How To Create Your First iPhone App (2012 Edition) How to Build Trust in a Virtual Workplace - Keith Ferrazzi by Keith Ferrazzi | 2:00 PM October 8, 2012 Teams can’t function well when co-workers don’t trust one another. Building and maintaining trust in the traditional, physical workplace is difficult enough, but the process is even tougher in a virtual environment, where people often have to work with people they haven’t met in person. Some biologists believe that we are hardwired to distrust everyone except our own family members. Studies have shown, however, that trust can indeed be actively accelerated and maintained on virtual teams even when they have to be assembled on the fly with employees scattered across the globe. Leverage “swift trust.” There are two ways to assure you take best advantage of the benefits of swift trust. Pro-actively build interpersonal trust. Managers can help encourage such personal connections by starting meetings with a “Take 5″ for people to talk about what’s been happening in their lives, both professionally and personally. Communicate with predictability.
Happy 30th birthday, compact disc! Watch a demo from the first TED, in 1984 Happy 30th birthday, compact disc. The CD was introduced on October 1, 1982 — but in early 1984 it was still slowly rolling out to consumer markets. In this surprising demo onstage at the very first TED, in February 1984, Mickey Schulhof of the Sony Corporation describes and then demonstrates the use of “compact disc digital audio.” In the screengrab above, Mickey Schulhof of Sony is saying: “The disc itself is about 5 inches in diameter. Love this? PS: The inevitable animated gif:
Walmart's Angry Workers Use A Web Spoof To Rain On The Company's Anniversary This week, Walmart workers in 12 states have walked off the job, in a wave of strikes set off today with a protest outside the investors’ meeting in Bentonville, Arkansas. Their numbers are tiny so far: mere dozens out of 1.4 million Walmart employees nationwide; a workers’ organization, OUR Walmart, claims just 5,000 dues-paying members, most of whom are still not on strike. But online, their impact is outsized. Walmart has set up a website, Walmart 50, commemorating its 50th anniversary with lots of heartwarming videos from employees, whom it calls "associates." The videos on Walmart’s own site take place in a world in which Walmart, which claims an average hourly wage of $12.54 for full-time workers (most are part-time), is a great place to build a career. Meanwhile, Walmartat50.org tells us about Kehlan Williams, a teenager, left taking care of his three younger siblings as his mother worked unpredictable shifts and then was abruptly fired. Walmart could not be reached for comment.
Breakdown: A Strategy for Engaging Passion Communities Left: A social network mapped out, this one is of influential photographer Kris Krug’s social graph. These breakdown posts often contain content that didn’t fit into research reports, and contain input from industry experts or deeper client engagements, see other ‘breakdown‘ posts. Unsure how to deal with the most passionate communities your market has to offer? A Passion Community Defined: Is one that contains highly focused brand and lifestyle advocates often on a third-party (one which you have no control over) website that the brand does not manage. Passion Community Scenarios Risks to Engaging a Passion CommunityWhat are the risks of jumping into a passion community without a strategy? Key Principals of Passion Community Engagement Passion communities may outlast your brand. Three Stages for Engaging Passion Communities Stage 1: Preparing: with the Ears and Eyes First, deploy a listening station. Stage 2: Build Rapport with Community Leaders Related Resources
The High Price of Social Media Risk Management - Alexandra Samuel by Alexandra Samuel | 4:32 PM October 19, 2012 In the event of uproar, please invoke social media policy. That’s the in-case-of-emergency sign that might as well hover over the desk of any communications manager, as the latest social media crisis reminds us. The Times responded by invoking its social media standards — even though it has no written social media policy. “[Y]ou are a Times journalist, and your online behavior should be appropriate for a Times journalist. Working from this principle, the Times suspended Goldman from his weekly column for the next four weeks. Right result — wrong reasons. Yes, Goldman needs to be held accountable for his tweet. But it’s one thing to hold a journalist (or any employee) accountable for what they post about their work (or in conversation with a customer). After all, like most of us, journalists now live much of their lives online. Seen through the lens of an approach like that of The New York Times, those posts are all potentially problematic.
How Presidential Elections Made Social Media Marketing Banal - Dorie Clark by Dorie Clark | 3:01 PM November 1, 2012 As we approach the final days of the U.S. presidential campaign, all the media attention shifts to the ground game: how many doors are knocked, and how many voters are mobilized in crucial swing states like Ohio. But while field organizing is essential in this closely contested race, the groundwork has been laid over many months by the campaigns’ digital operations. Online outreach has enabled the candidates to raise vast sums of money, identify their supporters and likely supporters with precision, and leverage social networks to engage peer pressure (the more polite term from psychology is “social proof”) on their behalf. Here are some of the most salient, which I discussed in a session I moderated last week at the Inbound Marketing Summit on “Digital Marketing in the Political Arena,” guest-starring Harvard Kennedy School professor Nicco Mele and fellow HBR blogger Michael Schrage, who recently wrote an astute piece about polling.
Digital Strategy Does Not Equal IT Strategy - Mark P. McDonald by Mark P. McDonald | 8:00 AM November 19, 2012 Everyone thinks they have a digital strategy these days. Why? Furthermore, organizations that focus their strategy on digital transactions based on automating and substituting physical resources for digital will only feel digital. A digital edge is different from digital automation. Organizations looking to create revenue from digital technology need a strategy that is more powerful than digital substitution. Consider Royal Caribbean and its Oasis-class ships. Imagine the potential for lines when 5,400 people on a single ship want to eat dinner, see a show, or take an excursion. A digital edge is a performance edge. Having a digital edge matters. After years of investing in “transformation” programs, executives understandably are reluctant to engage in strategies that go beyond specific, measurable and achievable point solutions. A digital-edge strategy is different for three reasons:
Saying goodbye to pen and paper My latest blog post for Harvard Business Review has provoked a strong reaction to the idea of saying goodbye to the paper notebook. Here’s my own take on the experience of giving up on paper and pen. 4.00 22.95 Alexandra Samuel Those 25 characters, comprising a tip, a total and a signature, now represent the lion’s share of my handwriting. That’s what I realized during a recent conversation with a colleague, when I asked how he takes notes…meaning, of course, what software program did he use. In all honesty, I have never liked holding a pen. As soon as I got a laptop light enough to carry, I braved the glares of my fellow conference-goers so that I could take my notes on my computer, where I could actually read them; my chicken scratch is barely legible, even to me. Even though I took more and more of my notes on a computer, I still used paper notebooks as my day-to-day repository. Then came VooDoopad, a one-stop notetaking program, and later, Evernote. And that leaves the Visa slips.
The Wearable Brand, Tracking Your Every Move - Mitch Joel “When did you hit your goal?” In Las Vegas for a conference last week, I heard that question more times than I could count. They were talking about their NikeFuel goals, of course. Should I leave a comment on TED.com? A commenting manifesto You’ve just watched a TED Talk, and now you have some thoughts — about the subject, about the speaker, about life. In the world of TED ideas, those reflections and reactions are some of our most important resources. Yet, for every 1,000 views on TED.com, only 1 viewer writes a comment in the space below the video. Perhaps the other 999 viewers had nothing to say? What can a great talk comment do? If you’d like to start commenting, we’d love to hear from you! 1. If your comment crosses the line, our moderation team will remove it and send you an email. And, of course, comments should be about the talk itself. So, should you leave a comment on TED.com? You can contact conversations@ted.com with feedback and suggestions.