Privacy 2.0

You knew it was bound to happen. You just knew it. As cool as Google Street View is, it had to cross the line somewhere. Somewhere appears to be Pittsburgh.

Short story shorter: Couple’s house appears on Street View. Couple lives on a private road. Couple is angry. Couple claims invasion of privacy. Couple sues Google for a sum greater than $25,000.

Guess what? This ain’t your mama’s privacy anymore.

Since the late 90s, the information available on the internet has exploded beyond what Al Gore and the ARPANET creators could have even imagined. You can look up pretty much anyone or anything, and get your answer. The availability of data is expanding as we move to mobile and wireless connectivity to digital information. Pew Research reported last month that 62% of all American adults have taken advantage of mobile internet connectivity. Information is everywhere, and it’s accessible from anywhere.

When I do a search for my name on Google, I come up with 768,000 results. Some of those are about me, and some aren’t. If I wanted to dig a little deeper, I would be able to find where I live, what I do for fun, and how often I’ve irritated people in my town with calls for Homeowners’ Association Fiscal Responsibility. Luckily, there’s no Street view of my house, yet, but I know it’s coming. And, being the “digital native” that my boss calls me, I’ll just have to accept it. The worms are out of the can, my friends. We can’t put them back, but we can learn to live with them.

That brings me to my main point. In a connected culture, we have to redefine our own expectations of privacy. Let’s call it Privacy 2.0, just for fun.

It’s no longer reasonable to assume that people won’t be able to easily find out where you live or what your house is worth. It’s not reasonable to assume that if you get loaded at an underage drinking party, pictures of you won’t show up on Facebook. It’s not reasonable to assume that anything you do outside the 4 walls of your own home won’t be captured, recorded, and added to the ever-growing base of human knowledge. Don’t expect that your private life is anything near what you used to think of as private. It simply isn’t.

So, where does that leave you? You’ve got to understand that now, more than ever, you have to accept responsibility for your actions, and make sure that you’re acting in a manner that portrays the image you want to portray. You’ve also got to be more diligent about your own security and safety. If that means installing a security system or more locks, do it. You must realize that people are going to know more about you than you might want. People will form impressions of you based on what they find on-line, and first impressions always matter.

Back to our friends from Pittsburgh… My (personal, non-BSG-Alliance) opinion is that they’re just looking for a quick buck. Their home is pictured, along with drawings of the rooms, on the Allegheny County website. Until they sue the county, I can’t really believe it’s about anything more than money.

 

Personal Branding

Man! It’s been a long time since I’ve posted. A lot has happened in the last 2 months. First, we bought a little company called Iconixx, and added them to the BSG Alliance platform. Second, I became an aunt again. Third, we launched an internal communications vehicle (known as The Buzz), which is published Monday/Wednesday/Friday. Fourth, I got elected to the Board of Directors of my homeowner’s association. I also continue to manage the four kids and cute husband. So, without coming right out and using those as excuses… Aw, heck. I’m using them as excuses.

Onward and upward, then!

A few weeks ago, I wrote an article in The Buzz based upon an email sent by one of my colleagues. He was explaining that a potential customer used Google to research him before a meeting, and how what the customer found provided instant credibility.

I followed up to his comments with this:

In today’s connected world, people use Google. When there are candidates to interview – we Google them. When there are prospects to approach – we Google them. When there are potential business partners to meet – we Google them. And the results of those searches often help us develop initial impressions about the people with whom we’ll be interacting. Good or bad, those impressions are lasting.

Smart companies – NGE companies – encourage their team members to build on-line identities. On-line identities are helpful for team members in a personal sense, since they can increase visibility in the ever-tightening labor market, and make someone more desirable to potential employers. They’re also helpful to companies, though. The more “Buzz” a company can build through the on-line identities of their team members, the stronger the company brand. On-line identities are a 1-2 punch – the personal credibility of the team member is coupled with the brand credibility of the company, thereby making the customer experience that much better.

At BSG Alliance, we encourage our team members to build on-line identities. Collaboration, especially on-line collaboration, is absolutely essential to our NGEness. In fact, in our Policies and Procedures document, we’ve dedicated a whole section to our external electronic communication. Here’s a key point:

We expect BSG Alliance employees to be active, vigorous and opinionated in their engagement with the public. This may mean asserting and defending strong points of view, taking provocative positions that are not the norm, and overall participating in the challenge we have of educating the industry about the changes to business that we are leading.

If you’re interested in how you can build your on-line identity and help build the BSG Alliance brand, start by determining where you’re starting. Career Distinction has a tool for determining your Google Quotient (GQ), which is a great place to start. If you’re curious, my GQ is 6.5 out of 10. I have some identity building to do…

 

Work Meetings, Potato Chips, & eBay

One of the worst parts of being a virtual employee is that I rarely get the opportunity to physically interact with my coworkers. I sit in my office at home, and use the phone, Skype, Twitter, and Instant Messenger to communicate with the other BSG Alliance folks. So, when I have the opportunity to fly to Texas and have some face time, I always jump at the chance.

This week, my chance was the People Team meeting in Austin, TX. We’re sitting around, drinking copious amounts of diet Coke and discussing plans for making sure that we can effectively innovate solutions for our human resource challenges.

As part of the meeting, we had a working lunch from Jason’s Deli. They brought in a big platter of sandwiches, cookies, brownies, and a big old bag of ruffly potato chips. As we were eating, my boss held up a chip and said:

Wow! This looks like Texas!

And it did. So Katie “Rockstar” Meenan, our new recruiter for the New York office, decided that it might be fun to put the potato chip up on eBay. As she was adding the eBay entry, our brainstorming took hold, and we had her add a link to the BSG Alliance careers site. After all, BSG Alliance paid for the potato chip, so we should get some benefit from Katie’s eBay sale!

Katie started the bidding at 50 cents. Within minutes, the bidding was up to $2.00. This morning, it’s at $3.25. Bidding ends next Monday. I fully expect that Katie’s winning bid will be well over $5. And I hope that the word-of-mouth we generate helps establish BSG Alliance as the kind of fun, innovative company that people really want to join.

UPDATE - 1/29/08 - 2:02 PM CST

Katie is donating the proceeds to the Austin Parks Foundation. Get those bids up there!

UPDATE - 1/31/08 - 9:13 PM CST

The bids are up to $74.  Let’s get this puppy above $100 and show Austin Parks Foundation that people really DO care!

 

I Found Agile Talent in a Suitcase

I am trying to find ways to be more creative. I like having ideas. I like having creative ideas even more. In my quest to become more creative, I find myself constantly hunting for tools to help me achieve “creativity nirvana.” One tool I’ve uncovered is a funky web site called GetFreshMinds.com. You know it must be cool since the author’s name is Katie, and, as we all know, Katie is the greatest name in the world. But, once again, I digress.

When I was reading one of Katie’s recent posts about innovation lessons she learned in 2007 I was led to IdeaList, a site where anyone can post an idea and get feedback from the community at large. There are a lot of really interesting ideas on IdeaList (not, however, this one), but one caught my eye because it is very much in line with what BSG Alliance calls Agile Talent.

The “idea” is actually a design contest sponsored by Samsonite. Samsonite wants to bring a new product to market, and they are looking outside their own design team for the right idea. They’re going worldwide, seeking a solution in the global marketplace, on-demand. The top prize is 5,000 Euros, and the total of all the prize money is 11,500 Euros (I had to look up the conversion on Google - it’s just under $17,000). $17,000 is a paltry sum for a company whose quarterly revenue is almost $300MM. I don’t have access to their budgets, but I think it’s safe to say that Samsonite’s product development group has a yearly budget well in excess of $17,000. For a fraction of what they could spend on a handful of internal ideas, Samsonite is getting potentially hundreds of ideas from an external talent pool - all for a total of $17,000 in prize money (and, yes, the overhead of coming up with the contest, marketing it, yaddayaddayadda).

By looking outside its walls for creative ideas, Samsonite is implementing Agile Talent. They are coming up with innovative ways to engage new thought leaders, without the burden of bringing them on as employees. They are getting the very best ideas that people have to offer, and they are not required to invest any capital up front. It’s like getting an employee to work for you for months, and only paying her if she actually produces something you like and can sell. It’s a very effective way to remain flexible, efficient, and profitable in the 21st Century.

In their book Wikinomics, Don Tapscott and Anthony Williams discussed another company that uses this type of Agile Talent to decrease time-to-market and increase innovation - Procter & Gamble. From the Wikinomics web page, they have this to say:

Smart, multibillion dollar companies like Procter & Gamble that cultivate nimble, trust-based relationships with external collaborators to form vibrant business ecosystems that create value more effectively than hierarchically organized businesses.

Through this design competition, Samsonite is exploring a new landscape in human resources. They are building a community of “workers” to provide talent in an on-demand capacity - when Samsonite needs new ideas, they can call upon the community (the network, if you will), and can expect to get the right answers, right away. This is Agile Talent.

Agile Talent is a key factor in successful Next Generation Enterprises. Once you combine an innovative resource pool with a distinctive customer experience, agile & collaborative technologies, education, and research, you have the makings of an organization that will thrive in today’s hypercompetitive global marketplace.

 

Do We NEED an Enterprise 2.0 Market?

Thanks to Twitter, I ran across a post by Jevon MacDonald about an Enterprise 2.0 market. More specifically, the post was Jevon arguing that there is no Enterprise 2.0 market. His valid points include:

1. There are very few companies with Enterprise 2.0 budget line items.
2. Enterprise 2.0 is too loosely defined at this point to make it valuable as a solution (or set of solutions) for organization problems.
3. There aren’t enough companies providing Enterprise 2.0 solutions (and providing them successfully) to roll up into a larger market.

What I gathered from Jevon’s article was something that we strongly believe at BSG Alliance: if what you’re selling doesn’t provide some bottom-line benefit (read: increase in profitability, productivity, and market share), then you’re not selling something that’s got a valid market value.

Here’s my take: A good Enterprise 2.0 startup doesn’t need an Enterprise 2.0 market. A good Enterprise 2.0 startup needs to address a real business problem, and do it well enough to make some money. It’s all about the Benjamins, baby.

Enterprise 2.0 startups need a market for what they’re selling – and they’d better be selling something that creates efficiencies, cost savings, and competitive advantages.

Take a look at Jeff Nolan’s “Dude, Where’s My Market?” post from last month to see a great example of a startup, Echosign, with a product that solves a real business problem, and does it well enough (using Enterprise 2.0 tools, technologies, and philosophies) to make money for themselves and their customers. Here is how Jeff explains Echosign’s success:

This company is growing not because they have a trendy set of buzzwords they use consistently, but because they solve a real problem that spans a significant number of prospect buyers, understand how to target and sell it at the price points they do, and manage their costs by taking advantage of efficiencies that technology enables and eliminating potential expenses by having discipline about the product management and development cycles.

At BSG Alliance, we’re focusing on our customers’ needs to increase efficiency and profits. Next Generation Enterprises are all about the bottom line: cost savings that come from increased collaboration, better systems that come from using agile methodologies, increased sales that come from a focus on the customer (rather than the competitor), and increased productivity that comes from engaging talent in unique, efficient ways. BSG Alliance is one of those Enterprise 2.0 startups that didn’t look for an Enterprise 2.0 market – instead, we saw that companies were struggling because of their inability to effectively manage talent, technology, and customer expectations in an wired world. Their lack of flexibility is their pain point, and becoming a Next Generation Enterprise is what solves it. Just like Echosign, we’re building our solutions to solve real business issues, and we’re continuing to be successful because of it.

 

Two Things

First, I ran across a cool twitter tool that would be very helpful to people in recruiting or sales (not that recruiting ISN’T sales, mind you - it is).  It’s called tweetscan, and it allows you to search twitter’s public timeline for tweets that match your search string.  It doesn’t support Boolean searches (David Sterry, are you listening? - that would be a really, really useful feature!), but it does allow automatic search agents, which is wicked cool.  You can also add it as a search bar on your favorite (decent) web browser.  I’ve got it set to do daily searches for RoR, Java, and Recruiter.  I’m excited to see what tweetscan can do for me.

Second, my good recruiting buddy Paul DeBettignies wrote a post today about me!  All about ME!  To quote Sally Field: “You like me!  You really LIKE me!”   Okay - I know that’s a bit much, but Tom Steinthal mentioned me, too, so my head is bigger than a freaking watermelon!

Have a very happy New Year.  Stay safe!

 

I’m twitdicted.

I’ve been using twitter for many months now. Not only has it been a great tool to help me keep track of my co-workers, but it’s also been an interesting and useful tool in my recruiting activities. I can track certain keywords (”recruiter,” “.NET,” “Java,” etc.), and follow up on people who I think might make interesting candidates. I can also keep up-to-date on breaking news and fun facts by following people like Guy Kawasaki (twitter id: guykawasaki, if you’re interested). Today, I spent several minutes venting my frustrations about Webkinz on twitter. Next up: Whirlpool Appliances (they won’t be happy!). If you’re interested in what I have to say on twitter, feel free to follow me - my id (of course!) is txaggie94. (Gig ‘em Aggies! Beat the Hell Outta Penn State! WHOOP!)

I’ve gone completely off-topic again. Sheesh. Back to the point…

Today, I ran across a post by Michael Specht, an Aussie blogger with a really cool graph (that he snagged from cogdogblog.com) that I can use to explain twitdiction:

The “????” is what I call twitdiction.

Twitdiction occurs when someone completely gives control of their lives to twitter. They send a tweet when they leave in the morning. They send a tweet when they sit in traffic. They send a tweet from the train. They send a tweet from every meeting. They send a tweet when they go to lunch. They send a tweet when they head home. They send tweets about their kids, pets, and better halves. They send angry tweets when the grocery store is out of Vegemite. In short, twitter has taken hold of their lives (and their mobile devices), and refuses to give it back.

But twitdiction isn’t all bad. Look at me, for example. I am constantly checking my twitter updates page to see if there are any fresh candidates out there for me to contact. While I have yet to hire anyone via twitter, I have developed relationships with folks that I would consider hiring if they lived in NYC. So, I am building up my weak ties network, with the full expectation that it will serve me well in the future. Twitter is helping me to be more effective (in the long run) at my job.

So, I like that people are taking notice of twitter. Twitter is an interesting tool, and, like Michael points out, it is utterly and completely useless if you don’t have friends on twitter. But, if you do have friends, and if you know how to track items of interest, twitter can be twitdictive.  And TWIT-TASTIC! 

 

Social Media Can Be Fun!

While sitting in the family room, scanning LinkedIn Profiles and looking for a NYC-based recruiter, I was half-listening to the Funniest Commercials of 2007 special on TBS. One of the commercials that caught my ear (and, subsequently, eye) was from Hydro Energy in Norway, and involved a group of kids and a train. Take a look at the commercial here:

This ad is a classic example of how companies can use Social Media to drive publicity efforts. Hydro isn’t looking to recruit 10-year-olds. They’re looking to build interest in their products, services, and mission by developing a sense of curiosity about what do. Frankly, I was driven to www.hydro.com because I wanted to see what kind of company came up with such a creative ad campaign. I happened to see the original ad on television, but given that you can see it on veryfunnyads.com, YouTube, MSN Videos, and others, it has become a form of Social Media, easily shared, and open to collaboration. It’s funny to read some of the YouTube comments, where it appears that some people thought it was REAL. Yikes. Let’s not go there.

But, I digress… Because the Hydro train ad is so interesting, it’s all over the internet. If you search Google for “Hydro Train,” you will see over 462,000 results, most of which are sites like mine - blogs and aggregators.

Hydro struck gold with this ad (and a couple of others like it). They are harnessing the power of the internet to spread their message, and they are doing it exceptionally well.

 

Dr. Jim Cash Joins BSG Alliance Board

The other day, I was commenting on the innovative nature of BSG Alliance. The way we deliver value to our customers is by guiding their transformation into Next Generation Enterprises. We accomplish this through an on-demand platform of services and software. Delivering a value proposition this innovative makes BSG Alliance very, very unique, and piques the interest of some very important, influential leaders. One of those leaders is Dr. Jim Cash.

Today, we announced that Dr. Cash has been appointed to the BSG Alliance Board of Directors. If Dr. Cash’s name sounds familiar to you, it might be because he is also a member of the boards of several other (not-so-small) companies, including Microsoft (MSFT), General Electric (GE), WalMart (WMT) and Chubb (CB). Further, he is a retired professor and Senior Associate Dean of the Harvard Business School. He is an exceptionally talented, highly visionary leader, and he sees the potential in BSG Alliance.

I’ve said it before (heck, even in this post), and I will continue to reiterate it… BSG Alliance is innovative. We’re focused on bringing benefits to our customers that other companies can’t. At the end of the day, our customers are more flexible than their competitors, and better able to meet the demands of a hypercompetitive global marketplace.

 

BSG Alliance is so innovative, it’s SCARY!

My boss and I were talking today, and she mentioned that, every so often, she runs across a candidate who is literally scared by the innovative way BSG Alliance delivers value. I agreed with her - I have seen a few of those candidates myself. You see, BSG Alliance is focused on transforming our customers into Next Generation Enterprises. Next Generation Enterprises are flexible, and will remain highly competitive and profitable because of their unique management of internal and external human resources, their delivery of unique and distinctive customer experiences, and their ability to develop and implement agile, collaborative technology solutions. In short, Next Generation Enterprises are INNOVATIVE.

In order for BSG Alliance to properly guide our customers on their journey to NGEness, we must lead by example - we must be NGE. And we are. We are so innovative and NGE, in fact, that Business Week recently gave us a plug in their Innovation Predictions 2008 article.

We understand how to provide our customers with exactly what they need to increase their profitability. We understand how to build flexible, agile software. We can provide the right solution, right now, on demand. That’s a very innovative way of doing business.

But, for some people, this is a scary proposition. Being innovative means that we’re in uncharted waters. People aren’t familiar with Agile Talent, or Distinctive Customer Experience, or Agile & Collaborative technology. They are afraid of the unknown, and unwilling to leave their comfort zone; unwilling to escape the hierarchical, traditional ways of doing things. Unwilling to acknowledge that the future of business is changing, and BSG Alliance is leading that change (back at BSG version 1.0, we used to say that BSG was Leading the Change, and Changing the Lead - we were then, and we are now).

So, we’ve had a few candidates hear about how we deliver this exceptional value proposition, and decide that they’re more comfortable in “SuperMegaLargeHierarchy Industries.” Which is fine, really - they aren’t the kind of people we need to make BSG Alliance successful. And, 10 years down the road, when BSG Alliance is a household name, they’ll realize that it may have been a good idea to be a part of the new way of doing business. We may be innovative, but our innovation is what make us unique. And our innovation is why people like me, Tom Steinthal, Brian Magierski, Susan Scrupski, and a host of others have been drawn to BSG Alliance. And, at the end of the day, our innovation is what makes us better able to truly address our customers’ pain points, and provide them with a path to enlightenment - a path to becoming NGE.