Best wishes for 2011

Another year has gone by...

On the personal level it has been the year where - finally - the renovation of our old farm-house came to an end and we were able to move into our new home. Not 100% finished but already feeling like we belong here.

It was not the year of long and far away travel although we spent a marvelous 10 days at one of our favorite destinations in Morocco. Both my wife and I hope to be able to catch up on that in 2011.

A good year at the Van Marcke Group as well; moving along with the roll out of our internal social media collaboration platform and our plans for external social media communications...

As an independent consultant I am planning to focus on teaching and online education this year.

I have been asked to give guest lectures on social media communications at La Sorbonne in Paris, at the University of Ghent and at the Royal Military Academy...

This, together with some very exciting conferences (Communications On Top in Davos among others...) make for a great start of the year.

I am also looking forward to create some solid educational content on social media communications and crisis communications. Still doing some research and then I will need to start writing if I want this to be online soon...

Blogging here more regularly will be back on the agenda... I plan to write more often and share my experiences in the field as much as I can.

Some of you might have missed my wishes through LinkedIn or on Twitter so here they are again:

Just wanted to say a big THANKS;

For the inspiration, the help, the talks (be it about good restaurants or the impact of social media on business communications ;-), the dinners and lunches and the many conferences where we met.

I wish you and your family a peaceful and meaningful 2011 and am looking forward to meet you again !

Above all else... have fun.

Enterprise 2.0 Questions - Social Networks a waste of time ?

In his blogpost of June last year, Andrew McAfee listed "some questions you might get asked" related to the use of social media within the corporate world (Enterprise 2.0)...

I already gave my answer to one of the questions listed there about the use of internal blogs. Today I am trying to answer another one in his original list; one about social networks...

Will people just use social networking software to plan happy hour, rather than to get work done?

This almost exact question came on during a recent presentation I gave to Human Resource Managers about social media, just last week... So Andrew, you're right about those questions, they do come up ! ;-)

Here's my take on this one:

Internal social networks are already a fact within companies... People gather for a coffee, talk during lunch, meet up to see "how things are going" etc... They are part of the social fabric & most corporate cultures respect and support them.

So for one, I don't see why this would be so different if and when these networks happen online within the organisation. I would imagine it could even be an added bonus to international or geographically disperse companies. Employees connecting with colleagues far away...

But like most of these new tools, social networks tend to be seen as "not serious", "more play than work" etc...

The questions to ask are;

Where is the business value, the social value and do these 2 interconnect at my company.

Do I value the fact that my employees have the possibility to connect across business units, official organisation charts and positions ? Do I promote cross company, cross cultural networking as a source of innovation ?

Because let's face it - your colleagues are already creating online networks on Facebook & LinkedIn and in most cases it is not to lynch the company, on the contrary, it is because they have a sense of being connected through the organisation they work for.

Again, it is about setting down guidelines, agree on usage and put the tool - in this case internal social networks - within the company and employee context.

Explain how and why the tool can add value - both to the company & the employee (effectiveness, productivity, reduction of search time, creation of virtual teams etc...) and you will probably be positively surprised.

What do you think ?