“Perhaps the biggest mistakes committed by businesses, personalities, and brands in social media occur when people jump into social networks blindly without establishing guidelines, a plan of action, a sense of what people are seeking and how and why they communicated, an understanding of where people are congregating, a definition of what they represent and how they will personify the brand online, and the goals, objectives, and metrics associated with participation.” Albeit fairly late in the book, this sentence sums up the purpose of Brian Solis in Engage! One more book about Social Media, sure; but this one is one of the best written. It’s almost reassuring to read sentences that exceed 140 characters (or twenty words), and, while you can find all the trendy buzzwords and expressions on virtually every page, the author authentically tries to assist social media managers as they transition from the broadcasting age to the intricacies of a new form of netcasting architecture where both users and corporations exchange “social objects.” How well or efficiently can they do so? This book provides social media managers with the background knowledge and practical notions that they can leverage to design a consistent strategy.
The first half of the book surveys the world of social media in general, describing all the aspects of social interactions and their impact on corporate marketing and communication, as well as customer service departments. Traditional marketing schemas have irreversibly imploded under the pressure of a crowd represented in a “conversation prism” that factors in behavioral guidelines implicitly or explicitly set by the multiple socialization channels. So marketers must listen. What can they do with so much information? “Instead of inhibiting the pace and breadth of information flow, we must channel relevant details and data,” a task that does not only require “attention” (nice reference to Linda Stone‘s Continuous Partial Attention), but also some understanding of applied social sciences or researchers’ and analysts’ categorizations (such as Charlene Li’s and Jeremiah Owyang’s Socialgraphics). Achieving a state of the art “unmarketing” to use a time-stamped word by Scott Stratten – i.e. rebuilding a marketing strategy from the bottom up – entails, for many companies, a serious reassessment of some entrenched marketing habits. Hence the resolutely didactic approach of the two parts of the book: “The New Reality of Marketing and Creating Customer Service” and “Forever Students of New Media.”
The second half of the book comprises four parts that detail the new responsibilities that come up with the potential of social media, and focuses more specifically on what a “new marketing” approach may look like. One of the most remarkable sections is related to “defining the rules of engagement.” It unambiguously shows to the skeptics that the social media revolution is not a passing phenomenon spurred on or controlled by influencers, but the reality of today’s computing, one of the incarnations of the social Web, and that it is set to transform every single company from the inside. The examples of IBM’s and Intel’s guide-lines (and its digital IQ Program) do not only demonstrate the forward-thinking intelligence of people like Bryan Rhoads or Ken Kaplan (also see my post about him earlier last year), but also the proactive approach of highly regarded companies as they define new roles and responsibilities to adapt to a new world. Digital intelligence is not simply the prerogative of a handful of gurus appointed to task forces or advisory boards, it will also be part of the job description of most employees in the close future if they want to be up to par with educated customers. The scope of the book stops here, but it’s clear that the social media revolution will lead to the reassessment of corporate cultures, employee empowerment methodologies, and linguistic and artistic skills. “Unmarketing” just like any vibrant “marketing” starts from within. Corporate stonewalling doesn’t have too much future.
End result: a serious book that gathers the Zeitgeist (and will bring many people up to speed with trends and idioms). Somewhat voluble, yet kindly extroverted and definitely useful if you want to create a social media plan.
Andy Hertzfeld has recounted the story of the black flag at the center of which Susan Kare had painted a big skull and crossbones in white that was floating over Bandley 3 in 1983 until early 1984. Yes, for the Macintosh team “it was better to be a pirate than join the navy.” In the early nineties, black pirate flags were still hanging here and there around the Borland campus, the company created by Philippe Kahn (a phenomenal sailor himself). These are two of the companies where James Bach, the author of Secrets of a Buccaner-Scholar (subtitled “How Self-Education and the Pursuit of Passion Can Lead to a Lifetime of Success”) started a career that made him one of the most established “gurus” in software testing.
This book is the personal and intellectual autobiography of a high-school dropout. Thirty years later, James relives his allergy as a kid to “schoolism,” i.e. “the belief that schooling is the necessary and exclusive way to get a good education.” He educated himself differently, at his pace, of his own volition, rejecting indoctrination and institutional frameworks, but at the same pursuing his passion for discovery to the fullest – and often ending up working much harder than any person with a “normal” education. He was (and still is) an explorer, venturing into the world of knowledge as boldly and free-spiritedly as the privateers and corsairs of the seventeenth century. He is a buccaneer-scholar, i.e. a person whose “mental windsurfing” capabilities make him/her want to live a purpose-driven existence, build up a talent, and create a reputation – a reputation based on facts and achievements, not on degrees or any form of social entitlement.
This book is remarkable for two main reasons:
A clear analysis of what dropouts are about: Regardless of the reasons why kids happen to drop out, look at dropouts as people who first and foremost need to feel self-reliant as well as leverage their uniqueness and their independence in their own way. Don’t judge them. The best thing to do is to accompany them on their own road, mentor them smoothly and non-dogmatically as they identify opportunities that work for them. As James Bach recounts very well through his own history, dropouts are not anti-social. They simply hate precepts and authority: “the independence of buccaneering is independence from authority, not from humanity.” As a result, buccaneers welcome ideas and are thrilled to feel needed. Look, James loved the Apple II that his father gave him and made the best out of it – again at his own pace and in his own way. It’s true that “life is less convenient for those who chart their own course,” but trying to speed up or thwart that course can only make their lives harder. So help kindly! That’s what mentoring is about.
Guidelines for all people who want to reconstruct their own creativity: As autobiographical as this book is, James Bach doesn’t come across as self-absorbed. What’s clear is that James Bach does not despise people with degrees who were well-adjusted students, and instead contemplates the possibility that they might become buccaneers at some point in their lives, and want to rekindle a long-time buried “unstoppable curiosity.” Then all the schemas that implicitly or explicitly governed James’ life – ranging from the principle of peripheral wisdom, creative procrastination where ideas mature as a background task, to obsessive scouting, or heuristic questioning – are potential rudders for anyone. You may want to see this book as a set of tools for the reconstructive introspection that will make you get into the “next big thing.” Yes, “new industries are perfect for a buccaneering mind,” and in turn, you may want to become a buccaneering mind to estrange yourself from what you know all too well and experience the naive jubilation of newness.
This book is one of the best books I have read recently around the themes of self-motivation and creativity. Definitely the most heartfelt. Thanks to David Arscott to handing it to me the other day as we had breakfast at Coupa Cafe!
Social Media 101 by Chris Brogan is a collection of posts related to “social media” that he wrote for his blog. So, just as any anthology, you can read this book pretty much in any order you want by picking one of the 87 topics that are listed in the table of contents.
With a title that contains “101,” you might think that the purpose is to provide basic, introductory information to social media. If this is what you are looking for, you may want to read Social Media Marketing for Dummies, a very insightful book by Shiv Singh published in October 2009. Here, the expression “101” is used in a broader sense, referring more to what you may want to do or think about as you experience what it means to live in a social media world. For example, Chris Brogan gives you 50 blog topics that you may want to pick from if you are a marketer writing for your company. Or, if you are an artist-entrepreneur, a favorite topic of mine, read Brogan’s excellent three pages about how pianist Grace Nikae leverages social media to build up, and connect to, her audience. As a general rule, the book primarily addresses intermediate users, who have a smattering of knowledge about social media, but want to assess where they are at, and get an overall perspective of the landscape before they move further. The most efficient posts in this book focus on what I would call “traditional” social media, i.e. what was around when Chris Shipley created the expression in 2004 – blogs. I would also tend to agree that blogs are, in many respects, the 101 of Social Media, its foundational component.
Because it is a collection of posts, the book is not designed around any specific thesis, and instead, recounts the experiences of an author who states his opinions, casually, always avoiding controversy. Any debate is left to the readers to handle: “I ask you: “Who benefits from Facebook’s Social Graph data?” Brogan writes. In the same fashion, “customer service needs new channels… or does it?” In the end, most personal stands are tempered down quite oecumenically, which dissociates “personal branding” from any personal profession of faith. Yes, “social media” is, first and foremost, a social game (very nice section on Social Networks as Your Local Pubs), for which you want to develop effective “tactics and tips to develop your business online,” as the subtitle says. So why would you alienate existing or potential customers?
One of my favorite sentences in Trust Agents (which I discussed in an earlier post) was related to a quote from David Maister: ‘‘A book is like a big, thick, impressive $25 business card,’’ that the authors (Chris Brogran had a co-author, Julien Smith) see as “old word credibility. We know that blogging and new media, while useful to us and to all the people we are in business with, just isn’t as creadible to the gatekeepers at the top of the hill.” In this book, I like this sentence: “For every 10 pundits, we should have an original thinker.”
This is a book that you will enjoy reading – much like you may enjoy Chris Brogan’s blog. There are a lot of useful references to all sorts of interesting blogs and people. Missing perhaps: a bibliography at the end of the book.
Lovely cover with a fifties touch (CSA Plastock/Getty Images). Social Media is a one-to-one connection to people, just as the old telephone, except that sounds can be indefinitely replicated. So don’t shout (lest you want to manage saturation). Smile.
Vision India 2020 by Sramana Mitra describes where India could be – or should be 10 years down the road. Is the country destined to remain an outsourcing haven? No – and anyway, this outsourcing industry shows some cracks. Is its historical heritage doomed to disappear entirely? Yes, if nothing is done. Are the sprawling slums going to turn into a playground for criminal activities or gigantic cutthroat arenas in Mumbai, Kolkata or Dehli? Maybe, if nobody cares. Some predictable catastrophes only happen to those who choose to bury their heads in the sand. Sramana’s Vision India 2020 is an entrepreneurial utopia, as well as a personal and intellectual futuristic autobiography.
“If I could help my country evolve, what would I do?” Sramana asks herself as a premise of the book. She starts with her life-story, which took her from India to Smith College, MIT and then, Silicon Valley, and then projects herself ten years down the road, describing how India has evolved into a state-of-the-art, modern country. It all changed with a stronger educational system (an MIT India, an effective K-12 teaching methodology, or Harvard Medical School India) and incentives to leverage local talents and attract foreigners, with the practical applications of new technologies, the revamping of the country’s infrastructure as well as an optimal and creative utilization of its vast natural resources, its sophisticated human and cultural heritage.
Vision India 2020 is not a fairyland, but the description of a new present based on an extrapolation of capabilities that are at our disposal today. In 2008, Sramana saw the potential of Energy Discovery Inc. (ERI) when her husband, Dominique Trempont, joined the board of this company founded by a Norwegian Entrepreneur, H.P. Michelet. At a time when humanity faces a global water supply crisis, is it beyond common sense to think that desalinisation plants along the coast of Orissa should provide water to the South Indian states? So much smarter than diverting rivers from the Himalayas! Is a “Doctor on Wire” telemedecine franchise for rural India an odd fabrication of the mind? The concept is here today. It’s not a stretch. It’s a matter of scaling with a purpose or simply applying what we know today. What prevents an entrepreneur from creating Zen retreats similar to the one at Tassajara in California amid the rice fields of Bankura? Nothing.
I liked this book for many reasons, but here are some of them:
1) It is well written: India is so vividly pictured that it’s hard to think that it’s not yet real.
2) It’s a passionate plea of a woman from India to a country that she loves. Her life today is definitely international. Most of what she loved in her childhood is gone with the mango orchards of her grandfather in Rajarhat, but she is not trying to resurrect the past. She wants her homeland to exceed her dreams.
3) It’s a great entrepreneurial message: It’s any entrepreneur’s responsibility to change the world for the better. While nostalgia sounds great, expanding the world of what’s possible is ten times more exciting.
4) It’s courageous: Most prospective books distill pompous predictions without taking the risk of talking implementation and telling you how things can look in practice. Experts on the future of India undoubtedly produce remarkable documents. Sramana has the guts to describe her personal vision as if it were reality with no jargon.
Finally, it’s a great book to reflect about what history is about. We are all familiar with the difficult transition from a pre-industrial stage to an industrial age, and basically since the early eighteen hundreds, every single country has followed the same patterns and generated the same by-products, i.e. the same ecological and human disasters. What Vision India 2020 contemplates is a way to cut short the mess created from the first stages of massive industrialization in the digital age. As Sramana puts it optimistically: “”It is the entrepreneurs, and the entrepreneurs alone, who wield the most potent weapons of mass reconstruction. To build markets; to build nations; to build worlds.”
In a recent powwow, I was asked about my takeaway for entrepreneurs from the Winter Olympics. As I was starting to discuss the make-up of a champion, mentally ranking key characteristics, I changed gears and realized that what struck me the most, ultimately, was the victory of Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo in pair figure skating. Not so much because they ended decades of Russian domination, not so much because they won (after all, they have been World champions for a while), not so much because of what this Gold Medal meant to them personally, but because of what it meant to their coach, Yao Bin.
In the early eighties, a Chinese pair of figure skaters, Yao Bin and Luan Bo, kept failing (sometimes miserably), regularly finishing last in international competitions – the 1980 World Competition in Dortmund where the audience laughed at them, the 1984 Winter Olympics in Sarajevo… They did improve somewhat every year (it seems that when they first showed up on the world scene, they had learned their moves from pictures only), but there was no way for them to catch up. Yet, as embarrassing or even humiliating as such experiences may have been, they resulted in phenomenal feedback and stimulus to action. Yao Bin became a coach, and, as early as 1999, his pair of skaters, Shen Xue and Zhao Hongbo, won a Silver Medal in Helsinki at the World Championships, having already impressed audiences at their first Olympics in 1998 in Nagano (where they finished fifth). Since then, the couple’s career has been a series of successes culminating in the Vancouver Olympics with a Gold Medal. A huge success for Yao Bin, who also coached the Silver Medalists and the couple in fifth place. As a Chinese proverb goes: “Failure is not falling down but refusing to get up.”
Tamara Moskvina, arguably one of the most successful coaches in the history of pair figure skating, said in a 2003 interview, “we [Russian skaters] are so successful because we have developed traditions and because we work in the same manner as we have in the past.” This may have been true. The lesson that entrepreneurs may want to take from the history of Yao Bin could be slightly different, however. In addition to demonstrating that failures are only steps towards success, his career shows that the “same old ways” don’t work endlessly and that traditions are secure only inasmuch as there isn’t somebody around who wants to tear them apart to reinvent the future. Listen to the journalists who (courteously) commented the 1984 short program of Yao Bin and Luan Bo. Clearly, they didn’t envision that China’s “developmental stage” would be so short !
(Incidentally, Chen Lu was the first Chinese to win an Olympic medal – Bronze- in 1994 in Lillehammer).
Selling to large companies is the dream of many entrepreneurs. It’s not easy, and they have reasons to be afraid of it. My advice is that they overcome their fears and try. This week, I wrote a post on the American Express Forum, addressing some of the most frequent questions that I get from entrepreneurs on this topic.
I also wrote post at the end of January on the Open Forum: Look at Your Company as a “Small Business” in which I remind entrepreneurs a simple fact: Having huge ambitions doesn’t mean getting carried away. Remember BASIC? It stands for “Beginner’s All-Purpose Symbolic Instruction Code.” That’s also how Bill Gates and Paul Allen started. Their first customer: the manufacturer of the Altair 8800 personal computer, MITS in Albuquerque. Their first year revenue: $16,005. Microsoft wasn’t a small big business—it was simply a small business that grew and grew and grew.
We are so used to doing everything via the Internet that we think we have paid our dues when we paypal a donation, or inform all our friends of what’s happening around us via our social networks. Yet, we need to continue to help in the real world and to make sure that we volunteer effectively as an organizer or as a follower. Our productivity is all the more critical as charitable giving has been declining and is unlikely to skyrocket any time soon.
So how can we do as much or more with less? The response is obvious: by better leveraging the time and talent of volunteers whose numbers –unlike those for giving– have been increasing. It’s a matter of strategic planning, but it’s also, and maybe primarily, a matter of using appropriate tools. “It’s not enough to have large member databases and a big list of names,” Joe Edelman says. “As an organizer, you must know who in your talent pool is available at any given time to plan your event or your action. You need updated information from the volunteers themselves. And once the event happens, you need to be able to adjust to unforeseen situations in a flash. That’s why I started Citizen Logistics. It’s a Common Good Corporation that understands the power of the human logistics chain. To do good, we need a workflow that allocates the right resources at the right time for the right purpose. You need to dispatch the right crew to make a difference, hence the name our first product, Groundcrew.”
Here is how Joe presents Groundcrew in a YouTube video:
Groundcrew leverages the social networking tools (Twitter, Facebook, Foursquare, and other messaging systems) to coordinate people into action and rally communities members around any particular goal or event. The platform is designed to boost efficiency in three critical areas:
Action planning and execution for Organizers, through full visibility and control over the way an event unfolds and the talent pool available at any given time. Today, organizers endure unacceptable levels of stress. For small budget organizations, organizing people is like herding cats. For those with bigger budgets, it’s as grueling as building up an army without being quite sure of which soldiers will show up or if the chefs de battalion are fit for the job. In all cases, it involves a lot of planning with limited visibility and a lot of ad-hoc re-planning in a blurry landscape.
Volunteer retention through appropriate use of the right volunteers on their own terms and in sync with the mission at hand. Today, although we love the idea of contributing, more often than not we resent the fact that we waste so much of our time. The end result is appalling: As noted by the Stanford Social Innovation Review, “of the 61.2 million people who volunteered in 2006, 21.7 million—more than one-third—did not donate any time to a charitable cause the following year.” Wow… Clearly it’s critical to offer a more gratifying experience to volunteers.
Strengthening governance and accountability in non-profit organizations or Corporation-funded programs. Each grant-maker has its own requirements to evaluate effectiveness. In the end, however, results are largely dependent upon the ability to measure the actual impact of an organization in the community, which itself largely depends on the ability for that organization to motivate its volunteers, and keep them engaged by matching their skills with the tasks at hand.
Volunteering is not simply about feeling good. It’s about having a purpose, and seeing results. It’s a result-oriented leadership of sorts. The stakes are high. The economic weight of volunteering stands an estimated $162 billion according to Volunteering in America 2009: 61.8 million Americans volunteered through an organization in 2008, giving more than 8 billion hours of service in 2008. “Yes, $162 billion a significant volunteer economy, but it could be much, much more. What it takes is a platform that helps our organizers, nonprofits, and community members leverage volunteers better and faster at all levels: from neighborhood to city to state and country. Our people want to be of service, as leaders and as actors. Leveraging everyone’s vitality and dreams is absolutely paramount.” Joe concludes enthusiastically.
The history of literature rarely remembers translators, yet they are the ones who bridge cultures, hoping that an understanding between people and nations will reduce warfare. This was definitely the case of Paul Amann (1884-1958), a German Jew from Bohemia, who lived in Austria and, French at heart, translated multiple French authors into German at a time of maximum bad blood between the two countries (before and after WW1). While he was in the Austro-Hungarian forces, Jean-Richard Bloch was in the French army. While officially “ennemies,” they continued to communicate through their common friend and mentor Romain Rolland, and became even closer after the war.
This correspondence of Paul Amann with Romain Rolland (from 1911 to 1938) and with Jean-Richard Bloch (from 1912 to 1947), recounts the personal and intellectual friendship between three people no war would alter, as well as the unwavering faith in a European spirit of freedom capable of overcoming evil. Reality at some point had to sink in. Amann tried to fight off the persecution of Jews in Germany and Austria as long as he could before emigrating to France in 1939, which was not going to be safer. After harrowing months in Marseille, Amann and his family made it to Lisbon from where they sailed to the United States in 1941, accompanying fify-six Jewish children (including the ten-year-old Wolfgang Grajonca, who was to become Bill Graham), that had been rescued by l’Œuvre au secours des enfants (OSE), the American Friends Service Commitee (AFSC), and the United States Committee for the Care of Refugee Children (USC).
The life of Amann that comes across this huge correspondence is a story of an extraordinary resilience powered by a mission – a personal commitment to carrying out humanistic ideals – which enables him to survive as a penniless teacher in Moravia, overcome personal losses, or become part of the ebullient intellectual circles of the twenties and thirties, both in Austria and France, building long-lasting friendships with Stefan and Friderike Zweig, Thomas Mann, Andrée Jouve, and George Duhamel to name of few.
Amann was a typical European Jew. Adjusting to the United States was not easy, but he owed this country his life and a remarkable career for his children. His son, Peter Amann is a retired Professor of the University of Michigan – and arguably the best specialist of the French Revolution of 1848 (Revolution and mass democracy: The Paris club movement in 1848) and his daughter Eva Irrera a successful illustrator and co-founder of the Irrera Studio Arts.
I had a cup of coffee at Il Fornaio earlier this week with Olivia Fox Cabane. The short story is this: she is a consultant, speaker and leadership coach who has worked with a number of large corporations such as Deloitte, Citigroup, or Veracity Worldwide. She has given lectures at Stanford, Harvard, Yale, MIT and the United Nations. In short, at 30, she is a well-established expert in helping people to improve their charisma, their self-confidence as well as their influence and persuasion skills. She started her practice in 2003 in New York City and is successfully expanding it in the Silicon Valley.
It’s one thing to read interesting books such as Influence : Science and Practice by Robert Cialdini, Persuasion: Social Influence and Compliance Gaining by Robert Gass, or peruse through dozens of essays and articles that tell you how to gain confidence, keep or increase your credibility; it’s a whole different story to be able to enact what gurus tell you to do, even when they give you common sense advice. Between what we understand and what we actually can do, there is a big gap – the reality of what we are able to do by ourselves – just like reading the best psychology studies has never spared anyone from actually going through the therapy process.
What many people do need is someone to guide them as they work on making a “fantastic first impression,” or delivering the killer pitch that will make the sale. You need a competent practitioner to take you to that stage. That’s what Olivia has been doing for years. “Charisma may be partly innate,” she said, “no doubt about this. But our potential to impress, influence and persuade is often hampered by all sorts of reasons.” She gives a simple example: “Have you ever felt only half-present in a conversation because part of your mind was thinking about something else? You may think this is all happening inside your head, but it’s also playing out across your face. If you’re not fully present, your facial reactions may be a split-second delayed. And people will read that, because people read your facial expressions in a flash—as fast as 17 milliseconds. And the effect of delayed facial expressions is that you may come across as inauthentic. If that happens, you can imagine the consequences: there’s no way you can generate trust, rapport or loyalty. Have you ever talked with someone you felt was being inauthentic? You know how that feels.”
So, can anyone improve? “Yes, absolutely!” she exclaimed. “Our basic capabilities only account for a very small part of who we become. There are countless techniques to turbo-charge your level of charisma, make you more persuasive and influential. My job is to find the right tools for each person; since everyone is different.”
Olivia loves what she does.Yes, at only 30, she has been in business for quite a while. Long enough to know both her strengths, and her limitations. “I can’t help people find their meaning or their purpose. I don’t do assessments; or 360-reviews. But once they learn from the reviews what they need to improve, and they start asking themselves “So how do I make these changes happen?” That, I can help with. For instance, if they need more “executive presence,” I can tell them exactly the body language they need; and how to get it.”
So how quickly can change happen? “So fast, that I used to worry about it! Seriously– I used to worry about the fact that within just two or three sessions, people were “all done” and no longer needed me. Then I realized– wait a minute. You can actually “fix” the issue in three or five sessions– that’s a good thing! Instant gratification, in a way…” Since then, “impressive results, impressively fast” has become her motto.
The reasons for Olivia’s success are simple: her honesty, her hard work, her professionalism, her will, her … charisma as well as her charm. Two additional big pluses: her personal culture and the fact that she is fluent in four languages (English, Spanish, German, and French).
Last week at a famous bookstore chain, the young lady at the cash register asked me if I had a coupon. “Yes,” I said. “It should show on my account.” “No, it doesn’t work that way,” she replied tersely. “You have to print it.” “Kind of a waste of paper,” I remarked. “It’s not my fault,” she said. And I had to agree – She is just a cog in the system. She doesn’t care. She is paid for her time and that’s it. She is not a linchpin. She is not indispensable. She could be replaced by virtually anybody.
And it so happened that coming back home, I found my early copy of Seth Godin’s Linchpin: Are You Indispensable? in my mailbox. This book is for the people who want to be more than a “faceless cog in the machinery of capitalism” (the “factory”), as well as any company who understands that it needs more than “two teams (“management and labor”) and intends to create “a third team, the linchpins,” i.e. people who “can invent, connect, create and make things happen.” As was the case of Tribes, this book sits in between several genres: it’s a socio-political pamphlet, a manifesto for individual development, and a call to a new workplace.
The book starts with a reference to Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations that focuses on the division of labor. Yes, “what factory owners want is compliant, low-paid, replaceable cogs to run their efficient machines.” But “great bosses and world-class organizations hire motivated people, set high expectations, and give their people room to become remarkable.” So unlock the genius in you. Interact with people. Inspire. Expose your artistry, and invent new rules. In many respects, Linchpin is a sermon in the original sense of the term, a speech addressed to believers whose hopes can be rekindled, and whose beliefs can be linked together. If you are a linchpin – if you can answer “yes” to the question “Are you indispensable?” – and if dozens, thousands, hundreds of thousands do the same… in other words, if there is an insurrection of talents, what will happen? The end of pointless “factories.”
Seth Godin’s bibliography at the end of the book is quite remarkable. He refers to real books with real messages. His diehard optimism and his fervent iconoclasm, however, also reminded me of one of the most fascinating assailant of the concept of factory, the Russian Prince Pyotr Kropotkin (1842-1921) who similarly invited his contemporaries to read again the Wealth of Nations’ first chapter, in Fields, Factories and Workshops. He added that “the artist who formerly found aesthetic enjoyment in the work of his hands is substituted by the human slave of an iron slave,” and advocated for a novel “integral education” to help reshape the future. Such future varies based on any thinker’s present. In our time, this future will be designed by the change agents that Seth Godin calls the “linchpins,” i.e. people who want to make a difference and for whom “dignity, humanity and generosity” can transparently intersect.
“Perhaps the biggest mistakes committed by businesses, personalities, and brands in social media occur when people jump into social networks blindly without establishing guidelines, a plan of action, a sense of what people are seeking and how and why they communicated, an understanding of where people are congregating, a definition of what they represent and how they will personify the brand online, and the goals, objectives, and metrics associated with participation.” Albeit fairly late in the book, this sentence sums up the purpose of Brian Solis in Engage! One more book about Social Media, sure; but this one is one of the best written. It’s almost reassuring to read sentences that exceed 140 characters (or twenty words), and, while you can find all the trendy buzzwords and expressions on virtually every page, the author authentically tries to assist social media managers as they transition from the broadcasting age to the intricacies of a new form of netcasting architecture where both users and corporations exchange “social objects.” How well or efficiently can they do so? This book provides social media managers with the background knowledge and practical notions that they can leverage to design a consistent strategy. 
Vision India 2020
In a recent powwow, I was asked about my takeaway for entrepreneurs from the Winter Olympics. As I was starting to discuss the make-up of a champion, mentally ranking key characteristics, I changed gears and realized that what struck me the most, ultimately, was the victory of 
Selling to large companies is the dream of many entrepreneurs. It’s not easy, and they have reasons to be afraid of it. My advice is that they overcome their fears and try. 
We are so used to doing everything via the Internet that we think we have paid our dues when we paypal a donation, or inform all our friends of what’s happening around us via our social networks. Yet, we need to continue to help in the real world and to make sure that we volunteer effectively as an organizer or as a follower. Our productivity is all the more critical as charitable giving has been declining and is unlikely to skyrocket any time soon.
If you are interested in Jewish studies and read French, here is a fascinating book: 
