Author: Christopher Carfi

In a timely follow-on to the last post, Shel Holtz has put up an outstanding podcast entitled "Employees Are The Brand," from a session he hosted at the recent New Communications Forum.  An excerpt from Shel:

"I had an interesting conversation with a fella a couple of months ago.  We were talking about this whole issue of your employees going home at night and being part of Facebook groups and commenting on blogs and frequently identifying themselves as associated with their employers.  Some of them are doing this from work because their company allows it, others were finding ways around the restrictions and the blocks.  I talk to more and more IT people who tell me ‘we block access to Facebook’ and ‘we block access to YouTube,’ but employees bring their home laptops in with their wireless access cards, or they use their cellphones and they’re doing it anyway. 

I was at one company where they actually have the means to block the signal from your personal cellphone or your personal laptop that you bring in so you can’t do this stuff on work time.    It’s getting kind of ridiculous.  But the fact is, your employees ARE participating in these spaces, because they are the people who go out and participate in these spaces.  These aren’t unemployed people in pajamas in their mom’s basements."

You can listen to the whole thing here.

Related:  The People ARE the Brand

Zappos has a great process for ensuring their corporate culture stays strong, and validating that the people they hire are truly bought into what they are doing:

"After a week or so in this immersive experience, though, it’s time for
what Zappos calls ‘The Offer.’ The fast-growing company, which works
hard to recruit people to join, says to its newest employees: “’f you
quit today, we will pay you for the amount of time you’ve worked, plus
we will offer you a $1,000 bonus.’"

Nice.  Here’s a link to the full article from HBS.

(from here)

In the old world, you were defined by what you consumed*.  In the new world, you are defined by what you create.

*- your credit report, your vehicle, etc.

A couple of years ago, Jerry Michalski introduced a number of people to the concept of "Red:Green Cards," which are described thusly:

Ever wish you could talk back
to the speaker at a conference?
To offer approval
or register dismay?

Use RedGreen feedback cards.

I found the concept to be absolutely fantastic.  It was a clear, yet unobtrusive, way to bring the audience into a conversation, without having to disrupt the flow of a thought and without having to deal with those little voting clicker boxes or microphones.  It was possible to achieve this goal without any kind of intrusive hardware at all, actually.

Red:Green cards are a wonderfully elegant way for an audience to give respectful feedback in real time.

At the iPhoneDevCamp last year, Biggu built a prototype of the Red:Green voting concept for iPhone.  However, it appears that their implementation has been taken down or is no longer working.  (The site was throwing errors the last I checked.)

So, we (re)built the Red:Green iPhone app from scratch.  You can find it here:

http://cerado.com/rg/

It
uses the Mobile Safari orientation hacks from the Apple code samples,
so it only works on the iPhone.  If you go there from a desktop
browser, it’ll just show a blank page.

Of course…

– Concept inspiration from Jerry Michalski.
– Code inspiration from Nicole Lazzaro and the TILT iPhone game.
– Implementation adapted from the Apple iPhoneOrientation sample.
– Address bar hiding hack from Christopher Allen.

Enjoy!

Related: By the way…the other fun iPhone-related thing we just did was to create an
iPhone-friendly network/directory of female political bloggers.  Currently,
there are over 100 bloggers listed from all sides of the aisle.  Here
are the coordinates if you are so inclined:

iPhone-based directory of political bloggers: http://blogher.com/politics/
Back story: http://tinyurl.com/5hob7wHer

Here’s a link to a video of the Red:Green iPhone app in action.

Cerado got some coverage on CNN yesterday, in a segment about how fast-moving companies are using outsourcing.  Check it out.

Michael Rindley is building his own “people keeper” because he says “social networking applications are handy, but what I’d really rather have is a personal CRM system.”

What would your people keep(e)r do?

• "Evaluating New Social Technologies" – Some key tidbits from Groundswell (thanks to Steve G. at PrimeRevenue for the tip)
• "A remarkable number of business people trying to reach consumers tend to forget, they ARE consumers" – Sage words from Paul Greenberg (thanks to Marty T. at Consona for the tip)
• "The Emerging Main Street Web"- Some good thoughts in here on the intersection of social media and (acutal) business models (via Bart)

Just back from a great time at the Dream Machines confab at the Half Moon Bay Airport.  Hundreds of vehicles, dozens of planes, stellar weather.  A great way to spend a Sunday.

Link to full Dream Machines photoset here