Community has been given a new lease of life online. As soon as you hop on to a network of people you are more than just connected. Community offers a range of elements, from support to strength in numbers.

Too often people can fear the idea of a business community because they think that being active within one will mean revealing too many secrets, especially in a community that contains rival companies. From the offset this can create a strained atmosphere, a stifling of group creativity and also, cliques.

A recent example, allbeit offline, of a barista introducing a dis-loyalty card in London’s trendy (Obligatory prefix) Shoreditch, is testament to businesses uniting together for the greater good.

Like Minds is proving to be a bit of a social change movement, with a lofty aim of generating £100,000 of revenue for the City of Exeter and in doing so proving the often questioned ROI from social media. The conference will bring great benefit to more then just the attendees and in turn will make a great gesture of support to the local business community. Other conferences do nothing or simply make a token gesture of planting a tree to offset carbon emissions.

Coming together for social good is something that social media is uniquely set up for. The boundaries are reduced, the red tape of charity is snipped, and things just get done. Take the Twestival organisation, initially, a near impromptu coming together of Twitter users in a handful of cities hosting a simultaneous putting-faces-to-avatars meetup, doubling up as fun-filled fundraising event. In this its second year, it is a more coordinated affair and because of the exponential growth of smartphones and users of Twitter, it will be a more powerful force for good. Bristol’s Twestival takes place on Thursday 25 March.

I am wary that the role of social media is overplayed in circumstances. Social media is an enabler and nothing more but for charitable and community gain it can certainly get things going.

How do you work within a community and what opportunities has community presented you?

I know what you think about before you fall asleep. I know what hurts you and what you most desire. I can see your true beliefs hidden behind the lies that seep through your teeth. I know your darkest secrets. I know what arouses you, what terrifies you, what you think of yourself, and what you think of me. Your skull cannot hold you or hide you. Bits of you find their way to me, always.

At times these pieces of others overwhelm me. It is always hard to know myself.

I make a lot of money. It is easy to ascend in life when you know what others want from you. I have several degrees. It is easy to learn when you can reach into the minds of others for answers, and meaning. I try to avoid crowds. I don’t mind knowing what people think about each other. Sometimes that’s really quite fascinating, even entertaining, actually. It never fails to amaze me how often two people can share the share the exact same thoughts and remain convinced of their own isolation. Whether it is mutual attraction or philosophy, like minded strangers almost never interact. There are talkative people, but they tend to be the ones who think the least, and although they interact often with others, those others are rarely like minded.

The reason why I don’t like crowds is because in them there is always that man. The one, I think you know who he is. You don’t have to be a telepath to pick him most of the time. He’s the one who stares at you, sometimes discreetly, sometimes overtly. While he stares, he thinks about the things that he would like to do to you. Not as another person, one like himself, but as an object or a tool. He exists at all levels of society. He is always the one who poses the greatest threat to your career, your sanity, your body. My body. My sanity.

Sometimes he has already committed crimes and plans to commit more. He wants to rape you. Sometimes he wants you to know. He talks to you inside his mind. He tells you what he would like to do, in detail. He knows you can’t really hear him. He thinks you can’t hear him. He will probably do it to someone he can already manipulate, someone he knows. If you can, you find a way to trap him, catch him, convict him. It is hard though. You don’t want to be exposed. There are always more of him. You can’t always protect her.

You don’t like crowds because she is always there and he has already gotten to her. Inside her. Inside you. She doesn’t want anyone to know. She doesn’t want you to know. She doesn’t want me to.

Sometimes he thinks about you so hard that you forget how to think of you. Sometimes you wonder if it isn’t the other way around. Sometimes they make you feel like they are the ones who know what you are thinking.

You don’t like crowds because one really vile thought can make an entire river of consciousness feel murky and heavy and hard to drink. You have to drink it anyway, even if it makes you sick.

You prefer open spaces and living spaces. Open spaces are the only places where you can think clearly. they are the only truly peaceful places. Living spaces are the ones where people relax and stop worrying about what others think of them. When people are at home it is easy to get a feeling for what they really care about. Sometimes people let their minds wander into the most wonderful places when they are alone when everyone else goes to sleep. Mostly they just watch television though, or eat, or masturbate. If they aren’t alone they talk or make love. In any case, when they are at home they are honest with themselves. They know if they are happy with their lives and the choices that they have made.

You like it when people can be honest with themselves. It makes you feel like maybe one day you can be honest with them too. You get tired of changing yourself to suit others. You wonder what it would be like to be truly honest with yourself.

I dare you!

Over the past few weeks, I have felt the urge to seek out women of like minds, who “Dare to be Daring.”

To my humble amazement, everywhere I turned I found fascinating women who have embodied this very courageous journey, just as I have done so enthusiastically!!!

These incredibly daring women, act in spite of fears, challenges or setbacks. They stop at nothing to create the life they desire.

What are the elements that make up a Daring Woman?

Are you one?

1) Daring Women are constantly in search of excitement and unexpected experiences.

2) Daring Women live their lives with extreme gratitude “on purpose” and most certainly by their own rules. She is no longer swayed away from her adventure, by the needs and wants imposed on her by others.

3) Daring Women look to enrich their lives through the pursuit of meaningful relationships, creativity, rich connections and conscious knowledge.

4) Daring Women accept themselves as the unique beings they are. What flaws?

5) Daring Women are warm, cleverly engaging & convinced of their uniqueness, so as not to ever feel threatened by the success & achievement of other women…especially.

6) Daring Women promote themselves with authenticity, confidence and style.

7) A Daring Woman does not “put herself on the bargain table.” She is striving to embrace her worth and will not settle for less. (I still struggle a little bit, with this one.)

A Daring Woman does not retreat when a challenge, or a setback arises.

9) A Daring Woman embraces life’s passages with courage and grace.

10) A Daring Woman truly believes in herself. She lovingly acknowledges her gifts and talents, to help pave the way to reach her full potential. Happiness included.

11) A Daring Woman can step outside of what she believes to be her comfort zone. She has the courage and belief that all things are possible

Sounds like being daring isn’t for the faint of heart!

I double dare you….

• I DARE you to love and accept yourself, just as you are, flaws & all.
• I DARE you to be embrace your femininity & sexuality.
• I DARE you to break free from unhealthy emotions and just have fun!
• I DARE you to acknowledge and embrace your true passions and dreams.
• I DARE you to soar to an entirely new level in your life, career, relationships & finances.
• I DARE you to be Bold…Show Up, Speak Up, Stand Up and Stand Out
• I DARE you to be YOU!

Will the world’s best Social Media and P2P case studies of 2009 please stand up? The time to claim your place in the pantheon of business case studies has come.

I hate to call them Social Media case studies, because – well, they’re more than just Social Media. They’re word-of-mouth (WOM) case studies too. They’re Marketing case studies. They’re community case studies. (Dare I call them business case studies?) Qualifying anything as being solely “Social Media” seems so limiting, doesn’t it? At the core though, they’re all P2P case studies, really.

(No, not P2P as in Peer-to-peer. Rather, P2P as in People-to-People.)

The idea behind P2P is simple: Fostering connections (human connections) with your customers. Whether you used social media to rebuild your customer support department, community management to significantly improve customer loyalty, a WOM program to increase your net transacting customers or a series of community feedback vehicles to generate conversations and participation in your brand, program or cause, that’s P2P.

But feel free to call them Social Media case studies. We don’t mind. Whatever makes the most sense to you, to your boss, to your employees, to your customers. We know better than to get hung up on words, especially this early in the social media game.

What’s important here is is that whether you used Facebook, Twitter, blogs, email, Ning, flickr, youtube, neighborhood canvassing, special events, phone calls, face-to-face interactions, sky-writing or any combination thereof to create human to human connections around a program, campaign, cause or brand in the last year – and it worked, we want to hear about it.

If you got people to talk to people, if you earned attention instead of paying for it, if you increased sales or marketshare or share of voice using Social Media or P2P tools, we want to hear about it.

PR, customer support, community management, online reputation management, internal collaboration, co-creation: if any or all of these terms drove your projects in 2009 and you have one or more case studies to back up all that work, we want to read it.

Why? Because we are looking for the best case studies in the world. Plain and simple. And you only have a couple of weeks to get them to us if you want to make the list – and be invited to attend a summit designed specifically to bring the best social media professionals on the planet together in one place for a couple of days and talk shop.

And by that, I mean seriously talk shop. Like you never have before.

Q: What is the LikeMinds Summit?

First things first – Likeminds 2010 is divided into two distinct events. A conference, and a Summit.

> Friday February 26 is the LikeMinds Conference – Open to all, (first come, first served, so get your tickets fast) interactive format with presenters, panels, Q&A, etc. The conference will be held in Exeter (Devon, UK) just like last time.Sa

> Saturday February 27 is the LikeMinds Summit at the spectacular (and Summit-friendly) Bovey Castle (just a short drive from Exeter). Unlike the conference, the Summit will be an invitation-only event. I repeat: Unlike the conference, the LikeMinds Summit will not be open to the general public. You must be invited to attend.

How do you get invited? I’ll get to that in a second. Let me tell you what the Summit is first:

1. An Open Dialogue and RoundTable about Social Media Best Practices

On Saturday February 27th, LikeMinds will welcome key CEOs, Directors, Trustees and global thought leaders to the first Like Minds Summit, where in the luxurious settings of Bovey Castle in the middle of Dartmoor National Park, we will be providing a roundtable platform for the worldʼs leading Social Media practitioners to enjoy an open dialogue about the future of social business innovation.

2. Strategic and Operational Training for Social Media Thought Leaders

In addition, the Summit will also include advanced executive Social Media program development training (strategy, integration, management and measurement) as well moderated collaborative sessions in which attending delegates will discuss successes, challenges, and lessons learned from their own experiences in developing and managing their programs.

3. The 2010 Global ‘Best In Class’ Report

Following the event, case studies selected for the summit will be outlined in a “Best in class” report, complete with lessons-learned, best practices, and a wealth of insights aimed at helping companies draw the best possible methodologies from the year’s most successful P2P and Social Media programs. For every company present at the LikeMinds Summit, the report will present an opportunity to have their hard work acknowledged globally. For anyone not invited to attend this time around, the report will present a unique reference guide from which to draw invaluable lessons for their own programs.

The LikeMinds Summit will convene every year in February to discuss, share and celebrate the previous year’s best P2P programs from around the world.

Q: Why a Summit? Isn’t the Friday LikeMinds Conference enough?

Define ‘enough.’ When is ‘enough’ ever enough?

Two of the most frequent questions from LikeMinds 2009 attendees were “where can we go to find the best case studies,” and “where do we go to find social media best practices?” (This actually came up during the panel Q&A after my presentation on R.O.I., and again a number of times at the little social event held immediately after the close of the conference.) From the onset, the notion that no one seemed to be addressing these two questions properly bothered me. As far as I could tell, as much as case studies turned up at just about every conference from Los Angeles to Dubai, no one was really focusing on trying to a) collect the best Social Media case studies, b) evaluate them against less “solid” case studies, and c) make the best of them available – in a lessons learned format – to the scores of business and social media professionals asking for them.

All evening, I was distracted by this unanswered need. By the next morning, Trey Pennington, Drew Ellis, Scott Gould and I were already toying with the idea of creating some kind of mechanism through which that type of information might be organized and made available. Without formalizing anything, we started bouncing ideas off each other in passing… until we ended up in the spectacular hills of Dartmoor, which we wished we could have shared with all of our  peers in the Social Media world…

… And then at Bovey Castle for a bone-warming fire and proper afternoon tea (yes, with real scones – not the Starbucks stuff). It was there, at Bovey Castle, that the idea of going beyond the simple collection, evaluation and publishing of the best social media case studies first took hold. The venue was so perfect for the level of conversations necessary to properly create the framework for something like this that we started to discuss the possibility of putting on a Summit – a high level event that would bring the best minds in social media in one place to have the kinds of conversations about the space that no one had the opportunity to have:

Large conferences weren’t the ideal format because of the distractions, the noise, the constant flux of presentations, meetings, dinners, parties and running around.

Small conferences tended not to attract enough of the best minds to put more than five or six of them in the same room at the same time.

Conference calls, webinars, twitter and other remote options were nice, but hardly conducive to… well, getting anywhere.

But man, if we could get 15 or 20 of the world’s best in a place like Bovey Castle, especially after a full day at the LikeMinds Conference in Exeter, we could really get somewhere. We could spend an entire day sharing best practices, discussing what works and what doesn’t, talking about where to take Social Media and New Marketing next. We could conduct training sessions based on the attendees’ specific needs, have real Q&A discussions between people who do this better than anyone else on the planet, and focus on what matters. Not that I mind sifting through the junk to get to the gold at most conferences, but what if we eliminated the junk completely and replaced it with 100% gold? The value of that type of event – for everyone present – would be beyond measurement.

That was the idea behind the Summit.

The rest, as they say, is history. Within a few days, we had a concept. A few weeks later, we were planning the Conference, the Summit and the format of the report and other resources that would emerge from them both.

Q: Where is the 2010 LikeMinds Summit being held? (And why?)

At Bovey Castle. Yes, THE Bovey Castle we just talked about. In England. Don’t worry, it just looks extravagant. It’s really just an old English house with a lot of really cool meeting rooms, a big back yard, and a forest all around it.

Why here? Three reasons: Convenience, awesomeness and the fact that the idea for the Summit came to us there for a good reason: It’s perfect for it.

We could have decided to hold the Summit anywhere: A hotel conference room in London, an office suite in New York, a cool space in San Fransisco… The possibilities are endless.  (The content of the Summit, its relevance, its format and even the cost to attend would be exactly the same, regardless of the venue.) Since the LikeMinds conference is already taking place just a short drive from Bovey Castle, it would have been a shame not to take advantage of its proximity. 

You can find out more about Bovey Castle here.

Q: If the Summit is by invitation only, how do I get invited?

Submit your case study.

Your submission can be in almost any format: a video, slide deck or document that is either emailed to the Summit staff, or even a simple hyperlink if your case study already exists online.

Invitation to the Summit will be based on the submission of that case study along with the following  qualifying elements. These elements are intended to prove the successful use of Social Media by documenting:

- Before and after overviews of the organization, with accurate measurement (Benchmarking)
- The research that backed the program
- The breakdown of strategy, integration, management and measurement
- How teamwork was guided, across departments, organizations and with the end user
- What were the most valuable lessons learned
- The frameworks that have been created from the experience

A jury will select the top 15-20 case studies from all received submissions and will send out invitations by the end of January.

Submissions for the Like Mind Summit may be sent to summit@wearelikeminds.com

Q: When are Summit submissions due?

Closing date for application submissions is Friday 22nd January.

Q: What is the cost of attending the Summit?

1. Getting to Exeter is up to you: Car, train, bicycle, horseback, steam ship, aeroplane, rocket, teleporter… If you’re in the UK already, it’s pretty simple. If you’re flying in, I suggest Heathrow or Gatwick airport, then either renting a car (don’t forget to stop at Stonehenge on your way to Exeter) or hopping on a train. Super simple. Once in Exeter, we’ll take care of shuttling you to Bovey on Saturday morning.

2. Hotels: The LikeMinds team is pretty well connected in Devon, so hooking you up with a hotel shouldn’t be a problem. (And yes, you can actually stay at Bovey Castle. We’ve negotiated a special rate of £150 per night – which is phenomenal.*)

* Last time I was in London, I found myself paying that much for horrible little economy hotels in the worst parts of town. £150 per night at Bovey is pretty mind-blowing.

3. The events: If you are invited to attend the summit, you’re automatically comped for the LikeMinds conference on Friday, including the V.I.P dinner Friday night. The Summit will also take care of your breakfast, lunch and afternoon tea on Saturday, as well as getting you back to Exeter once the Summit adjourns. You’ll be looking at two full days with some of the brightest, most forward thinking social media thought leaders and practitioners in the world. Not just in the same room, but at the same table. With a common purpose.

4. Inclusion in the ‘Best In Class’ report: If you get selected to attend the Summit, your case study will be featured in the LikeMinds report as one of the world’s best Social Media/P2P programs of 2009.  Those of you with a few Public Relations 101 credits in college might recognize the value of that kind of exposure. (Global exposure, I might add. This dog is going to have some pretty serious legs.)

Okay, enough with the pitch already: The price of admission is £1,500. (Sorry, the Gold Ticket isn’t free.)

I could make a joke about $2,995 social media certification programs right about now, but I won’t. Oh wait.. Doh!

Submitting your case study, however, is free. Just understand that if you are serious about attending the event upon being selected, the fee will be due fairly quickly. More details on that at a later date.

Q: Where can I get more information about the event?

You can download the PDF information kit here.

You can access the (Saturday) LikeMinds Summit website here.

You can check out the (Friday) LikeMinds Conference website here.

You can surf through the 2009 LikeMinds Conference archive here.

Q: What else is there?

I don’t know. You tell me.

If you’ve worked your tail off to develop, launch, manage and get the most out of a social media or P2P program in 2009, it would be silly to blow this off. Think of submitting your case study as that final 1% effort. Not even that. More like the final 0.01% effort.

If you end up being selected, yeah, there’s a bit of cost attached to it, especially if you aren’t based in Europe. I hear ya. Budgets are tight and £1,500 outside of travel expenses is nothing to sneeze at. But do the math:

1. You’ve probably thrown away more than that on conferences last year that didn’t really didn’t yield a whole lot of value, and for some strange reason, you may be contemplating doing it again this year, just in case they get it right this time (fat chance). Flying to Vegas, to Boston, to Orlando or New York or LA, going from session to session, wondering why you even bother attending half of the presentations? Hanging out at parties with your Twitter friends? Having dinner with a few “big names?” Hindsight being 20/20, if you could go back and skip those disappointments and trade them for something solid, something like this, wouldn’t that be a better use of your budget?

I can’t answer that for you.

2. The level of access you will have at the LikeMinds Summit – assuming you are selected to attend – is unheard of. You will spend a day (two if you attend the conference as well) with people whose individual consulting time is worth more than twice the price of admission. Multiply that by all 12 or 15 or 20 of them (depending on how many companies make the cut), and you atsrt to get the picture. These are people you will be engaging with, not just sitting next to in a conference room. Not to mention me, Trey Pennington, Drew Ellis, Scott Gould and a few other brainiacs yet to be announced.

3. Inclusion in the Summit’s report/master case study/white paper even without the summit’s value is worth ten times the £1,500 fee. From exposure to recognition, it’s a no-brainer. Your company probably spends that on branded pens and keychains at trade shows. On low tier print ads if you’re a small company. Heck, for most organizations with over 100 employees, you’re talking petty cash.

How much did you spend on PR last month? How much press did that get you? I rest my case.

4. Do you know why we set the price at £1,500 instead of, say, £800? (It would have been that even if we held this thing at the Holiday Inn, by the way. Not that we would.) It isn’t greed. It’s to weed out companies and individuals who aren’t serious about what they’re doing in this space. Some companies will choose to spend that on gimmicks.  Others will invest in the future of their social media programs. We’re only interested in the latter. The price of admission, quite simply, is commitment. 

So if you feel that you belong in that second category:

If you’re an agency or firm, submit your case studies.

If you’re an organization with a story to tell, submit your case study.

If you’re a service provider, tell your clients to submit their case studies.

Spread the word. Give it your best shot. Big brands, small businesses, NGOs, Non-profits, Universities… All are welcome. This event and report only come once a year, so don’t let all of your hard work in 2009 go to waste.

You have until the 22nd of January to submit your case studies.

May the best and brightest win.

Cheers.

There is a need in many to want to belong. We seek out groups and individuals who we think have connections to us, or who share common values. But in seeking out like minds do we not do ourselves a disservice? Do we not limit the view through which we see this world? Surely we are all connected, but if we only choose to interact with those who agree with us, or those who give us praise, are we not missing the point? Are we not closing ourselves off to all that this world has to offer? Opinions and perceptions are plentiful, but there is only One truth.

Speaking at SMiB in London

The current state of conversations in regards to Social Media and Business

Okay, look. I don’t mean to step on anyone’s toes here, but how many times do business managers hungry for real Social Media know-how have to suffer through another “Social Media is what’s next” presentation before someone actually decides to help them answer real questions and solve real problems?

Yes. We get it already. Social Media is the future of now. It’s the answer to all of your old-school marketing problems. The holy grail of business growth. It’s all about people and conversations and relationships, don’t you know. Okay, fine. So now let’s get on with it: How the hell does a company actually put Social Media into play?

Before I go on, if your answer includes any of the following words, I may have to reach across the internets and smack you upside the head: FaceBook, Twitter, Blog, YouTube. (No, no, no and no.) Let’s take a giant step backwards here, because if your idea of developing a Social Media program for a company of any size essentially consists of creating a series of embassies on the most popular social platforms on the web, you haven’t just put the cart ahead of the horse, you’ve pretty much squashed it like a bug.

Let me be as clear as I can be about this: Having a Facebook fan page, a twitter account, a YouTube channel and a blog aren’t forward thinking. This is the default position now. The absolute minimum. If you aren’t already here, you’ve already shown that your business is grossly out of touch with the rest of the world (and dare I say, your market?). And by default, so are you. You’ve fallen behind. And if your company does proudly display those little social badges, if indeed you do have a presence on Twitter, FaceBook, YouTube and the blogosphere, congratulations: You’re doing the same thing everyone else is, which is to say that you are merely here.

Having a Social Media presence nowadays is merely the equivalent of what being listed in the yellow pages meant ten years ago. It simply isn’t enough to be there. And if you believe it is, you have seriously underestimated the situation.

Don’t get me wrong: The vast majority of business managers and C-suite executives still need to be shown that Social Media isn’t just a silly fad. That it is a legitimate business discipline worthy of not only investment but special attention. And perhaps most importantly, that by not understanding that Social Media fits in their business toolkit, they will begin to lose increasingly large chunks of market share (among other things) to their smarter, more strategically-minded competitors as early as H1 of 2010. These are realities and facts that still need to be conveyed to decision-makers in the business world. No question.

But the message has already reached a good number of them. So now what? You’ve convinced them to focus on Social Media, but aside from “get on facebook, twitter, youtube and blogs and start engaging,” you haven’t really given them a whole lot to go on. For the benefit of those folks, why don’t we switch gears and meet them where they want us to: In the real and complex world of “how the hell do we actually build this in our own organization?”

Let’s inject a little structure and order into the Social Media for business discussion:

First, let’s get a couple of things straight about the nature of Social Media when it comes to operations (yes, actually “doing” instead of just talking about how great it is):

1. The idea that Social Media professionals are one-size-fits-all needs to disappear. Understand that despite what you may have been told, Social Media practitioners aren’t all community managers and engagement aficionados. Some are data analysts and others are business strategists, while some specialize in operational management, market research, marketing communications or any number of commonly found business functions. Yes, that’s right: Social Media practitioners probably aren’t social media experts at all. They’re simply professionals who use social media because they understand its value to their job and organization.

The topic of incorporating social media know-how into existing organizational roles (rather than creating new layers of superfluous social media expertise to piggy-back on existing functions)  is one that we will revisit often in the coming months.

So the lesson here is that if your organization seems to a) suffer from a knowledge gap when it comes to Social Media, and b) filling that gap with dozens, if not hundreds of new employees seems daunting, don’t fret: Focus on training and development first and foremost. Don’t worry about trying to hire a bunch of unemployed marketeers with “social media” roles strategically added to their resumes in the last 18 months. That will get you nowhere fast. There’s a better way. (More on that in a minute.)

2. Effective, sustainable, scalable social media programs all have a basic underlying framework (hinted at by the X-Box Live avatars assembled in the image above.) At its simplest, you are looking at four major building blocks and operational elements:

• Social Media program development (a strategy-heavy function)
• Social Media program integration (almost exclusively an ops piece, especially in the enterprise space)
• Social Media program management (the broadest of the three, basically dealing with the execution of the program itself. Some examples of management functions are listed in the image above.)
• Social Media program measurement (an analytical function which requires little explanation given the amount of time I have already devoted to explaining FRY, ROI, and non-financial impact).

When you start actually building the structure of a Social Media program, especially for a large/enterprise space organization, things get complex fast.  But let’s learn how to walk before we start running marathons, okay? Not everyone here is ready to graduate from “isn’t social media just another marketing channel?” so we’ll move slowly out of respect for them.

First things first: Recognizing that in order to build a proper Social Media program within an organization, you must first start with the understanding that these four core elements need to be present in order for things to work properly. Just having a Social Media director and an engagement team won’t cut it. All you’re likely to end up with is a decent management piece with perhaps some light strategy,  completely accidental integration thanks to an IT guy or two, and some made-up measurement based on whatever metrics seem to be popular on the Twitternets that week. Sorry but that’s not good enough.

If a half-assed DIY-style Social Media program appeals to you, your boss and your customers, by all means, have fun with that. But if you are the type of manager or business leader with even an ounce of vision,  professionalism (and sense of self-preservation), you already know that winging it isn’t really going to produce the results you are expected to deliver.

The alternative is to try and do it right: Actually building an effective and sustainable social media program within your organization by integrating social media (embedding it, even) into every department and business function – and doing so with purpose.

That’s all fine and good, but what if you need help? (No worries. I have you covered.):

So where can you turn for help? Unfortunately, that can sometimes be hard to tell. On the one hand, you have the thousands of self-appointed Social Media “gurus” selling everything from rehashed presentation decks and derivative white papers to stale webinars about essentially nothing. (Thanks for charging me $650 for information I could have gotten for free just by reading Mashable for twenty minutes a week. Great.) And don’t even get me started on the hacks who shamelessly steal my work and that of others and try to pass it off as their own. (We know who you are. You aren’t fooling anybody.)

So how do you tell the good ones from the frauds? Experience. Luck. Savvy. In fairness, you could actually get lucky and find one who knows how to do this (with enough money and enough time, who knows,) but the odds aren’t in your favor.

You could also keep hoping that the operational knowledge you seek will emerge from the various social media conferences you keep attending. And to some extent, yes, over time, you will pick up enough nuggets to become dangerous. No question. But it could take a while. Industry conferences have their value, but real operational training isn’t usually on the menu.

And of course, you could partner with a reputable consulting firm whose team of of experts will guide you every step of the way, from choosing the right measurement tools to the way you should develop engagement strategies. If you ‘re ready for that, have found a partner you know you can work with and have the budget for it, it’s go time. But not everyone is ready or able to go that route quite yet.

A fourth option is to let those of us who know how to do this teach you how without asking you to break the bank or further burden your schedule. We aren’t talking about “boot camps” here. (The idea isn’t to throw as much information at you as we can in a few hours and see how much of it you can retain.) By the same token, you don’t want a training programs to be so light that you walk away from it with solid theoretical knowledge but no practical knowledge. There isn’t a whole lot of value to training if you can’t actually put that training to good use.  And to be honest, there’s only so much ground you can cover even with a full day of training. So a group of us put our heads together over the last few months and decided to create something to fill that gap for you and do it right. (Which is to say, do it exceptionally well.) The objective is then to blend training and consulting in a way that makes sense for everyone.

Enter the Red Chair Group:

There will be plenty of time for me to get into what the Red Chair Group is, who will be involved and what types of services we’ll offer in the coming weeks. For now, all I can tell you is that our official launch is scheduled for December of 2009, that our primary objective will be to provide expert level assistance to businesses in need of strategic and operational program management, and that geographically speaking, we will cover a lot of ground. (I haven’t been this excited about a project/venture in a very long time, so it’s pretty hard for me to keep from spilling the beans.)

To that end, one of the first things the Red Chair Group will be launching is a series of executive training programs specifically designed to teach C-suite execs, business managers and agency directors how to develop, integrate, manage and measure social media programs (what we have been talking about in this post). These trainings will be carefully structured day-long events held in major cities around the world. We are currently in talks with partners in 20 key cities to bring Red Chair events to your doorstep.

(I forgot to mention: The whole idea is to bring these training events to you so you don’t have to come to us. This is yet another way we thought we could keep your budget as intact as possible.)

Cities already being added to the 2010 schedule:

• Chicago
• San Francisco
• New York
• Seattle
• Atlanta
• Boston
• Portland
• Philadelphia
• Paris
• Houston
• Sydney
• Hong Kong
• Charlotte
• Orlando
• Toronto
• Brussels
• Tokyo

(If you want us to add your city to the list, let me know. We’ll chat.)

The first Red Chair event will be held in London on December 4th of this year. (Yes, in just a few weeks.) Click here or on the image below to register. For this venue, A+G’s Scott Gould (of #LikeMinds fame) will be joining me to cover some key topics and learning points. To provide the best possible environment for the event, we’ve secured a space at One Alfred Place, perhaps London’s coolest (and my favorite) business club.

Our schedule for the session on December 4th is pretty heavy, so we plan to promptly begin with introductions at 9:00 am and be well into the program by 9:30. To make things easier for everyone, we’ve set up some group and agency discount packages in case some of you want to buy your tickets together. I strongly encourage that companies with an interest in this level of training (especially enterprise class organizations) consider sending more than one individual.

A note about registration: Though typical Red Chair events are designed for up to 40 attendees, our London launch is limited to only 20 attendees. Since our registration process is first come-first served, you’ll want to register quickly to secure a spot. With our schedule the way it is, it could be a while before we’re back in London.

One last thing: Anyone who registers for Red Chair London will automatically be enrolled in our registration referral program. The way it works is simple: Once you’ve registered, you will be given a special discount code to give friends, colleagues and clients. If they in turn register for the event using your code, they will get 10% off their ticket price and you will get $100 back. Nice, huh? Yeah. We thought you’d like that.

I will let you know as soon as the Red Chair website is up. (We’re building it as we speak.) In the meantime, you can access Red Chair London information via EventBrite by clicking here (or the image below).

I look forward to sharing more about how the Red Chair Group’s plans to help companies of all sizes operationalize social media. I am usually a pretty quiet guy (no, really), but I have to admit that I am having a hard time containing my excitement about this: To know that businesses are finally going to be able to cut through the social media noise and BS in part thanks to Red Chair makes me feel pretty good.

2010 is definitely going to be a fun year.

Cheers.

PS: Let’s give credit where credit is due. Special thanks to Kristi Colvin and Doug Cone for the amazing work they are already doing on the Red Chair Group’s branding and website. You guys are already producing outstanding work.

]]> http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/first-things-first-the-social-media-roi-presentation-from-the-likeminds-conference/ Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:10:35 +0000 Olivier Blanchard http://thebrandbuilder.wordpress.com/2009/10/27/first-things-first-the-social-media-roi-presentation-from-the-likeminds-conference/

Answering questions at #LikeMinds -Exter, Devon, UK

If you’ve missed seeing videos on the blog these past last few weeks, you’re in luck: I have some video for you today.

By now, you’ve probably seen the full version of the “intro to Social Media R.O.I.” deck I presented at SoFresh this summer, right? (If not, go check it out here.) You can also browse through most of the videos from my F.R.Y. and R.O.I. blog posts on www.smroi.net (which puts everything in one convenient place for you). And then there’s this recent piece by Mashable on the subject (which I highly recommend, by the way).

So what’s the latest? My presentation and ensuing panel discussion at the inaugural LikeMinds conference in Exeter, Devon, UK on October 16th.  We’ll be talking a lot more about Like Minds in the coming days (and weeks, and months) but for now, let’s focus on these two videos, which are essentially captures of the live feed provided during the conference. In these videos, the panel and I clarify what Social Media R.O.I. is and isn’t, and answer well crafted and at times difficult questions from the crowd.

Catch Part 1 here.

Catch Part 2 here. (That’s the one with the panel discussion. Very good stuff from the crowd and panelists.)

I also recommend that you take the time to watch Scott Gould’s intro, Trey Pennington’s keynote and Maz Nadjm’s presentation among other solid video content from #LikeMinds.

Cheers,

Olivier

On Friday, 16th October, I attended the inaugural Like Minds – Measuring Social Media (SM) conference in Exeter. The conference aimed to bring ‘like minded’ people together to discuss the business benefits of using SM and to explore possible Return On Investment (ROI).

The conference itself demonstrated how this can work as the event was publicised solely through SM channels. With a ticket price of just £25 – 180 people signed up to attend. An orderly queue formed outside the Exeter Conference Centre just before 2pm and no doubt passers-by were left wondering just who was ‘topping the bill’ at this small city venue!

Speakers included – Trey Pennington, Marketing Pro, Connector, Storyteller, Author and SM advisor to The Jones Group. Daren Forsyth – ex BBC Executive and founder of 140characters.co.uk and Vanessa Warwick former MTV presenter turned professional property investor (Propertytribes).

Each presentation was followed by a lively panel discussion. The man in the kilt (James Barisic – Photolegal) and our very own Carl Haggerty (DCC) adorning his delightfully flowery shirt, being particularly brave souls in the face of a live video-stream via ustream.tv and a 3 metre background Twitter…, or is that ‘Titterfall’! It was interesting to see questions/comments coming thick and fast through Twitter, we even had a Tweet from Stephen Fly no-less – but personally I found this quite distracting – and verging on plain rude at times.

So what is the ROI? As Trey stated in his keynote – ‘It really depends on what you are trying to achieve’. Oliver Blanchard commented that SM isn’t free. Yes, free to use but there is always a cost in terms of time and effort. But you don’t need to be a SM Guru to realise the train is in the station and businesses need to hop on board – and now would be good!

Looking forward to the next event.

http://alikeminds.org/

It’s an incredible feeling when you witness the birth of something. There is a palpable, almost magical force in the air. There is an underlying knowledge that what you have just experienced will only increase in value to you over time.

At a time when most, if not all of us, are facing challenges in their life and work it was an incredible feeling to watch a room fill with complete strangers who had a thirst for knowledge and the belief and faith to come and be an active part of something new and exciting. They really created what became a very special day.

What amazed me about the Like Minds event in Exeter on Friday wasn’t so much the great content from the speakers and the seamless event hosting and management from Scott Gould and the Exeter Conference Centre but the people who came to share it all with us.

Trey Pennington, one of our keynote speakers, mentioned the words ‘trust’ and ‘faith’ to me over breakfast the next day in Exeter city centre. He was spot on. Both Trey and Olivier Blanchard took a huge leap of faith to get on a plane and fly over from Greenville, South Carolina to be with us and prepare such incisive presentations.

Daren Forsyth and Maz Madjm, despite only knowing me from various London Tweetups, had the trust and faith to take the time out of their schedules and home lives, prepare presentations and travel down to help create such a valuable and magical day. Thanks also must go to all our panelists; Vanessa Warwick, Rick Waghorn, Matt Waring, James Barasic, Carl Haggerty, Laura Whithead, and Andrew Davies who provided such a stimulating discussion after each keynote. If you couldn’t make it down, do take the time to watch them all here.

Also take a moment to check out the feedback at the hashtag #LikeMinds on Twitter as well. The outpouring of love (and man love!) has been inspiring. It was also a great moment to see Stephen Fry say hello on the Twitterfall behind the stage – thank you Stephen! You can read my blog on his London Applestore event here.

Our sponsors, both local and national, also had the faith and trust to buy into our vision, at a point when even WE didn’t know exactly what the day was going to bring! For that we are deeply grateful because without that financial support the idea could have just as easily dissolved. I hope they all feel that they too have got a return on their investment and we look forward to inviting them back to our next event in February.

So it’s seems to me that the fundamentals of social media are about faith and trust. We increasingly ‘meet’ people through social networks, blogs and online communities long before we get to know them in real life and we have to take a leap of faith and trust that they are, who and what they say they are.

Scott Gould and I connected on Twitter around six months before we actually met. In the ensuing two months or so we discussed the idea of creating a brand and holding an inaugural event in Exeter that aimed to bring the level of quality you would expect for an event in a capital city like London but brought to more local communities. I spend my working week between the two cities and can see the parallels and the disparities and feel very passionately that Exeter needs stronger creative ties with other cities like London. I hope that Like Minds, through the use of social media, can start to beak the barriers down even further and bring us all closer together.

Exeter has an enormous amount of talent to offer, evidenced by many of the local participants at Like Minds. I hope that what Scott and I have created, with you and for you, helps you all in your chosen profession and life path.

After all YOU made it happen. To quote Scott on the day; we’re nobody.

PS: Check out what Christina Warren at Mashable had to say about Olivier Banchard, one of our keynote speakers here.

I am pretty excited to announce that I will be speaking at the Like Minds Conference on October 16th in Exeter, England. The conference is the brainchild of Scott Gould, Trey Pennington, and Andrew Ellis who… presumably got the idea for this event while holding on to a pint or two. (At least I hope so.)

What I like about Like Minds so far:

1. The conference will focus on two things dear to my heart:

a) Sustainable social media practices (how to develop, manage and integrate social media programs, how to turn customers into brand advocates through social media, how to blend social media into your business mix, etc.), and

b) Best practices for social media measurement (particularly how to define and measure social media ROI).

Already, you can see how this is right up my alley. We’re finally tucking evangelism away and getting to methods and best practices. It’s about time.

2. It’s in Exeter, England.

As much as I love living on this side of the pond, it’s nice to fly back to the other side every once in a while and reconnect with my roots. (Yeah, I need a regular dose of euro living every once in a while, just to make sure all my systems are still properly calibrated.) And given the proximity of the UK to France, I’m guessing I’ll probably take advantage of being in the EU to pay my patria materna a quick visit, stuff my face with croissants and brie, shake my fist at a moped or two, and argue about art and literature with complete strangers.

Not to mention some of the sight-seeing I intend to do in the UK.

On a more serious note, the prospect of speaking at a conference in England is pretty cool, but more importantly the opportunity to learn from social media practitioners in in the UK and EU, compare notes, share stories, etc. is pure gold to me. Sometimes, you kind of have to hop out of the fishbowl a little bit and go see how the other fishies swim. I know I am going to come back with my head abuzz with ideas. (I won’t sleep for weeks.)

3. The roster of speakers.

Aside from moi, this is what it looks like so far:

Andrew Ellis @drewellis

Andrew is a creative director with extensive startup experience, a seasoned innovator, and co-founder of Like Minds. He pioneered Eyetoeye Digital as one of the earliest ‘new media’ agencies in 1993, working with both household brands, and multinationals. His work has received international acclaim, from the iconic slogan T-Shirts for Kathryn Hamnett in the early 80s, to Grammy nominations, and most recently, ‘Orbit’, a documentary-come-musical with extensive CGI of explored universe which is touring the US in 2010. Drew’s accomplisments, past and present, are available in full at his personal blog.

Trey Pennington @treypennington

Trey is leveraging social media to connect with audiences around the world. HubSpot ranks his Facebook profile as the #4 most influential in the world. Since January 2009, Trey has started or helped start ten Social Media Clubs—eight in the southeastern United States, one in the United Kingdom, and one in Australia. His home club now has over 550 members and was, for most of 2009, the second largest Social Media Club in the world. Trey’s book ‘Spitball Marketing’ is being launched at Like Minds. For more information, visit http://www.treypennington.com.

Laura Whitehead @littlelaura

Laura is a web developer and a consultant on social media integration and online community development. Based in South Devon and the founder of Popokatea, she works with awide range of clients including the nonprofit and public sector, and small business enabling them to use innovative methods and online technology to extend their reach, engage with their audience and achieve their goals. Laura was quoted in Fast Company as “the queen of nonprofit technology in the UK.” (Pretty cool.)

Andrew Davies @andjdavies

Andrew is co-founder of idiomag.com, an personalised publishing platform that is at the cutting edge of the digital publishing revolution. He also previously co-founded thruSITES, a London-based social media development agency with clients such as Universal Studios, Sky, ITV and Number 10.

Carl Haggerty @carlhaggerty

Carl is the Enterprise Architect at Devon County Council. He guides social media usage and change in businesses and organizations, creating and installing frameworks and policies for social media and networking. He has a broad background ranging from Sustainability and Community Development, Tourism & Economic Development to Business Administration and Communications. Carl’s blog is at http://carlhaggerty.wordpress.com.

In other words, no fluff. And some new voices, which I like.

4. Meeting a whole new batch of tweeps in the real world, all of whom will have really cool accents.

You can’t beat that.

5. The price of admission.

While some social media conferences charge upwards of $1000 for the privilege of listening to celebrities talk about their twitter adventures, this one made sure to make admission affordable, therefore open to all. I like that. If you book now, You’re only looking at 25 quid. At the door, 35 quid. I have a lot of respect for that.

So if you’re able to make it to Exter on the 16th of October, I encourage you to drop by, share your stories, listen to ours, and join the fun. Find out more here, or just go ahead and book today.

And if you intend to be there, drop me a note.

]]> http://petrifyzone.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/like-minds/ Sun, 19 Jul 2009 11:25:02 +0000 Petrify http://petrifyzone.wordpress.com/2009/07/19/like-minds/

År: 2006
Genre: Drama, Thriller, Kriminalare.
IMDb Betyg: 6,2
Skådisar: Toni Collette, Eddie Redmayne, Tom Sturridge, Patrick Malahide, Richard Roxburgh, Cathryn Bradshaw.

Handling: En psykolog får i uppdrag av polisen att undersöka om det finns tillräckligt med bevis för att väcka ett mordåtal mot 17-årigiga Alex som anklagas för att ha dödat sin skolkamrat Nigel med ett hagelgevär. Utan några ordentliga bevis så utsätts detektiven på fallet för påtryckningar från Alex inflytelsefulla pappa att lägga ner fallet. Men desto djopare man går desto mer frågor finner man runt relationen mellan Alex och Nigel.

Kommentar: Skrämmande och hyfsad thriller. Högre betyg skulle det bli om jag fattade tvisten i slutet.

Betyg:

Autumn – my favourite season. Canterbury can do it brilliantly - leaves – yellow, red, russet. So can central Otago – we’ve just been in Wanaka – delightful.
Autumn charms me with its stillness and warmth – the memory of heat but with an undercurrent of chill. My breath fogs a little when i go to fetch the paper in the morning; and when the sun falls low in the late afternoon, suddenly the day’s cold.
A good season for walks – kicking leaves.
In Wanaka we walked, and talked lots with our good friend C.  Walking up Mount Iron gave us spectacular views of the lake and town. We ate superbly cooked beef and vegetables, drank delicious pinot noir [Rockburn], at the excellent Botswanna Butchery; and another night revelled messily in the tasty abundance of burgers from Red Star, watching Like Minds. [Memories of similarly huge 'special burgers' from Ashburton's Rangatira Burger Bar in the '80s.] Coffee and late breakfast at Gusto.
Warm autumn sun and still cooling air have made recent days seem gentle. Time away from work has allowed for those many walks, and spending hours with friends [C in Wanaka, G's home from Hong Kong, L & J in Ashburton], – and with books. Reading in slow afternoons has been winningly comfortable. Not having found anything to tempt me at the library [i'd left my list at home!], i’ve been re-reading early Patrick Gale – perfect. 

I think I’m beginning to enlist more recruits for this upcoming literary soirée. I believe I’ve hustled at least two more friends into joining me in the self-flagellation that will ensue starting in November. Initially I was inducted with the premise of being “emotional” support for someone else, as in he didn’t want to be the only person he knew “enduring” it. As he put it, ”Stringing other people along will definately help with the ol’ motivation”. Which I agree probably will help a whole hell of a lot. However now that certain select cronies of mine have tentatively agreed upon giving it a shot the thing I’m most looking forward to is getting a chance to seeing what it is they create. People have told me, at times, I seem to have a way with words. This is exactly how I feel about my friends. A few of them have that gift and it will be fantastic to get to see it put to work.

Back on the subject of motivation, when signing up as an author on the NaNoWriMo  I recieved their Welcoming email. It had love in the subject, which is always nice. Inside the email was your basic rigmarole of set up information for the site and community but near the bottom they included “A quick overview of the three-and-a-half things we wish we had known for our first NaNoWriMo”, which not only being incredibly helpful and reassuring was also very amusing.

1) It’s okay to not know what you’re doing. Really. You’ve read a lot of novels, so you’re completely up to the challenge of writing one. If you feel more comfortable outlining your story ahead of time, do so. But it’s also fine to just wing it. Write every day, and a book-worthy story will appear, even if you’re not sure what that story might be right now.

2) Do not edit as you go. Editing is for December. Think of November as an experiment in pure output. Even if it’s hard at first, leave ugly prose and poorly written passages on the page to be cleaned up later. Your inner editor will be very grumpy about this, but your inner editor is a nitpicky jerk who foolishly believes that it is possible to write a brilliant first draft if you write it slowly enough. It isn’t. Every book you’ve ever loved started out as a beautifully flawed first draft. In November, embrace imperfection and see where it takes you.

3) Tell everyone you know that you’re writing a novel in November. This will pay big dividends in Week Two, when the only thing keeping you from quitting is the fear of looking pathetic in front of all the people who’ve had to hear about your novel for the past month. Seriously. Email them now about your awesome new book. The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse.

3.5) There will be times you’ll want to quit during November. This is okay. Everyone who wins NaNoWriMo wanted to quit at some point in November. Stick it out. See it through. Week Two can be hard. Week Three is much better. Week Four will make you want to yodel.

And we’re talking the good kind of yodeling here.

With great well wishes on the noveling month ahead,

The NaNoWriMo Team

I’m particularly a fan of step #3. “The looming specter of personal humiliation is a very reliable muse”. Because this is something I do with almost any challenge I try to take on, whether it be exercising, studying or in this case writing a novel. Self motivation is a hard thing, and its much easier to motivate yourself when you don’t want to look bad. This of course is not the most ideal approach. I mean, we’re not supposed to care what other people think right? Its-my-own-damn-life-I-can-do-what-I-want type stuff. Which is completely true, don’t get me wrong, I just think an alternative option could also be just sticking to your guns and standing by your word. Instead of trying to do others proud, why not do it for yourself? (this can be hard!) For me its certainly not as easy as it sounds. I can justify almost anything, and quitting things that are difficult is one of the easiest to justify. Positive support however does help me greatly, so throughout the month of November I may be looking for just that. Anything to keep me going and reaching that goal.

The more involved I become with this whole endeavor and community the more I feel comfortable and almost at home. The sense of humor, styles and way of looking at the world just seem to click for me. I may have found a NaNoWriMo group here in at UH-Hilo which would be great because then we could host Write-Ins and have NaNoWriMos Anonymous support groups once week two hits. I’m also really looking forward to meeting other like minds willing to attempt this. I figure it takes a special kind of person to get excited at the prospect of writing anything, let alone a 50,000 word novel. I want to meet those people.

-Moniker Vise
“Dust the apple off, savor each bite“

  (photo by Janice Bohn)

  As we learn, grow and evolve as a species of beings, but more importantly as spiritual beings in our individual human experiences, there is much to offer and much to anticipate as we take ourselves to the next level of human consciousness. 

Greetings, dear friends and fellow travellers!  It’s been a while since my last personal post (The Gift, April 29th 2008), and I want to whole heartedly apologize for my extended absence.  It has been an amazing journey since late April/early May.  SO many things have occurred since last writing.  SO many wonderful, curious, mysterious, humorous and even downright crazy things!!   And every time I would go to write something of it all down, I would lose words, even the thought of where I should even begin.  So, I guess I shall start from the beginning, and see where we go from there.

But before I do, I want to say that the creation of this blog was/is two-fold.  One is to share my own experience on this crazy journey called Life!  I think I said it best in my first post, Where The Elephant Wants to Go (November 06, 2007),  as I laid out the basis for coming to this venue.  The second goal is to create a forum where like minds can connect and share their own experiences and words of wisdom from the lessons and realizations of their own journeys.  Thus the various postings from other inspirational writers and sources along the way. 

I hope that both will prove helpful and insightful while inspiring you as you seek out your own Inner Truth.  I appreciate your comments and questions.  And I appreciate those of you who have come back over and over again to discover more of what is offered up here.  I hope you will share this with your friends and colleagues alike.  And my commitment to you is to end my recent silence (Source/God told me too! =)~ and to contribute more and more to the greater goal of helping others become more aware of their own inner truths and how we are all connected on this big blue planet called Earth!

Ahhhhh, how the times are a-changin’!  And that statement in and of itself holds SO many wonderfully powerful and challenging truths in and of itself.  As we learn, grow and evolve as a species of beings, but more importantly as spiritual beings in our individual human experiences, there is much to offer and much to anticipate as we take ourselves to the next level of human consciousness. 

IF you have been paying attention, listening and learning from others who are also shouting out the great message of growth and change, you will no doubt know intuitively that what I have to say is true.  These are incredible times.  You and I have chosen to be here to experience them in very powerful ways.  You and I are here to learn something new, that is for certain.  However, some of us are also here to help show others what that something new really is, and how each and every soul on the planet is capable of achieving it as well.

I thank you for joining me on this amazing journey.  I look forward to sharing what I have learned and what I have simply come to KNOW through my experience here.  And I look forward to hearing back from so many of you who are experiencing the same powerful truths and transformations… in your own individual way!

I am SO excited!  Get ready for the really fun part!  It’s time to fulfill our ultimate destinies and change the course of the human experience in a most powerful and enlightening way.  Don’t worry, we have much help coming in from the other side.  It’s time.  So, you best get ready.  We are in for a very, very interesting ride! 

This will be the format and development of a larger piece of work I look forward to sharing with the rest fo the world.  And I look forward to sharing it with you here first as it (and I) grow into it.  I look forward to talking with you again soon… and often! 

in love and light,

Roldan

The new Peter O’Toole Times advert. Brilliant.

Like Minds

with Chick Corea, Gary Burton, Pat Metheny, Roy Haynes and Dave Holland

I was initially very attracted to this album prior to hearing it, due to the astounding line-up of musical talent it featured. Corea, Burton and Metheny are three of my all time favorite jazz artists. And just recently I have grown fond of the Burton’s jazz style and a new appreciation for his allocated instrument, the vibraphone. It is amazing to me just how many of my jazz heroes and influences have worked with each other. This album highlights the artistic style and expression that each member contributes to the overall sound, and feel of the album as a whole. It has also been educational to me, introducing me to an upright bass player that I had not previously known (Holland), as well as a great drummer (Haynes).

The main thing that stood out to me were the tunes themselves. The opening track, “Question and Answer”, a Metheny (guitar) tune, inspires me to write every time I hear it. It really is the perfect melody. It is layed out, and constructed very well, yet it is a very simple tune. From my experiences of jazz composition, the hardest thing to do, second to allocating chords, is creating a melody that is catchy and that flows smoothly. This is a melody that is very pleasing to the ear. What I really like about this track is how the melody is played in unison between the guitar and vibes. In fact, many of the tunes are played like this. Truly, the perfect opening to this album.

In the piece, “Futures” (track 4), Burton (vibes) and Metheny have a musical conversation and trade melodic ideas with each other. Burton’s instrumental skill is utilized a lot in this tune. Additional albums featuring Burton and Corea such as, “Native Sense” and “Crystal Silence”, have introduced me to the vibraphone in jazz music, and helped me to develop a real love for the instrument. This 10 minute tune, for the most part, is left fairly mellow, and open for musical expression between each member.

The title tune, “Like Minds” (track 5), opens with Burton playing a rhythmic part of the melody. The full band comes in shortly after with the melody being played in unison between Burton and Metheny. The melody is emphasized and pushed in front of the rhythm section very well. I really like the sound and intensity that unison playing offers, and it worked wonders for this tune. This track features the first (that I have heard) bass solo of the album. Although it was fairly short, and most bass solos are, I always listen hard to try and catch what they are doing. After Holland’s solo it transitions back into the melody, once again played in unison between Burton and Metheny. Wow, what a great outro!

I have listened to this album fairly extensively, and have really enjoyed it. I have learnt a lot by being exposed to this music. I now have a greater desire to write melodic tunes such as these ones. I really liked how each musician would exchange melodies, and musically talk to each other in small phrases throughout the album. This was often done in groups as small as a half bar. This suggests to me a different way to compose, and to improvise. Every time I listen to the album, and the individual songs I notice something that I had previously missed. This is probably my favorite album at the moment. Any Chick Corea fan should get this album, and I highly recommend it to any inspiring jazz musician.

I gave this album, overall, an 8 out of 10.

That’s all for now. If you have any questions about this album, or music general, please feel free to contact me. I hope this has been an inspiring read! Thanks as always.

Talk to you soon,

Jared

]]> http://silviasettevendemie.wordpress.com/2007/12/30/symbiosis-uniti-per-la-morte/ Sun, 30 Dec 2007 18:15:31 +0000 silviasettevendemie http://silviasettevendemie.wordpress.com/2007/12/30/symbiosis-uniti-per-la-morte/

Titolo originale: Like minds                        

Regia: Gregory J. Read                                          

Cast: Toni Collette, Eddie Redmayne, Tom Sturridge, Cathryn Bradshaw, Richard Roxburgh, Patrick Malahide, Amit Shah, John Overton.

Distribuzione: Delta Video. Australia, Gran Bretagna 2006

Guarda il trailer

Alex, 17enne di buona famiglia, è accusato di aver ucciso barbaramente Nigel, il suo compagno di stanza e studi. Per far luce sulla tremenda verità e su una serie di omicidi che gravitano intorno al college, una psicologa criminale viene incaricata dalla polizia per scavare nella mente del presunto assassino. Il legame fra i due ragazzi è molto più oscuro di quanto appaia e traspare inoltre il collegamento tra loro e una misteriosa setta templare del passato…

Avvincente thriller che si svolge come un puzzle, pezzo dopo pezzo, portando alla luce i rapporti tra i personaggi.

Man mano che si procede nella visione, il mistero si infittisce e lo spettatore inizia a dubitare di tutto ciò che vede o che sente.

Dov’è la verità? Come si sono svolti i fatti? Alex è sincero?

Sono interrogativi che resteranno senza risposta fino alla fine del film e che mantengono lo spettatore incollato alla poltrona.

Davvero ben riuscita l’opera prima di Gregory J. Read, regista proveniente dalla tv.

Ottima la scelta dei protagonisti, i giovani Eddie Redmayne e Tom Sturridge (di cui sicuramente sentiremo parlare anche in futuro) e altrettanto azzeccata la scelta di affiancare loro due attori affermati come Toni Collette e Richard Roxburgh, nei ruoli rispettivamente della psicologa criminale e del detective incaricati di risolvere il caso.

Conclusione: Decisamente consigliato, perchè la mente umana e i suoi misteri sono argomenti sempre molto affascinanti.

Voto: 7.5

Once you think about going to college, you think about your life after college.  Once you are in college you think there is nothing as good as college.  Then you graduate from college and ask the question:

“Where am I going from here?”

I think that was my thought exactly.  I knew Italia, speaking Italian, was going to be my goal to start off.  And I have achieved both in the 5 years since graduating.  I then worked at a corporate job for a year and a half, thinking to myself:

“What am I doing here?”

I knew my life consisted more than just making tons of money and moving up in a company that didn’t excite me.

I just visited my brother this weekend at school and noticed some things I forgot about 5 years ago.

How drinking was the highlight of a weekend

How school was really just a way to get to the weekend

How during these nights out drinking, was a distraction to what was really going on around us

How life in College is the best time in your life until…

You grow up and find that life has so many other surprises for you, if you pursue the life you want.   Drinking is not the highlight anymore.  It is a perk but not what makes the weeks fly by.

I see this now being a 26 year old, and not blinded by what society tells us to do after the best time in our lives.  I don’t at all regret my time in college, I guess I am a little wiser with these excursions I have been on and where I see myself going.

I see a lot of me in my brother and if he wants to travel, study abroad, move to another state, I know he will do it.  He will just have to look past societies conditioned responses that are asked of college graduates.  It is possible if you really want it.