evaluated our current strategy and provided us with valuable insight to maximize our outcome.

Penny Ramsey, Brand Communications Manager, DLR Group

This will be followed by a couple of pre-conference workshops at Council of Educational Facility Planners International (CEFPI) in San Jose, introducing plus implementing social media in the context of learning environments.

DK’s energy and vast knowledge of social network systems, the power of connecting imagination to realistic life and learning application was unreal. He mesmerized the audience by continually engaging them in the process of learning while swiftly covering new materials that even us “old dogs” were willing to learn! Fascinating young man – he is changing the world of learning and connecting the world of learners to unbelievable possibilities. DK’s time, energy, and expertise were a real treat to the conference attendees. I, myself, learned so much that my kids now think of me as cool because I can speak their connected language!

Julie Barrett, Business Development Leader at tBP/Architecture

Then my final sessions are another pre-conference workshop for executives and business owners at Lavacon in San Diego.

I want to thank you for speaking on “Social Media for Executives” at our conference last month. Attendees absolutely raved about your session.

A sampling of the comments included:

Very engaging!
Excellent presentation. Too bad it wasn’t longer!!
Great job!!
Loved all of it!
Bring DK back next year!

Attendees specifically enjoyed the practical portion, where they could practice what they learned in the first half of the presentation.

It is interesting to note that the Program Chair for an international conference on technical communication was following the comments coming out of LavaCon on Twitter. Based on the positive comments about your session, he immediately contacted me saying, “I want him to speak at our conference, too!”

Again, thank you for making our conference a success, and I look forward to speaking with you about our 2011 program.

Jack Molisani, Executive Director, The LavaCon Conference

I love my job and the above gigs illustrates the transferrable nature of social media to be delivering to a diverse mix of people/industries.

MediaSnackers Consulting and Speaking/Masterclass

Refocussing on the important stuff

Keen-eyed individuals may have noticed a new addition to our tagline above.

If you haven’t, please take a look. The line is small but very significant. It not only states what MediaSnackers does, but what motivates us in everything we do, currently and in the future.

Recently, we all sat round a table and individually pinpointed what pushes us everyday to fulfil duties in the roles we have —not as a business, but as people. A common theme returned from us all: we want to inspire people to learn, work and live differently.

So how does this change the way we do business?

Put simply, this statement forms the basis of all our decisions, from what clients we work with, what blog posts we write, what projects we start and the judgements which shapes the future business. It isn’t a business plan, it’s a lot purer than that, more memorable and condensed. Without this statement, we realised we were operating and reacting without direction.

We will be making some powerful and possibly risky decisions in future, but all will be made safe in the knowledge that it is the right thing for us: the people that make the business.

With it, we will be reminded of why we love helping others. It isn’t contrived, nor steered by a demand for growth, an insistence for success or a desire to be wealthy. It offers something to check against and gives us confidence to move forward on our ideas and the strength to dismiss those that don’t fit (even if they make financial sense).

That is what we want to do.

This is our focus.

This is why we do, what we do.

Because we love it: Inspiring people to learn, work and live differently.

How about you? How do you remain focused? Do you know what drives you (other than a need to pay the bills)? What is your ‘why’? Let us know in the comments, reminding yourself and telling everyone else in the process.

Thanks to Simon Sinek and his following TED talk which provided the inspiration and to Dr Kelly Page for being our steer and providing us focus.

Winning stuff and getting published

Remember our little pro-bono project from last year exploring the emotional responses of how the web makes young people feel…?

Well, the resulting academic paper (written by Dr Kelly Page) not only won “Best Conference Paper Award in Interactive Marketing” at the 2010 Academy of Marketing (AM) Conference (sponsored by the Institute of Direct Marketing (IDM)) but it will also be featured in the next issue of the Journal of Marketing Management.

One little by-product of this is that Mark and I are now officially academic authors in our own right (without having to do all those years of studying most people do).

This year the project has some international partners, which, due to the recent earthquakes in Christchurch where Core-Ed are based, will be slightly delayed.

Russian cameras

(WORLD) Back in 2001 I purchased a little russian camera called a Lomo LCA and joined the accompanying online Lomography site.

It was platform where you could create your own page, add in your personal details, upload your images taken by the camera (after scanning them in one by one and saving them to the correct specified size), sort them into albums, leave comments on other peoples pics, add them as friends, enter competitions, send each private messages and updates—sounds familiar?

All this in 2001.

Not before long, I had made ‘friends’ with lomographers from all over the globe, met Mark, connected with my first business mentor, met in person people I’ve only known virtually on lomowalks, swapped ideas, swapped stories, swapped films etc

Then in 2003 the Lomohomes got updated which meant you could update more than just your images. The site got a diary function and here’s my first entry:

Tue 26.08.2003 13:24:55 CET

….it’s a new dawn, it’s a new day….

well well well – weblogs now, what will the funky munkys from lomoheaven think of next…..?

not too happy with the ‘snot green’ everywhere although everything else i like.

well happy with my lomohome at the moment – feeling a little smug with my new pics from the eastpak event! thanx to everyone who attended and all those who threw down some massive tricks….you guys are nutters!

well i will try and keep this up-to-date with pics and my scribblings! i guess the biggest piece of news is that in 3 weeks and one days’ time i’ll be in vegas with the two darrens from back home in wales….look out!

till next time……

I was an active member of the community till early 2005 when I turned my attention for other things going on in my life.

Apart from a couple of things like the advancement of technology convergence into our mobile devices and other stuff like geolocation not much else has changed in the world of online networks. Sure, we’ve seen different iterations but at it’s core it’s all about creating spaces for people to connect and communicate with each other. Simple as that.

So what was your first foray into social networking?

Was it the old-boys, safe and stuffy LinkedIn? The terse and funky Twitter? Maybe it was all-conquering Facebook? Or perhaps you’re an arty type and it was DeviantArt? Are they much different?

Lips, mugs and rock & roll

I feel in order to deliver good training, one needs to experience bad training. Without being exposed to the most cringe worthy day of your life, one may never develop the passion to ensure that it never happens everyone else.

My worst learning experience has never been with MediaSnackers, big deal huh? No surprise, particularly if I’m in control of the delivery.

However there was a time in Devon, whereby myself and Barney turned up to deliver a course for Mencap only to discover that the entire Internet for Ottery St Mary was dead… all the way back to the BT exchange. Nothing. Not even a heartbeat was coming out of my F5s and Apple-Rs. I felt like it was going to be a short day and a wasted journey for youth professionals and the young people that had made the effort to rock up, covered in USB cables and big grins.

No… that wasn’t the worst day. Even though we chucked the course material out of the window and unplugged from the Matrix (as Karl would say) and conducted the entire day with mobile technology. I’m not just talking phones, but laptops, local software, digital cameras (still and video). The closest we got to going online was hooking a mobile up to some WAP. We threw on our 56k t-shirts and watched the net download like it was 1998, pixel by pixel.

I swear I had flashbacks to another life of Neanderthal man, getting excited as the sparks from a flint fluttered into the air. Only they probably had more chance of setting the place alight than BT tech support did 200,000 years later near Exeter. Not that I’m bitter.

No… that was fine in comparison.

My worst day training, was being on the end of the stick from a half drunk, cigarette smoker called Elaine from Manchester, who arrived 3hrs later in a Nissan Micra to kill me with a training course on Adobe Illustrator. One on one tuition suddenly didn’t feel like such a good idea.

She wanted coffee – lots of it.

Her make-up looked like it was applied one handed whilst clipping every manhole cover on the A37 out of Bristol. She left lipstick on my mug like a lady of the night, and her fragrance was a cross between the female equivalent of Old Spice (before it was cool) and Benson & Hedges.

Some key points to note:

• her mobile was more important than me
• she dropped her stuff and fished about on the floor like a semi-deflated blow-up doll caught in the wind
• her training manual / bible could have been handed to me in the post
• I tested her knowledge and flustered her system
• she couldn’t adapt to knowledge
• the office wasn’t private—it was all very public
• and as the world around me continued, I became bored
• the boss was eavesdropping
• the certificate was a joke. I still have it somewhere in a drawer
• it was like being handed an animated gif for my efforts
• she left in a blaze of glory if I recall correctly, at 5pm on the dot
• there was no SatNav in those days, she wanted a quicker route back to Manc. I was happy to help her break free from my personal space

That was my worst day and she taught me everything I needed to be a good trainer today. There are many many things, but the essentials should never be over looked:

• get there on time
• get there clean
• save wearing heavy lipstick for the weekends

But thats just me. I can’t be the only one can I? We’ve all been there.

I’d love to know your worst learning experience. From life lessons by friends and family to stuffy powerpoint presentations or a sudden realisation that you know more than a lecturer. Possibly a driving lesson by someone that you regret ever handing you the keys or a particularly painful violin class. Maybe you were delivering something on a topic that you knew very little about?

Let me know in the comments—what has been your worst learning experience? Don’t let me be the only one.