Conference Management for the 34th IGC

In my previous posts, I’ve talked about some social media strategies about wiki, Facebook and LinkedIn. Here I will provide some ideas and advices on how to use these tools to manage conference based on the case organization – 34^th IGC.

The 34^th International Geological Congress (IGC) or AUSTRALIA 2012, will be held in Brisbane, Queensland, from 2-10 August 2012. It is a world wide scientific conference involving various activities such as business meetings, scientific programs, GeoExpo, expert workshops, etc. Thus, in order to successful manage such huge conferences with approximate 6,000 – 7,000 delegates and exhibitors, corporate with social media is a wise choice.

During the conference, timely publishing relevant information to the public and attracting more online participations should be given top priority. Here provides a case to see what Dell has done and discuss which parts are suitable for IGC to learn. Dell’s marketing and communications organizations prefer to organize a one-day conference on one topic, bring together their employees to share and discuss through social media tools. The biggest challenge for Dell is to integrate communications professionals and their efforts throughout different departments and various social media channels. One solution adopted by Dell for internal conference is called Unconference – they borrowed from techniques from other open, spontaneously organized conferences to create a simple one-day conference. However, there exists some obvious problems of preparing for an event remotely due to some cultural issues around shyness which also may happen in IGC. IBM also uses Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn for their public participators. Subscribing to their social media can make participators across the world to stay in touch with their public conference in real-time.

 

LinkedIn, more business opportunities?

In the previous posts, I’ve talked much about Facebook, Twitter, blog and Wiki for individual and organizational purposes. This week, I will introduce a new Web2.0 tool – LinkedIn and outline some strategies on how to use LinkedIn for business and individual branding. The video below give the overview about LinkedIn:

Actually, LinkedIn should be a brand new domain for me which means I have no rich experience about this. However, after learning some relevant cases and examples, I find that LinkedIn is more professional for business or studies compared with Facebook and Twitter, and effective use of LinkedIn can improve your professional relationships and benefit your future career.

 

Wiki strategies

First, I want to say that I have little personal experience on Wikis. Before I took this course Enterprise2.0, I confused the Wikis with Wikipedia and treated them as the same thing. After a period learning of Web2.0, I’ve got an overview of Wikis. Personally thinking, Wiki is more formal and academic compared with blog. That’s why so many big companies like IBM prefer to use internal Wiki to gather organizational knowledge and improve business decisions. How to ensure the employees to use Wikis effectively? First of all, let’s see a short video to get a view of an internal wiki — Zoho Wiki:

 

How to use micro-blog for business purpose

In my previous posts, I’ve discussed much about the enterprise2.0 strategies on wiki, blog. Today I want to put the emphasis on micro-blog. Unlike traditional blog, micro-blog is typically much smaller and has attracted increasing number of web netizens to register. In China, micro-blog has become a new trend. Sina Weibo served as China’s leading microblogging site combines main natures of Twitter and Facebook which has more than 60,000 verified accounts including celebrities, sports stars and other VIPs. Personally, the main reason why so many people prefer to use micro-blog today is that the micro-blog allows netizens to express and share quite freely and timely. You just write a short sentence counts down to 140 words to express status, feelings at any time in any place rather than long or formal posts with hundred words.

         

Although micro-blog is sort of informal and not so credibility as blog, it can also help to promote your personal even organizational brands. But how? Do the blog and micro-blog use the same strategy? Here are some points on the means of using micro-blog for business purpose.

 

How can we find ROI — implementation of Enterprise2.0

Return on investment (ROI) is commonly used by companies as financial metrics or benchmarks to evaluate business performance and efficiency of investment.

Here is the ROI formula:

When it comes to Enterprise2.0, the gains and costs are very difficult to measure directly. Most companies prefer to use money to calculate returns and seek a lucrative investment, but it is really difficult and impossible to see the immediate financial benefits at the beginning of implementing Enterprise2.0. Calculating the ROI is more than math, and companies should from the financial and non-financial points to assess the benefits of using social media.

 

The legal risks within the organization

When SNS (social media services) such as Facebook, weblog, Linkedin has become the major approach for most organizations to engage their employees and promote the business, various legal risks generated from their own staffs and/or the third parties inevitably threaten a company’s safety. Because of the blurred boundaries between personal life and work life when people use social media tools, it is necessary to establish the SMP (social media policy) to bind on an organization’s staffs. The legal risks generally can be divided into two types: internal and external. As shown in the graphic1.1 below which has discussed in the lecture, we can initiatively acquire the most common legal risks organizations will meet.

Graphic 1.1 The model of legal risks

In order to develop an insight into these risks, the following part of this post will choose IBM as an example.

 

The class social media policy( part one)

The most important issues students must remember when they use social media tools as part of their learning or personal capacity are respecting and responsibility. Thus, the class social media policy can be a guidance lead students to utilize the social media tools more effectively and regularly.

The basic policy:

1)  Disclose you are the students and your majors.

2) Be clear about which area you are representing

3)  Proclaim that you only offer your personal perspective or use a permanent disclaimer

4)  Reference only publicly available information and add hyperlinks to what you reference

5)  Ensure you are not disclose the confidential information of other organizations or companies

6)  Ensure don’t post obscene, discriminatory, threaten contents.

7)  Be responsible for your comments on other individuals, posts or communities

8)  Be polite and respectful of other opinions

9)  Using copyright, privacy laws to protect your contents and rights

Reference:

How to write a social media policy

Materials:

Social media examples

 

 

 

 

The pros and cons of Enterprise2.0

In China, there is a traditional viewpoint that everything has two sides. The great benefits gained from the implementation of Enterprise2.0 are also accompanied with some potential risks. Among all the benefits, the top two for organizations or firms, as I see it, should be enhancing knowledge, staff engagement.

Knowledge refers to knowledge management. This terminology for most people is pretty blurred compared to information. To be brief, knowledge should be the product through assimilating information over time or within experience. Therefore, knowledge is the blood of an organization. And enterprise2.0 should be the vessel used to transmit the knowledge. Studying from the success stories, Northwestern Mutual Life (insurance company) has a good acquisition of the importance of knowledge. The number of older workers is high means this company has a powerful cultural and experience-based context. Thus, it uses Awareness (an enterprise2.0 platform), a kind of enterprise2.0 platform, to create a searchable warehouse to their employees. What a mighty strategy. Tacit knowledge shift to dynamic and open and keep improving.

 

Improve through Share — With Web2.0 Tools

Hi guys,

Last week, the lecturer introduced two books to us: ‘Who moved my cheese’ and ‘Wikinomics’. Before that, I’ve finished the ‘Who moved my cheese’, and continue to read the other one. Even though the ‘cheese’ book I’ve read is the Chinese version, it still impressed me a lot. For the most adults, the story is really simple and maybe a little childish. But think deeply, our life is just like this maze filled with changes, right? The four characters of the story just represent different reactions when human encounter the changes.

 

Strategies led your blog to success!

The purpose

My first regular blog is going to talk about successful blog strategy. Of course, the strategy will vary from person to person. In my view, the most critical factor that can result in a successful blog is a unique and clear purpose. In short, why should I blog? The reason can be diverse. For example, my blog aims at recording what I’ve learned from the lectures, expressing personal opinions, and using it as a way of developing my reputation and relationships both of which are very crucial to an overseas student.

Choose the topic

Before starting, I also need to think carefully about my blog topic. That is also an important preparation. Because after you pick up a kind of topic, you’ve targeted the type of the future readers and subscribers. You can have more than one topic, but the themes should not be too scattered. All of your posts should have similar keywords. That is, if your previous posts are mainly about your work and transaction which are all formal, your next post can not be about the entertainment or informal records. For this blog, my topic will focus on the Enterprise2.0. Discussing and expressing my own views about Enterprise2.0 or Web2.0, and communicating with the readers who have the same interests and want to share and solve the problems in the same domain.

The quality of  contents