I’ve been luma-focused on a massive project at Accenture that saw it’s first manifestation of validated delivery yesterday. It’s not yet officially launched in the marketplace, so I can’t tell you a whole lot about it, but can tell you that this milestone presents a nice exit point for my Accenture journey — where I learned a LOT, which isn’t surprising, but what is surprising is over the last 22 months, I have learned a lot about things I wasn’t expecting to learn (some at Accenture, some elsewhere).

Stuff I’ve learned in the last 22 months (pardon the randomness — many points are pulled from notes I would take while living off the grid at 30k-40k in the air):

1. Clarity comes at 30k-40k feet where distractions are few.
2. Give yourself permission to not be uber productive and responsible at all times. It’s OK to submit to sleep, daydreaming, socializing, offlinedness (<– not a real word, but it should be), etc. The work will wait. Life won't. I'm not suggesting a lifestyle of laziness & irresponsibility — the work/life scale has no meter & oddly it's sometimes hard to know when you’re actually clinging to the life scale by your fingernails.



3. I suck at being a road warrior. I’m grateful that my world is a bigger place now & I have the passport stamps to prove it, but the most amazing places on earth look like a Disneyland facade when you don’t have the people who matter most beside you.
4. Don’t expect acknowledgement and/or reward for your hard work, amazing contributions, and super powers — be your best because it inspires YOU. That’s it. That’s the only validation you need.
5. Some of the most necessary career alliances aren’t about perfect partnerships, but are more about an unspoken agreement to use each other in a mutually beneficial yet respectful way. Augh. I hate that, but it’s true. To contrast that dark point, some of the most important career alliances are those few (1-3 if you’re really lucky) who stand beside you in the darkest, riskiest, most challenging, unpleasant situations…AND would love to continue working with you. I can say this…I am really lucky and really grateful.
6. The war against the glass ceiling is alive and well. If you’ve not called bullshit on it when you’ve seen it, you are part of the problem. What did you do the last time you saw an act of discrimination? If the answer is nothing, you missed an opportunity to make a difference that matters.
7. Often, moments of clarity are the recalibration that lead to the next moments of not having a clue as to what the hell to do next, but knowing you have to do something. Do something. Fine tune if it was the wrong thing, but don’t be paralyzed by the fear of doing the wrong thing. There’s nothing sweeter than seeing your your ballsy decision validated as the right one.
8. Personal down time isn’t optional — it is required for self-preservation. The following do not count as down time: submitting expenses, bio breaks, daily grooming (you have a real problem if you’ve ever considered adding shower time to your calendar — that’s not normal), etc.
9. As you advance your career, rigorously protect that part of your brain that remains open to weird ideas & free of your ego. It’s sad to see once brilliant leaders submit to making decisions that best serve their ego — I don’t think they actually realize that’s what they’re doing, by the way.
10. Know when your personal stock is up/down and mold your conversations with your boss with that in mind.
11. The most personally valuable lesson I’ve learned is I now know my physical, emotional and intellectual limits — this might sound strange, but it’s rather interesting to hit (and realize) your thresholds even if it is painful. I also have had much of what I’ve always known about my character and convictions validated. As a result of knowing my boundaries, I now know how to protect them.

What’s next…

I’m taking a couple weeks off to reconnect with family, friends & myself; then, I’ll take on a product management directorship at Valassis, re-engaging with a few of my former Sun friends/colleagues. More to come on that topic, but you can expect to see me dial up my engagement in the social space again — something I LOVED doing at Sun.

All the best & thanks again for sticking around.

“Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.”

Today was the first day of my new job at Accenture. To be perfectly honest, I had become extremely complacent in the warm womb of Sun Microsystems & had a change not shoved me to stretch, I’m not certain that I would have, but I’m super glad I did. While I was still learning every day as a result of being around super bright people, I wasn’t uncomfortably challenged & therefore, probably wasn’t progressing as much as I probably could/should have.

I can’t post much on the details of the specific product/project I’ll be focused on just yet, but I can tell you that it’s going to be an amazing challenge & the silver lining is I’ll get work with a lot of super bright folks…most new, but a couple of folks whom I’ve worked closely with in the past & whom I highly respect: Will Snow & Liz DiTucci.

I want to extend a sincere thanks to everyone who helped me gain insight along the way (through good & even the not so good experiences) & especially those who offered such kind words of encouragement & direction — I owe you. Say the word. I’m eager to return the favor.

I want to offer a special shout-out to the following folks who went out of their way to give me a boost in finding my next gig: @WillSnow, @MMaryMary, @BrianHerman, @Neeraj, @Barton808, @twothirds, @Helzerman, @EvvivaKippen, @SnoopDave & , @JimParkinson.

To those faced with making a career change, aim high — you may be surprised.

P.S. If you’re looking, Accenture is doing a LOT of hiring. I’m happy to refer you, if we’ve successfully worked together in the past.

Many thanks to Tim Caynes, User Experience Extraordinaire, for creating the following.

We wouldn’t tolerate an in-room bully to move on stage and take over a conference session — either the conference staff or audience would stop it. So why do we allow, and in some cases encourage, the same behavior via the back-channel? I suspect one reason is because since the back-channel is relatively new, protocols and guidelines are not yet defined nor understood. Speakers don’t always know what to expect or how to effectively integrate the back-channel with the front-channel. Back-channel participants easily veer off course. Front-channel participants infuse an interesting dynamic by being the eyes/ears for the back-channel, but in some cases use the back-channel to spark an angry mob. Conference organizers don’t feel responsible for back-channel crowd control even though they provide the technology to syndicate the conversation on a larger than life big screen.

This needs to change if we don’t want to continue to see great speakers either walk-away or refuse to allow back-channel goodness to occur during their talks. Danah touches on a few good back-channel guidelines in the following sentence:

“I will do my darndest to give new, thought-provoking talks that will leave your brain buzzing. I will try really really hard to speak slowly. But in return, please come with some respect. Please treat me like a person, not an object. Come to talk with me, not about me. I’m ready and willing to listen, but I need you to be as well. And if you don’t want to listen, fine, don’t. But please don’t distract your neighbors with crude remarks. Let’s make public speaking and public listening an art form.”

A few other proposed guidelines:

Back-channel Participants
Be respectful (no profanity, rudeness, trolling, etc.). Ensure your contributions are on-topic and add value. Save speaker evaluations for the session evaluation process. Be mindful that public speaking takes courage, even for the most seasoned speaker.

Speakers
ID a back-channel moderator, preferably someone who is seated in the audience, who can call out critical questions as time allows. This integrates the back-channel audience with the in-room audience and builds a sense of inclusion. It also helps to reinforce the back-channel guidelines and enables you to focus on your talk. Plan for including the back-channel conversation in your talk and let the back/front channel audiences know up front how they can best participate.

Conference Organizers
Ensure back-channel protocols and guidelines are well defined and easily accessible. Know that you are responsible for back-channel crowd control. Don’t assume that every speaker wants or can effectively manage the back-channel syndicated on the screen behind them.

What else?

Some thoughts:

I agree that one size does not fit all, but whatever the corporate community/social media user experience/information architecture is, it should be somewhat cohesive & at a minimum, there should be some cross-pollination in place by making the all inclusive community bits findable & easy to navigate between each other & the main company site.

With regards to community sites outside of the main site (or company domain), another example of when this is OK is for open source communities. But there again, there should be some cross-pollination (at least links from the main site to the external open source site(s)).

Two additional principles I would suggest are:

1. A single set of guidelines/policy (including community moderation) for all community tools that are officially sanctioned/branded by the company. Again, open source communities that reside outside of the main site are an exception.
2. A single search engine. When people are seeking community contributions centered around a particular topic/product, they should be able to do this via a single search query.

And what about globalization, localization & internationalization? That’s one area that companies seem to have forgotten about in their over-all social media/community strategies.

Today is my last day at Sun. It has been a thrilling ride and one that I would do all over again. I’ve learned a lot, worked with some of the most brilliant people on the planet, worked for the world’s best management team who was more than willing to accommodate my requests to work on programs that most inspired me & happy to give me room to get my groove on, and now…I walk away with more experience and friends than I ever imagined I’d acquire through a job. I kicked butt & had fun! (I hope someone creates a tee-shirt for that McNealy-ism.)

Hands down, my favorite role (ever) is the one I am now exiting. Being your tour guide for Sun’s community sites (blogs, forums, wikis, etc.) went beyond just a job — it became an obsession. I was lucky enough to work directly with tens of thousands of Sun fans worldwide & Sun employees in every organization and in every rank in the company — from interns to our CEO. I’ve enjoyed every minute & every conversation (well, minus the spammers, trolls, & an unnamed executive blogger who asked me to air brush his mustache off his profile picture).

While it makes me sad that this is my last blog post on this site, I welcome change and wish my Sun fellows well as they embark on the next incarnation of Sun. “Thank you” to each of you for such fond memories — especially those who helped make the community sites such thriving & robust communities. It’s no wonder Sun is seen as a pioneer in this space and a poster child for corporate social media done right.

The world is a whole lot more connected thanks to social sites, so there’s no need to say good-bye — I’m just right here, here, here & here. I have a few irons in the fire & will be sure to keep you posted on my next big thing.

To new beginnings!

My take is this can become a slippery & expensive slope. The best way to quiet an angry mob is to listen, then promptly & efficiently react — I’ve found that more often than not, they’re right. Having a company engage in the discussion on the gripe site might actually be perceived as more credible since the conversation is happening on community turf. At best, buying gripe site domains might make the conversation slightly less findable.

Thoughts?

The content, in multiple formats (video, blog posts, etc.), as told through compelling stories by their employees is heartfelt — like this (they need a video embed feature).

Though the underlying recruiting objective of the site is obvious, the site’s design & functionality is super comprehensive & efficient to use — which is paramount considering the focus of the employees/medical practitioners is likely not blogging, editing HTML, etc.

When decision makers choose a new media platform for their employees, the employees’ skill set, work style & time available for blogging, is often not considered because the platform decision makers (usually in IT) are primarily focused on the technology — which can be just as important as considering the users capabilities to successfully utilize the tool. The level of effort involved with supporting less tech savvy, or time available individuals (CXOs, practitioners — as in doctors & nurses in this example, etc.) should not be under-estimated. Trust me on this one.

If the tool is too cumbersome & time-consuming to use (especially by the employees with the most compelling stories to tell), then what’s the point? And believe me, you want their contributions.

I checked it out, took a brief quiz & found the best matched virtual mom for me is a nice lady named Magnolia. She had me at “There’s nothing that pie can’t cure, honey.” But that’s not all. Magnolia has her own Facebook fan page. I love that. I joined out of pure curiosity of seeing what Momma Magnolia will do next.

By the way, my real momma is a lot like Phyllis — extreme in-your-face mothering is her style. So, please don’t tell her about Magnolia, alright?

Here’s the twist. In many cases, (not all, of course) the mentor didn’t realize they were mentoring me. I’ve had amazing learning experiences from highly experienced people, people far more educated & brilliant than I can ever hope to be, super green interns, angry mobs, hostile trolls, homeless people, super old and super young people & every age in between, complete strangers whom crossed my path for the slightest slice of time, people on the internet whom I’ve never met (some know of my existence, but many will never know I am their pupil), people I have absolutely nothing in common with and frankly can’t stand, etc., etc., etc.

They all influence my thoughts and opinions. They all arm me with experiences that I’ll hopefully leverage well at some point in my life.

It makes me wonder how I may be adding or detracting value to those around me. Who might I be unintentionally mentoring and is the result for the greater good?

“One day your life will flash before your eyes. Make sure its worth watching.”

~ Source Unknown

As many of you know today is Blog Action day & the topic is Climate Change.

A climate change near & dear to my heart is something that weighs heavily on many Colorado residents & visitors minds: the devastating consequences of Rocky Mountain pine beetle damage due to climate change. The vicious cycle looks like this:

Lack of cold mountain temps -> increase in pine beetle population -> millions of acres expanding pine tree death -> devastatingly fewer trees (none in some areas) to remove greenhouse gas from the atmosphere while the decomposing trees actually emit millions of tons of carbon -> compounding and terrifying impact to our ecosystem. This isn’t hypothetical. The damage is done and increasing.

The good news is with 6.791 billion of us calling this planet home, we can help address climate change crisis. Here are a few ideas:

• US Environmental Protection Agency “Climate Change – What You Can Do” (at home, school, work & on the road)
• Blog action day blog posts (scroll down a bit & have a look at the panel on the left side)
• Blog action day tweets
• Register your blog for Blog Action Day & post your own ideas today

Posted in Uncategorized ]]> http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/15/happy-blog-action-day-climate-change-and-the-pine-beetle-devastation-bad09/feed/ 0 lskrocki beetle-kill http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/kevinokeefe-lawyer-on-companies-who-block-social-media/ http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/kevinokeefe-lawyer-on-companies-who-block-social-media/#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 23:56:23 +0000 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/?p=1055 ]]> By now, you know how passionate I am about the proven goodness that companies see via the use of social networking (see the fine print here for one example). So, it’s no surprise that my stance on companies that block social sites is not one of support.

Kevin O’Keefe, my most recent favorite blogging lawyer, (but not my 1st favorite — sorry Kevin), has an excellent blog post on the topic titled “Companies and law firms blocking use of social media : Insanity is rampant“.

A few of my favorite quotes from his blog post:

“Maybe things have changed since I started practicing law almost 30 years ago. Back then law firms got their best work by word of mouth. Both lawyers and non lawyer personnel were expected to represent the law firm well in all they did (some things we were more proud of than others). We knew the more our employees came in touch with other people, the greater the opportunity people got to know them, and when the need for a lawyer arose, the people our employee’s met would think of us. Novel concept? Hardly.

Now we have one of the most effective mediums – the Internet – for time and cost effective networking and we’re telling lawyers and other legal professionals they can’t use it. Can’t use it because of fears born out of ignorance. That’s nuts.”

Have a look at the full post. Well worth the read.


Posted in Blogs, Social Media ]]> http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/13/kevinokeefe-lawyer-on-companies-who-block-social-media/feed/ 0 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/blog-action-day-oct-15-climate-change/ http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/blog-action-day-oct-15-climate-change/#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 21:07:02 +0000 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/?p=1044 ]]> Via @stoweboyd, here’s a neat global community thing we can do together on October 15th to help drive awareness of climate change & improvement ideas (it takes just a minute to register your blog)…

Posted in Blogs, Environment ]]> http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/07/blog-action-day-oct-15-climate-change/feed/ 0 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/colorado-a-slice-a-heaven/ http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/colorado-a-slice-a-heaven/#comments Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:11:52 +0000 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/?p=1035 ]]> To celebrate Mr. S’s birthday, we took a little mountain drive to Estes Park and Rocky Mountain National Park via Trail Ridge Road — one of the most beautiful Colorado mountain roads you’ll ever set eyes on. At 12,183 ft above sea level, it sees a lot of snow & is therefore closed mid-October thru June. We caught a few nice pictures. Have a look…

Posted in Colorado, Random Thoughts ]]> http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/colorado-a-slice-a-heaven/feed/ 1 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/medical-practioners-on-implications-of-an-inadquate-health-care-system/ http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/medical-practioners-on-implications-of-an-inadquate-health-care-system/#comments Tue, 06 Oct 2009 22:41:02 +0000 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/?p=1028 ]]> Not based on political biases, but what actually goes down every day in the US through the experiences of the medical practitioners on the front lines:

Posted in Random Thoughts ]]> http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/medical-practioners-on-implications-of-an-inadquate-health-care-system/feed/ 0 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/venue-needed-nov-19th-colorado-front-range-girl-geek-dinner/ http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/venue-needed-nov-19th-colorado-front-range-girl-geek-dinner/#comments Tue, 06 Oct 2009 19:56:52 +0000 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/?p=1021 ]]>

Deirdré Straughan kicked off a Facebook wall post requesting help with finding a Denver based venue for the November 19th Colorado Front Range Girl Geek Dinner. Per Deirdré “Venue could be a dinner or drinks-and-appetizers kind of place, I don’t have strong feelings about it but suspect a place with room to mingle is best.”

This is a fantastic networking opportunity for attendees & a great outreach opportunity for a company who may be interested in hosting/sponsoring the event. The last dinner, hosted at the Sun Microsytems Broomfield campus, had move than 80 attendees. Sun was generous enough to provide food & drinks (approx cost ~$1500). As of this post, there are 131 members in the Colorado Front Range Girl Geek Dinner Facebook group, so it’s reasonable to expect an even larger crowd at the next dinner.

If you’re interested in hosting the event and/or becoming a member of the Colorado Front Range Girl Geek Dinner group, you can do so via the Facebook page.


Posted in Sun, Women in Tech Tagged: girl geek dinner, sun microsystems inc ]]> http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/06/venue-needed-nov-19th-colorado-front-range-girl-geek-dinner/feed/ 0 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/checking-off-the-be-a-guest-blogger-box/ http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/checking-off-the-be-a-guest-blogger-box/#comments Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:12:42 +0000 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/?p=1018 ]]> Since my 1st official blog post 5+ years ago, I’ve been a sole blogger (only blogger contributing to a blog), a soul blogger , a group blogger, a behind-the-scenes blog helper (for friends, interesting people & high profile people with a blogphobia), a blog trainer, a blog site admin, but never an invited guest blogger…until now!

Thanks to another “serendipitous connection via social networking”, as I call it, I can now sport around the badge titled “Guest Blogger”. It all started when @KylePLacy, Author of Twitter Marketing for Dummies, tweeted the following to me “I really think you should do a guest post on my blog. What do you think?” To which I responded “What if my neglected blog finds out? What did you have in mind?”.

I went with a topic that is often discussed: Corporate Social Media Policies — something Sun, specifically the Sun Blog Founders, nailed several years ago and continues to be a solid template for other companies social media policies. Have a look at the guest post “Do Tight Corporate Social Media Policies Help or Hinder?” & let me know what you think.


Posted in Blogs, Social Media, Sun Tagged: Blogs, Social Media, social media policy, sun microsystems inc ]]> http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/10/05/checking-off-the-be-a-guest-blogger-box/feed/ 0 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/embracing-social-communities-a-cios-crib-sheet/ http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/embracing-social-communities-a-cios-crib-sheet/#comments Fri, 18 Sep 2009 15:15:39 +0000 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/embracing-social-communities-a-cios-crib-sheet/ ]]> I recently had the opportunity to chat with Bob Worrall, Sun’s Chief Information Officer, and my all time favorite marketing goddess, Mary Smaragdis, about how Sun builds community and enables collaboration via social networking tools. Have a look……

Social networks are everywhere — but what do they really mean to the CIO? Our experts discuss the implications, the opportunities, and the trends.

There’s no question that social networking has permeated our lives as CIOs — both on a personal front as we use these forums for communicating, and on a professional front as we put systems and policies in place to manage our organizations’ use of these communities. For my column this month, I’ve invited two social community experts within Sun to join me to discuss this phenomenon and what it means for CIOs. Mary Smaragdis, Director of Sun News Network and New and Social Media, manages Sun’s corporate activities in social media spaces, user-generated content spaces, and virtual worlds. Linda Skrocki, Sr. Engineering Program Manager for Sun’s high-volume external-facing community web properties, is involved with running Sun’s high-volume Web properties.

Bob: Mary, let’s start with you. How are you defining the social community space in your role?

Mary: The social community space is about first-person conversations on the network. Within Sun’s social community spaces, people are conversing about their work and their passions around work. They use these platforms to engage their stakeholders, whether they are customers, prospects, media, or others. The network dramatically elevates these conversations so that they reach huge potential audiences.

Linda: My responsibility is to enable those conversations Mary just described. When we open up a conversation to the marketplace, we need to have the toolsets to enable it. Sun has a variety of social community participants — some are very savvy technology-wise and are comfortable with social media tools. Others aren’t. So we provide tools and training to maximize peoples’ time with these media. Social networking, blogging, and wikis aren’t for everyone all of the time. And while we have a very liberal policy, we have usage guidelines so that people learn when it’s appropriate to use a blog as opposed to a wiki, for example. Because of this safety net, employees feel comfortable having organic conversations in the marketplace — which I think has been a huge factor in our success in this space.

Bob: What guidance do you give when adoption of these tools varies based on geography, language or even age?

Mary: Social media sites like Facebook and MySpace are most well-known in the U.S., but there are dozens of social media platforms around the world. As a CIO looking to extend your conversations to these places, you’ll want to understand the equation for adoption on the different platforms in different geographies.

As for age, MySpace and Facebook started out in a younger demographic, but have moved beyond the millennials. Certainly younger age groups have been more liberal with putting their information out there. Older age groups still tend to be cautious. This is a big transition — much like email was — and people are becoming more comfortable with how it works. This is just the next evolution of communication tools — for business and social communication — and there is definitely an adoption curve across geographies and age demographics.

Bob: What are some benefits of embracing social communities in terms of engaging customers, prospects, and investors?

Linda: Wikis.sun.com has proven to be a powerful tool for Sun employees (tech writers, engineers, etc.), who are globally distributed, to collaboratively create and iterate technical and program-specific content with customers, partners, and other members of the community who share common interests.

Blogs.sun.com has been an amazing success story for Sun. One of the primary reasons is because we’ve created a set of guidelines for employees to follow, thereby keeping Sun and the employees out of trouble. Over 10% of our company is blogging. We have 4,500 bloggers who have posted 137,000 entries. Within those entries, we have 153,000 comments, which tells us that there really is a two-way conversation happening.

Another success area is forums.sun.com which is one of our oldest and biggest communities. This is where people interested in Sun products can converse and help each other. It is a community-driven environment for users to get quick answers and engage with other users who share a commonality — usage of a particular technology for example. Over 4 million messages by approximately 1 million contributors are posted there.

Mary: To add some numbers to that, in the past 12 months, Sun’s bloggers have pulled in more than 8.3 million unique visitors. Forums.sun.com has seen more than 15 million unique visitors.

Bob: Those bring home some powerful examples of how these technologies can benefit both companies and individuals. I know from my own IT staff that blogs, wikis, and forums, even Twitter, allow them to reach support groups that otherwise they may have had to pay for, so we’re certainly using these technologies to drive down costs.

Once a company has decided to engage in social communities, what are the areas a CIO needs to think about as they begin preparing their organization?

Mary: There are two areas that are critical to success. The first is determining, as an organization, if you are prepared to be good contributors. Do you have a clear understanding of what the thresholds are, what the guidelines are? Sun’s guidelines of public disclosure have been held up as a benchmark and I encourage folks to take a look. The other key area is the infrastructure itself. How is it architected? Do you build it or host it yourself or outsource?

Linda: I agree. Policy-wise, it is important to identify your risk and transparency tolerances. You must keep in mind that this is part of your brand. Identify how often you are going to participate from a time-investment standpoint and then get training and evangelism to support that. Then, you need to analyze what kind of infrastructure you want. Do you need full control over your scalability, uptime, performance, feature set, and data or can you get by with using third party provided services? Can you afford to not have full control over your data and the availability of your site? Could you afford to lose all your data if someone else controlled it and lost it?

Bob: That brings up a good point. Many people consider these tools to not have critical business value and place them in the category of “interesting.” My advice, for all the reasons just brought up, is to treat them as mission-critical business applications, if for no other reason than issues of privacy and data control.

For the average CIO, who are the key stakeholders across the company that you should get engaged with as you adopt social media strategies and policies?

Mary: Definitely your CEO, because he/she can influence the success of your program. Jonathan Schwartz set a positive tone early on with bloggers. He blogged in a very open manner and left his comments section open for folks to read. We also engaged our privacy folks as well as folks in trademarks, export, legal, and HR.

Bob: What are some common pitfalls you’ve seen?

Linda: People sometimes forget that these tools are for organic conversations — not one-way publishing platforms for contrived messaging. Trying to over-control or command the conversations of a community would be considered misuse.

Bob: What is the trajectory both for CIOs and businesses at large as they think about this space?

Mary: These trends are well-entrenched and will continue to grow in the trajectories we’ve seen. The models we have for communicating and collaborating are increasingly becoming anchored around technology. The choices CIOs make will have ever-increasing reach in terms of how future models need to be anchored. This will be the way we communicate, collaborate, exchange, and engage in commerce for a very long time.

Linda: And I would add that people need to be open to new technologies. Blogging came out and people loved it. Then micro-blogging came out. Once that happened, there was a question about whether blogging still had a place. There still is a place for those more in-depth conversations. You can only say so much in 140 characters. My advice is to be open and try the new social technologies as they come along, but don’t feel compelled to use every one.

Bob: That’s terrific advice because one thing is certain — change. Twitter may be big today, but something new is around the corner. So my advice is the same — stay open to new ideas and technologies and stay abreast of what’s going on in the marketplace.

Thank you all for joining me this month. Until next time,

Bob Worrall


Posted in Sun ]]> http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/18/embracing-social-communities-a-cios-crib-sheet/feed/ 1 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/some-feel-good-outside-perspective/ http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/some-feel-good-outside-perspective/#comments Wed, 16 Sep 2009 15:57:13 +0000 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/some-feel-good-outside-perspective/ ]]> I just received a Tweet from @kbladow that made my day. It lead me to the following Technola blog post — which means a lot coming from a non Sun person (not that kudos from Sun peeps aren’t just as sweet, but we drink from the same Kool-aid fountain ). Thank you Kate and thank you @emzee for the tweeted advice. @emzee is my web design partner at Sun.




Posted in Social Media ]]> http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/16/some-feel-good-outside-perspective/feed/ 1 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/still-think-corporate-participation-in-social-media-is-optional/ http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/still-think-corporate-participation-in-social-media-is-optional/#comments Fri, 11 Sep 2009 16:57:49 +0000 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/still-think-corporate-participation-in-social-media-is-optional/ ]]> Still think you can fully control your brand or inevitable conversations about your company? Statistics show otherwise — which is why encouraging and engaging in open dialog on your own front porch will help make your company and products stronger, more accurately understood and more widely known.

Via Kyle Lacy:


Posted in Social Media ]]> http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/still-think-corporate-participation-in-social-media-is-optional/feed/ 0 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/you-may-own-your-digital-footprint-but-will-it-be-there-tomorrow/ http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/you-may-own-your-digital-footprint-but-will-it-be-there-tomorrow/#comments Fri, 11 Sep 2009 15:10:33 +0000 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/you-may-own-your-digital-footprint-but-will-it-be-there-tomorrow/ ]]>

You know the drill. You register for the next shiny social networking site and click the Terms of Use “Accept” button faster than the speed of light. Most of us never read a word of the lengthy legal foo because it’s boring and it makes our eyes bleed and we’re in a hurry to lifecast our next thought before the moment is lost, or we want in before the crowd shows up and ruins the novelty.

In our haste, are we giving up ownership of bits of our digital selves or blindly banking on the fact that those bits won’t be monetised by the site owners? Or worse, making the assumption that our content won’t go poof one day without warning?

I’m definitely guilty as charged in this regard, but have made a vow to at least read enough of the legalese on the sites I currently post content to so I know the rights that matter to me most:

1. Do I own my content on this site?
2. Does the site co-own my content?
3. If they co-own my content, what can they do with it?

Most site’s terms of use agreements lean far, far over to protecting the site owners, but some totally get that it’s in their best interest to take care of their community members by granting them (co)ownership their content. Examples:

Twitter: “Twitter is allowed to “use, copy, reproduce, process, adapt, modify, publish, transmit, display and distribute” your tweets because that’s what we do. However, they are your tweets and they belong to you.”

Facebook: “You own all of the content and information you post on Facebook…” (it’s worth reading the dots on this one).

Sun Blogs*: “Under the license, you will get to use and copy your blog in its entirety, and we can keep your entire blog in place at http://blogs.sun.com.” *Side note: Note that this is a corporate blog site. Sun has always been a leader in defining sensible corporate social content guidelines, so it’s not entirely surprising that they’d progressively cover this base as well. It’s good to know your rights as an employee who contributes social media content to company sanctioned sites.

OK, so you own your content. Now what?



Ownership is just half the battle. Assuming you own a copy of your content, does any of that matter if you don’t religiously back-up a local copy? Not really. Most sites have a sensible back-up strategy, but there’s no guarantee that they’ll restore missing or damaged content and there’s definitely no guarantee that they’ll perpetually host your content so your children’s, children’s, children can cherish your immortal and compelling lifecasts.

In addition to knowing your content ownership rights, before you decide on posting content to a site, be sure to know if there’s a feature that enables exporting of your content. Alternatively, check-out services that make this process a bit more convenient, but all of the above applies to them too.


Posted in Social Media ]]> http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/11/you-may-own-your-digital-footprint-but-will-it-be-there-tomorrow/feed/ 0 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/community-moderation-a-success-story/ http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/community-moderation-a-success-story/#comments Thu, 10 Sep 2009 21:01:04 +0000 lskrocki http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/community-moderation-a-success-story/ ]]> Sun Forums is one of Sun’s longest running community sites. It’s been around for ~8 years. It’s grown by leaps and bounds and continues to be one of our most active sites. There are currently more than 4 million messages posted by nearly 1 million contributors. The site see ~44 million page views annually (or 3.7 million/month) — amazing traffic & volumes of rich community-driven content.

While the majority of contributions are positive, as with any community site, there are going to be occasional disruptions in the form of derailed conversations, abusive posts, etc. We struggled a bit with implementing a protocol that would scale to effectively manage this issue.

As a collaborative effort between the team that manages the Sun Forums, the Sun Legal team and the Sun Forums Community, a sensible Community Moderation Program was defined, then implemented on January 26th, 2007. Since then, via the same collaborative effort, the program has been fine-tuned.

In addition to our community nominated volunteer moderators generously sharing useful information with their peers and helping to set a positive tone throughout the Sun Forums, they’ve also leveraged the site’s community moderators features to take the following actions in response to content that violate site terms or are simply posted in the wrong forum:

• Blocked 793 accounts
• Blocked 2,391 messages
• Quarantined 2,768 threads
• Moved 941 threads to better align with various forums topics



Many thanks to the community members who helped define the Moderators Program and special thanks to the eight volunteer moderators (dcminter, kajbj, PhHein, yawmark, ejp, Darryl.Burke, sabre150, and cotton.m (alumni)) for giving so generously of your time and for making such an awesome difference to the site & the community in general!


Posted in Sun ]]> http://lskrocki.wordpress.com/2009/09/10/community-moderation-a-success-story/feed/ 0 lskrocki thanks