David Armano

Originally posted on The Collaboratory.

I'm leaving for Las Vegas later this week to speak at Blogworld. I'm on a panel discussing the intersection of social media and brands, but what I'm really excited about is a presentation on Friday where I will discuss the value that visual thinking can bring to any organization.

If you found some value in the first iteration of "Social Business by Design" you may want to take a look at this current version. It includes double the content including video footage from the Drupal7 open design initiative. Also, you'll notice the slide design has been updated to reflect the current identity system of Dachis Group. There's also additional thinking around business culture and the dynamics between networks and hierarchies. Hope you find it useful.

I recently had a chance to sit down (virtually) with Bob Thompson of Customer Think. The result was a 30 minute podcast (listen here). We discussed some of the following topics and more:

Watch this video by Bruce Nussbaum, BusinessWeek's innovation editor and veteran employee with the company. It's a fascinating illustration of the shifts in business we are seeing in real time. Media outlets in particular have been on the front lines of this shift. As I've said many times before, the Web and its latest social iteration has introduced ultra deep and pervasive niche content and experiences which directly compete with many business models.

Recently colleague Peter Kim and myself found ourselves in close contact with a "social media expert". The problem is this expert was sucking in the feed of my blog without permission, attribution and had more holes in his resume than a slice of Swiss cheese. So how do you separate the social media snake oil from the vinegar? It's not easy, but here's a few pointers:

When thinking of any Social Business Design problem, it's important to realize that there are three areas which will define all of the challenges which will need to be resolves in order to move any business toward a more open, collaborative model which benefits all constituents (employees, customers, partners). These areas are:

Mitch Joel shouldn't need an introduction, but in the event that you haven't heard of him, he founded a successful Canadian based agency called Twist Image, is a well known participant at the intersection of business, social media and marketing and speaks on these topics often. When Mitch reached out to me, I promised no softballs, and his thoughtful replies make a great case for why you might want to investigate his new book, Six Pixels of Separation.

1. Social climbers are attracted to social media
That's right. The same people who climb their way up the social food chain in the real world tend to do well in the social media world. They'll be your friend for a while, until they find someone else with more Twitter followers to tweet with.

I've gotten a lot of requests over the past year to have my talk on personal branding called "Brand U.0" posted on YouTube. The folks at the Chicago Convergence have gone ahead and saved me the trouble of doing this. So if you live outside the US in a country that didn't support Veoh, or you just want to watch the video without the pop up ads, you can bookmark the YouTube version.

A recent survey conducted by Proofpoint found that 8% of companies had terminated employees due to social media usage (common causes including sharing sensitive information on a network).