Burn the Ships
This afternoon one of my clients, Peter Schleicher from Athletes International asked if we could help update his website. We had designed his first site and were looking forward to the revamp. A kick-off meeting was arranged, cordial greetings exchanged and then “sales mode” switched on; at once the air was alive with: Twitter talk, facebook, LinkedIn, Meatball Sundaes, social capital, trust agents, and whuffie factors. After the dust settled Peter calmly said “so how do I make money, I don’t understand” There was a dead silence.
At that moment a realization materialized. A realization that was in all of the reading, but had not yet sunk in; there is about to be a dramatic change in how businesses speak to each other.
In the beginning the Internet was mysterious, it was sexy; you could waltz into the boardroom toting shiny laptops and palm pilots; spend 10 minutes playing around with the projector then get the sales guy to shout out a few key phrases show some flash and bang, the deal was done. When can you start and when do we launch? That was that.
Having spent several months exploring social media there was a gap between the academic and the practical. Where were the “hands on guides”; the “soup to nuts” tutorials on how to introduce social media to a client base that thinks twitter is a bunch of kids talking about what they had for lunch.
While jogging on Mount Royal with my dog Buster and listening to the audio version of Mitch Joel’s, “Six Pixels of Separation“, it hit me. Instead of spending hours trying to search for a tutorial about how one engages with social media why not create my own.
This group (to my knowledge) will be the first ever documented example of how a website goes from Web 1.0 to Web 2.0. We will cover everything from evaluating what is out there in the text books, pitching ideas to the client, getting input from the crowd (hopefully) and following right through to launch.
In exchange for working on the project pro-bono, Peter will allow us to video all meetings and when relevant they will be posted this facebook group: Social Media Montreal. In addition to this a video tutorial of the steps taken to implement all technology will be presented. From setting up a Twitter account, creating a blog, to shooting, editing and posting videos online.
So this will be a living example of how you go from the boardroom kick off meeting to the crowd. Will it work? Will it flop? Who cares? Because along the way everyone will learn something and that my friends is what life is all about!
P.S. First lesson learning. After having worked for an hour pounding out thoughts and posting to facebook nothing appeared, computer hung and everything was lost. So Lesson 1 is when writing anything that is important use Google docs.
And now it is time to “Burn the Ships“
