Tomorrow [...]]]> Since I arrived in Sydney just over two and a half years ago, I’ve busied myself with a variety of initiatives – a long term remote contract,  a few freelance projects, numerous volunteer endeavors, one very exciting global collaborative project and a full time marketing and communications role in the not for profit sector.

Tomorrow I begin a brand new challenge.

I am joining  AMP Financial Services in their Customer Solutions division. Working from the Parramatta office, I’ll be leading the division’s Marketing and Communications activities. I’m thrilled to be joining such a well established and respected financial services organisation in a role that will allow me to help tell the exceptional service stories and publicise, promote and market the service advances delivered by the AMP Customer Solutions team to both internal and external stakeholders.

I am grateful for the opportunity to land such a transformative role that draws on so much of my previous experience. The truth is that I’ve been looking for a role like this since I arrived here. Over the next few months, I’m convinced this will prove to be both a fabulous fit and well worth the wait.

I huge THANK YOU goes out to all of you have helped me to get to this point. Your support is appreciated (perhaps more than you know).

While I may be moving desks, you’ll still find me in all my regular online places. And you can now also reach me at…

2 – 12 Macquarie Street Parramatta NSW 2150 Australia

Linda_Johannesson@amp.com.au

In addition to the fabulous people, professional sessions, terrific networking opportunities and heaps of fun,here are a few of my views about this  year’s conference… The future looks fabulous! As communicators we’re a lucky bunch! Our future looks fabulous. It promises to be dynamic, challenging and rewarding. But, to take advantage of the opportunities that await us, [...]]]>

In addition to the fabulous people, professional sessions, terrific networking opportunities and heaps of fun,here are a few of my views about this  year’s conference…

The future looks fabulous!
As communicators we’re a lucky bunch! Our future looks fabulous. It promises to be dynamic, challenging and rewarding. But, to take advantage of the opportunities that await us, we’ll need to actively embrace this dynamic future. In order to remain strategic and relevant we’ll need to better understand our own skills and strengths, we’ll need to embrace new skills, tools and technologies and add them deftly to our tactical toolkits. We’ll need to willingly embrace and respond to the expanding demands that require us to be consultants, change advocates, educators, coaches, publishers, conversation agents and story tellers. And, for those of us who do, we’ll have one key advantage. We’ll actually have a future.

There’s action required
A repeated theme of this conference for me was around Gandhi’s mantra of “Be the change you want to see”.  The TorontoTalks was proud to have the opportunity to do just that with our Unconference session. We had an idea, we pitched it and we delivered it. We took action.

Many of this year’s sessions stressed a focus on action. Of course, feedback is fine, dialogue is necessary, but action is what makes the real difference. It creates change. Action is tangible.
Whether it’s everyone focused on achieving  one action, as Craig Kielburger’s minga example, or the action is distributed through lots of people, each doing their share to create a small part of something larger, action by one or by many is a what gets things done. As communicators we need to realize that dialogue is great, but dialogue that creates action is better.

Great communications require great courage
We need to have the courage to break out of the traditional communications mold. We need the moxie to venture down new paths. We have to have confidence to challenge the status quo, to champion change, to create new tools, processes and solutions. We need to flex our strategic muscles and stand up for what we believe in, what we know to be good communication practices, to quote Guy Kawasaki, “don’t let the bozos grind you down” – have the courage to rise above them.

Trust has never been more important
As a profession, we’re still juggling the residual implications of the GFC, the challenges of Boomers, Gen X and Gen Ys working alongside each other trying to establish some common vocabulary and practices. Our ongoing reality includes an enduring lack of job security. We’ve faced dramatic change and had to do more with less.

There’s an expectancy for greater transparency in communications. There are more channels to choose from and faster ways of delivering your message. Everyone can have a voice and a broadcast platform,

We are at the highest level ever of distrust within organizations.  There are rampant challenges to employee engagement.

To deal with these issues and move productively beyond them, we need to trust. We need to trust our employees, our managers, our leaders, our stakeholders and we need to earn, keep and treasure the trust once it has been established.  Organizational engagement, productivity, innovation and evolution all depend on it.

The conference offered lots to applaud, lots to consider and lots to do…

Question of the day:

What were your conference thoughts, themes and takeaways?

Are you as cooperative or as collaborative as you could be?

How well have you embraced enabling technologies?

Rheingold discusses the technologies of COOPERATION & SHARING economies. He hypothesizes that if in the past, new forms of cooperation created new forms of wealth we may be moving into yet another economic [...]]]> Are you part of a smart mob?

Are you as cooperative or as collaborative as you could be?

How well have you embraced enabling technologies?

Rheingold discusses the technologies of COOPERATION & SHARING economies. He hypothesizes that if in the past, new forms of cooperation created new forms of wealth we may be moving into yet another economic form that is significantly different …

Are you prepared?

Take 20 minutes, have a listen, ponder the possibilities, then think about your answer.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Howard Rheingold on Collaboration

Question of the day

If your answer is “no, you’re not prepared”, what are you going to do about it?

Click here to view the embedded video.

As stated in their history,

TED was born in 1984 out of the observation by Richard Saul Wurman of a powerful convergence between Technology, Entertainment and Design. The first [...]]]> What’s the consummate conference experience? TED of course.  TED has become synonymous with innovation, inspiration. It thrills and inspires audiences around the world to join in the conversation.

As stated in their history,

TED was born in 1984 out of the observation by Richard Saul Wurman of a powerful convergence between Technology, Entertainment and Design. The first TED included demos of the newly released Macintosh computer and Sony compact disc, while mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot demonstrated how to map coastlines with his newly discovered fractals and AI guru Marvin Minsky outlined his powerful new model of the mind.

This year’s conference is next week and its theme is what the world needs now… I know what you’re thinking, the song is running through my head too,but it’s more than love, sweet love. What the world needs now is …ideas, creativity and innovation. There’s too little of those things too!

I’ve never attended TED in person, but it is on my bucket list.  However, I have experienced it through the resulting podcasts, their online presence and others who share in its appeal. I’ve witnessed the magic of TED speakers who have moved me to action, brought me to tears or lead me to a greater understanding or appreciation of things, events or concepts. I hold this conference up as the yardstick for all conferences.

Pssst…all you in the conference business… there are lessons here to be learned here if you’d just invest the time to learn them.

Firstly, perhaps you can glean a little something from the winning TED recipe that includes:

• a basic premise and fundamental goal (to present “Ideas worth spreading”),
• the adherence to a consistent format from year to year and around the globe,
• a line-up of superior quality of speakers where the magic is in their diversity (perspectives from industries including; medicine, government, technology, philanthropy, media, science, music, marketing, just to name a few), and
• talks that are all, in one way or another, inspiring, innovative and revolutionary.

As a result, the demand to attend and to speak at TED is staggering. It has become annual global phenomenon. Why wouldn’t it? These “ideas worth spreading” ignite innovation, stir passion, inspire action and evolve the conversation to a higher level.

So, listen up all you conference organizers, regardless of what industries, geographies, or topics your conferences cover, you can borrow a page from TED.

First off, define your purpose, test your ingredients, aim high and develop the winning recipe that will accomplish it.  There are a plethora of goals that you’ll want it to achieve  with your conference (from gaining visibility, facilitating member networking, providing value to the membership, recognizing and advancing the profession, to, yes, MAKING MONEY!) so spend time defining them. Set clear objectives. And do this in SMART terms.

And, if MAKING MONEY is a priority, why not take another lesson from TED. In addition to creating a fabulous conference experience, why not add your own version of the latest TED offering of  The Associate Membership Program.

They are offering a discounted conference fee for those who can’t actually make it to the conference, but want to share the experience of TED as it unfolds with a group of associates, family, or friends of their choosing.

It has always been my belief that there are tremendous untapped revenue streams that can be easily applied to conferences of all topics, geographies and sizes, with a little pre-planning and vision, some tech-savvy support and sound strategic marketing (ahem, here’s the shameless plug).

Why, when so many of  you conference organizers are clamoring to get butts in seats and create decent revenue streams from these events they spend months (and sometimes years) planning, you aren’t also embracing innovative ways of extending the conference conversation, is beyond my bottom line focused comprehension.

One thing I think the world needs now is flexibility that will open us up to consider other options for accomplishing our goals, to broaden our vision and our minds and lead us into doing new things in new ways. I guess that’s why I think that what the world needs now….is also… TED.

Questions of the day

Have you attended TED? Viewed a TEDTalk? What are your favourites? How did the experience change you?

What Matters Now is the latest free  e-book from Seth Godin and friends -it’s provocative, insightful, inspiring and just plain powerful!

Download it, read it, live it….just trust me on this…this IS what matters now.

After social networks, what next?

Are social [...]]]> PDA, the digital content blog, featured a recent post that highlighted the discussions of a star-studded internet rock star panel who met at Said Business School in Oxford recently to discuss the future of the web. These great technology minds considered some basic, yet tough and far reaching questions including:

After social networks, what next?

Are social networks the internet’s last big development? And how much will they change?

Peter Thiel, who co-founded PayPal  and was an early investor in Facebook and LinkedIn reminded everyone to evaluate first what stage we’re at with social networks and suggested that maybe there is no innovation left any more, and we have to look for it in a completely different direction.

Biz Stone, Twitter’s CEO was quite sure that  for him, Peter’s suggestions were not the case, there was further innovation to come and that using open technology, open platforms that encourage transparency is where we’ll continue to go and that this open exchange of information will create a resounding global impact.

Ram Shriram, a founding board member of Google and one of the search giant’s first investors, moved discussions to the mobile internet, suggesting quite assuredly that “Combining social and mobile – there is a new wave of opportunities coming up, a growth of users, so mobile internet is clearly the next major computing cycle.”

LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman observed,  “I actually think we are just beginning to see how people launch the eventualities of social networks into their life.”

Given that so much information is now being generated through social networks, but we’re just getting started on determining what can be done with it. Oxford lecturer, Dr Kate Blackmon summed up the discussions  in a nutshell in saying that the future was not about crowd sourcing but crowd filtering.

So, where is the web going? Who can really say for sure. There are  many questions, a few sound predictions, but no clear agreement about exactly where the web is headed. Personally, I’m fine with that, because for me, not knowing and being there to evolve along with it is half the fun. Besides, if these web-savvy minds can’t come to a clear agreement or shared predictions, how can I?

I know one thing though, I’ll be sailing on into the future of the web, clutching tightly to my mobile.

Question of the day:

After social networks, what do you think is next?

And, nowhere is this change more exponential than in the evolution of the technology available to us today.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, if you’ve got nothing urgent [...]]]> I’ve always said that the most valuable skill we can cultivate in work and in life is our ability to embrace new experiences and adapt to change. For change is truly the ONLY constant.

And, nowhere is this change more exponential than in the evolution of the technology available to us today.

Click here to view the embedded video.

So, if you’ve got nothing urgent to do with the next five minutes, watch this. Think about its implications. Then ask yourself, are you changing, adapting and embracing new technology and its possibilities? Are you even trying to keep pace? Or, are you doing what you’ve always done with the tools you’ve always used?

If the latter, you may just find yourself horribly unprepared for the future. Don’t say I didn’t warn you…

Question of the Day

Just how far do you think technology will go?