In ‘The Element‘, Sir Ken Robinson highlights ‘the importance of Identifying Passion and Redefining Creativity’.
In ‘Starfish and The Spider‘, Ori Brafman and Rod A. Beckstrom identify “the unstoppable power of leaderless organisations” and “inevitability and need for ever-changing models in our ever-changing and ever-connecting world”.
In ‘Life Inc.‘, Douglass Ruskoff asks ‘should our infrastructures/governments/education/systems be focused on creating good citizens and well-ness/well-being rather than economic performance and growth?’
In ‘Affluenza and The Selfish Capitalist‘, Oliver James provides evidence that ‘material affluence and extrinsic value(s) can produce the opposite of happiness’.
In ‘Drive‘, Daniel Pink provides ‘scientifically surprising truths about human-motivation’ and how ‘autonomy, mastery and purpose can far exceed financial reward in the value stakes’.
In ‘The Social Entrepreneur‘, Andrew Mawson provides his experienced insight towards “the empowering importance of Personal Responsibility over Personal Right(s)”
In ‘The New Capitalist Manifesto‘, Umair Haque (a thought leader in the field of Economics and Business Innovation) highlights that ‘our current economy, business strategies, policies and mindsets are unsustainable – we need to change or die.’

For many years, my work, endeavors, experience and research has (and continues), to inspire me to ponder such important things and I’ve challenged myself to do and learn about active participation and empowering human-focused responsibility and value-conversation(s).

“What good is an energy industry that destroys the atmosphere? What good is a media industry that, with relentlessly intrusive, ever-more persuasive ads, pollutes the infosphere? What good is production that consumes the natural world? What good are banks that catastrophically deplete the financial sphere? What good is a food industry that sparks an epidemic of obesity? What good is an apparel industry that produces insipid clothes in joyless, dreary working conditions? What good are athletic shoes that don’t make people fitter?”

These are special words. They weren’t spoken by a warrior wielding the buzzwords ‘Eco’ or ‘Green’, they weren’t (in this instance) written by authors like Naomi Klein, nor were they written by the head of some Corporate Social Responsibility council. In this instance they are extremely important, in print on page 193 of his latest book ‘The New Capitalist Manifesto‘, they were written by Umair Haque (Director of Havas Media Lab and Economist Blogger for the Harvard Business Review).

In the penultimate page of his book Umair writes: “my goal hasn’t been to write the new economic blueprint – but to give you pen, paper and maybe even a handful of design elements, for writing your own…” “…the future of capitalism begins, in other words, with you. So don’t just read this book. Use it. Its not a textbook, its a handbook. The protectors of the past never create the future. And the creators of the future never stop questioning the past. You’ve got to ask – and keep asking!”

Today, inspired my Umair (and the authors and great thinkers listed above, plus a few others) I choose to take my insights and learnings, and present to you my ever-developing philosophy towards the future – a twenty-first-century enterprise and economy – an inter-dependent ecology; upon the new rules within Digital Landscapes, Social Ethonomics and Twenty-First-Century Economics.

I encourage you to help me (us) re-conceptualise and re-define the words: Economic, Prosperity, Growth, Responsibility, Ethics, Value, and Worth, to develop a set of first principles of value creation, into a concise philosophy – with a clear intent and purpose!

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The diagram below forms the basis of a presentation I made to Media Tree UK (and their supporting Economic Development partners) on 17/01/2011 in relation to ‘The Future of Kent’s Creative Business Economy‘.
Each ‘value-conversation’ below has a Reference Code – please do leave your comments with the applicable code(s).

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Jenny Uglow – The Lunar Men

Andrew Mawson – The Social Entrepreneur

Ken Robinson – The Element

IDEO – Human Centered Design Toolkit

Ori Brafman & Rod Beckstrom – The Starfish and the Spider

Ori Brafman – Sway: The Irresistible Pull of Irrational Behavior

Gilles Deleuze – Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia

Erasmus Darwin – Philosophy of Agriculture

Brian Solis – Engage (hybrid theory manifesto)

Richard L. Daft – Organization Theory and Design (Media/Information Richness/Naturalness theory)

Umair Hague – The New Capitalist Manifesto

Rick Levine – The ClueTrain Manifesto

Lionel Trilling – Sincerity and Authenticity (consciousness vs influence)

Clay Shirky – Cognitive Surplus: Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (media abundance and tacit knowledge)

Seth Godin – Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?

Jeremy Benthem – Selected Writings on Utilitarianism (Wordsworth Classics)

Benjamin Franklin – The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin (13 Virtues)

Charles Sanders Peirce – Reasoning and the Logic of Things (abductive Logic)

George Orwell – Essays ‘Penguin Modern Classics’ (Animalism – cultural change)

Winston Churchill – Liberalism and the social problem

Eric Fromm – To Have or to Be?

Matthew Arnold – Culture and Anarchy (Oxford World’s Classics)

Douglas Rushkoff – Life Inc.

Oliver James – Affluenza (emotional wellbeing over wealth – democracy, meritocracy, equality)

Oliver James – Selfish Capitalist

Jean Paul Sartre – Being and nothingness

Michel Foucault – Madness and Civilization (Routledge Classics)

Jean-Paul Sartre – Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology (Routledge Classics)

Richard Laylard – Happiness: Lessons from a New Science

Charles Stafford – Questions of Anthropology (social anthropology)

Erasmus Darwin – Phytologia; or, The philosophy of agriculture and gardening

Alan Moore – Communities Dominate Brands

Oscar Wilde – Intentions

Robert E. Schofield – The Enlightened Joseph Priestley

Anthony Mayfield – Me and My Web Shadow

David McCandless – Information is Beautiful

Alexander Osterwalder – Business Model Generation

Laurence Sterne – Tristram Shandy (Multi-Dimensional Narrative – also see: B. S. Johnson)

Graham Hancock – Fingerprints of the Gods: The Evidence of Earth’s Lost Civilization

Joe Pine and Jim Gilmore – The Experience Economy

Jon Hagel III – The Power Of Pull

“If you want to come up with a few good ideas, or even one great one, then you have to generate lots of ideas” ~ Linus Pauling (one of only four individuals to have won multiple Nobel Prizes).

I’m Carl @FellowCreative. I’ve delivered ideas and helped solve problems directly for international names: Electronic Arts (EA), Intel, Nokia, NixonMcInnes, University for the Creative Arts (UCA), as well as talented pioneers like Remy Sharp (@Rem) and Jonathan Markwell (@Jot), to
name a few.

Reputed for identifying trends and future focused strategy. I’m a facilitator of insights, architect of citizen-brands and engineer of social-capital in the ever-growing engagement economy. An advisor to NACUE (National Consortium of University Entrepreneurs), anomalous speaker at conferences, recognised blogger of cognition and research fellow.

A perceptive creative professional with cross-functional, cross-disciplinary experience spanning design process and brand strategy, emergent technologies and cultural trends, decentralised social systems and sustainable enterprise. A resourceful co-ordinator with a rounded diagnostic approach to problem solving, capable of quickly learning, dissecting, reading between the lines and understanding foreign concepts to reveal alternative angles and transversal vectors, with an intellectual curiosity for uncharted shifting terrain (on or off the digital landscape).

I’m a catalyst, my role is usually mission orientated. I have a contagious enthusiasm for challenging norms and a high tolerance for ambiguity. With solid testimonials and an established client list I work ‘beyond What Is to deliver What Can Be™’ – R&D lab, think-tank, social enterprise, technology venture, creative agency, rhizomatic community or skunkworks project – I’m a valuable and inspirational element for any do-tank with an emphasis on discovery, not theory.

A creative midwife and joiner of dots, capable of weaving authenticity, co-design, human-centred-engagement and sustainability into the very fabric of an idea or strategy.

I believe creative insights often come in non-linear ways, through seeing connections and similarities between things we haven’t noticed or even tried before. I do well in situations that require divergent, lateral thinking in terms of metaphor, analogy, simile, abductive logic and provocative operation (PO). I challenge with integrity and directness. I make observations, and sometimes predictions. I’m experimental and experiential and always contextual. Learning through actually doing, to provide a more valuable pathway from ideas-lab to real-time and real-space.

I’m currently pondering future focused R&D opportunities. If you’d like to discuss how I could help your strategic research, creative development and innovation towards twenty-first-century economics (and an inter-dependent ecology), please do get in touch.

I’m not an evangelist. I’m a proponent of open-leadership, transparent communications and civic-data, and the practical application of theory and research focused on problems not disciplines, into business and social situations in the real world. I have a strong network of trustees and acquaintances, and a genuine interest in others. I thrive on meeting new people everyday and I can turn casual interactions into meaningful relations. I realise the importance of understanding what people really want and need. I recognize what drives behaviour, curates excitement and facilitates passion, and I suggest ways to channel that energy into projects between people, principles and technologies that otherwise wouldn’t meet – guiding collaboration through creativity, inspiration, support, trust, emotional and psychological intelligence and social sensitivity. Value can always be found through encouraging and enabling others. I have a relentless belief in people and a desire to help – its not just a nicety, it’s a natural and essential part of connection and engagement. Communication is not about talking; it’s about listening and understanding relevance – to inspire dialogue and multi-dimensional narratives, not monologue.

A peer not a boss. I can provide a drumbeat for decentralised organisation, helping top-down business structures develop a little hierarchical-ambiguity and open-chaos to get people into passionate conversation and action. I can map and unite advocates, form new circles, develop open-platforms and cultivate participation – inspiring change without being coercive. Aligning the needs and goals of industry and civics to ensure rich-insights, brand-equity and the early adoption of people-focused-ideas, cultural trends and emergent technologies. Creating meaningful sustainable value, igniting future thinking philosophy and engaging innovation – online or off, on-demand or live, through geographic location (such as GPS coordinate) or a point of interest (POI), and perhaps even through the orientation of a sensory object or mobile device.

Want to know more? Please do say hello.

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(Monetization, hierarchy, distribution, curation, policy, responsibility, ethics (Ethonomics), measurement, value… privacy vs net neutrality? value chain vs value cycle? competitive advantage vs constructive advantage ‘socio-efficiency’?)

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Renaissance of social participation: ‘Agri-culture of insight’

(Participation, human enterprise and social currency – to belong and make meaning. Authenticity and human/emotional linguistics: ‘yours truly’)

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Intrinsic social value over extrinsic materialism: ‘Brand value, sustainability and CSR’

(Do people value getting credit for their contributions over getting paid for them? – ROI/SROI – the reputation economy and trust mapping systems)

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Cultivation of nature and culture: ‘bohemia’s and acculturation’

(Diminishing social norms, Rhizomatic dynamics and human behaviours – social proof – human-factored/user-centered)

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Social objects/places and augmented reality: ‘Object-narratives and Social/Virtual Currency’

(GPS, marker-based, marker-less and gesture-based – plus, hyper-local (en)rich(ed)-media and on-event credit/incentives/network-economics – sensory/contactless, augmented, near-field)

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Geospatial science and the digital landscape: ‘Metaweb layers of information’

(Social layer, game layer, open-data and entities – singular, person, place or thing)

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Astronaut’s side-real-time: ‘Appearances of the same star on the observer’s meridian’

(As a measurement lens for information, people and networks in the context of real-time and real-space)
(Brownian motion: you can be certain of the location, or speed, of a particle, but not both)

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Social Integration: ‘Live and on-demand’

(Content Aggregation, Experience Streaming, 3G-4G Networks – the end of silo’d UI/UX, and birth of UE *engagement*)
(Multi-dimensional narrative/interaction – including ZScape Holographic/3DTV and WiFi/SmartMeter Appliances)

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Cross-discipline research and design methodologies: ‘Facilitation of participation, creativity and innovation’

(Innovation requires: ART not SCIENCE, QUALITATIVE insights not QUANTITATIVE statistics, HUNCHES not FACTS, RISKS not CERTAINTIES)
(Meritocratic value – laymen & lunar-man, amateur & pro-amateur, like-minds & like-hearts)

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Self-organising systems: ‘Agriculture as a metaphor. Technology is no longer mechanistic’

(Decentralised and open-source – the self regulating economy of the natural world. Biomimicry Inspiration)

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Complexity economics: ‘Mathematical theory of dispersed cross-sensitivity in a self-organising system’

(Anthropology and ethnography of ideas, influence and engagement)

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Academic, Corporate & Government protocol and policy: ‘Prosperity in an age of austerity’

(Should systems be focused on creating good citizens rather than economic performance? Net neutrality: The free and open ethos of civics and the internet is as stake if prioritising data/connection/freedomofspeech/human-senses for profit becomes a reality? #Civic-Data rather than #Open-Data?)

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UnSelfish Capitalism: ‘Emotional wellbeing over wealth’

(Happiness: Authentic [not sincere], Vivacious [not hyperactive], Playful [not game playing])
(Meet your needs, not your wants. Be, don’t have. Cooperate as well as compete)

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If you’d like to discuss how I could help your strategic research, creative development and innovation towards twenty-first-century economics (and an inter-dependent ecology), please do get in touch. Here’s what I’ll be reading in 2011 and if you’d like to know more here’s my Professional Bio.

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The Introduction

Hello. I’m Carl @FellowCreative *~)  Accepting NACUE’s invitation to support, inspire, connect, and become an advocate for over 65 university enterprise societies across the UK, representing in excess of 35,000 entrepreneurial students is both a great honour and a great responsibility.

As I sit down to write this I’m acutely aware that the NACUE Learning Programme provides a critical knowledge base for ever-changing Student and Academic Society Presidents and Committee Members. It aims to deliver you a thorough collection of guidance documents to cover all aspects of establishing, running and developing a successful University Enterprise Society. However, in some specialist and complex areas, delivering such complete, comprehensive, failsafe documentation can prove challenging and sometimes impossible – ‘Social Media’ is one such topic. I hope to cultivate your food for thought…

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Plate XLVII from the Yearbook of Agriculture 1901
Original illustration licensed under creative commons by PerpetualPlum
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Searching Google.com today (7^th August 2010) for the term ‘Social Media’ puts ‘About 276,000,000 Results’ at your instant disposal. An abundance of blog posts and video tutorials, from tips on Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategies to marketing techniques to ‘build a brand on Facebook.com’ and ‘increase your number of Twitter.com followers’, etc – some results are very worthy of investigation, others are not.

This document will cover what I believe to be the important stuff, with a short list of recommended reading and resources at the end.

This ‘How To Use Social Media’ guide doesn’t promise you a one-size-fits-all step-by-step manual of Social Media techniques and strategies. Instead, without Technobabble (mostly), it will explore the values inherent in NACUE and the words: University, Enterprise and Society from the heart of my intuition and experiences, from between the lines of all I’ve read, done and learnt. I underline one fact: ‘communication channels, technologies, social norms and the digital landscape evolve globally, by the second – this means what exists today, may change tomorrow’. I really hope to inspire you to question your perception of Social Media and its potential value to you and others, thus empowering you to ‘work beyond What Is to deliver What Can Be™’. As the quote reads: “We can identify trends for the future but accurate predictions are impossible”.

In the realms of the World Wide Web (commonly called the Internet) and its related technologies, my most important advice is: place strategic bets but always retain your ability to pivot – prepare to fail forward!

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Info-graphic by InformationArchitects.jp
Original image uploaded and licensed under creative commons by Evitc

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What is the Social Web?

The Internet now provides an increasingly diverse and innovative set of tools that allows people to connect with others, share information, socialise and collaborate together. The term ‘Web 2.0’ is commonly used to refer to specific websites and applications (Apps) that help facilitate such interactive information sharing, interoperability and collaborations across the Internet as a whole (and I mean across multiple platforms and online spaces, not just within so-called social networks like Facebook.com that are in fact silos of information where lots goes in but very little can be shared with people outside its walls).

New websites, platforms, applications and features launch daily if not hourly. Information Architects Inc. created the diagram ‘Web Trend Map 3’ (http://informationarchitects.jp/trendmap3-countdown-sneak-peak). It is a brilliant example of information design and does an extremely good job of visualising the connected and distributed ecosystems of Web 2.0. The diagram shows a complex and interrelated version of an Underground Tube Map, with different zones and layers. Each tube line represents a different Web Trend (e.g. Gaming, Technology, Photos, News, Video, Social Network, Politics, Innovation, Music, File Storage, Blogging), and travelling along each tube line you find community stations at every stop (e.g. Google.com, Facebook.com, YouTube.com, Flickr.com, Twitter.com, BBC.co.uk, Guardian.co.uk, MySpace.com, Amazon.com, WordPress.com).

The term ‘Social Web’ loosely describes how people socialise or interact with each other throughout and across this interconnected map and World Wide Web. It is also important to note that these connections and interactions aren’t limited to computer screens – many of the latest devices, phone handsets, iPads and games consoles now provide both Internet and App integration and connectivity. And remember, this connectivity isn’t just stationary, it’s now ‘mobile’ and on the move.

The ‘Web Trend Map 3’ mentioned above, was in fact released in January 2008; much has evolved since. The Web Trend Map 4 (’09) and Web Trend Map 5 published in 2010 demonstrate just how quickly the Internet evolves and how the ecosystems and connecting structures of today will undoubtedly adapt and develop to suit the trends and technologies of tomorrow.

Until recently most people formed their online connections and social networks through friends, contacts or shared interests. However, today a growing number of connections are being made through a geographic location, a point of interest (POI), or other forms of location (GPS) data. The fields of Augmented Reality and Social Gaming are growing, and applications like Gowalla.com are gaining traction and investment.

Increasingly, our Social Media activities and assets can be searched and identified not just by the Username(s), Publisher(s), Title(s) or Tag(s) but also by their context in time and space – e.g. a Digital Photograph taken on an iPhone or Nokia device already equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) receiver, will now likely contain (encoded into the digital file metadata) the actual mappable location (latitude, longitude, and altitude; plus the time) the photo was taken. In real-time and real-space.

The term ‘Semantic Web’ describes the methods and technologies that allow machines and devices to understand the meaning (and metadata) – or “semantics” – of information on the World Wide Web.

Only a few years ago online communication and audience engagement would have focused on a single location, your website. Broadcast monologues and advertising would have been used solely to drive customers to it. Today, we recognise that people increasingly hang out and socialise across multiple locations, different online spaces and social networks, they frequent multiple groups and tribes, and what’s more they’re now used to home delivery and on-demand. If you wish to engage them it must be within their territories, where they choose to hangout, on their terms, not yours. You must respect and value them as individuals, not as a number or mass-market. Respect has to be earned, and value(s) must be shared beyond price point.

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Engagement 1.0
Photograph licensed under creative commons by Mark Berry

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What is Social Media?

It is safe to suggest that you, fellow academics, students, entrepreneurs, business leaders, marketers and technologists perceive, describe and wish to use Social Media in different ways. Most focus on ‘Social Media for PR’ or ‘Social Media for Marketing’ – hence the now somewhat throw-away terms ‘Social Media Marketing’ and ‘Social Media Consultancy’.

It seems that attitudes to the term ‘Social Media’ differ greatly and its definition seems increasingly meaningless – perhaps the inevitable result and downside of any buzz-terminology.

However, I presume: A) your University Society’s primary aim is to communicate your people-focused benefits and value(s), and B) you actually wish to engage and inspire conversations, to connect and share in activities with fellow academics, students and members. This document should help you focus on the inherent value(s) of using ‘Social Media for Audience Engagement’ – and not the questionable hijacking of Social Media channels and platforms for one-directional broadcasting of monologues or self-interested-selling as is so often the case with monetised minds and quick-win business ventures, sadly.

Christian Payne @Documentally, the man I personally recognise as the UK’s #1 Social Media Journalist says: “Social media is about communication, and community building. In the modern world with millions of people vying for attention, it’s not your presentation; it’s your connection to your community that’s important. To people bombarded every day with ‘brand’ and ‘monologue’, it’s the human touch that develops interest and loyalty. Put more simply, social media tools aren’t about you; they’re about the people you want to speak with.”

With article references and citations to Yale University Press and Penguin, Wikipedia.org (the worlds largest encyclopaedia, which is both freely available and user generated) defines Social Media as “media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques”. It goes on to say: “Social Media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues”. Now, assuming you’ve already heard some webby-speak banded about by your University ICT Department, and without wanting to get you technically lost or turn all geeky, Professor’s Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein’s definition serves as a good introduction to some of the tech-terminology often associated with the realms of Social Media: “a group of Internet-based applications built on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”

Parking the reference to ‘ideological foundations’ aside for later discussion I will attempt to demystify the different types of media and user-generated content that might be created or exchanged through Social Media. The acronym used by the threaded-conversation platform Phreadz.com serves to suggest most people converse, connect and share through V.I.T.A.L: Video, Images, Text, Audio and Links (such Links may be to an online news article or website, a particular map location or point of interest (POI), a digital artefact of sorts. The possibilities grow daily…).

Thinking about Social Media in terms of socially VITAL exchanges and interactions makes it perhaps a little easier to understand the difference between Broadcast Media and Social Media. I use the acronym V.I.T.A.L with great emphasis on the essential definition of the word ‘vital’. Social Media is not about tools, technologies, websites or even the medium. It is about understanding the accepted social norms and enablers of human behaviour. It’s about retaining the core values of society, social engagement, inspirational conversation and participation, not eroding such norms or values with self-interested monologues or promotion. Being social is VITAL to inspiring, connecting, and engaging advocates, like-minds and people, truly supporting the development of an audience, tribe, society and community of inspirational friends and connectors.

In the introduction to his book ‘Life Inc’, Douglas Rushkoff writes:
“Sometimes it feels as if there’s just not enough air in the room – as if there were a corporate agenda guiding all human activity. At a moment’s notice any dinner party can slide invisibly into a stock promotion, a networking event, or an impromptu consultation – let me pick your brain. Is this why I was invited in the first place? Through sponsored word-of-mouth known as ‘buzz-marketing’, our personal social interactions become the promotional opportunities through which brands strive to be cults and religions strive to be brands”.

I constantly wonder to myself, and now I question you: Does the term ‘Social Media’ deserve a rethink?

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Super Human Powers
Photograph licensed under creative commons by Esparta Palma

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Social Media, Social Norms and ‘Elementals’

The theory of ‘Elementals’ is my own, it’s not an industry-recognised term or philosophy. I introduce it here not to confuse you, but to convey my continually developing thinking and ideology. Many of my concepts build upon already recognised principles: ‘Media Richness Theory’, ‘Media Naturalness Theory’ and Brian Solis’ ‘Hybrid Theory Manifesto’; and I remain inspired by the works of Sir Ken Robinson and motivations of Dan Pink.

Written by Sir Ken Robinson ‘The Element. How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything’ is an amazing book which I highly recommend to everyone – it’s certainly a must-read for anyone involved or interested in improving Education, Entrepreneurship, Creativity, Social Enterprise, Community Development or Civics and Society.

The book explores real people, as individuals, from the perspective of empowering passionate creativity, engagement, conversation and sharing, by firing up imaginations and motivations. Robinson suggests that when collections of people engage to create something much greater than any of them could create individually, they become more than the sum of their parts – he defines this as ‘the alchemy of synergy’. ‘The Element’ is the point at which natural talent meets personal passion.

I firmly believe that technology should be used to inspire and empower us to be better people – the Web’s potential to connect natural talents with passion and inspiration, provides you, us, our Universities, Enterprises and Societies, with a true catalyst for brilliance and value creation.

According to Wikipedia the term ‘Elemental’ refers to “a Mythological being” and “the ancient idea of elements as fundamental building blocks of nature”. The Oxford English Dictionary defines “a supernatural entity or force thought to be physically manifested”.

Through exploring the differences between the so-called Social Media and Social Networks online, in comparison to the super fundamental, super natural, ‘Elementals’ of social norms and human behaviour offline, you can begin to understand the valuable building blocks between the social and the media.

I define these ‘Elementals’ as: fun, authenticity, kindness, usefulness, challenge and inspiration – expressed and experienced through art, story-telling, memes and the wider human sense of friendship.

“Great teachers have always understood that their role is not to teach subjects but to teach students. Mentoring and coaching is the vital pulse of the living system…” ~ Sir Ken Robinson.

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“Not everything that counts can be counted…”
Photograph licensed under creative commons by Beth Kanter

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The Value and ROI of Social Media and its ‘Elementals’

There’s constant discussion and debate about the measurement and return on investment (ROI) of Social Media. Traditional industrialists, broadcasters and marketer minds are analytical, linear and strategic. They define measurement through a set of processes and numbers, numbers of followers, numbers of visitors and viewers, the number of potential customers, the number of sales – these minds simply don’t get the Web’s potential to create value (long-term and beyond profit) and develop long-standing relationships with and respect for people, education, entrepreneurship, society, and dare I say it ‘brand’.

For me, and hopefully you, the Value and ROI of Social Media can be found through focusing on ‘retention’, not recruitment. It’s not about the great numbers in Facebook groups. It’s in forming true communities of people and participants who engage to become more than the sum of their parts – through contacts, conversations and ideas, VITAL to inspiring, connecting, and engaging advocates – Social Return On Investment (SROI).

Through conversation with and listening to your societies and members as individuals, you can learn to answer all their questions and needs, empowering your forging of long-term relationships and friendships. Inevitably leading to improved ‘people-centred’ services and societies, and better understanding of future trends and values, and hopefully resulting in some additionally VITAL and much appreciated word of mouth.

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Practical Pieces of Advice!
Photograph licensed under creative commons by Munir Squires

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Practical & Actionable Social Media Advice:

In the realms of the World Wide Web (commonly called the Internet) and its related technologies, my most important advice to you is as follows:

• Focus on ‘retention’ not recruitment! Cater to your existing community’s needs while placing strategic bets for the future, but always retain your ability to pivot – prepare to fail forward!
• Think long-term flexibility, short-term scalability – Deliver today but plan for tomorrow!
• Logic makes people think, emotions make people act! Organizational charts can show your Societies hierarchy and structure but sadly they don’t capture how your organization or Society really works. Social communities are not like mechanisms; they are more like organisms – each is different, each requires a different approach, and all continue to evolve.
• Is your audience worthy of investment? Social Media is often viewed as an inexpensive tool for audience engagement. Many of the applications and media services are indeed free to use and simple to setup but Social Media is far from inexpensive if your time is valuable – be prepared to dedicate plenty of time and enthusiasm. Free tools and services are usually sustained by intrusive third-party advertising packages, be mindful that if something seems too good to be true, it usually is.
• Great Products sell companies but Great People sell Services and Societies!
• It’s about behaviour not tools!
• People and participants who truly engage can become more than the sum of their parts. Supporting them is VITAL to inspiring, connecting, and engaging advocates!
• Lead through example and education! Students, colleagues and potential advocates aren’t born knowing how to use Web tools and technologies, or how to navigate Legal Requirements, Copyright or Facebook Privacy Settings – explore your organizational policy towards Age Of Majority (legal terms of Understanding and Agreement) regarding student consent (to appear in content, photos or film), and explore Data Protection and Social Media Policy.
• Investigate your ‘Audience Persona(s)’ (hypothetical archetypes) – Understand your people!
• Understand your own (personal and organisations) value(s) and identity – Adopt a relaxed but appropriate conversational tone and find your accent!
• You have two ears and one mouth so listen twice as much as you talk – Talk with people, not at them!
• Make VITAL content for individuals’ sensibilities! Effective conversation and engagement requires different media for, and understandings of, natural human sense(s) and ability (Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic learning and communications).
• Attention to detail delivers 30% more engagement! Good Design, Copywriting, and Content Editing matters. *
• Is it useful or is it compelling? And is it easily sharable or embeddable elsewhere? Social interaction encourages dialogue not monologue. Engaging conversation and content means ‘compelling, fun, authentic, useful, challenging and inspirational’ – often expressed and experienced through art, story-telling, memes and the wider human sense of friendship.
• Share other peoples’ insights and timely goodness! Useful means contextual and relevant – not everything has to be written by you. Develop a network of relevance but always remember to credit your sources. It’s their content – respect it, and them!
• Create the Theatre not the Play, but don’t be afraid to provide Props! Community Management means facilitation of multiple personas, tribes and belief systems across multiple places. Inspire participation and crucial debate, don’t dictate or control it.
• Communicate organizational change quickly, simply, as it happens!
• Admit your mistakes and lessons learnt! Expect and encourage constant dialogue, engagement and comments. The web is a conversation, so join in with clear and frequent feedback!
• Test tools, features and viewer devices with users – accessibility is not an optional extra!
• Make sure your content can be searched and linked to, forever! Optimize your content with continuity and useful Account Names, Usernames, Filenames, Categories, Permalinks, Tags (metadata), RSS, Trackbacks, Pingbacks and Hashtags (#Tag).
• Google Yourself! Monitor value and success every day. Search your visibility metrics with services like ‘HowSociable.com’, ‘Klout.com’ and install ‘Google.com/Analytics’ on your website(s) so you can measure progress, success and failure (find out if your existing website already has measurement tools and reporting to help guide your planning).

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Thumbs Up!
Photograph licensed under creative commons by ChicagoGeek

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Recommended Tools and Applications:

If your University, Enterprise or Society doesn’t already have a website (and even if you do), a good starting point is to sit down with 4-6 people (these should be actual students, potential users and members; not people in the organizational chain) and discuss what actually works and what doesn’t. Focus on needs, wants and values. Focus on retention not recruitment. Research what others are doing successfully and poorly; and if applicable explore your pre-existing websites, communication channels and legal policies. Go through the full list of highlighted points in the ‘Practical and Actionable Social Media Advice’ section of this document.

Once complete you should have a good understanding of your existing User Personas and your potential ambassadors. You should also understand your values, voice and tone. You should have a basic understanding of your VITAL media requirements and constraints – What media and application features do you need?

The following list outlines a host of my recommended tools and applications. Please make sure you examine your own internal policies and data-protection guidelines, and all the applications terms of service and subscription contracts, before you make any decisions – the responsibility to make the right choice for you and your Society is yours alone, not mine. Many of these services are privately owned and free-to-use (funded by advertising, most of which isn’t too intrusive) – but please remember, what exists today may change tomorrow:

WordPress.com – is a free to use, semantic publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. Often used for personal weblogs (blogs), it provides social media support through embeddable media, widgets and content aggregations; along with basic design/theme customization and community features like commenting, search engine optimization (SEO) and content sharing goodness such as RSS and Analytical Stats. The WP platform is also available as a free open-source product via WordPress.org; increasingly used by self-hosted bloggers and organisations (both personal and commercial websites), with a constantly developing array of community features and Plugins. WordPress.org is fully customisable, reliable and secure (as now used by Number10.gov.uk).

Facebook.com – undoubtedly the UKs biggest social network; a free-to-use social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. Currently home to 500 million active users globally. Developments like Facebook Connect, Facebook Social Plugin, Mobile App, Facebook Questions, Social Gaming Apps and GEO location features (Facebook Places), mean it’s here to stay and an extremely valuable channel for audience engagement. Keep up to speed with Privacy Settings and remember, Facebook is currently a silo of information – place strategic bets but always retain your ability to pivot!

Twitter.com – a free-to-use micro-blogging platform with a limit of 140 characters per post or update (commonly known as a tweet). Defined as ‘the best way to share and discover what is happening right now’, much of its success has been built upon dedicated mobile apps and third party services. Increasingly being used by Students, Enterprises and Societies it is likely to prove a valuable part of your conversational and personal connection toolkit. Daily content and conversation can be searched, shared and aggregated across the Web in the form of RSS Feeds (and increasingly JSON), and embedded into websites and blogs (as well as such things as auto-updating your Facebook and LinkedIn status). Hashtags (#Tag) and Twitter Lists are two ways in which you can organize information, people, members and groups but Twitter continues to make deals with the likes of Google Realtime and DataSift so expect frequent change and new features relating to real-time and real-space.

Flickr.com – a free-to-use image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. Free accounts provide some extremely useful but limited features (low quality image hosting and sharing, creative commons licensing, etc.). A subscription fee (approximately £16 per year) provides ad-free browsing and sharing features, archiving and search facilities, high-definition imagery and HD video hosting, accessible viewer counts and statistics and unlimited uploads, storage and bandwidth. (Also worth checking out Google’s option: Picasa.com).

Viddler.com – a free-to-use interactive online video platform for uploading, sharing, enhancing, tagging, commenting on, and forming groups around videos. Competing against the more popular YouTube.com (and services like Vimeo.com, Wistia.com and Blip.tv), Viddler provides an ad-free subscription account and some additional business specific services. YouTube.com is likely to remain the Web’s largest community library of searchable video content so I’d certainly recommend Optimising, Tagging and Uploading your content to it but I’d recommend investigating Viddler as your core video sharing service. Equipped with video analytics, HTML5, brand-able and customizable video players and an impressive feature-set of embeddable Viddgets.

Audioboo.fm – because sound is social and real voices are personable. AudioBoo provides a free-to-use mobile and web platform that effortlessly allows you to record and upload audio for your friends, family or the rest of the world to hear. With a diverse community of users, from Journalists to Independent Podcasters, Musicians to people having everyday conversations. It might just spark your imagination for the potential uses of sound and provide you with a simple insight into the more complicated world of Podcasting, iTunes, non-streamed webcasts and digital media syndication (as well as a host of other audio services: Spotify.com, SoundCloud.com, BandCamp.com, Mixlr.com, Blip.fm, Last.fm and RootMusic.com, http://listen.grooveshark.com etc.).

LinkedIn.com – is a free-to-use business-oriented social networking site. It is mainly used for professional networking. With 75 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, it provides a continually developing set of features that allow you to share your career development, contacts, life, blog posts, tweets, upcoming events etc. with a growing network of professionals and industry groups.

MailChimp.com – start with a free account, upgrade at anytime. MailChimp provides an email marketing service to design, send, and track HTML email campaigns with a simple set of tools. An ad-supported but fully functional account provides the capacity to send 3,000 emails per month to up to 500 subscribers. A Pay-As-You-Go account removes any third-party advertising, and a range of monthly subscription packages can cater for an unlimited number of emails (approximately £20 per month if your mailing list is no bigger than 2,500 members).

SurveyMonkey.com – is a free online survey software and questionnaire tool. Create and publish online surveys in minutes, and view results graphically and in real time. A free account allows up to 10 questions per survey and a maximum of 100 responses, while a monthly subscription (approximately £20) provides customisable and branded survey tools with unlimited questions and responses, and downloadable results and analytics.

Eventbrite.com – a free-to-setup online event registration tool, everything you need to bring people together for an event and sell tickets. Creating an event page and adding it to your blog or website takes about 5 minutes, define your ticket types and price, track sales and attendees with an event summary – simple. Eventbrite takes a small commission on the tickets you actually sell. Additional features include event/conference Name Badge design, etc.

Bit.ly – allows you to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier, especially if you’re using services like Twitter.com that limit your updates (tweets) to 140 characters in length. Bit.ly also provides management and analytics for your shortened links so you can track popular links and traffic locations. Bit.ly is still a relatively new service, free-to-use and currently free from ads. It is certainly useful and I recommend it, but make sure any links you use within your own website content don’t reference bit.ly because if bit.ly doesn’t exist tomorrow neither do all your shortened links.

Bambuser.com – Live video streaming from your mobile phone or webcam (other live-streaming services include Ustream.tv and ‘now Skype owned’ Qik.com). Bambuser lets you instantly share your experiences with friends, family and followers all over the globe, whilst at the same time interacting with your audience through web-to-mobile chat. Bambuser also integrates with a wide range of global platforms and social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, as well as your blog or website – you decide where you want to share your real-time broadcasting experiences. Commercial packages are available; otherwise ad-support is likely.

Mendeley.com – is a desktop and web program for managing and sharing research papers, discovering research data and collaborating online. For a University or student Society, Mendeley’s growing popularity and social sharing features make it a potential gold-mine for inspirational content, connections and advocates – certainly one to look into!

Paper.li – creates an online newspaper built from all the articles, blog posts, videos and photos shared on Twitter – Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or Hashtag (#tag). Paper.li is an interesting example of how content, people and advocates from different places might be brought together (aggregated) to provide something greater than the sum of their parts. Other *filtering by collective trend* services like Flipboard.com help demonstrate what is both technically possible and increasingly popular.

Flattr.com – is a social micropayment platform (somewhat similar to the more widely known Chipin.com). Developed to help support you and the organizations and Societies people like. Adding a Flattr-Button to your website content might well help you fund future activities. Flattr is the newest and least proven service on my recommendations list; but if you’ve got some worthy content and Society activities planned it might be worth further investigation.

Gowalla.com – is a location-based social networking service that gives people around the world a new way to communicate and express. Users ‘check-in’ at Spots in their local vicinity, either through a dedicated mobile application or through the mobile website. As a reward users will sometimes receive virtual items from check-ins. With 150,000 active users in April 2010, this is certain to increase into 2011. As crazy as the concept may sound, if you want to explore the potential of social gaming and GEO location for community building and Society engagement this is my recommended place to start.

Google.com/Analytics – is a free web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features let you see and analyze your traffic data – enabling you to write better-targeted content and strengthen your marketing initiatives. Google also provide Email services and a suite of Google Apps (document, presentation, spreadsheet and collaboration tools). If you are looking for more specific business performance monitoring it might be worth investigating kissmetrics.com and thesunnytrail.com.

NameCheck.com – is a free service that checks your society/group/business/brand ‘name’ against a global registry of website domain names and social media account status’, to indicate their availability or current use. Ud’s NameCheck.com is not the only online service providing such ‘name research and analysis’. NameCheckList is also worthy of investigation, it provides ‘goodness’ analysis on search engine results for ‘names’ on Google, YouTube, Yahoo! and Flickr. If you do decide to purchase a domain name I recommend checking GoDaddy.com (sure you can buy domain names cheap elsewhere but for customer service and useful/scalable features they’re a solid point of call for small organisations, SME’s and NGO’s).

Klout.com – helps you understand and potentially leverage your influence, audience reach and engagement online. The industry of social media measurement and influence analysis is still in its infancy. Alongside Google Analytics, NameCheckList and other free services like HowSociable.com, Klout provide a somewhat solid foundation for exploration. Klout Labs are working on additional paid services: Social Search, Media Management, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Lead Generation. Other social metric services are also very worthy of investigation: chartbeat.com, woopra.com, gosquared.com.

SocialMedia.PolicyTool.net – is far from perfect, but does provide you the ideal introduction to an important topic – Social Media Policy. PolicyTool helps streamline the process of policy development. Answering a brief questionnaire provides you with a customized document upon which to build. Social Media Policy is not yet a legal requirement but there are certain aspects of it that you really should be aware of. Please make sure you examine your own internal policies and data-protection guidelines, and all the applications terms of service and subscription contracts, before you make any decisions – the responsibility to make the right choice for you and your Society is yours alone, not mine.

CreativeCommons.org – is a non-profit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. Free licenses and other legal tools mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof. Providing a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators.

Dropbox.com – is a digital storage service that syncs your files online for backup and sharing. Put your files into your Dropbox on one computer, and they’ll be instantly but securely available to you (and those you choose/invite) via any other computers (or mobile devices) with Dropbox installed (its even cross-compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux). A basic 2GB Dropbox account is free, with additional Pro storage available from £6.50 per 50GB (approximately).

Wikipedia.org – is a free, web-based, collaborative, multilingual encyclopaedia project supported by the non-profit Wikimedia Foundation. If you require additional information or further explanation of the concepts explored in this document Wikipedia is a good place to start your research, but please be advised that it is often not seen as an acceptable academic source for reference or citation.

[A few additional things to watch out for include: http://dailybooth.com, http://datasift.com, http://instagr.am, http://scvngr.com, http://Lanyrd.com, http://picasa.com, http://groupon.com, http://storify.com, http://kickstarter.com, http://quora.com, http://www.co-ment.com, http://peerindex.net, https://joindiaspora.com, http://civiccommons.org, http://doodle.com, http://path.com, http://groupme.com, http://belugapods.com, http://performable.com, http://www.geckoboard.com, http://kissmetrics.com, http://thesunnytrail.com, http://chartbeat.com, http://pingdom.com, http://www.cloudflare.com]

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Epilogue:

Quite simply, I really do hope that my insights inspire you to question your perception of Social Media and its potential value to you and others, thus empowering you to ‘work beyond What Is to deliver What Can Be™’. As the quote reads: “We can identify trends for the future but accurate predictions are impossible”. I wish you good luck!

I’m off to develop some real-space dialogue, research the information ecology and realms of social cultivation, joining dots with an emphasis on discovery not theory (more info here if you’re at all interested).
Positive thoughts, Carl. *~)

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In March 2010, as part of the National Student Enterprise Conference, NACUE invited Carl Jeffrey of FellowCreative.com to share his experiences, insights and beliefs surrounding Social Media and the ever-changing digital landscape. Although Carl insists he’s neither a Social Media Consultant nor an academically qualified Marketer, in recent years his reputation as a design innovator, educator, trend spotter, commentator and facilitator has grown rapidly through involvement in social media communications and the wider social web – his clients include UK Universities, the Worlds #1 Sustainable Technology Company and the UK’s #1 Specialist Social Media Agency – his bio reads ‘Creative Midwife™ & Joiner-of-Dots… attracted to inspiration & shiny things…’

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Recommended Reading and Resources:

Social Media for Audience Development and Community Building:
http://ourmaninside.com/2009/12/28/social-media-for-audience-development-community-building

Engaging Through Social Media (a PDF Guide aimed at Civil Servants)
http://coi.gov.uk/guidance.php?page=264

Brain Solis: Hybrid Theory Manifesto (broken into three parts)
http://www.briansolis.com/2010/07/the-hybrid-theory-manifesto-the-future-of-marketing-advertising-and-communications-part-one

Information Architects Inc. created the diagram ‘Web Trend Map 3’
http://informationarchitects.jp/trendmap3-countdown-sneak-peak

13 Qualities of a good Social Media Voice
http://socialmediatoday.com/ckochster/155676/13-qualities-good-social-media-voice

The Impact of a good Editor on Content*
http://www.ikiw.org/2010/07/16/ibm-web-team-measures-impact-of-an-editor-on-content

Helen Keegan: Social Media, Education, Industry – and motivation
http://heloukee.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/msc-social-media

RSA Video – Daniel Pink on intrinsic motivation
http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/04/08/rsa-animate-drive

The 15 Web Principles as published by the BBC
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/03/ten_publishing_principles_for.html

Sound-bites about social-media usage and strategy – some are worth your attention, others are not
http://whatthefuckismysocialmediastrategy.com

Habbo Hotel (habbo.co.uk) – understanding and developing your user Personas
http://www.clubhabboforum.net/showthread.php?p=3262438

How to manage a Sustainable Online Community
http://mashable.com/2010/07/30/sustainable-online-community

Seth Godin: Tribe Management
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/tribal-manageme.html

Where does responsibility for digital communications sit within a large organisation?
http://neilojwilliams.net/missioncreep/2010/death-of-the-web-team

Should publishers be running towards or away from Facebook
http://poynter.org/latest-news/media-lab/social-media/122934/should-publishers-be-running-towards-facebook-or-away-from-it

A Guide to Facebook Social Plugins
http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/technology/article/a-guide-to-facebook-social-plugins-for-small-business-amy-mae-elliott

A Collection of Social Networking Statistics for 2010
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/01/19/a-collection-of-social-network-stats-for-2010

Information Age vs Attention Age
http://aaronendre.com/2009/10/26/step-aside-information-age-the-attention-age-is-here

Please be very mindful of Information Gluttony
http://www.toggle.uk.com/journal/information-gluttony

Ken Robinson: the moving case for creating an education system that nurtures
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Matt Ridley: When ideas have sex
http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html

Seven Lessons from games for transforming engagement
http://tomchatfield.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-ted-talk-seven-gaming-lessons-for.html

57 Social Media Policy Examples and Resources
http://socialmediatoday.com/davefleet/151761/57-social-media-policy-examples-and-resources

Teaching Digital Literacy and Citizenship
http://www.commonsensemedia.org/schools

How to Get More Privacy From Facebook’s New Privacy Controls
http://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2010/05/more-privacy-facebook-new-privacy-controls

The Internet Identity Workgroup for Identity Commons
http://www.internetidentityworkshop.com/about/

Douglas Rushkoff – Life Inc.
(ISBN 978-0-141-04525-2. Book available at http://rushkoff.com)

Ken Robinson – The Element, how finding your passion changes everything
(ISBN 978-0-224-08203-7. Book available at http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/the-element)

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Written for the NACUE Learning Programme. The following text was originally drafted and posted on 12/08/10.

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In March 2010, as part of the National Student Enterprise Conference, NACUE invited Carl Jeffrey of FellowCreative.com to share his experiences, insights and beliefs surrounding Social Media and the ever-changing digital-landscape. Although Carl insists he’s neither a Social Media Consultant nor an academically qualified Marketer, in recent years his reputation as a design innovator, educator, trend spotter, commentator and facilitator has grown rapidly through involvement in social media communications and the wider social-web – his clients include UK Universities, the Worlds #1 Sustainable Technology Company and the UK’s #1 Specialist Social Media Agency – his bio reads ‘Creative Midwife™ & Joiner-of-Dots. Brand-Communication, Digital-Ideation, Sustainable-Creativity, Social-Enterprise… attracted to inspiration & shiny things…’

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The Introduction

Hello. I’m Carl *~) Accepting NACUE’s invitation to support, inspire, connect, and become an advocate for over 65 university enterprise societies across the UK, representing in excess of 35,000 entrepreneurial students is both a great honour and a great responsibility.

As I sit down to write this I’m acutely aware the NACUE Learning Programme provides a critical knowledge base for ever-changing Student and Academic Society Presidents and Committee Members; it aims to deliver you a thorough collection of guidance documents to cover all aspects of establishing, running and developing a successful University Enterprise Society. However, in some specialist and complex areas, delivering such complete, comprehensive, failsafe documentation can prove challenging and sometimes impossible – ‘Social Media’ is one such topic.

Searching Google.com for the term ‘Social Media’ puts ‘About 276,000,000 Results’ at your instant disposal – some results are very worthy of investigation, others are not. A growing abundance of information, video tutorials, case studies, search-engine-optimisation (SEO) strategies, and marketing techniques to ‘build a brand on Facebook.com’ and ‘increase your number of Twitter.com followers’, etc. – for this very reason I’m not intent on re-inventing the generic wheel – at the end of this document you will find a short list of my recommended reading and resources, but first I intend to cover what I believe to be the important stuff.

This ‘How To Use Social Media’ guide can’t promise you a one-size-fits-all step-by-step manual of Social Media techniques and strategies. Instead, I’ve prepared this document for those whom don’t speak in Technobabble (mostly), to explore the values inherent in NACUE and the words: University, Enterprise and Society. I write from the heart of my intuition and experiences, from between the lines of all I’ve read, done and think I’ve learned from. I underline one fact: ‘communication channels, technologies, social-norms and the digital-landscape evolve globally, by the second – this means what exists today, may change tomorrow’. I really hope to inspire you to question your perception of Social Media and its potential value to you and others, thus empowering you to ‘work beyond What Is to deliver What Can Be™’. As the quote reads: “we can identify trends for the future but accurate predictions are impossible”.

In the realms of the World Wide Web (commonly called the Internet) and its related technologies, my most important advice is to: place strategic bets but always retain your ability to pivot – prepare to fail forward!

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What is the Social-Web?

The Internet now provides an increasingly diverse and innovative set of tools that allow people to connect with others, share information, socialise and collaborate together. The term ‘Web 2.0’ is commonly used to reference the specific websites and applications (Apps) that help facilitate such interactive information sharing, interoperability and collaborations across the Internet as a whole (and I mean across multiple platforms and online spaces, not just within ‘so-called’ social-networks like Facebook.com that are in fact silo’s of information where lots goes in but very little can be shared with people on the outside of its walls).

New websites, platforms, applications and features launch daily if not hourly. Information Architects Inc. created the diagram ‘Web Trend Map 3’ (http://informationarchitects.jp/trendmap3-countdown-sneak-peak). It is a brilliant example of information design and it does an extremely good job of visualising the connected and distributed ecosystems of Web 2.0. The diagram conveys a complex and interrelated version of an Underground Tube Map, with different zones and layers, each tube-line represents a different Web Trend (E.g. Gaming, Technology, Photos, News, Video, Social Network, Politics, Innovation, Music, File Storage, Blogging, etc), and travelling along each tube-line you find community stations at every stop (E.g. Google.com, Facebook.com, YouTube.com, Flickr.com, Twitter.com, BBC.co.uk, Guardian.co.uk, MySpace.com, Amazon.com, WordPress.com, etc).

The term ‘Social Web’ loosely describes how people socialize or interact with each other throughout and across this interconnected map and World Wide Web. It is also important to note that these connections and interactions aren’t now limited to computer screens, many of the latest devices, phone-handsets, iPads and games-consoles now provide both Internet and App integration and connectivity – and remember, this connectivity isn’t just stationary, its now ‘mobile’ and on the move.

The ‘Web Trend Map 3’ mentioned above, was in fact released in January 2008; much has evolved since. The Web Trend Map 4 (’09) and Web Trend Map 5 published in 2010 demonstrate just how quickly the Internet evolves; and how the ecosystems and connecting structures of today will undoubtedly adapt and develop to suit the trends and technologies of tomorrow.

Until recently most people formed their online-connections and social-networks through friends, contacts or shared interests. However, today a growing number of connections are being made through a geographic location, a point of interest (POI), or another form of locational (GPS) data – the fields of Augmented Reality and Social Gaming are growing, and applications like Gowalla.com are gaining traction and investment.

Increasingly, our Social Media activities and assets can be searched and identified not just by the Username(s), Publisher(s), Title(s) or Tag(s) but also by their context in time and space – E.g. a Digital Photograph taken on an iPhone or Nokia device already equipped with a global positioning system (GPS) receiver, will now likely contain (encoded into the digital file meta-data) the actual map-able location (latitude, longitude, and altitude; plus the time) the photo was taken.

The term ‘Semantic Web’ describes the methods and technologies that allow machines and devices to understand the meaning (and meta-data) – or “semantics” – of information on the World Wide Web.

Only a few years ago online communication and audience engagement would have focused on a single location, your website, and broadcast monologues and advertising would have been used solely to drive customers to it. Today, we recognise that people increasingly hangout and socialise across multiple locations, different online-spaces and social-networks, they frequent multiple groups and tribes, and what’s more they’re now used to home-delivery and on-demand – if you wish to engage them it must be within their territories, where they choose to hangout, on their terms not yours, and you must respect and value them as an individual, not as a number or mass-market. Respect has to be earned, and value(s) must be shared beyond price-point.

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What is Social Media?

It is safe to suggest that you, fellow academics, students, entrepreneurs, business-leaders, marketers and technologists perceive, describe and wish to use Social Media in different ways; most focus on ‘Social Media for PR’ or ‘Social Media for Marketing’ – hence the now somewhat throw-away terms ‘Social Media Marketing’ and ‘Social Media Consultancy’.

It seems that attitudes to the term ‘Social Media’ differ greatly and its definition seems increasingly meaningless – perhaps the inevitable result and downside of any buzz-terminology.

However, I presume: A) your University Society’s primary aim is to communicate your people-focused benefits and value(s), and B) you actually wish to engage and inspire conversations, and connect too and share in activities with fellow academics, students and members. This document should help you focus on the inherent value(s) of using ‘Social Media for Audience Engagement’ – and not the questionable hijacking of Social Media channels and platforms for one-directional broadcasting of monologues or self-interested-selling as is so often the case with monetised-minds and quick-win-business-ventures, sadly.

Quoting his article ‘Social Media for Audience Development & Building’, Christian Payne @documentally (the man I personally recognise as the UK’s #1 Social Media Journalist) says:
“If you’re using social media properly your audience is your community, social media is about communication, and community building. Community Building is developing your audience. The moment you have a community, you have participants, not observers. People. Not Bums on Seats.
In the modern world of millions of people vying for your attention, it’s not your presentation; it’s your connection to your community that’s important. This is where social media comes in. Social media offers invaluable tools in accessing the hearts as well as the minds of your participants. To people bombarded every day with ‘brand’, it’s the human touch of organisations that gets your interest and loyalty. Put more simply, social media tools aren’t about you; they’re about the people you want to speak with.”

Wikipedia.org (the worlds largest encyclopaedia, which is both freely available and user generated) defines Social Media as “media for social interaction, using highly accessible and scalable publishing techniques”. It goes on to say: “Social Media use web-based technologies to transform and broadcast media monologues into social media dialogues”. Now, assuming you’ve already heard some webby-speak banded about by your University ICT Department, and without wanting to get you technically lost or turn all geeky, Professor’s Andreas Kaplan and Michael Haenlein’s definition serves as a good introduction to some of the tech-terminology often associated with the realms of Social Media: “a group of Internet-based applications built on the ideological and technological foundations of Web 2.0, and that allow the creation and exchange of user-generated content.”

Parking the reference to ‘ideological foundations’ aside for later discussion I will attempt to demystify the different types of media and user-generated content that might be created or exchanged through Social Media. The acronym used by the threaded-conversation platform Phreadz.com serves to suggest most people converse, connect and share through V.I.T.A.L: Video, Images, Text, Audio and Links (such Links may be to an online news article or website, a particular map location or point of interest (POI), a digital artefact of sorts; the possibilities grow daily…).

Thinking about Social Media in terms of socially VITAL exchanges and interactions makes it perhaps a little easier to understand the difference between Broadcast Media and Social Media. I use the acronym V.I.T.A.L with great emphasis on the essential definition of the word ‘vital’. Social Media is not about tools, technologies, websites or even the medium. It is about understanding the accepted social norms and enablers of human behaviour; it’s about retaining the core values of society, social engagement, inspirational conversation and participation, not eroding such norms or values with self-interested monologues or promotion – being social is VITAL to inspiring, connecting, and engaging advocates, likeminds and people; truly supporting the development of an audience, tribe, society and community of inspirational friends and connectors.

In the introduction to his book ‘Life Inc’, Douglas Rushkoff writes:
“Sometimes it feels as if there’s just not enough air in the room – as if there were a corporate agenda guiding all human activity. At a moment’s notice any dinner party can slide invisibly into a stock promotion, a networking event, or an impromptu consultation – let me pick your brain. Is this why I was invited in the first place? Through sponsored word-of-mouth known as ‘buzz-marketing’, our personal social interactions become the promotional opportunities through which brands strive to be cults and religions strive to be brands”.

I constantly wonder to myself, and now I question you: Does the term ‘Social Media’ deserve a rethink?

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Social Media, Social Norms and ‘Elementals’

The theory of ‘Elementals’ is my own, it’s not an industry-recognised term or philosophy. I introduce it here not to confuse you, but to convey my continually developing thinking and ideology. Many of my concepts build upon already recognised principles: ‘Media Richness Theory’, ‘Media Naturalness Theory’ and Brian Solis’ ‘Hybrid Theory Manifesto’; and I remain inspired by the works of Sir Ken Robinson and motivations of Dan Pink.

Written by Sir Ken Robinson ‘The Element. How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything’ is an amazing book which I highly recommend to everyone – it’s certainly a must-read for anyone involved or interested in improving Education, Entrepreneurship, Creativity, Social Enterprise, Community Development or Civics and Society.

The book explores real people, as individuals, from the perspective of empowering passionate creativity, engagement, conversation and sharing, by firing up imaginations and motivations. Robinson suggests that when collections of people engage to create something much greater than any of them could create individually, they become more than the sum of their parts – he defines this as ‘the alchemy of synergy’. ‘The Element’ is the point at which natural talent meets personal passion.

I firmly believe that technology should be used to inspire and empower us to be better people – the Web’s potential to connect natural talents with passion and inspiration, provides you, us, our Universities, Enterprises and Societies, with a true catalyst for brilliance and value creation.

The term ‘Elemental’ is currently referenced by Wikipedia.org as a “Mythological being”, “the ancient idea of elements as fundamental building blocks of nature.”

Through exploring the differences between the ‘so-called’ Social Media and Social Networks of online, in comparison to the very natural ‘Elementals’ of social norms and human behaviour offline, you can begin to understand the valuable building blocks between the social and the media.

I propose these are the ‘Elementals’ of: fun, authenticity, kindness, usefulness, challenge and inspiration – expressed and experienced through art, story-telling, memes and the wider human sense of friendship.

“Great teachers have always understood that their role is not to teach subjects but to teach students. Mentoring and coaching is the vital pulse of the living system…” ~ Sir Ken Robinson.

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The Value and ROI of Social Media and its ‘Elementals’

There’s constant discussion and debate about the measurement and return on investment (ROI) of Social Media. Traditional industrialists, broadcasters and marketer minds are analytical, linear and strategic. They define measurement through a set of processes and numbers, numbers of followers, numbers of visitors and viewers, the number of potential customers, the number of sales – these minds simply don’t get the Web’s potential to create value (long-term and beyond profit) and develop long-standing relationships with and respect for people, education, entrepreneurship, society, and dare I say it ‘brand’.

For me, and hopefully you, the Value and ROI of Social Media can be found through focusing on ‘retention’, not recruitment. I suggest it’s not about the great numbers in Facebook groups. I propose it’s in forming true communities of people and participants who engage to become more than the sum of their parts – through contacts, conversations and ideas, VITAL to inspiring, connecting, and engaging advocates – Social Return On Investment (SROI).

Through conversation with and listening to your societies and members as individuals, you can learn to answer all their questions and needs, empowering your forging of long-term relationships and friends – this inevitably leads to improved ‘people-centred’ services and societies, and better understanding of future trends and values, and hopefully resulting in some additionally VITAL and much appreciated word of mouth.

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Practical & Actionable Social Media Advice:

In the realms of the World Wide Web (commonly called the Internet) and its related technologies, my most important advice to you is as follows:

What exists today may change tomorrow, so place strategic bets but always retain your ability to pivot – prepare to fail forward! Focus on ‘retention’ not recruitment!

Organizational charts can show your Societies hierarchy and structure; sadly they can’t capture how your organization or Society really works. Social communities are not like mechanisms; they are more like organisms – each is different, each requires a different approach, and all continue to evolve. Logic makes people think, emotions make people act!

Social Media is often viewed as an inexpensive tool for audience engagement, many of the applications and media services are indeed free to use and simple to setup but Social Media is far from inexpensive if your time is valuable – be prepared to dedicate your time and enthusiasm. And be mindful that if something seems to good to be true, it usually is – free tools and services are usually sustained by intrusive third-party advertising, Is this price worth paying or is your audiences full-consideration worth the paid-for version?

Great Products sell companies but Great People sell services and Society’s!

Social Media are enablers for human behavior – It’s about behavior not tools!

People and participants who truly engage can become more than the sum of their parts – Supporting them is VITAL to inspiring, connecting, and engaging advocates!

Students, colleagues and potential advocates weren’t born knowing how to use Web tools and technologies, or how to navigate Legal Requirements, Copyright or Facebook Privacy Settings – explore your organizational policy towards Age Of Majority (legal terms of Understanding and Agreement) regarding student consent (to appear in content, photos or film), and explore Data Protection and Social Media Policy – Lead through example and education!

Investigate your ‘Audience Persona(s)’ (hypothetical architypes) – Understand your people!

Understand your own value(s) and identity – Adopt a relaxed, conversational tone; find your accent!

Listen before you talk – Talk with people, not at them!

Effective conversation and engagement requires different media for, and understandings of, natural human sense(s) and ability (Visual, Auditory and Kinesthetic learning and communications) – Make VITAL content for individuals sensibilities!

Good Design, Copy-Writing, and Content Editing matters – Attention to detail delivers 30% more engagement! *

Social interaction encourages dialogue not monologue – engaging conversation and content means ‘compelling, fun, authentic, useful, challenging and inspirational’ – often expressed and experienced through art, story-telling, memes and the wider human sense of friendship. Ask yourself: Is it useful or is it compelling? And is it easily sharable or embeddable elsewhere?

Useful means contextual and relevant – Share other peoples insights and timely goodness! But remember it’s theirs, respect it, and them – always credit the source!

Community Management means participation and facilitation of multiple persona’s, tribes and belief systems across multiple places – Create the Theatre not the Play!

Communicate organizational change, activity and crucial debate – Quickly, simply, as it happens!

Expect and encourage constant dialogue, engagement and comments – The web is a conversation, join in with clear & frequent feedback! And admit your mistakes and lessons learnt!

Test users, tools, features and viewer devices – Accessibility is not an optional extra!

Think long-term flexibility, short-term scalability – Deliver today but plan for tomorrow!

Optimize your content with continuity and useful Account Names, Usernames, Filenames, Permalinks, Categories, Tags, RSS, Trackbacks, Pingbacks and Hashtags (#Tag) – Make sure your content can be searched and linked to, forever!

Monitor value and success every day. Search your visibility metrics with services like ‘HowSociable.com’ and Klout.com, and install ‘Google.com/Analytics’ on website(s) so you can measure progress, success and failure (find out if your existing website already has measurement tools and reporting to help guide your planning) – Google Yourself!

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Recommended Tools and Applications:

If your University, Enterprise or Society don’t already have a website (and even if you do), a good starting point is to sit down with 4-6 people (these should be actual students, potential users and members; not people in the organizational chain) and discuss what actually works and what doesn’t – focus on needs, wants and values – focus on retention not recruitment. Research what others are doing successfully and poorly; and explore your pre-existing websites, communication channels and legal-policies – go through the full list of highlighted points in the ‘Practical and Actionable Social Media Advice’ section of this document (above).

Once complete you should have a good understanding of your existing User Personas and your potential ambassadors. You should also understand your values, voice and tone. You should have a basic understanding of your VITAL media requirements and constraints – What media and application features do you need?

The following list outlines a host of my recommended tools and applications; many of the written definitions are derived from WikiMedia.org and WikiPedia.org for description accuracy. Please make sure you examine your own internal policies and data-protection guidelines, and all the applications terms of service and subscription contracts, before you make any decisions – the responsibility to make the right choice for you and your Society is yours alone, not mine. Many of these services are privately owned and free-to-use (funded by advertising, most of which isn’t too intrusive) – but please remember, what exists today may change tomorrow:

WordPress.com – is a free to use, semantic publishing platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards, and usability. Often used for personal weblogs (blogs), it provides social media support through embeddable media, widgets and content aggregations; along with basic design/theme customization and community features like commenting, search engine optimization (SEO) and content sharing goodness such as RSS and Analytical Stats. The WP platform is also available as a free open-source product via WordPress.org; increasingly used by self-hosted bloggers and organizations (both personal and commercial websites), with a constantly developing array of community features and Plugins. WordPress.org is fully-customizable, reliable and secure (as now used by Number10.gov.uk).

Facebook.com – undoubtedly the UKs biggest social network; a free-to-use social utility that connects people with friends and others who work, study and live around them. Currently home to 500 million active users globally. Developments like Facebook Connect, Facebook Social Plugin, Mobile App, Facebook Questions, Social Gaming Apps and GEO location features (Facebook Places), mean its here to stay and an extremely valuable channel for audience engagement. But remember, Facebook is currently a silo of information – place strategic bets but always retain your ability to pivot!

Twitter.com – a free-to-use micro-blogging platform with a limit of 140 characters per post or update (commonly known as a tweet). Defined as ‘the best way to share and discover what is happening right now’, much of its success has been built upon dedicated mobile apps and third party services. Increasingly being used by Students, Enterprises and Society’s it is likely to prove a valuable part of your conversational and personal connection toolkit. Daily content and conversation can be searched, shared and aggregated across the Web in the form of RSS Feeds, and embedded into websites and blogs (as well as such things as auto-updating your Facebook and LinkedIn status). Hashtags (#Tag) and Twitter Lists are two ways in which you can organize information, people, members and groups.

Flickr.com – a free-to-use image and video hosting website, web services suite, and online community. In addition to being a popular website for users to share and embed personal photographs, the service is widely used by bloggers to host images that they embed in blogs and social media. Free accounts provide some extremely useful but limited features (low quality image hosting and sharing, creative commons licensing, etc.). A subscription fee (approximately £16 per year) provides ad-free browsing and sharing features, archiving and search facilities, high-definition imagery and HD video hosting, accessible viewer counts and statistics and unlimited uploads, storage and bandwidth.

Viddler.com – a free-to-use interactive online video platform for uploading, sharing, enhancing, tagging, commenting on, and forming groups around videos. Competing against the more popular YouTube.com (and services like Vimeo.com and Blip.tv), Viddler provides an ad-free subscription account and some additional business specific services. YouTube.com is likely to remain the Web’s largest community library of searchable video content so I’d certainly recommend Optimising, Tagging and Uploading your content to it but I’d recommend investigating Viddler as your core video sharing service. Equipped with video analytics, HTML5, brand-able and customizable video players and an impressive feature-set of embeddable Viddgets.

Audioboo.fm – because sound is social and real voices are personable. AudioBoo provides a free-to-use mobile & web platform that effortlessly allows you to record and upload audio for your friends, family or the rest of the world to hear. With a diverse community of users, from Journalists to Independent Podcasters, Musicians to people having everyday conversations. It might just spark your imagination for the potential uses of sound and provide you with a simple insight into the more complicated world of Podcasting, iTunes, non-streamed webcasts and digital media syndication (as well as a host of other audio services: Spotify.com, SoundCloud.com, Blip.fm, Last.fm and RootMusic.com, etc.).

LinkedIn.com – is a free-to-use business-oriented social networking site. It is mainly used for professional networking. With 75 million registered users, spanning more than 200 countries and territories worldwide, it provides a continually developing set of features that allow you to share your career development, contacts, life, blog posts, tweets, upcoming events etc. with a growing network of professionals and industry groups.

MailChimp.com – start with a free account, upgrade at anytime. MailChimp provides an email marketing service to design, send, and track HTML email campaigns with a simple set of tools. An ad-supported but fully-functional account provides the capacity to send 3,000 emails per month to up to 500 subscribers. A Pay-As-You-Go account removes any third-party advertising, and a range of monthly subscription packages can cater for an unlimited number of emails (approximately £20 per month if your mailing list is no bigger than 2,500 members).

SurveyMonkey.com – is a free online survey software & questionnaire tool. Create and publish online surveys in minutes, and view results graphically and in real time. A free account allows up to 10 questions per survey and a maximum of 100 responses, whilst a monthly subscription (approximately £20) provides customizable and branded survey tools with unlimited questions and responses, and downloadable results and analytics.

Eventbrite.com – a free-to-setup online event registration tool, everything you need to bring people together for an event and sell tickets. Creating an event page and adding it to your blog or website takes about 5 minutes, define your ticket types and price, track sales and attendees with an event summary – simple. Eventbrite takes a small commission on the tickets you actually sell. Additional features include event/conference Name Badge design, etc.

Bit.ly – allows you to shorten, share, and track links (URLs). Reducing the URL length makes sharing easier, especially if you’re using services like Twitter.com that limit your updates (tweets) to 140 characters in length. Bit.ly also provides management and analytics for your shortened links so you can track popular links and traffic locations. Bit.ly is still a relatively new service, free-to-use and currently free from ads. It is certainly useful and I recommend it, but make sure any links you use ‘within’ your own website content don’t reference bit.ly because if bit.ly doesn’t exist tomorrow neither do all your shortened links.

Bambuser.com – Live video streaming from your mobile phone or webcam (other live-streaming services include Ustream.tv and Qik.com). Bambuser lets you instantly share your experiences with friends, family and followers all over the globe, whilst at the same time interacting with your audience through web-to-mobile chat. Bambuser also integrates with a wide range of global platforms and social networks, such as Facebook, Twitter and Myspace, as well your blog or website – you decide where you want to share your real-time broadcasting experiences. Commercial packages are available; otherwise ad-support is likely.

Mendeley.com – is a desktop and web program for managing and sharing research papers, discovering research data and collaborating online. For a University or student Society, Mendeley’s growing popularity and social sharing features make it a potential gold-mine for inspirational content, connections and advocates – certainly one to look into!

Paper.li – creates an online newspaper built from all the articles, blog posts, videos and photos shared on Twitter – Newspapers can be created for any Twitter user, list or Hashtag (#tag). Paper.li is an interesting example of how content, people and advocates from different places might be brought together (aggregated) to provide something greater than the sum of their parts. Other *filtering by collective trend* services like Flipboard.com help demonstrate what is both technically possible and increasingly popular.

Flattr.com – is a social micropayment platform (somewhat similar to the more widely known Chipin.com). Developed to help support you and the organizations and Societies people like. Adding a Flattr-Button to your website content might well help you fund future activities. Flattr is the newest and least proven service on my recommendations list; but if you’ve got some worthy content and Society activities planned it might be worth further investigation.

Gowalla.com – is a location-based social networking service that gives people around the world a new way to communicate and express. Users ‘check-in’ at Spots in their local vicinity, either through a dedicated mobile application or through the mobile website. As a reward users will sometimes receive virtual items from check-ins. With 150,000 active users in April 2010, this is certain to increase into 2011. As crazy as the concept may sound, if you want to explore the potential of social gaming and GEO location for community building and Society engagement this is my recommended place to start.

Google.com/Analytics – is a free web analytics solution that gives you rich insights into your website traffic and marketing effectiveness. Powerful, flexible and easy-to-use features let you see and analyze your traffic data – enabling you to write better-targeted content and strengthen your marketing initiatives. Google also provide Email services and a suite of Google Apps (document, presentation, spreadsheet and collaboration tools).

SocialMedia.PolicyTool.net – is far from perfect, but does provide you the ideal introduction to an important topic – Social Media Policy. PolicyTool helps streamline the process of policy development. Answering a brief questionnaire provides you with a customized document upon which to build. Social Media Policy is not yet a legal requirement but there are certain aspects of it that you really should be aware of. Please make sure you examine your own internal policies and data-protection guidelines, and all the applications terms of service and subscription contracts, before you make any decisions – the responsibility to make the right choice for you and your Society is yours alone, not mine.

CreativeCommons.org – is a nonprofit corporation dedicated to making it easier for people to share and build upon the work of others, consistent with the rules of copyright. Free licenses and other legal tools mark creative work with the freedom the creator wants it to carry, so others can share, remix, use commercially, or any combination thereof. Providing a flexible range of protections and freedoms for authors, artists, and educators.

Dropbox.com – is a digital storage service that syncs your files online for backup and sharing. Put your files into your Dropbox on one computer, and they’ll be instantly but securely available to you (and those you choose/invite) via any other computers (or mobile devices) with Dropbox installed (its even cross-compatible with Windows, Mac, and Linux). A basic 2GB Dropbox account is free, with additional Pro storage available from £6.50 per 50GB (approximately).

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I really do hope that my insights inspire you to question your perception of Social Media and its potential value to you and others, thus empowering you to ‘work beyond What Is to deliver What Can Be™’. As the quote reads: “we can identify trends for the future but accurate predictions are impossible”. Good luck and positive thoughts, Carl. *~)

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Recommended Reading and Resources:

(This document URL: http://www.fellowcreative.com/2010/08/how-to-use-social-media-the-elementals)

Social Media for Audience Development and Community Building:
http://ourmaninside.com/2009/12/28/social-media-for-audience-development-community-building

Engaging Through Social Media (a PDF Guide aimed at Civil Servants):
http://coi.gov.uk/guidance.php?page=264

Brain Solis: Hybrid Theory Manifesto (broken into three parts):
http://www.briansolis.com/2010/07/the-hybrid-theory-manifesto-the-future-of-marketing-advertising-and-communications-part-one

Information Architects Inc. created the diagram ‘Web Trend Map 3’:
http://informationarchitects.jp/trendmap3-countdown-sneak-peak

13 Qualities of a good Social Media Voice:
http://socialmediatoday.com/ckochster/155676/13-qualities-good-social-media-voice

The Impact of a good Editor on Content: *
http://www.ikiw.org/2010/07/16/ibm-web-team-measures-impact-of-an-editor-on-content

Helen Keegan: Social Media, Education, Industry – and motivation
http://heloukee.wordpress.com/2010/08/04/msc-social-media

RSA Video – Daniel Pink on intrinsic motivation:
http://comment.rsablogs.org.uk/2010/04/08/rsa-animate-drive

The 15 Web Principles as published by the BBC:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/bbcinternet/2009/03/ten_publishing_principles_for.html

Sound-bites about social-media usage and strategy – some are worth your attention, others are not:
http://whatthefuckismysocialmediastrategy.com

Habbo Hotel (habbo.co.uk) – understanding and developing your user Personas:
http://www.clubhabboforum.net/showthread.php?p=3262438

How to manage a Sustainable Online Community:
http://mashable.com/2010/07/30/sustainable-online-community

Seth Godin: Tribe Management
http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2008/01/tribal-manageme.html

Where does responsibility for digital communications sit within a large organisation?
http://neilojwilliams.net/missioncreep/2010/death-of-the-web-team

A Guide to Facebook Social Plugins:
http://www.openforum.com/idea-hub/topics/technology/article/a-guide-to-facebook-social-plugins-for-small-business-amy-mae-elliott

A Collection of Social Networking Statistics for 2010
http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2010/01/19/a-collection-of-social-network-stats-for-2010

Information Age vs Attention Age:
http://aaronendre.com/2009/10/26/step-aside-information-age-the-attention-age-is-here

Please be very mindful of Information Gluttony
http://www.toggle.uk.com/journal/information-gluttony

Ken Robinson: the moving case for creating an education system that nurtures
http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Matt Ridley: When ideas have sex
http://www.ted.com/talks/matt_ridley_when_ideas_have_sex.html

Seven Lessons from games for transforming engagement
http://tomchatfield.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-ted-talk-seven-gaming-lessons-for.html

57 Social Media Policy Examples and Resources:
http://socialmediatoday.com/davefleet/151761/57-social-media-policy-examples-and-resources

Douglas Rushkoff – Life Inc.
(ISBN 978-0-141-04525-2. Book available at http://rushkoff.com)

Ken Robinson – The Element, how finding your passion changes everything
(ISBN 978-0-224-08203-7. Book available at http://sirkenrobinson.com/skr/the-element)

I was honored to accept the invitation to share my experiences of the Social Web but before I said yes to anything I did make it very clear that I am neither a Social Media Consultant nor a qualified marketeer – it was only later that I discovered whom else was on the panel – I was humbled to be in the presence of Penny Power, Ryan Pinnick and Hermione Way! ;-)

I’d also like to thank all the enthusiastic folk I met yesterday – your energy, tweets and blog posts were/are greatly appreciated =)

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Here’s a written summary of my somewhat non-linear Slideshare presentation (below). Please also note I’ve adapted my original post to include some thoughts that stem from the panel session – the trend lists at the end are my thoughts alone.

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Zig Ziglar (the sales guru) suggests every sale has Five Basic Obstacles:

No need
No money
No hurry
No desire
No trust

I believe: traditional marketing and advertising place a focus on the first two (they present a market need and provide an affordable price-point) but Social Media and Conversation can help tackle the last three by developing/empowering long-term relationships and personable trust/transparency between people/individuals through passion/enthusiasm and understanding – I paraphrase @PennyPower when I say ‘Social Networks (online and off) are built upon friendship’ – helping, listening and inspiring – not through traditional marketing, advertising, selling or preaching!

I believe: modeling/building/funding/supporting Social Media platforms and Social Interactions through unsocial behaviors such as selling, ego, marketing and advertising present much pause for concern and contemplation – its not sustainable, it only devalues the words ‘Social’ and ‘Friend’!

Zig Ziglar suggests “People don’t buy for logical reasons, they buy for emotional reasons” and these are 9 points from Zig’s 11 point list for establishing a sale:

1. Establish value before you quote a price
2. Involve your customer with your product as quickly as possible
3.
4. Focus on relationships not transcription
5. Ask high gain and high impact questions
6. Accept the fact that some prospects really don’t want to think it over
7. Logic makes people think, emotions make people act
8. Make it easy for the buyer to buy
9. Interpret your benefits not your features
10. Listen first, then explain
11.

I believe: many ‘short-sighted and traditional’ Marketeers and Brands see the above behaviors through traditional lenses and sadly they are manipulating them for short term financial gain – this is not sustainable! I urge anyone venturing into the Social Web to buy a pair of binoculars and look at the bigger picture! >its growing by the day!<

I believe that being Social (online and off) can empower everything on the above list – please realize that there are no quick wins in regards to a financial return and it should not be the number one driving force – being ‘Social’ and being a ‘Friend’ is unlikely to make you a millionaire but it will develop you as a person and it’ll certainly make you opportunity rich! its truly amazing how many people want to help a friend who’s helped them!

I believe Great Products sell companies but Great People sell services!

I believe you’re not defined by your job title or brand positioning statement. You’re defined (perceived and valued) by ‘what you actually do’, the way you spend your time, the conversations you have and the authenticity of your voice when married with your actions – why not help others by tweeting or blogging about your inspirations and experiences (photos, relevant links, audioBoo’s etc)? If you are passionate about what you do as an entrepreneur, surely it can only be a good thing to build connections, learn how to do things better and to develop yourself and others as people? accept criticism and sign-posts along the way, make them constructive! remember, its about the journey, not the destination! sincerity will shine through, such things are impossible to fake long term, as some marketers and brands are already finding out! ‘-)

What do you think folks?

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Re. Student Questions: these are my trending observations and predictions, hopefully they’ll provide food for thought ‘-)…

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Industry Trends

1. Crowd sourcing ideas/products (E.g. ChatRoulette’s remove perverts prize, and services like Groupon)
2. Social Media Policy (E.g. Policy Guidance & PolicyEspresso)
3. Geo-location & Augmented reality (mapping data in locational context – QR & RFID tags vs Gowalla and Foursquare – earn points/prizes through loyalty interactions)
4. New scaling/working models: co-working and freelance collaboration
5. Recommendation Engines and ROI Measurement (collecting, analyzing and measuring data, conversation, networks, purchases etc)
6. Real-time (including mobile video/content streaming and data search)
7. Mobile Payment Systems (square, PayPal, Bump and NFC’s N-Mark)
8. Open Data – government and service APIs
   
   {*My prediction and tipped field to watch*} Multi-dimensional narrative (authenticity, story-telling and play within/across conversation, Facebook Games, Online Marketing and iPad Apps – including new ‘add value’ dimensions to publishing, promotion and engagement – this is where my long-term money is on services like Gowalla over the likes of Foursquare, in my mind they have two very different social narrative values)

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Industry/User Challenges

1. Up-to-speed Education (online identity, ethics,tools) – Related topics: Chat Roulette, OpenID, OAuth & TwitterAuth to reduce identity phishing scams and spam, services like SocialSentry now offer businesses the ability to track employees via social networks and conversations on twitter/Facebook/etc.
2. Proprietary/Open-Source, Monetization & Measurement (Subscriptions/Freemium/Advertising/Free)
3. Accessibility & Compatibility for multiple devices and navigation types (muti-touch vs browser, desktop vs mobile, Surface vs iPad etc. – including the evolution towards gesture based interaction like Jonny Lee’s genius, SeaDragon and technologies like Canesta – expect to see interface evolve towards more physical interactions like BumpTop and SixthSense)
4. Law & Legislation – Related topics: Digital Economy Bill, Google in China, Social Media Policy and Facebook T&Cs
5. Understanding transparency vs engagement – we don’t consume, we filter and question (government, business, advertising) – large businesses need to find/develop passionate and inspiring staff, entrepreneurs should be naturals!
6. Data-legacy & Sustainable Hosting (Eg. dead short-url links, backup and http://deathbook.info)
7. Data Publishing & Distribution – Related Topics: Publishing Industry vs Apple/Google/Facebook… iPad – Flash vs HTML5 video…

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Summary Insights:

1. Traditional marketing is not a ‘social’ activity so don’t apply its mindset to Social Media or Social Networks – Related topics: Top down vs bottom up, one directional vs multi-directional, multi-channel multi-media/um)
2. Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are all very different – please recognize/realize this!
3. If you’re starting a website I suggest ‘self-hosting it for a minimal fee’ and host its content where possible (but make sure its shareable and embeddable elsewhere) and build in measurement tools (I recommend WordPress and Google Analytics – then SEO and Google Adwords can come later – at least build the foundations with a sensible database format like MySQL/XML)
4. Social Media is the playground of Individuals, agile business’s and entrepreneurs
5. Social Media’s real strength is in its possibilities, ideas and connections to inspiring minds and challenging opinions
6. If you choose to use Social Media then be prepared to participate (build identity/trust/respect/transparency/connections through participation in conversations and inspiring/useful/unique content) – listen and learn, apply the 2 ears 1 mouth philosophy of a BarCamp – be prepared for criticism and address it, don’t brush it under the carpet – focus on quality not quantity, long ‘unique’ blog posts are worth much more to your community than short posts of information they can already find elsewhere ‘don’t create noise, create gems!’ – build your content into a story, narrative is often engaging if it has a plot!
7. Please be aware that 3rd party services can and will change their business models – I personally believe services like Twitter will start charging businesses and providing limited data (API) access to individuals very soon (its likely other services will start advertising in your content feed), don’t put all your eggs in one basket in terms of YouTube for video, check great services like Viddler.com (its equipped with widgets and analytics) and be aware of using short url services (bit.ly is my current preference but even I’ve got a long list of improvements to make to my blog)
8. Social Media Communication is not a replacement for traditional marketing, attending events or real-world face-to-face meetups or conversations over coffee/beer, it is simply a supporting channel – get out and meet people! put your twitter address on your business card and use #hashtags! > when social online meets social offline true value is realized (both ROI and SROI FTW!) see > Twestival.org, Tuttle.101 and many more!

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Please do checkout these resources – click the links below:

This is a better introduction to me >my @fellowcreative padawan blog-post<

http://informationarchitects.jp
Do you have a Facebook?
BBCs Virtual Revolution series (you should find all 4 episodes on YouTube)
TED Video on Creative Commons
Online Ethics and Digital Legacy
The UK Digital Economy Bill
Entrepreneurship Advice from the founders of Air B&B (4 episodes in total)
The future of Game & Play (watch the embeded video!)
Seth Godin’s post entitled ‘The Ubiquity of Competition’ (check all his blog content!)

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Over the years I’ve learnt that forming my thoughts into a written story provides me with a linear process and a declaration of intention, but most useful of all it delivers a new perspective and the viewpoint of hindsight – which is much needed today (01/01/10) to inspire both realisation of my situation and some direct action to guide me.

Christmas and New Year provided time away from the laptop, keyboard and iPhone, and I did my utmost to avoid the usual daily dose of Social Web, tweets and posts. The break has proven truly fascinating and sobering, not because its been fueled with intellectual conversations with Wiseman from Nazareth, but because it delivered a much needed period of self-reflection and thought.

As I type this I’m faced with a virtual desktop of half finished Word Documents and lists of to-do’s, all of which must be edited and prioritized – this document serves as a psychological waste-basket for some items and begins a 2010 commitment to others – both are much needed if I’m to have any hope of keeping my sanity and developing a truly sustainable business in the years ahead.

Today, my bank statements tell me I’m £2,000 down into my business overdraft and in debt to the tune of £4,000 personally, on the positive side I filed and paid my VAT on Christmas Eve, I have no outstanding supplier bills until February, I’m due £650 in invoice-able time and above all I own all my studio equipment outright (probably £10,000′s worth on ebay). – In short, I start 2010 financially down but in no way out. At the age of 30 I’m poorer than I’ve ever been but I’ve never been so opportunity rich.

Before I look forward into 2010 I feel it important to remember the path I’ve traveled thus far (and for any potential readers of this, may it provide an insightful lesson, and a rare glimpse into a Padawan business mind).

Its now four years since I stood on a high-wire ledge in New Zealand, the eight-second free-fall that followed delivered much more than I expected. I hung suspended at the bottom of the 134m bungy cord, fueled by adrenaline and a realization of “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” – it was at this moment a seed was planted in my mind – return to the UK, forsake the short-term safety of a mortgage and pension, and set about developing a successful business and positive mindset based on personal challenge and social value.

I was twenty-six. I’d already managed an agency studio, been registered as self-employed for years, and been a founding partner of Rorschok Creative (which was less of a traditional commercial partnership, and more of a part-time creative/collaborative team) – I’d certainly worked hard to learn my trade but at no point had I ever been solely responsible for making decisions to drive a business forward, but most importantly, I’d never been solely responsible for the consequences – I felt I needed to learn from my own mistakes.

Linus Pauling (one of only four individuals to have won multiple Nobel Prizes) once said “if you want to come up with a few good ideas, or even one great one, then you have to generate lots of ideas” [quoted from Jonathon Porritt's Audio Essay "Creative Sustainability" 2006 Podcast].

Suspended at the end of a bungy cord, I already understood Paulings quote to be true in regards to ideas and creativity, but upon boarding the Air New Zealand flight back to the UK I began an enlightening journey… and today I understand that Paulings philosophy also applies to life, experience, inspiration, people, knowledge, ability and business. I also now realise that bad ideas and poor decisions are inevitable along the way, and as it happens, they’re 100% necessary to get a great result.

In October 2007 I opened a business bank account in the name of Fellow Creative, I instructed my accountant to process a formal VAT registration; and the rest as they say, is history. With many thanks too, and loving memories of a late family relative, I opened Fellow Creative with £10,000 in the bank but I also had the words of an ex girlfriend ringing in my ears “Carl, you’re an idealist, you’ll never run a business where you get on with every single colleague or client, or do what you want every single day”. Today, on 1st January 2010, I realize that its cost me £16,000 to find out that she was half-right.

“If you want to come up with a few good ideas, or even one great one, then you have to generate lots of ideas” – In addition, I suggest that you also have to do and experience lots of different things, step outside your natural comfort zone, meet and work with people you don’t always see eye to eye with and take risks based on gut feel rather than monthly bank statements – I follow my instincts every single day, and taking the rough with the smooth, I enjoy every single minute of it. (I recommend watching this).

In early 2008 I thought this philosophical approach was traveling pretty well, that is until I was hit by a 20 ton aggregate lorry and a double-decker bus in a near fatal car accident, a true story that not only shut the A26 for three hours but thankfully reminded me that “what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger” and forced me to realize that although I’d been making gut feel decisions with people and time, if I was to truly succeed in business I really needed to gamble on my instincts with money.

Now four years on, I’ve made errors and poor decisions across all areas, and some gambles are yet to be proven but I’ve done my best to learn from everything – I’ve rarely made the same mistake twice and the few times I’ve been foolish enough to do so now insures I’ll not make them a third – not even I’m that stupid *-)

To this day I’ve not run a traditional business, I’ve not been driven by money, or operated upon a written business plan or formalized cash-flow forecasts and targets, nor have I had small-print terms and conditions or even a vision to grow to employ staff – I’ve lived at home with my parents (thanks for the support Mum and Dad) and slept on friends sofas (you know who you are, you are all legends – thank you!). I’ve paid myself little and randomly, yet I survived to turnover 32,000+ last tax year. I existed upon my creative skillset and curiosity, combined it with manners “show respect to everyone and never waste someones time” and a northern blood up-bringing “my handshake is my word and the first round is on me”. I supported efforts with the initial savings pot of £10,000 and proceeded to put myself in as many challenging situations as possible to help me better understand what I should value in this world, and in doing so I aimed to develop a Credentials document and portfolio, trusted contact network and list of testimonials that could, if need be, get me a Creative Director’s job anywhere I might wish to work.

Of the past thirty years I’ve spent seventeen in academic learning yet during the past four I’ve learned far more from being polite, helping people and simply saying yes to challenges, curiosity, intuition and gut-feel – but at every stage ‘knowing and believing’ I’ve got the ability to deliver anything I put my mind too – even if it kills me or my bank account – I’ve not tried to buy anyone’s friendship or use money as an advantage but I’ve made some great friends and colleagues, and I’ve delivered on everything I said I would, and all my suppliers got paid before I did.

At the age of 30 I still know relatively little about banking or business finance, which perhaps explains why £1,500 of the above £16,000 went on Northern Rock shares, but I’ve gained much understanding about myself and the worlds around me (referring to both the real-world and the digital-world). I believe I now understand the value of people and the value of investment – in both myself and others, and how and why others might invest in me – I believe that Communication is not about talking, its about listening. Value can always be found in encouraging and enabling others – being Social, Transparent and Honest.

2007-2009 I did many things, some of which were for paying clients but more were for the experience, knowledge and ideas. I founded and funded SustainableWidget, moved into and sadly back out of a second studio at The Skiff, fell in love with the co-worker mindset of Brighton, invested time and money into Social-Web Platforms, FellowCreative.com and Social Media Education and Events, worked with and mentored 3 talented upcoming designers (1,2,3), taught other creatively minded students, spoke at events on Creative Sustainability and found myself on iTunes as a downloadable PodCast and presented to a crowd of 80+ at Nesta. I facilitated thinking for a No.1 agency, began to seed Creative & Social Innovation philosophies like BarCamp and Co-working in Kent, learned about the Digital Economy, Digital-Legacy, wider Social-Web and real-time, traveled to Budapest to blog about Nokia, played with and gave away the latest devices, worked the door at the very first Twestival, supported random events, attended GeeknBury, WordCamp and numerous conferences, gave-away tickets, sponsored a gumball rally for charity, built contacts in video-on demand, live-stream and mobile, developed a list of Fellow Trustees and started Tuttle.101 – long may it continue.

At every stage I’ve taken great pleasure in meeting, helping and working with great people and organisations but because my experiences have been so diverse and my knowledge so seemingly scattered, I’ve struggled with how to describe my job role and offering (even the VAT man has me down as ‘specialty design service’) – thankfully respected names like Nixon McInnes and WOMWorld Nokia have presented me prize opportunities based on their own gut feelings and conversations with me.

“Sometimes you need someone else or something else to cultivate the great creative thinking. For a crucial piece of creative thinking we asked Carl to help facilitate us, and use his creative methodologies, his knowledge of our market but crucially his distance from our consultancy to improve our chances of making the mental jumps we needed. It worked! Carl was patient, thoughtful and used fun, theory and careful interventions to help us find ourselves some little gems of thought. A good man and one I’m happy to recommend”
Will McInnes, MD of NixonMcInnes

I love my title ‘Creative Midwife & Joiner-of-Dots’ but when Will McInnes gave me his testimonial I suddenly realised that I could only be defined by what I do – my now approach – not based on what I had done (The whole is greater than the sum of its parts).

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“Thoughts become things, choose the good ones!”

~The Universe. (via KB @ktotheb)

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Some may think of financial transparency as bold, others may define it as stupid – either way its honest and to learn from. Its all part of the journey, thankfully I’ve already secured enough paid client work to keep me alive until mid-Feb, with a superb Tender Opportunity already in motion for a February-March project *-)

At the mere age of 30, I’m poorer than I’ve ever been but I’ve never been so opportunity rich – nor have I been so excited about the future!

I begin 2010 as a product of all my experiences, conversations, contacts, learning curves, plus all the good ideas that haven’t left my mind or my gut in the past four years, I have a great idea and I’m intent on creating a truly Sustainable enterprise out of it! The best part about the idea is that its so clear in my mind that I’ve already written the Feasibility Plan. I plan to continue meeting and looking for the right investor(s) – to invest in me, not necessarily financially, but as I have done for others, with belief, time, advice and encouragement.

Here’s what I’ll be doing with the month of January:
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January Tasks:
A. Define a 2010 day rate for @FellowCreative – Done.
B. Write a draft Feasibility Plan for NewFellowVenture – 04/01/10 – Complete.
C. Get trusted feedback on NewFellowVenture proposition – 12/01/10 – Complete.
D. Prepare NewFellowVenture Plan for Partners/Investors – 20/01/10 – 50% Done
E. Submit LL Brand Proposal – 09/01/10 – Done!
F. Arrange Brighton meetings for 14-15/01/10 (TN,LL,RI,BB,P) –
G. Publish Social Media Blog Post – Late but complete!
H. Submit Client Summary Document – 11/01/10 – Complete!
I. LL Brand Phase 1 – 14/01/10 – Complete!
J. Prepare NMI Documentation & dispatch for 3 meets – deadline 15/01/10 – Done!
K. Prepare ORG & CK document for Jonathon Shaw MP meeting – 6.15pm 15/01/10 – Done!
L. Organise Tuttle.101 – 18/01/10 – Done!
M. Update Fellow Creative Credentials & Documentation – 20/01/10
N. Submit Tender Document – 21/01/10 – Done!
O. Implement Marketing Strategy for @FellowCreative – latest 10/02/10

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Hopes for 2010 (updated with URL links 24/05/10):
1. Update FellowCreative.com and define ‘What I Do’
2. Earn enough to attend SXSW Interactive > Done – Click to See!
3. Organise Tuttle101 Collaborative Project or BarCampKent
4. Inspire an Open-source Platform (#Deathbook #deBill #Floor101 #EmptyShops)
5. Plan a 15,000ft LIVE-stream sky-dive for charity

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Companies I’d like to talk to more:
ToggleUK, Automattic, NixonMcInnes, Ribot, TorchBox, 1000heads, WOMWorld Nokia, Nesta, FutureGov, PolicyUnplugged, Channel4, Ideas.org, 33digital…

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I say this because I’ve worked with them all…

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David Ince
Author, Film-maker, Intellectual, Designer & Do’er

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Daniel Cudby
Strategic Thinker, Designer… eats Photoshop Retouching & Illustrator for breakfast

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Jonathan Markwell
iPhone App, Ruby on Rails & Twitter Developer – co-worker & all round good egg!

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Scott Evans
Designer & CMS Developer (XHTML, CSS, PHP, MySQL & WordPress)

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Gemma Garner
Designer & Maker of Crafty Stuff (iPhone sleeves etc…), Ethical thinker

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Christian Payne
Social Media Journalist, Video Blogger & Legendary Content Creator

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Jack Butler
Generation Y Specialist, Inspiring Young People & Public Speaker

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Benjamin Breckler
Designer for Mobile & Web – now working at Ribot!

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Alan Offord
Graphic Designer (up-coming-talent) and Tea Drinker Extraordinaire

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Gareth Rogers
Facebook Developer

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Remy Sharp
jQuery, JavaScript & HTML 5

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Steve Lawson
Social Media, Musician & Thinker

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Ellen deVries
Brand Language Consultant & Copywriter

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Josie Fraser
Social & Education Technologist, Digital Literacy, Identity & Citizenship

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Paul Anderson
Sustainability Consultant

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Tom Nixon
Social Media Consultancy (trust me, I don’t use that title lightly)

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Jon Kossmann (Kosso)
Createch – Social-Web Developer Extraordinaire & Founder of Phreadz.com

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Brian Noonan
LIVE-streaming & video-on-demand (Web & Mobile)

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People I trust enough to work with at the next opportunity:

* those I’ve not met in person at least twice

Anthony Ribot – User Interface, Experience & Apps (anything Mobile)
Phil Campbell – Content Creator, Video Blogger, Social-Web planner
Ben Sauer – User Experience (UX) Consultant
Mike Little – WordPress Developer *
Ben Walker – Musical Legend & Early Adopter
Stef Lewandowski – Developer: #DEbill http://debillitated.heroku.com & http://stef.io *
Paul Bradshaw – Blogger, Senior Lecturer in Online Journalism
Steve Purkiss – Drupal & Open Source Evangelist
Lloyd Davis – Social Artist, Community Builder
Antony Mayfiled -Digital Marketing Consultant
Oisin Lunny – Music & Social Technology
Ilicco Elia – Mobile, Web & iTV (high-value strategy)
Victoria Lennox – Enterprise & Academic Policy
Little Laura – Designer & Web Developer (with solid code and ethics)
Benjamin Read – Writer, Publisher & Indy Film Producer
Jof Arnold – Developer (currently iPhone App focused)
Peter O’Neill – Web Analytics
Gavin Wray – Content Manager, Information Architecture *
James Yorke – Online Marketing & Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Penny Jackson – Journalist & Audio PodCaster
Dave Goodchild – PHP (Zend, Codeigniter), Rals/Sinatra, SQL/MySQL, Y.Pipes
James Whatley – Social Media, content Creator, Blogger (anything Mobile)
Josh Russell – Product and idea development
Aral Balkan – Flash/Flex, Renaissance Geek & User Experience Advocate *
Alison Coward – Enterprise & Management for the Creative Arts
Allix Harrison-D’Arcy – Crap at mornings. Dead Amusing,  still not dead.
Matt Weston – Strategist & Planner (knowledge, design, space and people)
Dan Thompson – Empty Shops Network
Michael L Radcliffe – Artist & Plumber
Erica Grigg – Sustainability in Social Media Consultant *
Chris Dalby – Developer, HomeCamp Organiser
Leif Kendall – Technology Copywriter
Derek Mantle – Graphic Designer
Russ McVeigh – Web Developer, Flash Actionscript, XML, SOAP, JSON
Stephen Bartholomew – Ruby on Rails
Rob O’Callaghan – Developer, Connector
Neil Pepper – iPhone/Android/Mobile App development
Nicholas Butler – Developer (WordPress Back-End)
Xander Cansell – Connector and Planner (of anything) *
Dan Donald – Web Dev/Design, Social-Media, PHP/MySQL, CSS, jQuery
Jenny Brown – Internal Communications and Consumer Engagement
Debbie Davies – Co-Discovery Films
Danny Hope – Interaction & User Experience (UX) Design
Premasagar Rose – Social innovation + front-end engineering
Robert McIntosh – Marketing & Wine
Peter-Paul Koch (PPK) – Front-End Development (#1 Mobile Consultant) *
Euan Semple – Consultant, Writer
Alan Moore – Engagement/Participation *
Toby Moores – Interactive Game/TV/Online/Mobile
Daren Forsyth – Engagement Jedi
Mike Atherton – Writer for Screen

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My recommended ones to watch (some are students):

* those I’ve not met in person at least twice

Merle Cordier – Podcast & Radio producer/editor – will call it as it is!
Toby Watson – Mashupr & Maker of different things and crazy tech stuff!
Richard Mackney – Early Adopter, Blogger, Content Creator – interestingly visual! *
Dave Stone – Nomadic Business Designer
Thomas Forsyth – Artist & Maker *
Paul Davis – Designer, Developer – impressively self taught! *
Mark Phipps – Microsoft & Apple Certified Support
Katie Fotis – Branding and Marketing Student – full of enthusiasm!
Gaurav Patel – Blogger, a Voice with Good Tone – seeks an opportunity! *
Al-nashir Bandali – Marketing Planner & Strategist
Jon-Paul Davies – ASP.NET, AmpliFeeder *
Will Waterman – Thinker not Do’er – in the right team this man could be gold!
Lee Gavin – Psychogeographer
Giulia Piu – Designer, UX Researcher
Nathan Parris – Graphic Designer
William Morland – a young man going somewhere! *

As a gregarious Fellow who gets about quite a lot, I am fortunate to know a large number of diversely talented individuals and companies. So much so that I have never had to contact a recruitment agency to find someone with a particular skill set.

Although I often feel such a network has formed itself quite naturally, when I launched the Fellow brand I did consciously set out to meet gifted individuals that I might collaborate with and even be able call upon when and if I needed to. The name Fellow was born from the concept of exacting standards, academic connection, and a professional commitment to question everything and develop over time – but also the idea that I am a fellow creative, part of a larger community of talented individuals driving the future of technology, communications and creative disciplines forward into an uncertain future.

Many of the people I have met over the last few years have helped to shape what Fellow has ultimately become. I once read that Einstein wasn’t born a genius, he forged himself into one by surrounding himself with exceptionally smart people. I might be about as far removed from Einstein as a scruffy creative type can get, but we do share one thing in common: I am also surrounded by exceptional people.

Over the last few months, people from places like Tuttle, Tweetups, BarCamp and my broader social web have been getting in contact asking if I know anyone who can develop, say, widgets for this or a design for that. In each case I’ve been able to make those connections.

With this in mind, I am proud to launch Fellow Trustees.

The concept is very simple. The people and companies on this list I whole-heartedly recommend. They are exceptional at what they do and conduct themselves with absolute professionalism. I trust them enough to align my Fellow brand with them. They are Fellow Trustees.

If you are thinking about talking to a creative recruitment agency to help fulfill a project, I would say check out the individuals and companies on the following lists first (in time I may even develop some relevant twitter lists too but some of my recommended connections can’t be found on twitter).

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CLICK HERE TO VIEW LIST