Barcelona, World’s mobile capital city for 4 days – #mwc13

This post was written as part of a blogger trip I organised for the Live Orange Blog. Connect to the blog for the latest on that event!

On February 24^th, 2013, we paid a visit to the Grand Fira which is the brand new venue for the MWC conference in Barcelona. Everything here is brand new and even though they built dummy columns at the entrance to remind visitors of the old place it is certainly lacking the lustre of the old romantic buildings at the end of the old Fira convention centre, situated in Plaza de Espanya.

[Polishing the signs while speakers are polishing their pitches]

Nonetheless, the new venue is – as the name goes – even bigger, and we can expect a lot to happen by way of innovation on the stands. The promise is that a new horizon for telecommunications is ahead of us. One, mostly, where NFC will be playing a role since the three letter acronym is absolutely ubiquitous. The press is even asked to check in through NFC gates exclusively and I was quite disappointed that I hadn’t taken the time to renew my phone and buy a brand new Galaxy SIII for instance.

[nothing is shown at MWC on the eve of the event. All is quiet… not for long!]

Talking about Samsung, we were greeted by a small stand of theirs at the exit of the Fira metro station. This is probably a sign that they are going to show big things this year. On the other hand, so far, we haven’t seen any signs of Android being at the forefront, but it’s not clear as the venue is always decorated at the last minute to avoid leaks. Last year was definitely an Android year. Does it mean that Google – I heard that rumoured yesterday – would toy with the idea of renaming its mobile OS by using its main brand (as they did with Google Play which replaced the former Android Market)? Or does it mean that new big guys, like the Mozilla foundation for instance, are sticking their guns this year. A new OS in the mobile environment is a possibility. Time will tell, I am all set for the press conference on new mobile Operating systems as well as the much expected Zte announcement. Stay tuned to the live Orange blog!

10 Major Trends In Corporate Social Media Management (2/2)

http://oran.ge/10smtrends

This is part 2 of a two-part piece dedicated to the major trends in coroporate social media management, which will serve as a basis for my presentation in Bucharest at the ronewmedia digital conference due to take place on May 16th, 2012. I will use my 5 years of practice in that field at Orange and dwell on some of the major trends impacting Social Media and its management in large corporations. My presentation will highlight these trends which will be illustrated with real life examples taken from the field.

[photo Yann Gourvennec, cc 2012 http://bit.ly/picasayann]

Trend number 6: clients want direct interaction to take place on social media 

We have been debating about social CRM for quite a while now. It has always been my view that there was no such thing as social CRM but that it had to be a means for customer relationship to add one more channel to its current toolbox. However, this is more than just an additional channel. It is a channel which forces customer relationship management departments to better handle customer requests and complaints. On social media, it is no longer possible to hide direct interaction. It is immediately visible to all. At the same time, a survey carried out by orange business services in France has shown that the requirement for customers to interact with real people is of paramount importance to these customers. I see this as a real opportunity to make “social CRM” really useful insofar as it is happening in real time and cannot be hidden or postponed and therefore thi fulfils the requirement expressed  by customers.

Trend number 7: enterprise social networks are certainly the future, but we are not there yet

The future of social media isn’t where you believe it is. The internal part of enterprise collaboration (aka enterprise social networks) is probably the line of business on which the biggest numbers will be made at least according to Gartner. There is no doubt that you will hear far less noise about the new version of SharePoint or Lotus Notes or blueKiwi than the recent takeover of instagram by Facebook (see trend number 10). However, we’re still a long way from implementing social networks inside organisations in a seamless manner. Such implementations are fraught with social issues (often, it’s employees who actually feel reluctant to use internal social networks rather than management, and the latter are sometimes unable to explain that internal social networks are here to help them and not spy on them) as well as many implementation issues. It is far from being accessory. For people like me in charge of external social networks and websites, the use of the internal social network is of paramount importance if one wants to find help and support internally. Things are moving forward but a lot remains to be done  and things are far from being perfect. As often, technology isn’t the major issue.

Trend number 8: turning one’s employees – not just community managers – into brand advocates

Working with external bloggers is nice, having community managers who have become experts in the facilitation of social media communities is not bad either, training one’s communications managers on the use of second generation web collaboration techniques and platforms is also nice (and Orange is doing this and I am actually the sponsor of this initiative), but we cannot think that we have achieved our goals until we have managed to convince most of our staff to become – if they so wish – our brand advocates. In our case, it is particularly challenging given the fact that we are 170,000 employees around the world, scattered around more than 35 countries, and 220 countries and territories if we include Orange Business Services. This is why I believe in this initiative that we are launching at this moment, which we are naming “social media champions”, the details of which are explained on our social media guidelines page online: http://orange.com/smg

Trend number 9: social media strategists will have to / must deal with the proliferation of social media platforms, due to peer pressure and self-fulfilling prophecies initiated online and/or by the Press   

This isn’t as easy as it seems. Everyday or so, a new platform is born, which creates a huge buzz on the web and puts considerable pressure on web teams within large organisations. Can we, or can we not, ignore Pinterest for instance? Depending on our line of business, positioning, or even just the number of resources that are available to us, the response to that question may vary; yet there is a strong probability that you will not be able to evade the question, for fear of being taken for a twit or a has-been, or even because of internal pressure too. Yet, with the hardening of the current crisis, we would probably have to learn how to say no… human resources and time cannot be expanded without limits even though our “champions” (see trend number eight) can help.

Trend number 10: the new bubble is coming, the signs are worrying

During the first dot com bust, between the year 1999 and 2001, there was no shortage of pundits who would tell you, a calculator in their hands, that the so-called “new economy” was real and that the gross market cap over evaluations of the period were justified. The fact of the matter is that they were right insofar as there was really something new happening for which many of the benefits are only reaped nowadays. However, there were wrong in the evaluation of certain companies, and they had even lost common sense in more than many cases. We now know what happened next. To a large extent, this is also what we are witnessing today. There is no question as to the amazing success of Facebook, even to a certain extent as a platform for advertising. I am still flabbergasted however to see the Facebook – or any of the other platforms – is not trying to make money out of the numerous brands which are now thriving on their platforms whereas in fact it would make perfect sense for an enterprise to pay for the service as it offers considerable publicity for them and helps maintain the service. A premium version of Twitter for instance, which would offer multilingual support, would be something I’d be ready to pay for because we need it. Yet, the battle has shifted to the stock market, IPOs and new Web entrepreneurs who make no money but are ready to “flip it” as  they say in the Valley. People never learn. The valuation of Facebook itself at anything between $90-$100 billion seems over the top. Even the fact that the company (even before it launched on the NASDAQ) has been able to take over Instagram (and God knows I love Instagram) for $1 billion even though it is only made of less than 10 people and hasn’t started to generate a penny worth of revenue is a worrying sign that something wrong is happening … again; naysayers would probably say that a bubble his buying another bubble … Sensible Web managers have to look after this kind of things and prepare for the future, that is to say protect themselves from current excesses as well as future excesses in any direction. Despite what people think, Web assets are developed in the long run, not with platforms which come and go; stability is of the essence.

learn from the savviest European social media practitioners … and save £ 100 on ticket price

I will be taking part in the oncoming Social Media B2C Marketing Summit due to take place in London, on June 25th and 26th and as I am preparing for the event, I took a few moments to dig my teeth into the programme and I realised it’s not a conference but the conference on European Social Media … absolutely packed with extremely high profile social media managers from some of the most prominent European brands. It was high time something was done to catch up with the likes of Blogwell in the USA, and here it is, right at our door, so it’s an event you shouldn’t miss.

the pitch

The Social Media Marketing Summit (25-26 June, London UK)
Social media represents a growing marketing opportunity for business to directly engage with their consumers. The phenomenal growth of social media activity has meant consumers are now interacting with their favourite brands and regularly checking for the latest updates online.

Orange, Heineken, Unilever and KLM are a selection of brands which have embedded social media throughout their marketing campaigns. Join these leading brands on the 25-26th June at the 2012 Social Media Marketing Summit, London.

Learn how to deliver engaging and interactive marketing tactics to entice your consumers to engage with your brand. O2, Honda, Tom Tom, Barclaycard and many more will share exclusive case studies, their everyday experiences and best practice, so you can improve your social media marketing efforts.

£100 off ticket price

Quote YG12 and save an £100 you register at http://bitly.com/Socialreg

about my presentation at the summit

Orange has been very active in the Social Media space since early 2008 and now has an online fanbase of over 3 million fans. With a presence on Twitter,
Google+ and Dailymotion – in which Orange has a stake – Orange has experience in using multiple networks – and insight on which networks are best for different kinds of marketing. Hear how this telecoms giant chooses different social platforms to engage with their community and meet marketing goals.

• how to decide which tools work for you : hear how Orange decides which social network works best for them and how you can decide depending on your organisations goals.
• learn which social platforms are most effective to market your brand and build brand awareness:  Orange will share which worked best for them and why
• hear why Orange doesn’t just rely on Facebook and Twitter: discover which other social networks you should be using and how these can help your online marketing.

Yahoo! movies summer program: from 200,000 to 1.2 million likes

On Tuesday March 27th, I attended my fifth Blogwell session (overall, this was the nineteenth session!) since the end of 2008, time flies! This session was taking place in San Francisco in the beautiful Golden Gate Club venue in the Presidio park, a stone’s throw from the Golden Gate bridge. Not only was the view beautiful, the lessons learnt from Yahoo! in their presentation were invaluable. Yahoo! was represented by Robin Zucker, Social Media director for the famous portal company. Her presentation was geared towards their engagement strategy and entitled “ summer movie programs”.

[photo cc by Yann Gourvennec http://bit.ly/picasayann]  

The Yahoo!’s objectives were to become more social, and increase the Yahoo! movies fan base as well as reinforce the fact that Yahoo! movies is the premier online movie destination. Generally, the focus for Yahoo! was Facebook, “for obvious reasons” Robin said, because of the amount of people involved on the popular social network.

“We are a digital company, so decided to help users decide what to see but also help them go and see the movies”. This is what prompted a partnership with a cinema house company named Regal Cinemas.

Yahoo!’s initial question for setting up the program (note: I love that term so much better than the word “campaign”) was user-centred: “What can we do that what would be relevant and interesting enough for users to share?”… which is a very good question to start from.

there is such a thing as free popcorn!

There is no such thing as a free lunch, but Yahoo! took care of the popcorn for all cinema goers in the States who were clicking their summer movie program banners! News fans, were indeed granted ‘”$6 worth for a small bag of pop-corn when they went to the cinema” through a coupon, Robin explained.

But the “key piece was the offline exposure in theatres” she added. Yahoo! decided to partner with Regal Cinemas which is one the of the largest network of cinema houses with 90,000,000 visitors throughout the Summer period (a rich period for film launches,such as Harry Potter and the smurfs as examples for the Summer of 2011)

2 distinct means of entry were chosen for users to engage in the program

• In Cinema theatres, there were placements of banners about the popcorn offer;
• Online, Yahoo! launched the popcorn.yahoo.net microsite

A mobile microsite was also put together. The site was leading users to the dedicated Facebook fan page. A great part of the program was to enable people to use social check-in (Facebook had just improved the system and that was providing additional exposure for Yahoo!).

mobiles and smartphones still a big challenge

However, “asking users to use their smartphones is a big challenge” Robin added because it puts the onus on the user who is “being asked to do something different”. Similarly, the online experience was key as the main site was the main driver for visits. People would enter their phone number and the coupon would be sent over to their smartphone, then they could initiate social sharing, and then they’d get free popcorn … Well, as long as they had a smartphone! Robin concluded, that “mobile isn’t easy, because people are sometimes confused”.

1.2 million new Facebook likes!

Yahoo! went from 200,000  to 1.2 million likes and surpassed its initial objectives by 400,000 fans! “Those promotions initiated a lot of buzz for Yahoo!” Robin added:

• to start with, it generated 1.4 million more minutes spent on the Yahoo! movies website;
• besides, it also generated 200,000+ social check-ins at Regal cinemas
• and $1 m worth of free popcorn was munched by Yahoo! movie fans

What Worked well according to Robin:

• it was tied to an event, Yahoo! didn’t create anything, but decided to build on something that was already happening;
• the partnership with Regal Cinemas proved very successful;
• agency partnership allowed program optimisation in real time;
• flexibility after program launch;
• the offer was relevant and highly sharable.

What didn’t work so well according to Yahoo!

• there are some limitations with standard Facebook applications, which doesn’t allow cobranding or has no ability track deal exposure and is limited to smartphones, which tended to exclude certain users;
• the national chain coordination was a challenge (on site posting etc.);
• users without smartphones also were the “loudest” in social media;
• challenges with mobile coverage;
• training the staff locally

Q&A session

Was there much attrition after the program?
There was little attrition after the event because the event was very relevant. There is always a small level of attrition, but it’s minimised when the program is good and matches the public’s requirement.

Why hasn’t Yahoo! created its own social media platform?
There is a strategic partnership between the 2 companies, 80% of Yahoo! users are already on Facebook and besides, education is an issue so it would be more difficult for Yahoo! to launch their own platform.

ROI? How do you measure?
In general, it’s not easy because we don’t get all the numbers from Facebook but track the value of a Fan on visits and clicks and as Yahoo! is valued through content advertising, having more traffic allowed additional and new advertising opportunities.

5 tips for organising social media teams in large organisations (5/5)

This is part 5 of the synopsis of my Figaro Digital presentation in London on November 23, 2011. In order to gather all parts, click or use the following short link: http://bit.ly/figaroyag11 

[all photos by Yann Gourvennec: http://bit.ly/picasayann]

5. building a community of community managers

Once all the above principles have been implemented, there is a requirement for all in the organisation to get themselves organised and this is what we have been doing for at least three years now, with a community of community managers which was started by my predecessor, and is known as the “come’in” community. This community of community managers exists online on our internal collaboration platform named Plazza, but mostly, it is a community of people who actually meeting person every two months. In a well-established process now we gather all these people together in a room anything between 50 to 100, we invite renowned industry professionals who give us some of their time and knowledge in order to share with our community. This community of community managers is also working on new projects, building a repository together, establishing the tools which I described earlier on, and last but not least launching campaigns together and exchanging on best practices. In December, we will be going one step further by inviting some of our peers from other corporations in order to exchange and broaden the scope of our discussions.

We see “come’in” (one of our meetings in the above picture) as one of our most important assets, a forum in which we can devise new projects and launch new initiatives a place in which we can exchange and debate and move forward and implement the dandelion organisation. Our most important goal now with regard to this community is to internationalise it and we will be taking “come’in” to Tunisia in order to kick-start this process.

Key to our new programmes is also the so-called “social media champions” programme which is going to enable us to distinguish the people throughout the organisation who are actually better than others in social media. As I said earlier on, I don’t believe in social media experts. It’s more a case of “the blind leading the blind” and helping the company to move one step at a time and succeed in its business endeavours via social media and improve the way it communicates online as well as its e-reputation.

5 tips for organising social media teams in large organisations (4/5)

This is part 4 of the synopsis of my Figaro Digital presentation in London on November 23, 2011. In order to gather all parts, click or use the following short link: http://bit.ly/figaroyag11 

[all photos by Yann Gourvennec: http://bit.ly/picasayann]

4. using tools as platforms for change

Social media is a difficult discipline which requires many different tools for management, monitoring and statistics. Using your team’s expertise, you can build credibility and offer tools which could exponentially equip your entire organisation, therefore improving cross channel communications and mutual help. These mutualised tools can therefore serve also as a basis for the implementation of the multiple hub and spoke organisation. At Orange, we have been able to work in those directions more than once.

First and foremost, we have worked on the standardisation of processes and the industrialisation of moderation around our social media platforms. Because our teams cannot be behind their screens all day long, let alone speak all languages and especially difficult or rare tongues (even though we already speak three or four), we are resorting to external teams in order to moderate the comments and posts by our audiences on social media platforms, in order that each and every customer (this is our ultimate goal) gets an individual response by the Orange helpers teams in the country relevant to the customer who has an issue.

We have been able to work beyond this though, with the equipment of the entire organisation with a social media platform Administration tool which we are using to help teens better communicate between each other and respond within platforms across the organisation. With this kind of platforms (many vendors exist) you can very well ask somebody from, say the Orange helper team, to take ownership of your twitter platform any time somebody has a problem which needs to be solved. Slowly but surely, we are improving the process, and the equipment of our entire organisation with tools like this is making it possible.

Beyond social media (but including social media), we are implementing what we call a websites factory, based on the popular open source software CMS EZpublish in order not only to establish consistency throughout the group, but also to achieve the merger between social media and web platforms. In essence, this is undoubtedly the topic which is the most important in my eyes, a lot more important than just an merely growing one’s fan bases on Facebook and other platforms, because through this websites factory, we will be able to establish governance, enforce consistency, make social media work for the company and its business and eventually, establish this decentralised, dandelion organisation which I was talking about at the beginning of my pitch.

It is possible to enforce organisational change through the implementation of new tools, even though the tools in themselves do not really matter. They can be changed one-minute to the next, but in the same way that we do business process re-engineering through tools i.e. that we encourage people to change their behaviour by mimicking those of others which have been translated into Information Systems, we can use this tools as platforms to help people communicate with one another and better respond to our customers and audiences.

to be continued …

5 tips for organising social media teams in large organisations (3/5)

This is part 3 of the synopsis of my Figaro Digital presentation in London on November 23, 2011. In order to gather all parts, click or use the following short link: http://bit.ly/figaroyag11 

[all photos by Yann Gourvennec: http://bit.ly/picasayann]

3. structuring your own social media approach

… is a must, but it has to be performed in stages. First one has to foster usage and establish credibility, second educate, evangelise and support. Social media guidelines are made for that. They are a tool aimed at encouraging best practices, rather than a weapon of mass destruction of your enterprise team spirit. This is why I didn’t want to have Social Media Guidelines posted at the beginning of our Social Media endeavours. Instead I thought it was best to foster usage, gather a number of like-minded people who would contribute to the same platforms in a collaborative manner.

It is any wonder that the strongest community on our internal collaboration platform is that of our experts who are blogging on the Orange Business Services platform (http://blogs.orange-business.com)? Right from day one, we started to structure this initiative in a decentralised way, ensuring that our experts were empowered in order to create user generated content. Now, this has created motivation and enthusiasm amongst the teams who are more than ever determined to keep this new media. Once and this empowerment has been established, then and only then can we deploy our social media guidelines, as was done in early October 2011; they are also made available to all viewers at http://orange.com/smg.

to be continued …

5 tips for organising social media teams in large organisations (2/5)

This is part 2 of the synopsis of my Figaro Digital presentation in London on November 23, 2011. In order to gather all parts, click or use the following short link: http://bit.ly/figaroyag11 

[all photos by Yann Gourvennec: http://bit.ly/picasayann]

In Social Media as in many other areas, we are learning as we go along, but we have discovered that there are certain methods which worked well for us and I will be sharing them with you today. We aren’t probably doing everything right, but we are learning every day and experimenting a lot. As I keep saying, there is no such thing as a social media expert, we are just social media practitioners.

2. it all starts with your team

Team involvement is key. It’s the foundation for sound change management. First, one has to establish credibility, then find change agents, and last but not least, ensure that one educates, encourages and supports employees. The coordination team is at the centre of the hub and spoke approach.

Our role in the Web and Social Media team is to develop and promote our corporate website Orange.com (2nd largest French Corporate Website), to coordinate Web and social media efforts, at home and Worldwide.

As a matter of fact, our role extends beyond Facebook (or Twitter, G+ etc.) page management, it’s a coordination effort. And coordination starts with practice. How on earth would we be able to share best practices if we didn’t practice ourselves?! Tools are interchangeable, but people and knowhow aren’t, and some if not most of the knowledge has to be developed in-house, this is something I am very keen on.

Our tasks therefore extend beyond social media monitoring, we actually master (or try to master) all the facets of Social Media engagement including Digital Brand Content creation – there is someone in my team dedicated to the facilitation of the http://live.orange.blog which is more than just a blog, but a platform for both internal and external partners to exchange. This involvement turns us into internal consultants so as to be able to advise people on their Social Media Engagement and presence. Our job is not to artificially manage fan pages but to fit these tasks into the overall picture of Web communications. Over the years, we’ll see more and more of that knowledge and knowhow applied to other fan pages than our own, and devoted to the networked promotion of other entities. This is indeed starting now.

to be continued …

LeWeb Paris 11: don’t miss a thing thanks to our blogging team

From December 7-9, I will be taking part in Le Web in Paris and leading an international team of bloggers from and outside Orange

Readers who are not able to make it to the event will nonetheless be able to keep in touch with what happens in Paris at Le Web thanks to our twitter handle @orange, which will lead them to the right resources on blog and other media. The #leweb hashtag will also be funnelled through Orange Timeline so you can see, not only what we are going to tweet and post during the event, but all the content provided by all users talking/writing about the event.

Discover our Social media team’s members

Glenn Le Santo
Writer. Journalist. Broadcaster. Photographer. PR. Social Media commentator. Speaker. His specialties are social media, mobile, people, travel
Twitter @lesanto

Camille Bouiller
High Tech enthusiastic, he writes regularly on Presse Citron High Tech blog to talk about web news, and to share his developper work experience
Twitter @nephthys

Camille Jourdain
Social Media Manager at Up 2 Social, blogger (his own blog and a collaborative one, Locita). Social media enthuastic
Twitter @camj59

Laurent Moulinier
Mobile Marketing Strategy Marketer (at Orange France) – SoLoMo evangelist. His specialities are social, local, mobile, mcommerce, etourism, startup, entrepreneurship
Twitter @laurent_local

Raphaelle Laubie
Health 2.0 Serial Entrepreneur, Corporate Affiliate Lecturer at ESCP-Europe, operating on Soft Skills, Organizational Behavior, Web 2.0 and Open Innovation topics
Twitter @raphaellelaubie

Kevin Dicop
Social Media Manager, Blogger and Community Manager for MyCommunityManager – Former Mba EBusiness ESG student. Web, travel, street art and cooking geek enthusiastic
Twitter @KDicop

Lise Janody
President and chief content strategist at Dot-Connection, a small, fully bilingual consultancy based in Paris, France. Content and web management
Twitter @lisajanody

Stewart Baines
Co-founder of Futurity Media with Anthony Plewes. Stewart’s focus in Futurity Media is in emerging technologies, social media and future gazing. A graduate of philosophy & science, he has studied futurology & foresight to post-grad level.
Twitter @stewartbaines

Orange Group social media team

Lionel Fumado, Social media manager at Orange Group
Twitter @lionelfumado

Céline Louis, Live blog chief editor and blogger at Orange Group
Twitter @celine_louis

Alexandra Operto, Social media project manager & community manager Orange Group
Twitter @aoperto

Yann Gourvennec (yours truly), Director, Web Digital Media & Social Media at Orange Group
Twitter @ygourven

5 tips for organising social media teams in large organisations (1/5)

This is the session synopsis of my keynote presentation at Figaro Digital in London on November 23, 2011. I only used a few slides which I will provide later on. In this presentation I gave my tips for organising social media teams in large organisations, based on my current experience at Orange.

This is part 1 of this presentation. In order to gather all parts, click or use the following short link: http://bit.ly/figaroyag11 

[all photos by Yann Gourvennec: http://bit.ly/picasayann]

1. the social media strategist’s dilemma

Jeremiah Owyang, industry analyst at Altimeter Group, gave us a presentation in Paris in December 2010 which rang many bells at the time. In that presentation, entitled the Career Path of the Social Media Strategist[1], he described the dilemma that every social media strategist in my position is facing: either we scale and industrialise our job or we crash! The volume of requests is staggering, the number of new platforms ever increasing.

November 2011 is a critical month for instance: Google+ released its business pages on November 4th, 2011 and everybody in Socialmedia.org and everywhere else is asking themselves whether to dip or not to dip a toe in the water … It may seem trivial but how do we get ourselves organised? Do we have to throw more budget onto this – and if so for what purpose? – Or more resources, or do nothing and then run the risk of being a laggard? Decision-making has to be brisk, and the consequences aren’t minimal. Building a new network of fans/followers/likers … whatever you call them is the basis for doing community work and practice word of mouth marketing, and it is a job which requires many efforts and resources.

Even on existing platforms, one has to improve the way in which we are responding. It is particularly true at Orange, because we are a popular service provider with millions of clients and like any other service provider, one has to pay a lot of attention to customer service. It is therefore of paramount importance that we – at Corporate communications – understand that.

Jeremiah with Stan Magniant from Publicis

As a conclusion to his presentation, Jeremiah demonstrated that there were 4 potential organisational models and that the only viable one in a large organisation, the only one which scales, is the one called multiple hub and spoke or “dandelion”, in which empowerment is enforced, and the focus is on education, delegation, cross-organisational work and best practice sharing.

From our own perspective, this is easy to understand. Not only do I manage the Corporate Orange Website (Orange.com) and social media engagement with my team, but I also have to coordinate other initiatives in other entities and other countries (we have presence in 35 countries) as well as define the Governance that goes with this.

Now that we have established that there is a strong requirement for implementing the “dandelion” organisation, how do we do that? And how do we do that in a mostly de-centralised organisation. Most organisations, a fact I was able to witness throughout my career, are de-centralised. De-centralised organisations are more creative, but they are also more challenging with regard to how one implements programmes across the board. If your organisation is more regimental, and all you need to do is press a button this presentation isn’t for you. Having said that, even in the Army when I was part of it, I witnessed a lot of de-centralisation which gave us leeway to do things and innovate at our level.

We have been busy working on Social Media at Orange for a long time now. Even though it’s only 4 years, Internet[2] years are said to be longer than ordinary years, only Internet pioneers remember that though. When I started working in this industry this is what used to be common knowledge. Internet years were likened to dog-years, i.e. supposedly 1 year equalled 7 years. Although there is nothing scientific to back this statement up, it is true that a lot has happened in just 4 years and sometimes I realised that everything we have learned has to be re-learned time and time again. 4 years later, approximately 200 people – the number was officially quoted by my colleague who is in charge of our digital HR strategy – are working in and around social media at Orange worldwide. This is a lot of people, but not out of proportion (we have 169,000 employees worldwide[3]). Yet, the challenge described by Jeremiah Owyang in his presentation are really pertinent.

So, how are we trying to tackle this challenge?

… to be continued

---

[1] Jeremiah’s slideshare presentation is made available at: http://www.slideshare.net/jeremiah_owyang/keynote-career-path-of-corporate-social-strategist

[2] see “how old are you in Internet years”: http://joesummerhays.wordpress.com/2010/02/23/how-old-are-you-in-internet-years/

[3] check http://orange.com/leaflet for details

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales : “from Wikipedia to Wikia” – #istrategy (6 of 6)

On October 26, I attended the iStrategy conference in Amsterdam. Here is part 2 of the account of Jimmy Wales’s presentation on Wikipedia and Wikia.

To gather all the parts of this post together, just type: http://bit.ly/walesvm2!

what the future holds

The future trends for the foundation, according to its founder are twofold:

1. on the one hand, it’s about expanding Wikipedia’s language capability and namely the most popular languages of India (in India there are over 20 different languages!”). In order to do that, keyboard issues will have to be overcome;  “this will be a challenge!” Jimmy Wales added,
2. on the other hand, the future is also about a new project name Wikia. “If Wikipedia was the beginning, i.e. an encyclopaedia, wiki is much more ambitious platform; it is meant to be a library!” declared Jimmy ‘Jimbo’ Wales.

Jimmy Wales gave us a few example of new projects developed from the platform, in order to give us a flavour of what the future holds:

The Guttenplag wiki (http://de.guttenplag.wikia.com) for instance, is a full-fledged critical report of the Ph.D. dissertation of Karl Theodor Freiherr (Earl) zu Guttenberg in which the authors of the collaborative project demonstrated that 371 pages of that dissertation (i.e. over 60% of the whole document) were actually copied from other sources. This led to the resignation of this gentleman as defence minister of the Federal Republic of Germany (for details refer to “Karl Theodor zu Gutenberg: “baron without a title” BBC.co.uk 18th of February 2011). Hundreds of people, not just journalists, took part in this project, Jimmy pointed out. In essence, one could comment that what this Wikia platform is bringing the power of wikis to the people.

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales: the Wikimedia foundation #istrategy (5 of 6)

On October 26, I attended the iStrategy conference in Amsterdam. Here is part 2 of the account of Jimmy Wales’s presentation on Wikipedia and Wikia.

to gather all the parts of this post together, just type: http://bit.ly/walesvm2!

the Wikimedia foundation

… is the mother company behind the online encyclopaedia. Its primary source of funding is its yearly donation campaigns. “Last year’s campaign was most successful“, Jimmy Wells emphasised. $19 million were donated online, out of the $28 million which make up the annual budget of the non-profit. Running servers and paying for the bandwidth supporting those millions of pages costs a mint of money, and $28 million is a handsome budget. The aim of the foundation is to be “independent, neutral and avoid the whitewashing of anything for anybody” Jimmy added.

Yet, how you ensure neutrality and fairness in the community in which not everyone is capable of editing the content (see part 4 in this series) is a much debatable issue.

Having said that, the foundation has 80 full-time employees working for it, and above 100,000 volunteers. “Do not expect our employee pays to grow to the 4,000 level within 10 years” Jimmy Wales said, this is not supposed to happen!

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales: “our contributors are computer geeks” #istrategy (4 of 6)

On October 26, I attended the iStrategy conference in Amsterdam. Here is part 2 of the account of Jimmy Wales’s presentation on Wikipedia and Wikia.

to gather all the parts of this post together, just type: http://bit.ly/walesvm2!

user profile

The new generation doesn’t know what a regular encyclopaedia is Jimmy Wales went on: he gave us evidence of that when he shared a tweet with us in which a teacher (see above picture) was asking a student what and encyclopaedia was and the student responded: “is it some sort of Wikipedia?“. One may well surmise that Wikipedia has become the epitome of an encyclopaedia … for better or for worse.

Yet, don’t imagine that your average Wikipedia contributor is representative of the overall population: “87% of our contributors are made male ” Jimmy pointed out. ”This is because the software is very geeky” he added.

The technical complexity of the code is “putting off other people who aren’t computer nerds” he added. But the Wikipedia team is working on a new improved WYSIWYG interface (thank God! I’m not exactly computer illiterate but editing Wikipedia for me is a real chore).

For the same reasons, contributors tend to be very young, the average age being 26. And the number of Ph.D. among them is double the average numbers of what they are among the overall population!

Wikipedia’s Jimmy Wales: all nationalities are culturally different – #istrategy (3 of 6)

On October 26, I attended the iStrategy conference in Amsterdam. Here is part 2 of the account of Jimmy Wales’s presentation on Wikipedia and Wikia.

to gather all the parts of this post together, just type: http://bit.ly/walesvm2!

Pop Culture in Japan

Talking about usage, not all the world is using the popular online Cyclopaedia in the same way. Jimmy provided a very striking comparison (see above picture). The Japanese for instance, are very focused on pop culture which is according to Jimmy Wells, “a very important part of Japanese life”. I personally couldn’t imagine it could be any worse than in Britain and France but it is apparently…

Our German neighbours seem to be very much into geography Jimmy went on “a joke which could only be made in Holland” according to him, hinting at the darkest hours of Europe. The Spanish and French are the only nationalities in which they are not articles about sex he added; maybe a sign that “they are the only ones who are actually having it” he ventured, and they are far more interested in culture and the arts than the average too.

a world of differences

“it is difficult to draw any conclusions from this” he commented more seriously, but it defeats the idea that we have all become similar. On the contrary, it ‘”shows the great cultural differences between nationalities”. It is easy to explain and he gave us an example: “any Briton would be interested in reading facts about Nick Clegg” he said. Other nationalities wouldn’t even know what party he is from and why he is deputy Prime Minister.

iStrategy digital conference in Amsterdam with Randi Zuckerberg and Jimmy Wales …

supercharge your digital strategy in Amsterdam on October 26

October 2011 is rather fretful. I keep telling my wife that I need to put down my suitcase and stay put but how could I when the world is buzzing with exciting events like the iStrategy global digital media conference which will take place in Amsterdam on October 25 and 26?!

At this conference, on October 26, I will be keynoting on social media ROI/ROE but I will keep this for a later post. today, I would like to focus on the program first. The array of speakers is truly amazing, the program is second to none, and here are some other highlights from that list of keynotes which you shouldn’t miss:

• Randi Zuckerberg will open the session with a keynote on the future of online banking. Mr Z’s sister will namely deliver her top 10 tips to maximise your brand on… Facebook of course!,
• Tim Callan from Melbourne IT (disclosure: I am a client) will deliver a pitch on the new GTLD program by ICANN. Don’t miss this, MIT are the world’s most revered experts in this domain (their Chief Strategy Officer is Dr Bruce Tonkin, one of the world’s leading experts in domain name strategy),
• Last but not least, Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, will describe how collaboration is changing not just encyclopaedias, but the whole world. Mr Wales’s keynote is entitled: “the wiki world“.

There will be plenty more speakers, like Facebook’s Julien Codorniou and Laurent Delaporte from Microsoft. Stay tuned on this blog, I will soon give some details about my keynote on “social media ROI/ROE”.