Collaborate to Accomplish Something Greater

EMC Leadership & Innovation Speaker Series:
Collaborate to Accomplish Something Greater

Wednesday, September 8, 2010 ~ 5:30 - 7:30 PM PT

To remain relevant in this increasingly complex, interconnected world your two most vital traits to hone are your top talent and your capacity to collaborate - especially with people extremely unlike you. Rational Optimist author, Matt Ridley, and Cognitive Surplus author Clay Shirky - among others - predict that collaboration will flourish. Done right, it's the surest way to seize an opportunity or solve a problem. Keys are recruiting the right team around the sweet spot of mutual benefit, using the best collaborative method and with agreed-upon Rules of Engagement. That's why, after reviewing over 300 examples of successful collaboration including 18 she's instigated, Anderson honed a model.

She found that several kinds of collaborative including co-creation, charette, crowd sourcing, mutual support, peer2peer and team-to-team, yet the one that is most versatile is the self-organized project team.

In this session hear success stories, steps, pitfalls and ways to instigate and participate in collaboration so you can use your best talents to accomplish greater things than you could alone – and savor the experience.

Speaker Bio

Kare Anderson

 was the Issues team formation director for the Obama presidential campaign. She writes about collaboration at the blogs Moving From Me to We and at How We Partner. Her retainer clients include Nomura Americas, Lego, Utah Jazz and Earth Justice. This year she was voted one of the Top Five Speakers on Communication. She is an Emmy-winning former journalist for NBC and the Wall Street Journal. As David Rockefeller Jr. said, "Kare forever changes how you see yourself and your world." Learn more http://www.sayitbetter.com/coaching.php

Refreshments (pizza, salad, cookies) will be served

Register here: http://info.emc.com/mk/get/DBM9049-11442_raf_lp?reg_src=IN

Agenda

	Networking: 5:30 - 6:00 PM
	Speaker: 6:00 - 6:45 PM
	Questions: 6:45 - 7:00 PM
	Networking: 7:00 - 7:30 PM

f you have questions, would like more information, or if you require assistance with your registration, please email Sheryl Chamberlain, Program Director, at  elin@emc.com .

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect

Eight Ways to Co-Promote Products or Projects

Even when novelists dream of fame and fortune few probably 

dream this big.Lucky Nicholas Sparks.

Even before the screenplay is written a partnering-inclined movie producerjoined forces with a publisher to launch a huge promotional campaign for the book from which it will be made – Nicholas Sparks’ Safe Haven.

This is a first.

The partners' plan is to build buzz and momentum for the September 15th book launch and continue the campaign through next year so that avid fans share the news and fill those movie seats when the movie comes out.

The producers of the movie, Eat Pray Love have partnered to co-promote manytie-in products, yet they might have generated more sales by starting sooner - adopting a similar book/movie build-up.

Of course it helps that Sparks has a jaw-dropping track record. Each of his previous books usually has over 2.5 million copies in print. Six have already been made into films. In case you’re interested in the winning formula, Safe Haven is an action thriller and a love story. Some call his formula schmaltzy yet the books sure do sell.

Grand Central Publishing is the publisher and the movie producer is Relativity Media, the firm that's delivered a string of hits including Mamma Mia! and Evan Almighty.

As Randall Cox, head of Relativity's digital properties suggests, "The social community has evolved to the point where audiences want to be engaged, not just sold to."

Here are eight elements of this leveraged partnership that smaller businesses or other organizations could adapt and emulate: 1. Explore ways to have a staggered over time, multi-part promotion with your partners – like this book, followed by the movie roll-out. For example co-create a product, then roll out new features of it and/or special versions that serve specific situations and/or niches.

2. Join forces with your partners in creating online sites. For example, Grand Central Publishing and Relativity will co-create a Facebook page for the book that will also give updates on the movie in the making. Sparks already  has 148,010 followers on his Facebook page where he invites fans to name their favorite actor who appears in one of his films.  (Hint: multiply the easy ways fans and customers have to participate and brag about it.)

3. Ask customers, prospects and fans for their input in designing or refining your product, service, program or cause. For example, Relativity will consult fans on who to cast for the movie parts.

4. Co-host ongoing web-based interactive experiences and a series of contests.

5. Offer prizes to contest winners that recognize and reward them in ways that relate to your project. For example, prizes may include a meet-and-greet with Mr. Sparks and a walk-on role in the movie.

6. Provide  events for customers and fans and video them in action and when giving their own stories of why they love your product or project. For example, a videographer will cover fans when Sparks goes on his extensive book tour. The video vignettes will be titled and the participating fans named when the videos are placed on the partners’ sites and on YouTube where there’s already an Authors@Google series and author, Gretchen Rubin has even created her own branded YouTube channel.) Viewers will be invited to comment on the videos and to share them.

7. Keep an eye open for new ways to distribute your product. For example, 30 Relativity-produced movies will be sold by Netflix to be streamed into homes.

Look for distribution channels that enable your kind of clients to see you product when your competition isn’t even in sight. Here’s one partnering scenario to prime the pump of your creating thinking:

What if those involved in local dog parks banded together into a national association that included an online community? They could attract underwriting to cover the costs of avid pet owners and dog park creators and managers learning from each other, including how to advocate for local support of such parks.

A maker of comfortable walking shoes (The Walking Company) and an outdoor-oriented clothing (Land’s End) could be recruited as community underwriters/advertisers – giving them the opportunity to be exclusive partners in their kind of product category.

8. Look for relevant tie-ins to create more profit centers. For example, since Sparks' books and movies have romantic themes, there could be product tie-ins with Valentine’s Day and/or special group offers such as Double Date nights at the movies where any two or more couples who see the movie together get gift coupons from partnering clothiers, restaurant or chocolate store chains. Kare speaks, writes and consults on quotability and collaboration – vital traits in this increasingly bottom-up, complex, connected world. See how much others accomplished in just an hour of phone coaching with Kare http://www.sayitbetter.com/coaching.php - or bring her to speak http://www.sayitbetter.com/meeting_planners.php  This Emmy-winning former NBC and Wall Street Journal reporter is the author of Walk Your Talk and Resolving Conflict Sooner. Voted one of Top 5 speakers on Communication: http://speaking.com/top5/ Two of her blogs are featured on http://collaboration.alltop.com/

http://listiki.com/best-list-of-collaborationrelated-sites-and-books/kareanderson

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect

An Approach to Crowdsourcing Worth Emulating

Like the Aussies, you’d probably jump at the chance to preserve your country’s past – especially if you could fit your volunteer work into convenient breaks in your day.  That’s why it’s worth your while to learn about the crowdsourced Trove project.

But another reason is that you might be able to adapt the Trove approach to involve like-minded people in tackling a time-consuming yet worthy project that matters to you.

Here’s the story of The Trove.

The National Library of Australia invited citizens to join them an ambitious campaign to digitize out-of-copyright Australian newspapers from 1803 to 1954 that soon grew to include other Australian collections.

In Addition to a Catchy Title Give Your Project an Inspiring Label

The librarians described the project a “national online discovery service”, thus evoking national pride and a vivid reason to volunteer. And Debbie Campbell, the projects director of collaborative services, enthusiastically dubs her slideshare on the project “Explore Like Never Before ….”

Scale Your Project to Serve More People More Ways

Rose Holley, the librarian in charge of the Trove has been astounded by the wave of volunteer involvement. What began as a huge volunteer project has morphed into a search engine that now provides access to more than 90 million items about Australians and Australia. As of last month 4.3 million images from Picture Australia including all contributions from Flickr users can now be found in the new Trove service. Trove searches multiple types of resource, including photographs in Picture Australia and elsewhere.

From the beginning, the library wanted the results to be easily available and searchable by anyone. That’s why it opted for an open source platform that enables people to contribute, correct and find information.

Here’s how it started.

in July 2008, the library got a grant to cover the overhead cost of this extensive OCR scanning project. It included the launch of a free online service for full-text searching of newspaper articles.  Then the library invited volunteers to help by searching and correcting the OCR-scanned text, as well as adding subject tags to articles. Old newspapers are difficult to scan so it helps to have humans correct the results.

Volunteers uploaded and classified photographs to the Picture Australia public-domain photo library. By June 2010, there were 12,000 active volunteers had corrected 50 million lines of text.

Holley was overjoyed: “It’s amazing to think that we have 20 million articles awaiting correction, and in a year we will have 40 million. It’s an impossible, crazy goal, but in many ways that seems to inspire people.”

Reward Your Most Diligent Crowdsourcing Volunteers

The top text correcting volunteers received Australia Day awards for their efforts.

Leverage the Ways Your Volunteers’ Work Can Help Others

Articles from the service have been harvested and are now available from the 

Google News Archive 

Search.

Also the searchable Trove has grown to include maps, music, diaries, books, journals and more. One result? The library more than doubled its web services traffic to reach more than 2.5 billion hits in 2009.

Librarian Holley offers a vital insight that applies to all crowdsourcing projects: “People don’t want to be taken advantage of, so they are much more motivated to help a non-profit organization.”

~ ~ ~ 

See Kare's list of collaboration-related sites and books: 

http://listiki.com/best-list-of-collaborationrelated-sites-and-books/kareanderson

See how much others accomplished in just an hour of phone coaching with Kare http://www.sayitbetter.com/coaching.php - or bring her to speak http://www.sayitbetter.com/meeting_planners.php 

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect

Super Way to Attract More People While Spending Less

I was often bored in school except for Mrs. Dodge’s high school English class. She scared me. Not just each week but each day she required us to write an essay. She was my Superman. That daily deadline set me on a lifelong path of loving words and leaning into deadlines.

For all those great teachers and those lost students who didn’t have a Mrs. Dodge, the upcoming movie Waiting for ‘Superman’ is a provocative call to arms. It follows the lives of five public school students in a lottery, each hoping to be among the lucky ones who get into a good (charter) school.

After seeing the movie, DonorChoose founder, Charles Best was so outraged that he joined forces with the movie producer and the publisher, PublicAffairs, in a smart partnership to get more people motivated to support public school reform.

Why write about a movie in a blog about the power of partnering?

Because it offers another specific example of how businesses and not-for-profits that serve the same kind of people can come together around a sweet spot of mutual benefit to generate more money, visibility and other support for an advocated action than they could alone.

As I describe this partnership think of the emotional hot point of your work or interest – and your top goal. Then look for other businesses and groups that share that passion in better serving “our” common situation – and how you could join forces to reach and involve more people.

Here is the movie-centered partnership then the four steps you can take to adapt it to your situation.

Offer People Multiple Ways to Participate

Prior to the October release of Waiting for Superman by the social activist film production company Participant Media, partner PublicAffairs produced a companion book. Each book will include a unique code that those who buy it can enter on DonorsChoose.org and have $15 donated to the school or their choice.

Momentum Builds to Join, Once You Have Your First Partners

Another partner sweetened the pot. When publisher Houghton Mifflin Harcourt joined the WaitingforSuperman.com “Pledge Progress Meter” it offered to provide $100,000 worth of new children’s books to U.S. libraries in need - if 60,000 people signed the pledge to see the Guggenheim’s documentary when it opens. Donating your products or services is the most cost-effective way to participate, of course.

Add a Facebook page for people to tout their related tips and other contributions and link to their sites. Encourage them to create their own tie-in lists.

Encourage Groups of All Sizes to Find a Way to Participate

The more kinds of organizations and individuals that are offered a way to participate the more credible and compelling your campaign becomes.

What-if Dream Scenario

What if the partners recruited major national retailers that want to reach the market of parents like The Gap. Via Foursquare and/or Groupon they could make special offers (fulfilled by the retailers) to spur movie ticket sales, especially on that crucial first weekend the movie comes out.

The offers might be sweetened for a group of five or more who attend together. Movie theater owners become partners because they would be delighted to promote that offer.

As all partners promote the retailers’ offer (and the traditional and social media cover it) the retailers are able to reach more prospective customers with a “halo”-based message and a reason for offer holders to walk through their doors.

Tip: When two or more organizations partner they multiple the number of people they reach and the extra value they can provide

Steps: to Forging Your Own Value-Building Partnership

1. What kind of people do you want to reach?

2. Who else reaches or serves (or could reach or serve) that “market”?

3. What specific action(s) do you want the people in your market to take?

For example, the main site for the movie encourages you to see the movie, read the book and offers ways to learn more, donate or to help a local school.

4. What offer(s) can you and your partners make that will motivate them to act?

As you and your partners advocate actions you’ll know you are succeeding when:

1. Others join you and suggest other supportive actions.

For example, one tutor mentor suggested the campaign should also show “show kids the importance of college, if they had a college degree themselves. But that’s what poverty is all about. It’s people who don’t have high paying jobs, college degrees, etc. How can they be providing the dollars to help teachers? How can they find the time to be mentors? How can they model jobs and college if they have not finished school themselves? “

2. Others question the legitimacy of your offers or claims.

That’s the reward and the penalty of this increasingly complex, connected and bottom-up world. We must become increasingly nimble in forging partnerships and other kinds of collaboration so we can respond quickly to seize opportunities and to solve problems.

See links at <a href="http://howwepartner.com/2010/08/super-way-to-attract-more-people-while-spending-less/

Find Kindred Spirits or Customers by Sharing the Simple Way

There’s a simple, satisfying way to attract those who share your interests or seek your kind of product.  It enables you to demonstrate your expertise and it doesn’t take much time nor cost anything.

Sharing helpful tips with those who want them is more appreciated – and credibility-building – than self-promotion. In a time-starved world, the best way for people read your tips may be in a list they find online or via their smart phone. It helps people find you – and it’s a quick read.

The more specific the list the greater your chance of attracting the people you most want to reach.

Hint: Top Dog Breeds for People with Allergies. (I have yet to take my own advice here).

Your list can be a “best of” something such as books and sites on a topic or a David Letterman-style Top Ten countdown of relevant advice, or…?

For example, four of my interests are collaboration, connective conversation, human behavior and, as a paid speaker, conferences so I created a Twitter list of favorite people and organizations for each interest.

The bottom line is your list should catch the interest of the people you see to reach.  They may be your peers, possible customers, or individuals who share your hobby, medical condition, belief, profession, industry or other interest.

Your list enables others to quickly:

•  Get ideas on a subject that interests them.

•  Know who you respect.

•  Understand a bit about your perspective and priorities.

•  Identify possible sweet spots of mutual interest.

•  Find you.

Once you’ve created your list you can share and update it online at several popular places where friends, kindred spirits and strangers are likely to find it:

• Your blog and/or web site.

• Twitter List – create several for the different parts of your life and find others who shareyour interests.

• Listiki – where you can invite others to add to your list.

• List of Bests – Make a list in one of three categories, personal, definitive or award.

• Posterous – where you can share your list without creating a blog.

http://kareanderson.posterous.com/

• Facebook group page – see examples, Shareable and my Etsy where you can link to your list, first explaining why it is relevant to them.

• Linkedin group of people who have something in common – you can join or start a group, linking to your list as you would for your Facebook group.

• Ta-da – create and share “to do” lists for everything from organizations you respect to meeting agendas or famous quotes you don’t want to forget

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect

Co-Create S’More Customer-Attracting Events

From Palm Springs to Puerto Rico s’mores were being served poolside, at the bar and outdoor fire pitsand as self-serve "s'more-gasbords" and for children’s “cooking” demos by hoteliers and and restaurateurs – all in celebration of National S’mores Day on August 10th.

Together they created more buzz for this enticing reason to dine than

any one of them could on their own – and so can you.

And they could have generated even more visibility if they’d involved more 

partners.

As any former Girl Scout like me fondly recalls this snack of roasted marshmallows and melted chocolate, sandwiched between graham crackers was a part of our campfire tradition.

Imagine if the associations of restaurants and of hotels had invited the makers of those ingredients and the Girls Scouts to join in the celebration – plus an inspiring unlikely ally.

Some restaurants, for example, might have offered free s’mores as deserts that day to any group of that chose to dine with them when one of the group could show proof that she was once a Girl Scout.

As well, what if next year’s celebration was announced with an insert offer in the packages of the ingredients – good for a free s’more desert at any participating restaurant or hotel?

Another partners' package insert might include a “How to Hold Your Own S’mores Party.”

Both the offer and the “how-to” guide would also be available on the web sites and described in the social media campaigns of all partners.

Together the partners:

• Multiply the number of prospective customers they reach.

• Dramatically reduce their promotional costs.

• Are more likely to attract media coverage for their “first ever” story.

Besides a fun, interactive event that includes a free offer usually attracts more interest and participation than an advertisement.

Most any consumer-serving business could suggest that its industry association coordinate a day in which all members and other partners join forces around a single kind of customer-attracting experience.

Think of a demonstration by a celebrity expert, ritual, “best of…” contest or a share-and-compare or speed-consulting event that taps a trend.

~ ~ ~ 

Accomplishing greater things 

with others than one can alone...

Kare speaks, writes and consults on connective communication and collaboration – vital traits in this increasingly bottom-up, complex, connected world. This Emmy-winning former NBC and Wall Street Journal reporter was the Obama campaign's Team Collaboration Director. She’s the author of Walk Your Talk and Resolving Conflict Sooner. Voted one of Top 5 speakers on Communication: http://speaking.com/top5/ Two of her blogs are featured on http://collaboration.alltop.com/ and another, Say it Better, on http://lifehacks.alltop.com/

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect

From Slave Trading to Watching Kittens on Treadmills: How We Use Our Cognitive Surplus

The invisible gorilla, Get Satisfaction, wellness community, Bikewire, kiva and etsy are just some of the online places we’ve shared for fun, money-making, justice, special interests, tips or support. With more free time and the spread of “public media” ordinary citizens can “pool free time to pursue activities together” suggests Clay Shirky in Cognitive Surplus, his follow-up to Here Comes Everybody.

Yet, where are we heading with this growing capacity to actively share and co-create?

Towards extraordinarily satisfying and dangerous “opportunities” I’ve found.

Shirky covers the upside. Here are some points from his book, followed by the dangerous downside of the trends he cites that are covered in other books. These effects will touch all our lives so it’s vital to be aware of them.

The Benefits of More Free Time and Capacity to Share and to Organize

•  “The wiring of humanity lets us treat free time as a shared global resource, and lets us design new kinds of participation and sharing that take advantage of that resource.  Our cognitive surplus is only potential; it doesn’t mean anything or do anything by itself. To understand what we can make of these new resources, we have to understand, not just the kind of actions it makes possible but the hows and wheres of those actions.”

• “Back when coordinating group action was hard, most amateur groups stayed small and informal.  Now that we have the tools that let groups of people find each other and share their thoughts and actions, we are seeing a strange new hybrid: large, public amateur groups.  Individuals can make their interests public, more easily, and groups can balance amateur motivation and larger coordinated action more easily as well.”

• “The geographic range of collaborative efforts has spread dramatically.  When Linus Torvalds first asked or help creating what would become the Linus operating system, he received only a few replies, but they came from potential participants all over the globe.   Similarly, Julie Clarke, Valerie Sooky, and Meg Markus all lived in different places when they were forming Grobanites for Charity, but that didn’t stop them from creating a charity that’s raised a million dollars.”

• “Today people have new freedom to act in concert and in public. In personal satisfaction, this goal is fairly uncomplicated – even the banal uses of our creative capacity (posting YouTube videos of kittens on treadmills or writing bloviating blog posts) are still more creative and generous than watching TV.

• “Personal value is the kind of value we receive from being active instead of passive, creative instead of consumptive.”

The Dangerous Downside to Most Anyone’s Increased Ability to Share and to Organize

Yes, people like sharing and collaborating, as Shirky suggests yet many are adept at both for illegal goals. There is a tragic and growing dark side in this increasingly connected world as Moses Naim points out in Illicit. From trading in women, guns and drugs, illegal activity has also grown more “creative” and “active” and connected groups of bandits, terrorists, pirates and self-described global businessmen in a more efficient, larger activity.

As Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn have found there are now more enslaved and traded girls and women in than there were blacks at the height of slavery.

As well, we increasingly connect with people who share our beliefs, according to The Big Sort and Going to Extremes. A dangerous consequence of closer connections with like-minded people is not limited to terrorists.

As a group continues to bond it tends to take more extreme stances on the beliefs that brought them together – and to become more intense in those beliefs.

With our innate desire to belong, contribute and be known – and the greater capacity to connect, share and organize described by Clay Shirky, it behooves us to be aware of the downside tendencies of organizing groups as we enjoy the upsides.

Also as low-paid writers for eHow and LIVESTRONG, wine and other “content farm” workers have discovered, we’ll see other downsides to increased connectivity.

Accomplishing greater things with others than one can alone

Kare speaks, writes and consults on connective communication and collaboration – vital traits in this bottom-up, complex, connected world. This Emmy-winning former NBC and Wall Street Journal reporter was the Obama campaign's Team Collaboration Director. She’s the author of Walk Your Talk and Resolving Conflict Sooner Voted one of Top 5 speakers on Communication: http://speaking.com/top5/

• See how much others accomplished in just an hour of phone coaching with Kare http://www.sayitbetter.com/coaching.php - or bring her to speak http://www.sayitbetter.com/meeting_planners.php  http://twitter.com/KareAnderson  + http://howwepartner.com/

• Two of her blogs are featured on http://collaboration.alltop.com/ and another, Say it Better, on http://lifehacks.alltop.com/

Posted via email from Kare Anderson on Coummunicating to Connect