commbasics

 Today I... Helped a young entrepreneur in Qatar refine his executive summary on a social media app designed to help charities raise money. ( Linkedin ) Conducted a staff meeting ( Skype ) and reviewed documents and reports with the team in Boston and Austin ( Dropbox ) Encouraged a young friend in Washington state who was in a sudden moment of crisis. ( Facebook ) Finished editing a series of videos to help local voters work their way through the California ballot without using divisive campaign rhetoric. (Youtube) Helped someone adjust their security settings on Facebook so she wasn’t blasting everything about her life to everyone on the web. (Facebook) Suggested several candidates for a senior communications executive to a major semiconductor company identify. (Talent.me) Put the early workings together for a fund raising project to help teacher take care of their cars. (Causes.com) Set up a video channel to broadcast my daughter’s wedding to people who cannot attend. (Ustre...

For those who have not discovered him yet, Brian Solis is a social media guru who has turned the medium into a science.  If you can, pick up his book Engage ! and read it with a bottle of aspirin nearby, because you'll have a headache about a third of the way in.  Ever since I discovered him he regulalrly posts an explanation of something that has been noodling around in my brain.  It's kind of scary actually. For example, today he posts a piece about infographics  (that are all the rage now) and explains why they are so badly done in general. He asks,  "Are you trying to seek the embrace of your customers and the people who influence them or are you designing for those who will approve and fund your campaign?" In that simple question he wraps up about 6 months of discussions I've had with companies about developing shareable, engaging content.  I morphed my business out of PR a couple of years ago into whate we called a strat...

 EE Times recently published the results of a survey regarding engineers and social media, concluding that engineers use social media, but do not use social media for work.  This flies in the face of pretty much every other survey that shows engineers in almost every engineering discipline from software to car makers do, in fact use social media for collaboration and research.  For the moment, however, lets give the benefit of the doubt and say that electrical engineers have yet to figure out that social media can, in fact, make their jobs easier. That is going to change, very soon.  Last week, at TechCrunch , Mark Zuckerberg pre-announced Facebook's interest in establishing a search function that will enable people to find out what their coworkers/friends are reading and viewing.  For example, if you want to know if anyone has found interesting information about functional verification tools, you will just have to type "functional verification...