During CommPartners’ Social Learning session at #ASAE11, attention turned quickly to social media. Someone asked the perpetual question: “what if someone says something bad about us?”. You could almost hear the groan, the desperate “When will we stop having this conversation?” The The Twitter stream came alive – “will the association world ever get past this discussion?” We’re tired of saying THEY ARE ALREADY TALKING ABOUT YOU! DON’T YOU WANT TO JOIN THE CONVERSATION? While working on this post, Reggie Henry, CIO of ASAE, posted this tweet. with …. TRUST. CONTROL. DEALING WITH FEAR. MORE >>

This is a guest post by Bill Dorman. Okay, I was going to jokingly say Michelangelo must have had me in mind when he sculpted this; but then that might imply I’m old and my FedEx package could have been sent via regular mail instead of shipped. Now we wouldn’t want that as a persona, would we? Throughout your life, somebody somewhere is always looking up to you; and sometimes it can create lofty expectations. Do you want to be there? Is it deserved? What responsibilities come with that? This post is a reflection of the admirations and criticisms that occur in the social media world. MORE >>

If you love the work of Italy’s  Vincenzo Cosenza (we certainly do!) below is his latest infographic on Social Networks Adoption via a bell curved distribution (click to enlarge): From Cosenza’s article : The diffusion of new technologies follows a classic normal distribution or “bell curve” and, according to Everett Rogers’ studies ( Diffusion of Innovation , 1962), anyone who engages with a given innovation fits into one of five categories: innovators (2.5% of the potential population of adopters), early adopters (12.5%), early majority (34%), late majority (34%), laggards (16%). MORE >>

I recently had the pleasure of speaking at the Utenti Pubblicita Associati (UPA) conference in Milan where the theme was the future of language and it’s role in shaping advertising. The other presenters were UPA President, Lorenzo Sassoli de Bianchi, and Paris Kafantaris , VP for Babycare in Western Europe at Proctor and Gamble. hope this is useful, the slides for the presentation can be found here and fire away with any questions. Advertising Brands Causes Consumers MEDIA Purpose Social media Thought leadership We First language purpose MORE >>

The times we live in are being formatted by perpetual and disruptive change. This kind of climate reduces visibility of future events prevously predictable. Predictability is driven by identifiable patterns in data, behavior and variation. Variation comes from common and special causes. Not knowing the difference means your reaction can actually make things worst. Creating more special cause variation fuels unpredictability. When things become unpredictable it is very difficult to visualize future performance. What Fuels Change? Change happens when what was expected turns into the unexpected. MORE >>