The Social Organization

Respect, Acceptance, & Patience

I've been thinking a lot lately about the difference between groups, communities, and mobs as well as our collective ability to respect each other - accepting each other for where we are instead of where we would all like to be. I don't quite know the answer but it has something to do with being organized - not necessarily in a hierarchical way. The other thing about communities is that they tend to be managed - again not necessarily by one person or in a direct way but they are definitely mediated. Lastly, people in groups and communities respect each other whereas people in mobs do not.

Respect is a complicated thing - and it is not really the same thing as doing what someone tells you to. Many people follow orders from superiors without respecting them at all - that is power dynamics, not respect. Respect interestingly often means we have more room to disagree and that we can be confrontational in a non-threatening way. True respect allows for honesty - with things that are both pleasant and things that may not be. Respect means taking someone at face value and trying to understand differences rather than judge them.

I was watching the Amazing Race the other night and they were in India - many of the contestants were horrified or upset by the poverty and trash they saw while racing through. I actually found that response a little patronizing because while it may not be our expectation of life, people in India seem to manage just fine. And it is not to say that there is not a lot of improvements that can be made - there is indeed way too much poverty in India - and elsewhere. However, even if you took the poverty away there would still be cows meandering around through traffic (they are sacred after all - you can't just tell them what to do!), traffic would still be chaotic (that's just how they roll), and there would be a lot of people. I actually found the cows quite funny while I was there - one had parallel parked itself in the middle of downtown New Delhi. But the reaction of one of the Amazing Race participants was to condemn how poorly the animals were treated because they were wandering about somewhat aimlessly instead of non-judgmentally wondering why. His intentions were right - to care - but he jumped to a conclusion without really understanding the situation.

Last night I went to Social Media Club Boston where the topic was Change Dot Gov and how government was using new social tools and communications methods.  I was a bit surprised how critical people were of government and media because there are a lot of efforts to move more information, data, and access online. Is it perfect? Hell no but who among us is a perfect citizen and ultimately the government is a reflection of what we collectively make it so we have no one to criticize but ourselves. Additionally, government needs to serve everyone and there is a large percentage of everyone that is not hyper-connected - or digitally connected at all for that matter. I am also amazed how people view journalism and that it should absolutely be free. We have certainly gotten used to it being free and I am not naive enough to believe the majority of newspapers can start charging but being an informed citizen is a cornerstone to making democracy work - and isn't that valuable enough to support? And goodness knows there is a lot of information that needs to be curated these days. How we do that needs to be figured out - but I believe that it is vitally important to do so.

A large part of being part of a healthy community is reserving judgment, working to understand each other, giving each other the benefit of the doubt, accepting each other as we are, and then trying to work together on the things we can agree on.  That was hard enough as a society when things worked at a slower pace but now that people are overwhelmed with information and things move at lightning speed it is so, so easy to judge quickly. I don't know quite how to solve the problem but one thing that was incredibly useful to me was living abroad as a teenager with a family pretty different from my own. I was surrounded by people who were different and that isolation forced me to understand them rather than thinking that they should understand me. It's useful to experience being in a situation where you are entirely different from everyone else - whether it is politically different, culturally different, technologically different. Try it some time - and don't take your iPhone/Blackberry/etc. with you. It may not be the most comfortable experience but it will make you a better cultural 'listener' and we could use more people like that in the world.

Ada Lovelace Day: Susan Feldman

Image via Wikipedia

Today is Ada Lovelace Day - an event organized by Suw Charman-Anderson as a way to appreciate and recognize women in technology.  You can see the pledge list here or read more about it here. What a great idea!

I would like to recognize two women who have been phenomenal mentors in my career. The first is Michelle Roloff with whom I worked at PRTM - she is no longer in technology but as a young professional without an engineering background working in an organization where almost everyone else had one, Michelle was critical to helping me navigate and gain confidence. I was assigned to cover the semiconductor market and I hadn't even taken high school physics (skipped junior year to spend a year in Germany). Michelle had worked as an engineer at Motorola. Despite my lack of qualifications Michelle never assumed that I couldn't understand and she took the time to explain the differences between diodes, analog ICs, and microprocessors. I still remember the description of semiconductors from another woman at PRTM (there were not many) that helped me the most.... she told me to think about a map of Manhattan and assume each traffic light was a gate, either letting through or stopping the circuit in a complex pattern. I owe Michelle my early confidence to continue in technology.

It was quite a while after working at PRTM that I ran into other senior women in the companies I worked for - maybe it is the fact that I've worked at start-ups but in the three software companies at which I have worked there was only one woman senior to me in product/engineering (or really in any management position now that I think about it). While it hasn't been an issue per se, I did crave more people I could look to in order to figure out my own career.

I found that person at IDC. Susan Feldman was my manager at IDC and had been in the enterprise search space for decades and runs the content technologies group at IDC. With a background in linguistics and library science she understands the complex problem of parsing and analyzing language like few others. More importantly to me and she was a generation ahead of me - a generation of which there are indeed very few women in technology - with the associated perspective of a long career. What I loved the most about Sue - and what I shared with her - is a rich enjoyment of technology and its potential. Sue is in the enterprise search space not because she fell into it but because she loves the problem space and has a ton of fun working through its issues. For that reason, Sue was incredibly energizing and fun. Sue also helped me understand the connection between content and its 'discoverability' and gave me a lot of respect for the issues around computer mediated language. One of her greatest strengths is simply articulating the complex problems around understanding language with algorithms. Among other things, Sue also introduced me to systems dynamics as a way to model and understand markets and other complex systems. Systems dynamics changed a lot of my thinking around modeling in general. We had a lot of fun building a search advertising and online content revenue model - it gave my mind a lot of fodder on which to grind.

Sue is also rare in a way that I have not seen a lot of in women of her generation - she has a family that she clearly loves and she raised two very accomplished children while working - but she is not conflicted about having a rich professional life. And while this should be the norm, I have not found too many conflict-free women who came of age in the 50s and 60s because they understandably did not have the support they needed to thrive both personally and professionally. Understanding how Sue has approached her career has really helped me to see how to carve out my own career given multiple different interests and demands on my time - and not feel overly conflicted about making compromises, either in the personal or professional realm.

So - thank you to both Michelle and Sue - you helped me immeasurably by modeling how to do it right and encouraging me. I doubt I would have the career I do without you.

Also a more historical shout out to Jean Sammet, a fellow Mount Holyoke grad, who developed the FORMAC language and was an early computer scientist.

Social Software - The Value is Not Really About the Conversation

Heresy you say? Your company really doesn't care about your idle chit chat? Well...they may but there is something much larger at play here and like many things it comes down to simple economics.

Content has always driven exposure and conversation. Remember Coke's Teach the World to Sing?

Remember the Pillsbury Bake Off? Old school social media. The problem is not that all of a sudden we've discovered content marketing. The problem is...it was friggin' expensive.

Think about all of the different types of content and how you would have presented it to the world ten years ago:

Documents: Someone wrote them in MSWord, sent them around to 20 different people to fact-check, edit, add to, comment on, etc. which probably took about a month and created a headache for someone to parse through even if all 20 people did use their review tool correctly which, of course, they didn't. Once the text was finalized it had to go to a publishing group to ensure it used the correct language, formatting, etc. based on company policies. That group would then publish the document to the corporate document management system so that edits could be tracked. Then you had to get the person in the web publishing group to post it to the website - maybe putting the request into a ticket tracking system to accomplish. After a couple of days or a week (faster if you begged) it was finally on the website. Yay. But wait...how would anyone know the website had new content? So then you have to get the document highlighted in the weekly or monthly email newsletter or create a webinar to promote it. I'm tired just thinking about it. Writing it was really only half of that battle - and probably still is for most companies.

But what if the website was a wiki and as the head of product marketing for one of the products, you had permission to change the pages on the website related to your product? What if everything on the website was RSS-enabled? You write the document in the wiki - send out the link for 20 people to edit and they make their changes directly to the single source of the text. You review it, clean it up and have someone look at it for final edits. The CSS already ensures proper layout and formatting. Once reviewed/approved you change a setting and save. Presto - it's on the website and in the feeds of everyone who is tracking your company through their RSS reader.

And that is just text. In the video world, we have gone from needing this:

to being able to use this:

Never mind the editing, publishing, and distribution channels necessary.

What's going on here?

While we used to have to use different tools and channels to author, produce, publish, and distribute we can now use the same tool to do all of those things because the content is saved in the same action in which it is published and because it is all wrapped in social functionality - it gets immediately broadcast out to the people who care the most.

So while it's nice that it is 'social' what really matters to companies is that the cost to produce content has dropped like a manganese nodule in the middle of the Pacific.

Update: I'm extremely flattered that my friend Heather Strout voted this post the runner-up for Social Media Blog Carnival this week - see her post about it here.

SXSW '09 Retrospective

If you are just not that into the whole SXSW navel gazing...no need to read further :) I thought I would recap my impressions as a newbie and someone who was slightly intimidated about the whole thing...I tweeted before I left "I fear being swept up by rapid podcasters and forced to create content" - I wasn't that far off! SXSW was three months of interesting conversations and socializing compressed into three days with a healthy dose of both business and just plain fun.

People - people are really the heart of the SXSW experience and my first roll of the dice did not disappoint. In fact, I missed most of the conference tracks in favor of talking with people. I had both a ton of people that I wanted to reconnect with as well as a lot of people I know virtually that I wanted to meet. Sprinkle in some other folks and a few "celebrities" and there was never a dull moment.

Friends I got to reconnect with: @aaronstrout @heatherjstrout @adamcohen @billjohnston @jeffcutler @peterkim @jenrobinson @seanodmvp @jakemckee - not to mention hanging out with Boston people I see more regularly like @jimstorer @mikelangford ...and thank goodness for @pistachio who I saw at the registration desk and skillfully steered me in the direction of the blogger lounge where I could recover from my attack of over-stimulation.

People I knew virtually but had never met: @scottmonty @lizstauss @davidalston @yojibee @jljohansen @bryanperson @ckieff @bobpearson1845 @mvermut @ayeletb @bethharte @sirmichael

People I didn't know but got to meet: @just_kate @kimhaynes @lavannamartin @DougWick @peterfasano @natanyap @smcdonaldatdell @twalk @kyleflaherty @conej and many others...I did a somewhat horrific job of keeping track of names & Twitter IDs so apologies if I missed you here - it's all a bit of a blur.

The hot tickets (some of whom are friends but their status transcends that at #SXSW) that I tripped across:  @pistachio @loic @jowyang @JasonFalls @briansolis @stevegarfield @conniereece @guykawasaki @scobleizer @chrisbrogan

I was also really happy to get the chance to cheer on @aaronstrout (as well as other ex-Bostonians @bryanperson & @kyleflaherty) during the Texas Statesmen Social Media awards...well deserved all around.

Fun - the second piece of SXSW is really just about having a good time and that obviously overlaps quite a bit with the people. I'm a little bit of an introvert so I am probably not the best example of people who have fun at SXSW but I managed to do OK. Friends like Aaron Strout, Mike Langford, Heather Strout, Jim Storer, and John Johanson were kind enough to let me draft their peloton while cruising around Austin during the party hours on Saturday and Sunday night. On Saturday night we caravaned out to The Salt Lick - an Austin institution - and devoured heaping plates of BBQ, German coleslaw, and beans. On Sunday evening, Guy Kawasaki was kind enough to invite me and a couple of friends in to the Alltop party despite showing up unannounced - Guy throws a hell of a party - replete with hay, cowboys, and some very good music & BBQ.  He was announcing the launch of My Alltop, among other things, and being as generous as ever with his time and attention.

Random - While I certainly didn't head down to Austin thinking that I would try to do anything other than the SXSW circuit, Lavanna Martin flattered me by asking to paint my portrait and invited me to another Austin institution - The Spider House - to do so.  On a lovely spring morning I sat on the funky patio of Spider House chatting amiably with Lavanna and "Spider House Paul" while sipping some wonderful coffee and having my portrait painted. It was a great break from the bustle of downtown and was a slice of Austin that I appreciated seeing - and I really liked the artistic results. Lavanna is working on a series of cafe portraits that represent the tech and online culture with the idea that she may visit tech hot spots around the country doing a number of series. I love the idea and suggested that she also incorporate the art into a multi-media display or as part of tech events. Regardless of where she goes with this - I love her style and she posts much of her work on her blog, I Stare at People. If you are in Austin and also like the idea - get in touch with her!

And, although it was a vlogger and not a podcaster, I did get swept up into participating in an interesting content project. Crystal Beasley came up with an ingenious idea after struggling to come up with one interesting question that she could ask everyone and thinking that it is much harder to find the right question than the right answer. Crystal created a game of vlog tag whereby the person tagged had to answer the question of the tagger and then formulate a question for their tagee - in that way creating a running string of video linking one person to the next. Really interesting concept and I can't wait to see the result - despite my aversion to participating in the media portion of social media ;)

There are other random things that happen all over SXSW but really too many to mention...the green kilted man, the superhero being interviewed...papa smurf. That is just how it rolls.

Business - Jim Storer & I are working on a new business idea and part of the reason to attend SXSW was to get reaction and feedback to the idea.  The business? An online roundtable for social media and community practitioners to help them in their day to day world which will include weekly programming, peer matching, online events with experts, peer support, vendor/consultant lists and evaluations, and curated content from around the web. While we will limit the roundtable both in size and to practitioners we will also be looking for sponsors who are looking for unbiased market research, a chance to present to roundtable members, opportunities to be spotlighted, and a chance to provide input into programming and surveys.   More about the concept? Visit http://www.community-roundtable.com

We heard some interest from potential participants, interest from potential sponsors and a lot of opportunities to work with experts and consultants that a roundtable would be a good compliment to their products and/or services. So with that encouragement, we will continue our planning. Stay tuned for more information on specifics.

Meanwhile I am also doing some work as an independent analyst and writing a landscape report on the social software market and got the chance to catch up with a couple of the vendors at the show although I must admit, did not get into many of the details while I had BBQ slathered across my face (have you ever seen a Texas-sized beef rib?!?)

Would I recommend SXSW? It depends but it was definitely worth it for me. Want to see some great photos? See Jim Storer's photo stream.

Oldies But Goodies

For my 100th post I thought I would go do two things - share some stats and go back and look at some of my more popular posts. Since I don't typically write about time-sensitive topics there are plenty of things buried in the pages of my blog that I think are just as relevant today as they were when I wrote them. And since 100 is such a good round number, I was looking at blog stats and thought I'd share those stats for those of you who are trying to compare, project, whatever.... My blog is fairly focused so I definitely don't go for the huge audience but I do have a good size regular audience so thank you for continuing to read and interact - it's been a great pleasure.

• I average about 590 views per post - with a lot of variability between posts (although I also syndicate out posts to a couple of places - not sure about stats from those sources)
• I average 4 comments per post so that's a 'conversion' rate of .7%
• I have roughly 7 feed subscribers for every post - new subscriber sign-up has been very regular with some occasional bumps.
• I post about 6 times per month - a little more than once a week

I am quite happy with those stats given that 1) Flattered that anyone is interested 2) I haven't done much beyond Tweeting new posts to drive traffic 3) Don't consider myself a 'blogger' meaning writing here is not what I do for a living.

In terms of popular posts - I am often surprised what really takes off. The posts that have garnered the most attention are often ones that I call my 'rants' about some observation or topic that come to me quickly.  Posts in that category include:

• Social Media and the Popular Girls
• Social Media is not Community
• Just Do the Right Thing

Other posts that have been well received but a little less read are posts where I start to lay out frameworks or constructs for thinking about how to plan and implement social media or community initiatives. These include:

• Relationship development is a process, technology can (sometimes) help
• Assessing Corporate Readiness for Social Media
• Assessing Corporate Readiness for Communities
• Defining Social Media Priorities Amidst the Hype
• The Importance of Social Networking to Information Work
• The Alignment Gap Between Organizational Structure & Organizational Priorities

Other posts are best practice related:

• Community Velocity: A Metric for Measurement
• Executive Blogs Don't Need to Be Difficult
• Social Media Metrics - My ongoing collection

And lastly, posts where I offer a perspective or opinion:

• Social Networking As Information Arbitrage
• Do Enterprises Have the Patience to Develop Communities?
• Lead from the Back
• The Social Challenge for 2009 - Scaling Relationships
• Why Socializing Organizations Matters to Me
• Radical Transparency: Where the Rubber Hits the Road

While The Social Organization is not my first or only blog is has been my first work-related blog and over the past 14 months you have helped me clarify my thoughts, point me in the right direction, and question some of my more half-baked thoughts.  I greatly appreciate it and am looking forward to having people keep me honest.

Thank you for reading and please let me know if there are topics that you think are lacking or worth more exploration.

The Future of the Social Web

 It's hard to step out of my little world sometimes - my online world consists of the following social tools:

• LinkedIn
• TypePad
• Blogger
• WordPress
• Facebook
• Twitter
• FriendFeed
• Google Reader
• ShareThis
• Zmanta
• TweetDeck
• TweetWorks
• PBwiki
• Utterli
• Flickr
• Ning
• Akismet
• OpenID
• Google Analytics/Feedburner
• TwitterSheep (tool or toy...too close to call!)

I could go on...but my real point is I think I'm a little odd. I explore, I pick up new tools because they are there. I don't think most people are like that and...I think it distracts me a lot of the time from doing 'real' work. It is easy to lose hours lost in a pretty complex web of tools - some of which are integrated and some of which are not, many of which do not add much to my existance other than to feed my unhealthy compulsion with gadgetry.

This is insanity. This is why the vast majority of people use Facebook and call it a day. This is why Google ends up sucking us in because at least our email, feed reader, calendar, and documents are centralized and sharable with the same network of friends.

Open APIs and standards such as OpenID are helping but they do not necessarily ensure centralized control. And because the ability to give the user fine grain control over sharing and privacy - that is extremely easy to use - has not been figured out yet, we aren't really ready for centralized control anyway. But you can get a glimmer of how this world is going to work out there on the consumer web.

This world is fast encroaching on the enterprise. And in someways, because the social network is more defined and there is more centralized control of access and authentication, enterprise IT has a leg up. However, enterprise IT departments need to start thinking about a few things:

• How to integrate a variety of social tools with identity, presence, unified communications, individual workflow, productivity tools, enterprise apps, & accounting/ERP systems.
• How to provide individuals with control over the tools they use, their distribution channels, and settings on their social graph.
• How to give enough 'open' controls to users to allow them to configure and mashup additional tools and widgets they they find useful even though it is not part of the enterprise stack. Because people like me will always be lurking around and 'breaking' things otherwise.
• How to use an SOA architecture in a way that enables individuals to have custom solutions. Imagine everyone in the organization having their own application that seamlessly integrates the productivity, publication, communication, intelligence, and enterprise management features that they need with appropriate information & content in a way that was focused on their responsibilities and goals? All integrated with a social graph and managed through presence such that a person's information stream turned off when they were 'off' and general requests got re-routed to others and then switched back on when they were ready to work - letting through anything that was urgent and for which the individual had no substitute?
• Imagine a resource management solution that was flexible enough to handle emergent activities. An employee gets involved in a project for which they are not directly responsible but their contribution is 'accounted' for and if they end up playing a larger role in the project it automatically shows up as a line item on their time sheet and a notation is automatically made in their HR record so that when their manager sets up a review s/he is aware of the attentional contribution that was made.

'Social' in the enterprise will not be about a destination or a tool - it will be the method by which information is filtered, how collaboration happens, how information is shared/distributed, how contributions are judged, and ultimately it will allow for more fluid and organic careers. Rather than working in one role and always getting 'assigned' to projects, individuals' experience, skills, and interests can determine how they get involved with new projects and how they get compensated/rewarded and moved through the organization. We don't yet have the tools that integrate in a way to make this easily manageable but it's coming.

I've seen the argument to this that goes something like 'people will always need to be assigned to things because there will always be things that no one wants to do in large enterprises'. I agree that there are things that just need to be done - repeatedly - over and over but I disagree that you will never get people to do them.  There are a lot of people out there that like operating in their comfort zone on discrete tasks that they can do, spend 8 hours a day doing, feel like they've contributed, and go home satisfied. In this new world that is still an option and organizations will still need to staff such that they have the right mix of people to do all the different things they need done.  Those individuals will also likely get customized apps that have a more limited stream and breadth of content, fewer communications channels, and more discrete functionality. And that is OK.

I'm starting to see this world take shape - in fits and starts. What do you think the primary barriers to this are? What are the underlying technologies and how will they need to change - or are they ready today?

I Hope I See You There!

I'm excited - I'm attending a few upcoming events that I am looking forward to.

SXSW Interactive - in Austin, March 14-17th; tweeting

The Business of Community Networking - in Boston, March 24-26; blogging

PRSA Digital Impact Conference - New York, April 30-May 1; speaking

If you are attending any of these events please drop me a note (rachel at thesocialorganization.com) or catch up with me on Twitter.

Other possible conferences on my roster: Community 2.0 & Enterprise 2.0

Measuring The Marketing Vortex

Being out on my own has given me the unique opportunity to start thinking about how I market myself - and how I might measure that. There are a couple of interesting things that have some good cross-over best practices for any kind of marketing. Because I am embedded in the social media/community world, I have not used traditional methods at all (i.e. sending out resumes, cold calling/emailing, etc) - other than creating a pipeline of prospects that evolve into concrete opportunities.

To me the new social marketing methods are about creating a marketing vortex (this is not a new idea - HubSpot and New Marketing Labs call this 'Inbound Marketing'). But I like the image of a vortex - you want to create an audience compelled to move into your field of view and then compelled to egaged with you. Personally, my audience was pulled in through my blog, Twitter, speaking engagements, events, and work relationships. That audience is the people on my pitch. Generally speaking, they are there to play the same game I am. I can count the number of people on my pitch even if I cannot identify them by name.

The next step is engaging with the people on your pitch. This takes the form of pageviews, Twitter conversations, comments, and conversations at events. The people I engage with show an increase in interest in the areas I care most about. I can count them. In my opinion it would be a mistake to weed any of these people out because they do not have an opportunity for me or are interested in areas that are not 100% aligned with mine. It's a mistake to ignore them mostly because I learn a lot from them but also because you cannot know when a situation with any of those people will change.  I also never directly ask this crowd for opportunities - I'm mostly interested in encouraging more engagement. These are cool leads in the world of marketing but this is actually the area of richest opportunity - these people will make connections for me that I don't even know exist. Those connections might simply be sharing one of my blog posts with a colleague. Regardless, these are the people that will increase the number of people on my pitch. Immensely valuable.

The tension in the vortex continues to increase when I start having a relationship with someone. I've had multiple conversations, I've likely met them, and we always get something out of speaking to each other. How does that conversion happen? More touch points. Here's where I think corporate marketing can learn something from personal relationships. Transitioning people from people you engage with to people who are really interested in what you are doing is not about getting them to read more of your blog, whitepapers or attend more webinars. That can certainly be part of it but most of this relationship building comes from less formal interaction. Tweetups, BBQs, lunches, breakfasts, and one-on-one interactions are really what move the relationship forward. Why? Because you are not just using their time to tell them something - you are developing a give and take. Listening and responding. Referring them to others (because you don't do everything...really). That give and take is absolutely essential in building trust. If you just try and force people through the tunnel the way you want it to work you make people uncomfortable by reducing their control over the situation. This also doesn't need to be expensive to do - just create opportunities to casually interact. This will help create your inner circle. But not everyone in your inner circle is necessarily a lead - but they are likely a fan.  You can count these people.

And how do you get conversion? If you do all of the above well, opportunity will come to you. If it doesn't, you are not selling something people want and need to rethink your product. Practice will help you understand how many conversions you get based on the size of your pitch...no one else can tell you that because your product and service are unique (unless you are selling a commodity in which case you shouldn't be considering using social marketing). If you have a huge number of people on your pitch, a product targeted at those people, and low conversion you likely have a product issue. Nothing new but in the traditional marketing approach you could often mask product issues by spending more on marketing. That world has not gone away but will slowly disappear over time for markets with plenty of competition.

I don't think I am describing anything a lot of us don't already realize. I think the challenge is transitioning tradtional marketing departments from the formal to the more interactive and transitioning market expenses from big formal, expensive campaigns to people that spend time forming relationships. Paricularly for large companies, that can be a disruptive process and the people skilled an formal programming are not always the same as people skilled at relationship building so it's not just changing your perspective it means changing resources, changing the tool set, changing policies, and changing the expectations of the rest of the organization. Not easy and in this economic climate it is likely the capacity does not exist to make a complete transition so you need to find specific product lines or market segments that are more likely to benefit from a conversational approach. But don't say it isn't measurable - it is the traditional marketing funnel, just with different activities.

Photos by fatcontroller & Gobbo1000

Job Search 2.0

While not necessarily of my own choosing, I've been thrust into the 2.0 world looking for new opportunities. In my case, I've decided not to focus on finding *the* job and to look for contract and consulting opportunities instead (and working on creating my perfect job on the side...more about that later). I want to pursue work that is a really good fit for me personally...and a tight fit is much easier to find when you can control more of the decisions about what you work on and how you work.

Regardless of my preference for for contract work vs. looking for a position, it requires much of the same networking and opportunity scanning that a more traditional job search does. And it has been an interesting experience in this hyper-connected new world. Having a blog, a decent Twitter presence, and connections via LinkedIn & Facebook has been a phenomenal resource. It matters more than ever that you nurture your network before you need it. I thought I would share some of my observations in the hopes that it may help others:

• Twitter: Twitter allowed me to let everyone know what my situation was without the awkwardness of a mass-email. Why? By allowing people to opt-in to getting in touch I never made anyone feel bad by asking them directly if they could help. The reality is that you never know who is your network has opportunities and asking people who have no ability to help just makes them feel badly because they typically want to help but just don't have any information to give you. Making people feel badly can in the end make them avoid you a bit just because they don't want to disappoint you again.  I don't think the power of that dynamic can be underestimated. You are letting others decided for themselves if they don't have anything to say, whether they want to offer condolences, whether they would like to reach out for a conversation, or whether they have an opportunity to discuss with you. And I can't tell you how overwhelmed I was by the response of my network when I let people know I had been laid off.

• Blogging: If people are curious about my views on my work they need not go any further than my blog. I try to be fairly candid about what I think - and the more I share the better my ability to attract people who are looking to solve the same problems I am. That audience is likely to be the same types of people who may be interested in hiring me for a project or referring me to their network of associates. It's a prime example of content marketing. Offer something of interest or value on a somewhat consistent basis and you will be on the minds of the people who are most likely to make a difference to your business.

• Social Networks: Like marketing engagement metrics, all the social networks I'm involved in give me an ambient sense of what kinds of people are engaging with me. LinkedIn allows you to see who is looking at your profile and I still get alerts for new Twitter followers so I can see what types of people are finding me. Luckily I am not attracting just the 15-year-old gamers en masse.... that might indicate an issue with the content I distribute since they are not the ones likely to help me with my endeavors :)

So the social technologies have helped immensely but there are some behaviors that are also useful to consider:

• Tell people what you want to do and what you are passionate about - while projects and jobs aren't likely to come in that exact form, it will give people a very good idea of whether you are a good fit. It may also attract opportunities that you didn't know were out there.

• Take anyone who offers up on the chance to talk or meet - and don't use these conversations to press people for specific opportunities - just be engaged. If they have an interesting conversation with you and have an opportunity, they will let you know.

• Make connections between others. If you hear about an opportunity that is not right for you, pass it on and make a specific connection if you know of an individual that is a great fit. Call is karma if you want but it will make you feel good even if you never get anything else in return.

• Go out to as many events as you can - get in front of people and meet new ones. Have interesting conversations - people are likely to refer you to opportunities if they hear about them.

•  Don't be afraid to have a position or an opinion. While a strong opinion will likely make some people decide that they do not agree, you are more likely to connect closely with others. You don't need to find opportunities from 100% of the people you meet, you need to find the opportunities that are a good fit for your personality and skill set. Ask me about how I met my husband sometime if you are still wondering about this.

• Ask and you shall receive. If you need something specific, ask your network...again let them opt in, don't ask specific individuals unless they are uniquely suited to help. The more specific you can be in your requests, the more likely people can judge their own ability to help or refer.

Anyone else have more advice? Would love to hear about your experiences - not so different than general online marketing but much more personal.

Oh...and if anyone doubts the power of networking, thanks to Laura Fitton (aka @pistachio) and her generosity in helping friends with pink slip parties, I am now getting a lot of press...just for being unemployed. See coverag: WBUR, Mass High Tech, & WBZ/Channel 4 Not exactly what I'm looking to be known for but...if I can help others I am all for that.

My contribution to the general issue is The Deep Bench Series.

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Deep Bench Profile 4: David Wallace

Like many people in my social media circle I knew David from online connections long before I met him in person and I can't quite remember whether it was a Social Media Breakfast or Tweetup or Media Chowder event where I first met him. Regardless, he and I share a passion for communications, innovation, and collaboration particularly from the perspective of managing those things in complex organizations.  David has a rich background in journalism and teaches in his 'spare' time trying to bring some clarity to young minds around the issues of content creation and distribution. He is also actively involved in Boston's KMForum and if you want an engaging conversation, invite him out for a bowl of noodles in Chinatown!

Here are David's answers to my questions:

What are you passionate about and what motivates that passion?

Problem-solving and sharing multiple (sometimes competing) views of the same situation. Often people see issues through their own lens of finance, marketing, operations, but getting another view often leads to more creative options than anyone expected. The passion for this comes from the split personality that emerged from working in complex high-tech companies AND in nimble, creative small ones. 

If you could construct your own job who would you be working with? For whom? On what problems?

Perhaps a consulting group or think-tank is looking at new policy initiatives that deliver more than just tax payments for local government based on antiquated maps. More complex programs to fund government services have to come from economic activity and consumption – not just the zoning of a particular patch of ground. You can take the Urban Studies minor out of the city, but not vice versa.   

Since you can't always make up a job that will support you - what are you looking for next?

Another chance to work with smart people on a venture that values creative thinking, social collaboration across departments and a chance to offer a product or service to solve a longstanding need. Innovative, multi-disciplinary approaches such as Zipcar or Bright Horizons fit the bill. 

What project/activity from past jobs gave you the most joy?

Not sure I’ve experienced workplace joy since the tech crash bubble and explaining why Enron and some other companies couldn’t just go on forever. Every story has an ending – not all of them end well. 

What non-work related activities make you the happiest?

My family, a long bike ride, a relentless interest in travel and the never-ending quest for the perfect fried clam. 

What's your most amusing work-related story?

Shortly after “Caddyshack” gained huge popularity I met Robert Trent Jones, famous golf course designer. A pump station failed and dumped sewage all over a posh South Florida country club. “All just sounds like a lot of crap” he said to me, in what passed for a one-sentence interview. 

What are your thoughts about the US economy and what is going on?

Larger brains than mine are trying to comprehend billions and trillions of dollars. But perhaps this will finally dim the lights on the “Don’t Worry Be Happy” approach to blind consumerism and the hero worship of Ayn Rand as a model for runamuck commerce at all costs. 

Interested in following David? Visit his website or follow him on Twitter

Want to help? Repost this interview on your blog or RT.

Want to know more about the #deepbench series, see my original post on The Deep Bench of Social Organization Management

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