Posts tagged: social networking

Digital Literacy — Not Just For Kids Anymore!

What happens if someone posts an unflattering, or worse, a scandalous or compromising picture of you on Facebook? What are your rights? That’s a sensitivity that we need to start nurturing by training our kids — and our employees — to use online tools responsibly’, says Anna O’Brian, a PHD student in digital technology.

It is said that technology becomes part of our critical infrastructure when it crosses the threshold from the ‘techie’ world into the ‘everyday’ world like Skype, Google, and now Twitter.

So what happens when only some of us know how to use these connective technologies to improve our lives (as opposed to overwhelming ourselves even more). In other words, what happens when only a small portion of online users is actually digitally literate?

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With social networking sites reaching ubiquity, the internet allows anyone with access to ask any question and if you’re smart about it, you’ll get a useful answer — if you know where to look and how to connect the dots. But how do you wade through all of the information on the web and make sense of it all to do what you want to do?

Millions of people every day spend an inordinate amount of time meandering around social networking sites, discussion groups, e-commerce sites and blogs without getting a return on their time investment. More often than not, they simply get weighed down with TMI — too much information.

At a Wired magazine panel at the Social Media Week Conference in NY, I asked a roomful of tech connoisseurs how to save time and accelerate one’s digital literacy learning curve. Here are a few tips:

Be strategic. Prioritize your steps and not just in business.

Begin by asking yourself a few questions: What are your online consumption priorities in both your personal and your business lives? Who gives you the most online value because they’ve aggregated information that is pertinent to you?

Identify what minds you want to follow online - those that add value to your life, your business, your industry and to your head space; what online tools are they using and how; Determine how best to interact with them.

Organizing and filtering your information is key and Twitter List is a still underestimated yet simple tool. Just pick your favorite curators - the people you trust the most on Twitter to aggregate information that is pertinent to you - ignore those who tell you what they had for breakfast.

Some people know how to consume digital info and some people don’t.

Twitter curators like @scobleizer (for technology), @savvyauntie (kids) and @garyvee (social media and wine), can teach you how best to use the resources at your fingertips. Tweet after tweet, they tirelessly share useful links and generously respond to most inquiries with good humor and empathy.

Just how important is it to learn digital literacy skills these days?

Beyond saving inordinate amounts of time when sorting and filtering information, digital literacy enables you to find any resource then produce and distribute just about any message or idea to millions of people online. Many an entrepreneur and social activist has profited from the opportunity. But when the majority of the population still doesn’t know the difference between a web page and an application, will we be divided into two classes, those with access to timely critical information and those without?

As Meebo’s CEO, Seth Sternberg, put it: “I really fear that we aren’t teaching people the proper skills to really participate in this economy. It’s really scaring the crap out of me.”

Juliette Powell is an author, entrepreneur and integrated media specialist. Her first book: 33 Million People in the Room (Financial Times Press, 2009) builds on her work as co-founder and COO of the Gathering Think Tank Inc., an innovation forum at the intersection of integrated media, business, innovation and technology.

Solidarity 2.0

Juliette Powell: Digital Media has changed the face of Humanitarian Aid

Juliette Powell: Digital Media has changed the face of Humanitarian Aid

(This post was translated from French. The original interview was published in Voir on Jan 28, 2010 and written by journalist Elias Levy.)

Author of 33 Million People in the Room, a bestseller on the power of social networking, former TV interviewer/producer at MuchMusic & MusiquePlus, and recognized expert in interactive new media, the dual citizen (US, Canada) Juliette Powell is firmly convinced that social media is radically transforming the concept of “human solidarity”.

Social media is playing a very important role in humanitarian assistance to the stricken people of Haiti.

Juliette Powell: “Absolutely. We often under-estimate the impact of social media, yet we are now seeing their efficiency in managing the humanitarian catastrophe in Haiti. The NGOs in this devastated country have been empowered by digital media to help source and provide humanitarian aid and medical care to the Haitian people. The use of social media helps relief workers accomplish their difficult task faster: Oxfam benefits from using YouTube; Unicef from Twitter; the UNDP (United Nations Development) from Flickr; the International Red Cross from Apple who has made its iTunes service freely available.

Since telephone infrastructure has been destroyed by the earthquake, the only means of communication in Haiti is through the Internet. Social media can spread information clouds very rapidly which can help rescue survivors in care areas using photos of disaster areas taken from satellites to survey population flow.

The whole online community has galvanized to be at the service of Haiti’s millions: Google has made available its satellite images to help the victims of the earthquake while Missing Persons are listed and discussed on Facebook, Twitter, MySpace. These realities reminds us that now, humanitarian aid can not live without the digital and social networks that feed it. ”

Are many donations to Haiti are raised through social media?

“Yes. Last week’s figures speak for themselves: 21 million of 150 million dollars raised so far for Haiti have been collected through donations made through social media. Since this unspeakable tragedy has befallen the people of Haiti, a movement of unprecedented solidarity very tangibly expressed through social media, has emerged to demonstrate that in emergency situations digital and social media is faster and more effective than traditional media.”

How does social media also play a role in the democratization policy of certain countries?

“It is undeniable that social media also plays a major role today in the struggle for democracy waged by people under the yoke of dictatorship. For example, through the use of social media, Iranian youth - many opponents of the radical regime of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad - came to remind the world that they are wish for democracy and that they strongly reject the traditional insular vision of Iran defended by the current Iranian president and his supporters. Pictures and  videos of the strikingly brutal repression by the Iranian police of political activists and citizen journalists opposing Ahmadinejad was transmitted via the Web by dissidents and shared worldwide via social media.”

Why are you visiting Montreal, the hometown where you grew up?

“The Studio XX and the National Film Board (NFB) have launched a special training project called, ‘First Person Digital‘ a program for women to explore new narrative avenues. This project aims to inspire future filmmakers. First Person Digital distinguishes itself by offering a cross-disciplinarian production methodology cross-pollinating aspiring filmmakers, designers and the digerati.”

33 Million People in the Room: How to Create, Influence and Run a Successful Business with Social Networking by Juliette Powell (Published by Financial Times Press, 2009, 200 pages)

Tweetiquette… For Weddings?

Image courtesy of hartboy

Image courtesy of hartboy

This summer has been filled with new clients, lots of travel and new opportunities to work with the people I care about the most. On a personal note, I was fortunate to attend six weddings this summer, four of which weren’t just weddings, they turned out to be what I have begun to think of as ‘the twedding’.

You know you’re at a ‘twedding’ when:

1.    Your wedding invitations were sent via the micro-blogging site twitter.com.
2.    All aspects of your big day have been vetted by your twitter followers who suggest everything from wedding guests to wedding vendors.
3.    Members of the wedding party take ‘candid’ photographs and videos of the ceremony and upload them directly to twitpic and twitvid for community commenting.
4.    Your wedding becomes a trending topic on twitter.
5.    The groom tweets “I’m married” before kissing the bride.

As more and more engaged couples say ‘yes’ to social media, I wondered about the do’s and don’ts of ‘tweetiquette’. Is there a ‘twedding tweetiquette’? In this era of transparency and ‘ce-web-rity’, do couples secretly want us to ‘tweet their weddings’? Below, some of my favorite brides-to-be chime in with their thoughts:

‘We don’t intend to tweet or facebook only because we want our focus to be present and shared with the actual people in attendance‘, asserts bride-to-be Aviva Gayle. ‘We’re not really concerned with the virtual audience in the internet either. I’m sure if we were guests we’d feel differently, and want to exclaim “congrats” or “beautiful setting” or “great band” or “what-have-you!“‘

Isabel Walcott Hilborne, a bi-coastal online community consultant agrees: ‘Tweeting won’t be allowed at my wedding. I frown upon people telling others (who weren’t invited and perhaps are resentful) how much fun they are having!  I think it’s snobby - “I’m here and you weren’t invited!”  How rude.  Plus - live in the moment, don’t try to be elsewhere’.

Bride-to-be Nikki Stelma sees it differently: ‘I’d have to discuss it with my fiancé but we’re both very social so if one of us started tweeting at the wedding, the other would want to as well’, says Stelma, a New York based event coordinator. ‘There are so many details that happen during weddings that it is impossible to remember it all.

‘By opening an online discussion, you’re sharing your big day with everyone and they help you collect and immortalize all of the moments from multiple angles. When you think of it, it’s very intimate’.

Brody Bond, a creative director at a brand development agency in Baltimore who is getting married in a few weeks, couldn’t agree more: ‘It’s ok to be bold about who you are and what you do. This is an opt-in world, so you don’t need to worry too much about people being disinterested.’ Bond and his fiance Lisa have already set up a twitter hashtag (#Brisa) and a new twitter account (@BrisaBond) to keep friends up to speed on new wedding developments. No stranger to social media, Bond explains:

As always, it’s not about you. It’s about serving friends and family - especially those who aren’t there.One should always be thinking “what can I do to add value? How can I serve people?” In that way, social media helps to accomplish the intended purpose of wedding ceremonies more than the ceremony.

Bond has a habit of taking photos and “tweeting live” from friends’ weddings and rehearsals so it isn’t surprising that he has chosen to apply these same principles to his own wedding. You can check out Bond’s hilarious pre-wedding twitvid here.

If using social media to share your wedding is a new trend, what are the rules of engagement for those encouraging guests to tweet? Mindy Howard, Founder and Chief  Twit at TweetMyWedding.com sums up the wisdom of the crowd with her top 5 wedding ‘tweetiquette’ basics:

  1. The wedding couple should not be tweeting the whole time - they should be engaging personally with their guests & family.
  2. Use a ‘Tweeter of Honor’ and a hashtag (#) for the event, so everyone can participate, congratulate and tweet for the couple.
  3. Never tweet anything you would not say out loud at a wedding.
  4. Tweeting before and after the ceremony is acceptable, but never ever during the ceremony.
  5. Do not tweet during vows, special songs/music or toasts during the reception. Tweeting while someone is speaking is like talking over them - Hold off 5min!

To Tweet or Not to Tweet
In this day & age including all of your online friends in your wedding via social media could push that guest list into previously unmanageable and unaffordable numbers yet for most of us, no matter how engaged in social media we are, the question remains: Are ‘tweddings’ ‘Twagic’ or ‘Twiumphant’?

What do you think?

Juliette Powell is an author, entrepreneur and contributing commentator with HuffingtonPost.com. Her first book: 33 Million People in the Room, (Financial Times Press, 2009) details how to successfully use digital media in business. Powell is co-founder of the Gathering Think Tank Inc., an innovation forum at the intersection of media, business, advertising and technology. A popular key note speaker and commentator, connect with her on Twitter and Facebook.

CrowdFunding: How To Kickstart Your Business

Obama did it. Filmmakers are doing it and now you can do it too. ‘Crowdfunding’, a spin on ‘crowdsourcing’, is the latest funding opportunity at a time when our funding institutions are failing. With the success of crowdfunding campaigns like wikipedia.com and threadless.com, the financing of projects and people by large crowds is on the rise and a new tool to fund even the smallest of projects is now available to the general public.

In the best of times, there is always a sense that there are great ideas out there with little or no chance of funding from traditional channels. According to web-preneur Perry Chen, “the biggest trend we’ve seen so far: even during this economy, people are generous.  One reason why: people are getting big responses from their networks as people leverage their Flickr groups and other niche communities to spread the word about their projects‘. Also, small amounts are key.

“We need to move away from looking for big checks and learn to embrace small amounts.  I love people who pledge $1 or $5 to a project. Why shouldn’t we be able to become a patron each other for the price of a cup of coffee?

Enter KickStartr.com a free online platform that uses ‘crowdfunding’ to seed small projects with big communities. Although still in beta, the funding platform launched 2 weeks ago is for everyone from artists to entrepreneurs to students. Contrary to online investment mechanism’s Kickstarter’s site says that: “People who use KickStartr to fund their projects (”project creators”) keep 100% ownership and control”.

"The Gathering 1.09 by stevegarfield.com)

Crowdfunding yourself to success (image:stevegarfield.com)

How does one crowdfund that project you’ve been forever putting on the back burner? To find that out, I turned to KickStartr.com founder, Perry Chen.

What is the key to crowdsourcing for money or ‘crowdfunding’?
A focused project. I think we want to rally around things with specific goals. Making people feel like they are a part of something.  This starts with a compelling story — why I should support you — and then a determination to spread the word.

There is a great concept coined “Empowered Interactivity” by marketer and author Mark Hughes. Paraphrasing: Create a mechanism where people have an observable impact, and it becomes their brand, their 15 minutes of fame, their outcome.

If you already have a large social network, will it help you get funded more quickly? No question. Each person you know is an amplifier to each person they know. We all have a social network, and the key to crowdfunding is sculpting your project and presentation so that it amplifies past that first degree of your network. If it’s compelling, people will forward it.

What if you don’t have lots of online presence before using KickStartr, how do you raise awareness and get funded? It might not be the sexiest thing, but email is still extremely powerful. Send a rallying cry to friends and family, encouraging them to forward along.  Reach out to relevant blogs and organizations.  Become a marketer.

You can also go small.  One of our first projects (and we are only starting our 2nd week) was a programmer named Dan Phiffer who raised $99 to build a Wikipedia iPhone application. The funds will go to pay the Apple’s iPhone application fee. He was fully funded in a few days.

What can people do to make their idea stand out overall?
Video! It’s not required to fund a project, but we strongly encouraged it. Doesn’t need to be Kubrick, some of the best video are just people talking about their projects.  Their passion comes across, we can connect.

Along those same lines, offering benefits or rewards that have charm or value is a huge boost.  If you just put your hand out, it’s not that interesting.  Everyone can offer something in return.

One great example is a project by Earl Scioneaux, a musician from New Orleans, who is offering prospective backers some home-cooked gumbo and music theory lessons. His rewards really connect us to his project and make us feel like patrons.

What are some of the projects currently being funded?
They cover all the bases: group of New Yorkers self-publishing a book where everyone gets a page, a photographer exploring Iceland, a writer funding travel for a regional cookbook, a NYTimes crossword puzzle creator funding the release of Brooklyn-themed puzzles.

The day after we launched, two projects were already completely funded. That really blew us away. Five projects have been funded in the first week.  Five more are quite close.  The smallest funded was $35, and another is already close to it’s $3,000 goal. Several new projects are attempting to raise $10,000. I think projects will mostly be started by: people with particular ideas that have been burning in their hearts for awhile; those people that have ideas falling out of their heads; and people in creative industries that no longer want to wait to be tapped on the head. Then the second group are the audiences and networks of those folks. We think, eventually, that’s almost everyone.

KickStartr was a back of a napkin idea, and everyone has those. What if you could easily aggregate enthusiasm with resources? What project would you like to kickstart?

Juliette Powell is an entrepreneur, media consultant and author of 33 Million People in the Room (Financial Times Press, 2009), a book about social networking for business. Powell is co-founder of the Gathering Think Tank Inc., an innovation forum at the intersection of media, business, advertising and technology. You can connect with her on Twitter and facebook.

Me 2.0: Will Building a Personal Brand lead to Career Success?

While my last post was about media literacy, this one is more focused on digital literacy and how it affects your career. Many of us are aware there exists a digital divide: some people have access to digital technology while others don’t, particularly in extremely poor rural areas and in developing countries. What we rarely hear about is the digital divide happening right here, in our homes, neighborhoods and in our companies.

Digital literacy is the difference between knowing how to consume digital media (like searching for information on the internet) and knowing how to communicate, produce and distribute a message using digital media (like starting a blog or producing and uploading a useful video to youtube). While the divide between those who are digitally literate and those who aren’t is generally thought of as a demographic issue, I tend to think of it as a psychographic barrier as well. In other words, the ability to use digital technology isn’t determined solely on where and when you were born, it is also determined by a person’s affinity to technology in general and to digital media in particular.

For those of you who want to tap into the current zeitgeist around the digital literacy required these days to build a career using social networking, here’s an interview with personal branding coach to the millennial generation, Dan Schawbel, who shares insights and tips from his new best-selling book: Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success. (Kaplan Publishing, April 2009).

While 33 million People in the Room details how entrepreneurs and companies can build social and cultural capital using social networking, Me 2.0 takes a different tact to communicate a similar message, what is the main hypothesis behind your book?

The main hypothesis behind Me 2.0 is that everyone needs to “command their career.”  Tom Peters, the inventor of personal branding, always stated that we have to be the chief marketer for the brand called us.  He was all about Me Inc. and how we had to think of ourselves as companies and use the same strategies to stand out.

Being the commander of your career means that you’re accountable for your successes and failures.  You have to take ownership and full responsibility for your career.

Although, you might seek advice from teachers and managers, you know who you are, what you’re capable of and have to make the decisions.  You need to be in the drivers seat and that’s the only way you’re going to succeed.  The four steps I’ve outlined in Me 2.0 (discover, create, communicate, maintain) are aligned to this main idea.

What are some of the new ideas and tips that emerge from your book that people can apply immediately?

  • Reserve your name on the leading social networks, while purchasing your domain name and being an active contributor to your own blog.
  • Get endorsements as much as you can from your managers, teachers, etc.
  • Always think about how you can use what you’ve accomplished in the past to get your next opportunity in the future.
  • Understand that the number of Twitter followers, Facebook friends and LinkedIn contacts is a marketing list that you can tap at anytime.  They are internet assets!
  • Have a clear branding strategy before you engage online and offline.
  • Focus on relationships instead of making money.  The personal equity will get you further than paper currency.

What companies/ individuals are best representing the strategy and tactics described in ‘Me 2.0: Build a Powerful Brand to Achieve Career Success’?
When it comes to personal branding, Donald Trump, Oprah, and Madonna are three of the top ones that people have heard of.  Celebrity internet brands examples are Kevin Rose, Pete Cashmore, Rohit Bhargava and Jeremiah Owyang.   Companies that have strong brands through social media are Zappos, Comcast, EMC (I work there), and Ford.

*What specific tips do you have to effectively leverage each of the social tools: video on the net, blog, twitter, facebook, other?

  • Blogs are more important than all the social networks combined because they are hubs of information  and are something you can control.
  • Decide weather you’re better at doing video or writing.  Invest more of your energy in the one you do the best and promote that over time.
  • Don’t be afraid of using these tools.  Instead, figure out which ones work the best for you.
  • Learn about your audience before updating your status messages on social networks.  You don’t want to send the wrong signals to employers or friends.

‘Me 2.0′ is directed at gen Y, yet more and more evidence supports the idea that the ability to use social tools effectively to build career success isn’t directly correlated to demographics but rather with psychographics (head space) as well as affinity and access to technology. With that in mind, what can the ‘every person’ learn by picking up your book?
Every person can learn a little bit more about themselves from reading this book.  It’s also a source of inspiration and contains a proven set of tools that will work for anyone.  You don’t just learn about what’s available, you get to put it into practice.  A lot of research went into writing Me 2.0 and I think everyone will be challenged and see the potential of social media for personal brand building.

Dan’s book is in stores now and we’d love to get your comments on it, as well as any more tips you might have for building your personal brand using social networking. Time to share with the rest of the class..

Juliette

‘You 2.0’: The Silver Lining in a Cloud of Uncertainty

Overworked, Public, Economist These are the 3 words Paul Krugman used to described himself as we sat back in Princeton, NJ for our interview. Add to that the titles ‘New York Times columnist’, ‘Princeton Professor of Economics’ and ‘2008 Nobel Prize laureate in Economics’ and you begin to get a sense of the man behind all of the big headlines.

In Part 2 of my conversation with Krugman, we discuss everything from the impact of the Yes We Can generation, to political nominations within the Obama administration to the small world theory.

Social Media Expert Toby Daniels, '33 Million People in the Room' author Juliette Powell and nextNY's Nate Westheimer

You 2.0 meets the Yes We Can generation

An interview with Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman (Part 2)
By Juliette Powell

Where do you see the biggest impact of social networking and social media in the next 4 years?
Krugman: Some of it has already happened.

There have been some proposed appointments in the national security area, or at least floated appointments, that have essentially been torpedoed because the online community said no. ‘these guys are unacceptable!’ and rightly so.

There will be other areas affected but remember that basic policy formulation won’t come out of this stuff because it’s detailed. It will always require somebody sitting at a desk with lines of access and so on… But fast critique now demands that issues be brought to the front of the table when they were no being considered in the past.

Yes, the online community is gaining in power and influence and the effects are compounded because we realize it. Yes, it will be harder for this (Obama) administration to slip!

In the later Clinton years, the administration took on more of a managerial role and wasn’t as pro-corporate as a republican administration but less of a force for democratic change than one would have hoped.  That’s partly because they had a hostile congress but it’s also that there was no effective community saying: ‘Hey this is not what we elected you for!’ I think the Obama administration will have that kind of community and a good thing too!

Now that people all over the world have seen the impact that a single person can have using social networking technology – do you think that’s going to change the way that we view our own possibility to actually take control of our own destinies?

Krugman: I think there is something like that happening and it’s not just what is happening in America. What I hear a lot, is that many countries, including very oppressive regimes –

It starts as people having Facebook profiles just for friends, then something happens. It turns out that that same technology, that same involvement is also a way of getting political action together. People can be mobilized and I think it changes a lot of things.

In the 18th century, when we lived in small towns and everybody could participate and then we moved to this world where the power became very distant and news media far away, dictated how you saw the world. Now I don’t want to romanticize it but I think that it’s going to affect a lot of the world.

Take the famous Jacques Chirac quote: “The internet is an Anglo Saxon network’, that is no longer true at all. I watch my own links for my blog posts and I can see that we really are a small world. I’m seeing Chinese links, Korean links, Russian links. It’s a world now where this involvement has spread to very many cultures and indeed it is a very small world.

With Crisis Comes The Opportunity Of Accelerated Social Change, an interview with Paul Krugman

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect when I arrived in Princeton, New Jersey to interview Paul Krugman. I had been reading him for years in the Times and he was one of the reasons I had studied economics yet a sense of relief washed over me when I met a slightly harried Krugman in the unmarked video conferencing room reserved for our encounter.  The bearded genius with the earnest eyes greeted me warmly and told me he only had a few minutes to spare; his wife had just called because she was making pasta, the water was boiling and she wanted to know when to throw in the pasta and he wanted to get home before heading to Stockholm to pick up the coveted 2008 Nobel Prize in Economics. Krugman won for his ‘analysis of trade patterns and location of economic activity’. When I told him I’d share our interview with you on this blog, he graciously extended our allotted time together to answer more questions. The result is a multi-part Q and A.

In part 1, Krugman and I discuss topics ranging from the impact of the democratization of American politics on the connected masses to the role of social capital on the economic recovery. The full transcript of my Krugman interview, along with his videotaped responses will be posted here in the coming days.

An interview with Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman (Part 1)
By Juliette Powell

Given the current economic climate, what do you feel the role of building social and cultural capital plays in our recovery?

Krugman: We’ve gone thru an era of emphasis on individual initiative and individual rights. The “greed is good’ era, and now we’ve learned the hard way that that can go very wrong. 70 years ago Franklin D Roosevelt said: ‘We’ve always known that heedless self-interest was bad morals.’ Now we know that it’s bad economics.

We are now at a time when some of those virtues of cooperation, which is what social capital is about, have been rediscovered and with luck, this can be turned into something of lasting benefit, not just getting out of the recession.

For anybody who has followed Obama’s election and looked at the impact of his team’s online campaign, it is clear that many first time voters and people that wouldn’t have considered themselves politically inclined were empowered to self-organize and use social networking tools to help rock the vote. In your opinion, what kind of impact will people’s use of social media tools really have on the Obama administration’s decisions moving forward?

Krugman: We can’t be too romantic about this. Legislation still has to be drafted by teams of people putting every semi-colon in the right place. Economic crisis management will still be done by people sitting in government offices. Conversely, there is a democratization of the ability to express opinion and to make analysis. Here’s an example that most people wouldn’t be aware of:

We had a proposal for a financial bailout presented by Henry Paulson, the current Treasury Secretary. This was the voice of authority and most of the traditional media were highly respectful of it- not me - but most everyone else was. Yet very quickly, an enormous online discussion broke out and grew into a sense of outrage around the proposal. So the quality of the economics blogging around the economic bailout was incredible. You had a lot of smart people who knew a lot about economics but in the past wouldn’t have had any ability to get their views out quickly. They were not in official positions. The number of trained economists who also have newspaper columns is – one – me. These other people did not, but their discussion. I think it helped move the policy.

Within 3 weeks the treasury had effectively completely abandoned the original approach (to the economic bailout) because everyone who wasn’t in a position of power said: this doesn’t make sense!

We can see a lot of things like that happening in the future. Still, don’t underestimate the influence of people who can treat a congressman to luxurious dinners. Being online unfortunately is never going to do away with that entirely but there is a real democratization of access.

If you were one of the people who participated in the online discussion about the economic bailout, our healthcare system or the way to maximize the usefulness of the social tools put out by the Obama team, we want to hear your experiences or send us the name and blog of an online community member who helped you understand the issues better.

Keep checking in for Part 2 of my interview with Paul Krugman, where we discuss the impact of social media and social networking tools on everything from business to globalization to national security.

~> j*

As Markets Decline, Invest In Relationships

While most of us feel powerless as we collectively witness the seemingly endless disintegration of our financial, economic and political institutions, I tend to forget that we do still have a considerable amount of power - the power to elect a new President who reflects the nation we aspire to be, and the power to choose the people who, on a day to day basis, shape the fabric of our lives. As more and more people lose faith in our institutions, may this forum be an opportunity to celebrate the real heroes in our lives.

Why invest in relationships?
Whether I’m looking for a new job, a new apartment or a new point of view, my friends, colleagues and acquaintances are an invaluable resource for gathering useful information.  As the value of markets go down, the value of our relationships to navigate these uncertain times goes up.

With a little help from your friends, your network has the ability to keep you connected to business and social opportunities that you would not be privy to otherwise. In a world where most people’s financial capital is getting scarcer by the day, one cannot overemphasize the importance of building your social capital.  Reinforcing the foundations of your relationships has always been a good idea; nowadays, it’s essential.

Luckily, thanks to social networking platforms, it’s easier than ever to manage and cultivate relationships. Take my friend Kitt Grant for instance. Kitt is a television producer on shows like 360 with Anderson Cooper and the Today show. Because of the nature of her job, she’s always looking for interesting people to book as show guests. Last year Kit became a member of  the ‘A Small World’ (ASW) social network and started looking through member profiles. The next thing I knew, she had befriended me and we’ve been looking for ways to add value to each other’s lives ever since. With her inquisitive nature and easy smile, a few minutes spent listening to Kitt talk about her job and you naturally want to start suggesting people who might be a good fit for her next tv segment. Far from being a one-sided relationship, Kitt took an immediate interest in my company, the Gathering Think Tank and even reviewed the first draft of my book. From that experience, I began to think about the awesome power a network can wield when the people within it work together. But let’s get back to the power of just 2 networked people for a moment.

Say you have lunch with a friend, and between the 2 of you, you share 25 friends and friends of friends. If I were to calculate the number of potential connections between you and your friend, it would work out to 2 to the power of 25 or over 33 million possible connections.

There may only be 2 people at the table, but there are 33 Million People In The Room!

Of course not all of these connections could humanely be explored in one lifetime so the trick is to invest in those relationships that have the highest probability of giving you the maximum return on your time investment.

How do you find the most valuable people in your network?
Start with the people you know on your favorite social network. As Kitt found out, friends and friends of friends are a lifeline when it comes to linking you quickly with the information you need to make the best decisions about your next steps. As you go through your friends’ online networks, notice who is a natural born information hub. These are the people to invest in and learn from when consciously building your social capital. If you’re not sure what you’re looking for, here are a few clues.

Invest in people who:

§    Care about others and really work to help others get ahead as they get ahead.
§    Pass on helpful and pertinent information.
§    Are tirelessly on the scene - and this doesn’t mean they attend lots of parties – they are actually the people producing the cool, worthwhile events, products and campaigns.
§    Know who they are and are very entertaining.
§    Are full of passion about what they do. It’s not about the money. It’s about changing the world!

Taking notes from Kitt’s winning networking strategy: once you’ve determined who to invest your time in, it’s in your best interest to stimulate and develop those relationships. With social networking tools, your entire network is at your fingertips.

How easy could it be to:

§    Forward along helpful articles, topical blog posts and other relevant information to various affinity groups within you network?
§   What about recommending suppliers or former co-workers?

All of these small things make a big impression. The resulting dividends on your time investment could be exponential. Chances are, your network is rife with high quality people who successfully build relationships and add value to your community.

I’d like to feature your real life stories about who they are. It could be you, a friend, a friend of a friend – whatever works!

Contact me at j (at) juliettepowell (dot) com or facebook me your stories today!

~ > j*