I was able to attend the Dachis Groups inaugural Social Business Summit 2010 yesterday, in Austin TX, and it contained a pretty stacked line-up of social business thinkers. Rather then writing some kind of review of the experience, I thought it would be more useful for me to just say that I really enjoyed myself, shout out to Peter Kim, and to highlight some of the key things I took away from some of the various speakers:

The Good Stuff

There was a lot of good stuff at the conference. The following are the big themes that really resonated with me, and got me excited that they were being talked about:

Doug Rushkoff – @rushkoff
“The way for companies to make money is to actually be good at something.”

I think that it’s easy for organizations to look at something like social media and think that it could possibly substitute for a solid product and decent customer service… it can’t. Doug sums it up rather nicely.

Charlene Li – @charleneli

“Social Business is hard because management must be able to give up the need to control, while being able to command.”

Spot on. The need to control is exactly the challenge that most large organizations are facing. After sitting through the conference, it became apparent that command means having documented strategy and policies that people can be held accountable against. Control means saying no.

Jamie Punishill – @jpunishill

“It is very hard to adjust a company’s bio-rhythms to align with the social web.”

Totally agree. Massive bureaucracy in approval processes and meetings are real time killers. Allowing everybody to have a say, means that you’re not going to be able to capitalize on things as they happen… Which is key because the half life of a story on-line is somewhere between two to four hours.

Frank Eliason – @comcastcares

“Personalizing customer stories and sharing internally with customer care associates drive reaction.”

The point being that working stiffs, like me, look at data all day long. But it isn’t until you see an actual personal story from somebody before it gets personal for the people in the Ivory Tower. Frank’s team started sharing customer blog posts, good and bad, so that everyone in the company can find out what’s going on.

We’re All In This Thing

It was really good to find out that the people working in large organizations were facing the same challenges as I have faced, and that there are some external organizations that understand those challenges are equipping themselves to help us brave this new frontier.

Good times.

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It’s the one week anniversary, and I remember exactly where I was when I first became aware of Chris Brogan’s day rate… like it was yesterday. Calculating that number had a profound impact on one of my Facebook status updates and I even considered blogging about it.

Seriously?

It’s just a number, and it’s really none of our business anyway… I’ve hung out with and personally man-hugged Chris on more than one occasion. So I decided that I would write a post that allows us to focus on the reasons most people, including myself, think that Chris Brogan is a cool guy.

Just The Facts About Chris Brogan

1 Shortly after Al Gore read a Chris Brogan blog post, he invented the Internet
2 When Chris Brogan hits enter on his laptop the Internet turns on
3 Chris Brogan created the blogosphere by writing a post about it
4 Chris Brogan blog posts can be read by both the illiterate and the blind
5 The Googlebot is actually Chris Brogan

6 Chris Brogan doesn’t update status, the Internet automatically updates his status for him
7 One Chris Brogan tweet can power the state of Iowa for 17 hours with its awesomeness
8 When your iPhone drops a call it’s because Chris Brogan just asked a question on Twitter
9 Every time Chris Brogan is retweeted a dolphin swims under a rainbow
10 When Chris Brogan @replies you on Twitter you are momentarily immortal

11 Chris Brogan is able to render Flash videos on his iPhone just by touching it
12 Chris Brogan can pinch zoom himself from Boston to Los Angeles in 2.3 seconds
13 Chris Brogan’s transparency makes it impossible for him to use Chatroulette!
14 It was once thought that Amazon EC2 could contain Chris Brogan’s authenticity, it cannot
15 Superman paid Chris Brogan $22k for a full day session on becoming a Trust Agent

Special thanks to @sregular for brainstorming these with me.

Add Your Own

The comments are for you to add your own facts about Chris Brogan. But you can’t argue with the aforementioned facts, as they are irrefutable.

As a veteran of Operation Enduring Freedom, a newly interested individual in the world of infographics, and on the heels of The Hurt Locker winning best picture, I thought it would be cool to look up information graphics showing the cost of the Iraq War and put them into one place. This is by no means an exhaustive list, nor is it intended to be, but rather what I could put together after rapidly scouring the internets.

If you have or know of any I’ve missed throw the link up in the comments and I’ll add it to the post. To be clear, this is intended to be informational and not political. I do, however, realize that seeing this information can rile up a political view or two…

Cost of the War in Iraq

Costofwar.com is a real time running tally of the cost of the war we are currently waging. It is set to reach its final amount of $1.05T on September 30, 2010, which is the last day of the Government’s fiscal year in 2010 and the last day of appropriated funds for both wars.

Hidden Costs of War

ny times In 2003, the cost of the war in Iraq was originally estimated to be $50B – $60B (B stands for billion). In 2007, the New York Times wrote a piece exploring What $1.2 Trillion Can Buy where they put an infographic together that related spending in Iraq to spending on domestic programs that can be viewed here. It is interesting to note that the sources for this story/graphic were Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes who, at that time, felt that the total cost of war would be around $2T (T stands for trillion).

good.is Why that is interesting is that the very next year, 2008, Good.Is cited Joseph E. Stiglitz and Linda J. Bilmes for the creation of this infographic where the estimated total cost of war was set at $3T (T still stands for trillion). What a difference a year makes, eh? Good.Is also animated the static infographic and threw in some narration, below, which is a great way to repurpose the information.

billion dollar gram One year later, August 2009, David McCandless created the Billion Dollar Gram, using the same $3T number, which shows spending in Iraq in relation to other interesting expenses and revenues throughout history.

energy consumption This last one is short and to the point, but I do not know where the data to support it comes from. Gavin Potenza put together a graphic that alludes to the costs of war, via energy consumption, by comparing the Iraq War to World War II. Although it doesn’t show dollar figures, it is a stark contrast that drives a point home.

Take Aways

First and foremost, war is expensive.

Second, it’s great that these graphics exist to help us understand the extent of that expense for the War in Iraq. It seems that, as human beings, we have a hard time getting our heads around large numbers without comparing and contrasting to other known numbers.

Third, after looking at these examples, a possible best practice in the production of cost based infographics is to relate the cost of the subject to costs of other known things.

Finally, Infographics based on speculation or money that cannot be accounted for and attributed to its actual source of cost, skate a fine line.

What are your take aways?

Everyone was up in arms about Please Rob Me, two weeks ago, the site that made a statement about being careful when you provide status updates regarding your location. And by everyone I mean Mashable, CNet, and even Forbes… whoa.

So now that the dust has settled a bit, @mathiask and I brainstormed where this web application could possibly go next, since the development team wants to sell it to a company that creates awareness about location based applications ruining people’s lives.

It’s All About The Mobile, Baby

Honestly, I don’t know any burglers who aren’t constantly on the go, outsmarting the fuzz to swoop in and steal all of your stuff. So why would a web based application work for them? Seriously. They’re not carrying around laptops to crime scenes… they’re stealing your laptop.

I would also argue that today’s thief needs more than a mobile version of a web site to peruse on their phones. They need a native application that integrates the best the web has to offer about you, your possessions and your current location.

I’m talking integration here, people. If you’re a robber, it’s not enough to know where your mark is, and therefore where he/she is not… You also need to know your mark’s address, how far away they are from their domicile, how far away you are from their domicile, what kind of stuff worth stealing they have, and how you’re going to get away with it. And if it’s not too much to ask, you also need a way to get rid of the stuff you steal, to cash in on your dirty work.

Balsamiq Mock-up

I really wanted to use this post to mock-up the potential future of a mobile version of Please Rob Me on Balsamiq because it’s indescribable how totally awesome Balsamiq is for the average web / mobile app designer. That, and I really think that paranoia about privacy and foursquare check-ins is a weak sauce thing to spread around the internets.

In case you were wondering where I stand on the issue: even though I wrote this post, I personally don’t condone the act of stealing from other people, and most certainly wouldn’t want my things taken from me. Therefore my hypocrisy knows no bounds.

What does it mean to have a vision today? And is an organization’s vision just a bunch of buzz words strewn together to make an incoherent sentence sound intelligent?

I don’t think so.

What Are Words For?

Using words is a traditional way to kick off writing a vision statement. So is looking at other organizational vision statements. However, both of those ways take up a lot of time as people try to out thesaurusize one another, splitting hairs over words that mean roughly the same thing.

A better way to kick off vision-storming exists. That way is good old fashioned goal setting. What is it that the organization wants to accomplish, and where does that mean the organization has to go to accomplish it? This goal should be an idea that is easy to understand and share. After all, everybody needs to get behind it… not just the people who craft it.

While you’re performing this exercise, keep in mind that buzzwords kill great vision statements, because organizational visions don’t leverage anything. They don’t hyper anything. And they especially don’t synergize.

So the next time you get pulled into a room full of colleagues to draft out a vision for the future, do something totally different… Ask the room what it is that the organization wants to accomplish. And I’m not talking about making money or increasing shareholder value. That stuff is implied. What problem is the organization setting out to solve.

“To make the world’s information universally accessible and useful” – Google

Then when people spout off sound bite cliche’s, push the collective thinking in the room. Ask why? And then do it again… Really get to the bottom of the organizational goal and don’t let people off with easy expected answers. The problem that the organization is going to tackle in its vision needs to inspire everyone in the organization.

It’s important.