Mass Relationship

Posted on March 19, 2010 by Scott Gould

In the comment section of our discussion this week on Social Media not being ‘social’, Robin Dickinson and I discussed the future of conferences, namely that the future could be a future without them altogether. Robin and I have been discussing this on Skype since July and his point is, ‘why in the 21st century are we still using 1950s conferencing models?’

Many of the ideas of Social Media, like engagement, conversation, friendship, follower, social and discussion, are based around relationship. That’s the whole point: it’s social and it’s relationship.

But I notice a few things that don’t line up that I’d like your feedback on:

Despite all this talk of community, why do we still idolise content over everything else? Talk about hypocritical!
Conferences are good becuase they allow people to make and strengthen relationship, but the conferences aren’t actually made for this. Should they be? Or should we be building relationships ourselves anyway?
The idea of conversation, when considering Dunbar’s number of 150 friends is the max you can handle, means we have to enter into mass relationship. Can we have an ‘online gathering’ whilst still retaining connections? What if people get lost? Or is that their fault?
How do we operate in a world where we have micro relationships and mass relationships? Do mass relationships just send us back to pushing content again?
Some people say face to face is best, others say should evolved. How do you scale face to face into mass relationship?

Did you see what I said there? Micro relationships and mass relationships. It brings me back to this diagram from my article on Preaching to the Converted:

I’m unsure about where we go from here, and what the implications of mass relationship are. I’m hoping we can talk it through.

P.S. If you are wanting to get past content and into real connections with real people to really collaborate, you might want to read this.

Do Talk Do – What Collaboration Looks Like

Posted on March 18, 2010 by Scott Gould

I’m on a warpath.

I’ve decided that most of the content consumed on a daily basis is the digital equivilent of frozen ready meals that get warmed and served up in 5 minutes, before being forgotten, having added no nutrition value to the body, and being dropped out into the toilet a day later in the chain of useless bodily consumption.

The irony is that I’m posting content to declare a war of sorts on content, but hear me out: today I’m beginning a collaboration project that you are all invited to.

Do Talk Do

The other day my friend Robin Dickinson said “DO-TALK-DO: continual talk without action lowers your credibility. Far better to talk about the action you took.”

When people ask what collaboration looks like, I’ve now got an answer. It’s this. Collaboration is that we do something. We talk about it’s successes and failures. Then we go and do again.

There’s twice as much doing as there is talking. And the talking is based on action, not theory.

Here’s How It’s Going to Work

I’ve been speaking to you in the comments, on Twitter recently, and face to face with many of you, about a collaboration project. About connections over community. Today it begins. This is how I see it happening to start with:

We’ve all done something. So we arrange a time to talk vision – probably on a bit conference call – along the lines of a rough agenda. If you haven’t done, don’t come.
If no one responds in the comments and on Twitter to this – then fine – I’ve clearly got it wrong. I’m not going to push it.
The aim is that we move ourselves from being content creators to those who make it happen. Goodwill and all that.
Put your name in the comments below if you’re in, with contact details.

Want more info? Like what we’re actually going to collaborate on? I don’t have it. The whole point is that this isn’t me, it’s us. And we don’t yet know where we are going.

Let it begin.

By the way, thanks to AJ Pape who inspired me no end last night with a short call where he showed me all the ideas he had ready from Like Minds. You can see them in the picture above. He’s already onboard. Thanks AJ.

Preaching to the Converted?

Posted on March 12, 2010 by Scott Gould

You might have the feeling if you’re using Social Media that you’re preaching to the converted. I often do. Question:

How many more case studies can we read?
How many more times can the same common sense be reinterpreted in 5 different points?
How many more summarises and digest emails can we look through for the same content packaged in new ways?
How many more comments can you leave saying “Great post”?
How many more events can you attend?

Lessons from Church

I’m an assistant pastor at my church. We have similar issues: How many sermons can you sit through? How many times can you come to church and hear the same basic principles (change, love, give, help) said in different ways?

There comes a point when you realise you are preaching to the converted. At this point you realise that it’s no longer about what you say, it’s about what they do.

Check out the diagram below. I’ve adapted it from Purpose Driven Church by Rick Warren (affiliate link) so that the language is more business orientated.

It’s pretty obvious, but let’s break it down.

The Crowd are the people in your general vicinity. This could be your city. In Social Media this used to be everyone on Twitter. But now that people follow so many other people, your crowd is probably those that either you follow or who follow you – people that you are linked to, but don’t engage with. These often are not aware of you.
The Community are those who in my case use the #likeminds hashtag and attended the last Like Minds Conference. You may speak with them occasionally. They are aware of you.
The Connected are the ones that you speak with semi-regularly to regularly. You comment on and subscribe to their blogs. Sometimes you collaborate with them. They are engaged with you.
The Committed are those you speak, discuss, update, collaborate and work with regularly. They are builders with you.
The Core are those with whom your life is share. They lead with you.

You see the change here. At the crowd level, you aren’t aware of each other. At the core level, you are leading with each other. The difference is action.

The tipping point is going from community to connected.

If you feel you are preaching to the converted

Then stop preaching. Instead, start working with them.

A few ideas for you to turn community into connections.

Schedule a skype call and get talking about your passions.
Agree to work together on a small project
Go out of your way to refer or make an opportunity for them
Do something extraordinarily special for them
Meet them

How about you? Are you preaching to the converted?

Scaling The Levels Of Social Communication

Posted on March 9, 2010 by Scott Gould

If a picture is worth a thousand words, then what is a tweet worth?

One of the things I persistently tell my staff is “get on the phone!” When trying to get information, sort something out, or close the loop on a contract or task, I really do hate it when people leave things to email when they could so easily pick up and phone and do it right there.

Even when my wife says to me “I’ll text them” I say to her, “why text and wait for an answer when you can get one right away if you call!” The other day I even had someone say to me that they hoped so-and-so got their tweet about their meeting. My answer again was, “Phone?”

We seem to have forgotten sometimes that our mobile phone does indeed make phone calls on top of email and tweeting! Continue reading →

Broadcasting Hypocrisy

Posted on March 8, 2010 by Scott Gould

I think Seth Godin is reading my blog. Yesterday he wrote on ‘Losing Andrew Carnegie‘ and talked about investing in people over parts. Anyone who has been reading here a while knows I’ve been talking about this a lot since October, and gaining new levels of growth by getting free what I call ‘Factory thinking‘. The idea is that parts in a factory will break, but if you lead people, they can develop and grow.

Of course I know Seth isn’t reading my blog, nor is the idea mine to begin with – we’re just standing on the soliders of giants who’ve been discussing this since the beginning of time.

However it is an opportunity to discuss something that’s really on my mind right now and will require me to be painfully honest.

Are We Really Focussing On People In Social Media, Really?

So confession time. Claiming that Seth Godin is reading my blog is attention seeking. My blog is getting less comments and retweets and I find myself at times wondering what the point is. I’ve been doing things like writing blog titles like this, trying to promote my own stuff as if it’s someone else’s. All the dirty tricks.

But then I catch myself: this is factory thinking. It’s treating my blog is a machine that has outputs – rather than a place to serve and lead people.

What really shook me up was spending a bit of time with Chris Brogan at Like Minds. I don’t want to play the name game, but I was profoundly impacted by the time I spent with Chris. I’m pretty good with people and good with names – but Chris was on a whole other level.

I saw him meet people in the morning, meet a tonne of people during the day, and then call that person by name in the evening. Every person he spoke to I watched him converse with genuine interest, and never flip open his phone or excuse himself like I know I so often do.

When I asked Chris what his secret was, he gave me the simplest, yet most painful answer: “I just have an insane passion for humans”

Are We Broadcasting Social Media?

I wonder how many of us are broadcasting the message of discussion? The whole idea of Social Media is that it is two, three, four way communication, yet I know my behaviour of late has been one of broadcast.

What hypocrisy!

One of my friends is Robin Dickinson. He and I talked a few months ago about a comment-driven blog, a place where the blogger was actually a facilitator – and rather than forcing his readers to read his content, he instead used the blog as a place to draw comments to form the content.

Well Robin went away and did it. What he has going on right now at RADSmarts is something I’ve never seen before – a community that is commenting on each others comments based on a short, 50 word blog ‘question’ with a picture.

I’ve got no point to round this up on, and to be honest I’ve lost the expectation of getting an discussion going below. But that doesn’t matter. This isn’t a machine that I’m churning – it’s a place to lead people. And if what I’ve seen last week with Like Minds is anything to go by, leading people will build far bigger things than managing machines ever will.

My thought now is, how much of what I thought was ‘discussion’ and ‘social’ was just broadcast?

What can we do with our collective Like Minds?

Posted on March 5, 2010 by Scott Gould

In a world where many are caught in a Catch 22, you have to wonder, what can we do with our collective Like Minds?

If we could convert our community into connections, I bet we’d find ourselves accomplishing things we never thought possible. I know that’s where I’m finding myself at the moment.

- What change could we make in the local community?
- What differences could we make for those living with tragically poor quality of life?
- What opportunities could we open for those who have none?
- What people could we connect together who could change the world?

So the question is, how are you leading the way with the connections you’ve made?

Photo courtesy of the stellar Benjamin Ellis.

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