Giving something back

(WORLD) The red carpet is out, we’re all tuxed up and the champagne has been popped… sounds like the perfect time to announce the 2010 MediaSnackers Awards.

Here we go:

• Best Overall Platform : Tweetdeck
• Best Newcomer : DropBox
• Best Piece of Technology : Kodak Zi8
• Best Free Install/App : Adobe AIR
• Champion Achievers : Palmerston North City Library

And now for the acceptance speeches:

The winners were chosen at our recent development day and are basically given to people and companies who have helped to make us look good over the past year—thank you guys.

The new category of 'Champion Achievers' is awarded to a client who have made some great strives to adopting social media into their operations (we know it could be a potentially dangerous move but we have nice clients so we know they won't take it personally).

Here’s what the awards look like :

What do you think? Good choices?

Related post : MS Awards 09

Been a long time coming

(WORLD) For nearly four years we’ve been delivering social media training to a cross sector group of clients. Back then all this stuff still had the price-tag on it (brand new) and we were one of only a few agencies offering this type of service.

Throughout all that time three things have remained constant:

• our prices
• how much fun it’s been
• our constant tweaking of the content to reflect the fluid media landscape

Our training courses have started to become more embedded within our consulting contracts (which is great) though this prompted a rethink of our stand alone packages.

At the end of last year we decided to take a step back, talk to our clients and reformulate the menu of what we offer to the now flourishing market.

We also looked around to see what other social media practitioners were offering in the way of ‘training’ and saw a lot of great stuff (challenging us to raise our game). Equally we saw stuff which didn't float our boat ( like the single-platform focussed short sessions which usually had very snazzy titles like : Twitter for Tap Dancers Over Tea & Biscuits; which lack sustainability and context).

Drawing on experience and a big whiteboard we came up with the following and a fresh new approach which provides a graduated and measurable path for social media learners:

Beginners : up to 20 participants.
Exploring the basics of social media, the breadth of platforms and how to create simple, day-to-day value and benefit from its use.

Intermediate : up to 15 participants.
For those already familiar with the broad social media practices who wish to go deeper in its application and strategic possibilities.

Advanced : up to 10 participants.
Focussed on embedding social media into wider operations to create sustainable impact and measurable outcomes.

The above options can be delivered to any sector, gives us more time with the client as they step up through each level plus there will be a set of ‘missions’ (heavily used in our other projects) to bridge the link between the next level of training.

All kind of makes sense to us and hopefully to you, our customers…

For the full details check out our new services pdf below:

MediaSnackers Services

You’re an army of thousands.

Back in the day l suggested to a former manager that we needed to include a blogging facility as a free feature with customer accounts.

Then it happened. The eyes glazed over, the blood drained, the body started to wobble like a weeble and I was blinked at.

Yes blinked at.

You know the type of blink that says ‘What on earth are you talking about? Get back in your box and don’t come out until you’ve created something pretty’.

This was 10 years ago (maybe more). Livejournal was all the rage. The cool kids ‘got-it’, but sadly my manager didn’t.

I’m sure I can’t be the only person to have experienced this.

Y’see, web dev’s and designers, and general techie / geek type people are on the cusp of shaky fads and life changing trends. Some sink like a bucket of wet bricks at a cake eating competition (*cough* ‘Plurk‘), and some, yes some become bigger than Jesus* (Twitter).

We, and I say we because I’m a web design/dev too, know about this stuff, we want to design it and build it, we see the colour it can bring to people’s cheeks, we know the capabilities, the freedoms and the change of attitudes it can instill in others… if… only… they… listened!

We can do something about this digital ‘gap’, something to make our lives easier, their lives more exciting, create some changes and get some energy flowing again. This is where MS comes in, we take nervous drivers, bumbling communicators and unintentional-controllers by the hand and give them the guidance they need to rewind the fear induced from their first big public balls-up. We undo the damage, inspire them, fill their heads with possibilities and turn them into the lovable geeks you really need to push that project through and make that build happen.

That’s what we do. We bring the cool stuff you do, to them. We train people, because you don’t want to, you haven’t got the time, inclination or incentive to do so, right?

So how do you spot if you need to get MediaSnackers in to educate your clients, team, office or, damn, the whole company? You, as a designer or developer, techie or geek, or just a socially savvy enthusiast makes a suggestion that gets the:

• glazed-over-nodding-dog look
• mechanic-sucking-air-through-the-teeth look
• ums-and-ahhs-of-indecisiveness look
• look-of-fear (otherwise known as the ‘I’m-scared-hold-me’ look)

and the worst:

• I-saw-an-article-in-the-Daily-Mail-about-this look

I don’t do ’sales pitches’, you get what you see here, but dev’s and designer’s are in better position than we ever will be to kick start something really creative & office/life changing. So don’t hold back on your builds because you know that it’ll fall over faster than Maureen from Accounts at the Christmas party. Rattle some cages with your creativity and pull us onboard to help ensure that it all happens the way you designed.

Have you experienced a flat refusal of a new idea? Are you fed up with trying to educate your manager? Is your office/team/website about as exciting as a watching a painted snail dry? There’s a space below, be a charm and fill it with something mental.

*not ‘the’ Jesus btw—I meant Paul De Jesus the professional skateboarder from the 90’s Powell Peralta—Propaganda and Eight videos

MediaSnackers Services

Old and new models

(WORLD) Back at the turn of the century I was busy working my way around a couple of local authorities here in the UK. I ended up in one where the Chief Executive took a shining to me and basically allowed me to write a job description for the post of 'Corporate Youth Officer', focussed on embedding youth participation into the councils operations—it was the first ever post of its kind in the UK.

One of the things I held dear at that time was Roger Harts 'Ladder of Participation' (which is still very much in use today and which every youth professional knows backwards across the globe):

Image credit

Spring forward into the latter end of the last decade and I'm delivering keynotes and masterclasses to several youth services across the country (and world) and mashing up the above ladder with another one which show how people use the web (below is the latest verion):

Image credit

Looks familiar, huh? Maybe great minds were thinking alike here or maybe the Forrester guys were inspired by Mr Hart?

All I know is that participation as a term and model can be substituted for many of the social media phrases such as conversation, community and/or user-generated content, and maybe that's why I feel so at home in this space as I've been doing stuff like this for over a decade.

I want to challenge you…

To stop for a day, put all your projects in a shared space, including all problems, remove your job title, leave your authority at the door, include everyone in the company, and invite everyone to work together to change things.

Every day people follow the same routine, invite the people they know and love to meetings, include certain people in email circulations and work really really hard at achieving something mediocre.

Why would you accept that? You have access to an incredible wealth of minds, be that employee’s, friends, family or followers. Why would you limit yourself, your projects and your business to the same old invited few?

Think about it. People are employed because you have a job that needs doing or you fulfill a position that needs your skill set, right? But how long does it take before that ’spark of enthusiasm’ dulls, and that role becomes tedious, or worse that company becomes stale. Why drive your friends, employee’s and acquaintances to utter boredom?

The limits of the job description, does just that, limits people. Limiting their passions, their ideas, their enthusiasm for getting up in the morning and it limits the development of a great cultural, collaborative, participatory working environment. Meetings are closed (invite only), managers tell people ‘as much as they need to know’, people are urged to work towards a collective goal but only given a piece of the puzzle to play with. Stop doing that. It’s counter productive. Have you ever considered that environment you instill in a workforce, breeds the very culture you are desperately wanting to get away from?

The reason I think people don’t try something new, is because they are afraid that someone else’s priority won’t get done. That urgent thing which determines if Sales get made and wages get paid won’t happen. The fear is that ‘new’ equals ‘will most likely fail’. That is wrong. People love their jobs, people love their teams and projects and ‘want’ to do a great job. But they also want to contribute to the success of the company, not just their corner of the office.

Give them that chance. I challenge you. Put it all on an internal Wiki, everything. Invite everyone to contribute. But here’s the biggie. Give them the time, and remove all priorities from their workload. Clear their minds of worry for that day. Don’t just stop the day, create the space, and move the deadline. Take the pressure off and reward the people you work with and for and want to make use of. Make it happen midweek, on Friday, or whenever you like.

Don’t just encourage evolutionary working, create revolutionary rethinking.

Take that (perceived) risk and I guarantee you’ll see rewards.

Am I talking rubbish? Bring it on in the comments.

Photo credit: lmwarner517

Newbie alert

(GBR) It's with lots of high-fives and spontaneous cheers we welcome a new member into the MediaSnackers family.

Here's what our new 'Business Development Director' got to say for himself:

Hello! I'm Karl Hakeem.

Senior Gig Hunter, Youth Trainer, Community Enterprise Champion, Business Development Specialist, Innovative Network Creator and Social Media Ninja.

Co-Founder of several young enterprise networks, utilizing social media to innovatively communicate and deliver skills based training and educational events nation-wide.

I also have over 10 years of sales, marketing and business development experience with various international organizations and award winning training providers.

"I have come here to chew bubblegum and kick ass… and I'm all out of bubblegum."

Thinking he's going to fit right in…

Please say "hello" and make him feel welcome…

The final hush, hush gig.

(ENG) For the third and final 'top secret' new service session we're in London today.

We promise to announce what this is all about probably next month but definitely in the March 2010 email digest, so be sure to keep an eye on the blog sign up to our newsletter on the right hand side there to get the news first.

Related post : Top Secret Session #1 and #2

A hard lesson in web security

(WORLD) Well if you hadn’t noticed, the mediasnackers.com website had gone messy over the past few days, I’m pleased to say that its back in action and so far, all is healthy. Without Kieran Mastertons help, we would have been screwed, because even though I’m the ‘web dude’, I’m far from knowledgeable about server intricacies to know what to do in the event of matters so catastrophic as what we’ve just experienced.

So what happened exactly?

A little link in our admin area that said ‘upgrade’ wasn’t clicked—so small, yet so important.

From that neglect, the site was compromised, code was placed all over our pages. Google, Blogger & Twitter blocked us, plus anyone that tried to access the site through Safari, FireFox, Chrome and many others. However if you’re an IE user, surprisingly (or unsurprisingly) you would have just seen our temporary page showing the site was down.

It would be easy for people to think ‘Oooo, Wordpress is baad’, and it would be easy to think that ignoring a warning message was the fault, but much more than that, not understanding the implications and repercussions of ignoring a warning message is far, far worse than any ignorance on its own.

Post exploit, it’s now all about damage limitation.

One of the first things that was done, was removing public access to the site by putting up a temporary holding page, redirecting and informing all visitors of how we can be contacted, and then trying to identify the malicious code and remove it. Apparently the database had been compromised, so no matter what I tried to remove from the pages itself, it would always reappear. The full extent became clear after setting up Google’s Webmaster Tools for the website which reported malicious code on 7 pages.

Kieran confirmed that many of the Wordpress core files had also been breached—nothing more we could do but remove the site, sweep the database of all the malicious code that could be located and reinstall. Finally dropping the clean database back in, adding the theme and plugins, getting everything running again, checking all the links to make sure everything works and pushing it live.

However, things will not be perfect for some time. Google needs to run a sweep of it again to check that its safe to let visitors back, including Twitter as well, not to mention a number of other sites and servers which we aren’t aware of.

Looking forward, it’s obvious to ask what can we do to prevent this happening in future? The truth isn’t so easy to swallow, as the answer is nothing. Nothing can guarantee that a website won’t get hacked, a server won’t be breached or a database compromised. The most any of us can do is to make sure passwords are as secure as is practically possible, plugins are updated with the latest versions, and any warnings about ‘upgrades’ are not over looked.

Fingers burnt, lessons learnt, and hindsight is 24hrs too late as usual. Ho-hum. Apologies for the turbulence people, normal service will resume shortly.

How about you? Have you had a similar experience? Or a security headache to deal with? Let us know in the comments.

Nottingham Cultural Offer Part 4

(GBR) What do you do when you want a good night out?

I’ll guess that you suggest a few places you know and love and choose one of those options. The Cinema, certain restaurants, bars and pubs etc. We all do. But every now and then we want something different, and often the effort of figuring out what is new to do, brings about more difficulties in making that decision.

• What is available?
• Where is within reach?
• What do all the inidividuals prefer?
• Is there easy transport?
• Parking?
• Buses?
• Taxi’s?
• Venue times and locations?

It’s easy to see why we get stuck in a rut and revisit the same old spaces.

Today I’m in Nottingham, sitting in on a meeting to help unify the Cultural spaces so the residents can choose and organise a good time – be that day or night, indoors or outdoors. It’s a big project, but we have some great web agencies pitching for the tender. By the end of the day, we hope to have started an exciting journey that everyone in the City will be proud of and able to participate in.

Woo, go Nottingham! More news as I have it.

Related post: Nottingham Cultural Offer Part 1 & Part 2 & Part 3

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