Posted by Chuck Musciano in Technology.
Tags: Communication, Networking, Poken, Social Media
A few weeks ago, I fretted about the need for business cards amidst all these new-fangled connectivity tools. Although we have all sorts of ways to sustain a connection once it’s made, it still takes a little card to get most connections started.
Until now, that is. I recently learned about a clever new device called a Poken. The size of a USB drive, a Poken contains a unique serial number and an RFID tag reader. When you acquire a Poken, you register it on the Poken web site. On that site, you associate your contact information with your unique serial number. You can even create multiple contact cards, with separate business and personal information.
When you encounter another Poken user, you simply touch your Poken to theirs. The devices sense each other, exchange serial numbers, and glow green to indicate a successful exchange. Later, when you plug your Poken into your computer, you are shown the contact information for the person that you just met. You can download that data into Outlook, another mail client, or just keep it on the Poken web site.
Essentially, a Poken is a digital business card, without all the bother of carrying paper cards. Even better, you can’t run out of cards with a Poken, and you never lose a card you’ve acquired. Best of all, the data is already entered for you on the Poken site, so you’ll never transcribe another business card.
It’s easy to imagine folks exchanging contact information at a conference or social event. I could also see vendors with Poken readers at their booths, eliminating the need to “swipe your badge” to gather customer data. There are all sorts of imaginative ways to use a Poken.
Poken also has a clever privacy feature. You may encounter someone with whom you do not wish to exchange information. Instead of awkwardly avoiding them, you discreetly tap a button on the Poken twice, just before touching it to their Poken. You get their serial number, but they get a “ghost card” from you. When they later synchronize their Poken, they see an empty business card (and have a private awkward moment). If you later decide to reveal yourself to them, you can do so on the Poken site and your card will be revealed.
With all this going for it, what’s not to like about the Poken? It’s small, easy to use, well-designed, geeky-cool, and a conversation starter. What more could you want?
Well, I’d like to find someone else who owns one. Honestly, I don’t even know if mine works, although I have high hopes. Owning the only Poken in a crowd is much like the sound of one hand clapping. For this great idea to take off, a lot of people need to acquire Pokens. And soon.
So, I implore all of you to get a Poken. While most Pokens target a younger demographic, the Poken Pulse sports a more executive style and offers 2 gigs of USB storage to boot. With Christmas approaching, I think a Poken makes the perfect gift for everyone on your shopping list. You’ll find dozens of Pokens (including the Pulse) at findapoken.com. Do yourself (and me) a favor: hasten the end of paper business cards and get a Poken today.
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Networking, Technology.
Tags: Communication, Networking, Social Media
At any industry event, the impact of social media is evident. People are tweeting as the event transpires. Bloggers c0ver keynote addresses live. Vendors stream video from their booths, letting you watch presentations as you browse the show floor.
It is now common to see people run into folks they know but have never actually met. Relationships built on Twitter or Facebook come alive when people actually meet face to face. Closing the loop with a physical connection is now the last component of a rich relationship; it used to be the first.
In spite of all this connectedness and mobile technology, one thing has remained absolutely unchanged throughout the lifetime of the internet: the business card. How can it be, with all this technology at our disposal, that the single most important way to gather important data about a person is a little card? Even people who have built a strong relationship electronically will still exchange cards when they meet for the first time.
Why? What is missing from the new media that this old solution provides?
The problem has two sources. First, people still need to exchange some basic data to complete a connection: name, phone number, email address. Physical address is becoming much less important; other items (like your Twitter or Facebook name) are becoming more prominent. Even so, the basic way to reach most people is by phone or email.
Secondly, there is no simple way to exchange this information. I have used many electronic devices over the years, from a Casio Zoomer to various Palm devices to all sorts of phones. Each of this gadgets has had some way to create a business card and send it to someone else, either by infrared or Bluetooth. It was always very cool, seemed to work like magic, and never got used more than once or twice. After you had shown off your geek skills to admiring neighbors, you then exchanged business cards and went on your way.
I don’t know that this will ever change. There is no cross-platform standard for exchanging virtual business cards that actually works. I know all about Bluetooth Object Exchange, but it’s just too hard to set up and actually use in real life.
Even if you could establish such a standard, it would take years for everyone to acquire a device that used it. In the meantime, you’d still be handing out business cards. And you’d still need cards for people without a device, not to mention needing cards to throw into drawings and such at industry events.
It’s actually kind of quaint that such an old practice simply will not succumb to modern technology. Even as more and more people tweet and blog and post and stream, you still cannot avoid asking that age-old question: “May I have your card?”
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Networking.
Tags: Communication, Networking, Relationships, Small Talk
I love “small world” stories. I love wandering into an event and discovering that someone in the room went to my elementary school, or likes the same movies, or knows someone I know. I like that “who’d have thought?” moment when two people make a connection that they would have never thought possible just moments before.
Much is made these days of networking and how to use it to our advantage in our personal and professional lives. While a lot of focus is on the social networking tools like Facebook and Twitter, there is still a lot of value in face-to-face networking. It’s just that people seem to avoid it, and that lots of people seem to be bad at it. I think that’s a shame. With a little practice, everyone can get better at real networking.
The key is to master the art of small talk. Small talk, far from being as diminutive as its name suggests, is the real grease that makes networking flow. Through small talk, you can discover the serendipitous connections that will open the door to better, deeper network connections.
Good small talk is easy. A simple rule for starting a good “small” conversation is to avoid talking about the actual topic that has brought you together with other people. For example, if you are at an event addressing server virtualization, do not talk about any aspect of servers, virtualization, data centers, or even computing. This stuff is deadly dull even when you want to talk about it; the idea that you’re going to create a warm connection with someone over a meaningful conversation about virtual memory is ludicrous.
Instead, bring up topics that are likely to generate a connection with someone. Where do they live? Where are they from? Where did they go to school? Do they have kids? Hobbies? Seen any good movies? Back from vacation? Doing something interesting this weekend? Play golf? Like to run? There are dozens of simple questions that will get people talking about something that interests them. The idea is to learn about the other person, find some connections between you and them, and let those connections strengthen your shared knowledge and resulting relationship.
I’m often puzzled why people struggle with this kind of networking. I’ve seen so many people standing in awkward, uncomfortable silence at networking events, staring at their drinks and stuck for conversation. That’s foreign to me; anyone who knows me will tell you that I am never stuck for something to say.
Many people in IT are introverts (that’s what the “I” stands for) and have a hard time starting these kinds of conversations. They gravitate back to the safety of technology, which makes it hard to meet non-technical people. If you are one of these people, you may need to consciously focus on being better at this kind of engagement with people. That’s OK.
I once worked for someone who knew they were bad at this stuff and had to consciously prepare for events. When the event was over, they were exhausted by the effort. But they recognized the value of small talk and making connections, so they made the effort, improving over time.
Are you using small talk to build and enrich your network? Does it come easy, or do you have to work at it? Either way, small talk paves the way to big rewards in your network. So, seen any good movies lately?
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Networking.
Tags: Giving, Networking, Relationships
It is happening all too frequently these days. I get a call or an email from a recruiter with the same story: a great person has lost their job and is looking for a new position. This person is a seasoned IT executive, a great asset, and has a long history of success. Would I know of any potential openings in the area? The recruiter is always kind enough to forward to a resume for my review.
Opening the resume, I note that this person has held a number of executive IT positions with local companies over the past several years. Yet I have never heard of them. How can this be? I work in the Research Triangle of North Carolina. We are crawling with technology companies and have one of the strongest local executive networks in the country. Nonetheless, looking at this resume, I am drawing a complete blank. Even after checking LinkedIn, I have no second- or third-level connections to this person.
In contrast, I also hear from folks who are very well-connected. They are in a similar tough position, but they have all sorts of resources to fall back on. They have built relationships that will help them as they seek a new position. More than anything else, they have great name recognition and a history of having done great work that is known in the community.
Those folks with no networks give me precious little to work with. As much as I want to, my ability to assist is limited because this person did not invest in the most important aspect of their long-term career: their network. As they moved up the ladder, racking up those successes, they didn’t take the time to become a part of the community. Now that trouble has arrived, they have no place to turn for help, advice, or a connection to a new job.
Why do people neglect their network? Time and again I have invited local CIOs to various networking events, only to be told that they “don’t have the time” or “don’t do those kinds of things.” I simply cannot understand this mentality.
Investing in your network is like investing in an savings account. You deposit a little at a time, over a long period of time. You accrue value that, in many cases, you hope you never need to use. But when you need it, it’s there, and it’s a lifesaver. Sometimes you draw from your network in little pieces: a question answered or an opinion confirmed. But occasionally you make a major withdrawal: career changes or economic upheaval.
But the real purpose of a network is not about how it helps you. The real purpose of a network is that it gives you the ability to help everyone else, all the time, in many ways. You meet interesting people. You learn from them. You get the privilege of helping them.
Let me be blunt: people who fail to build their networks are acting selfishly. They hurt themselves, certainly, but they also diminish everyone else. By choosing to not give a little to those around them now, they rob our community of their potential contributions. Networks succeed when everyone pitches in, just a little bit. All those little bits create a rich community of people sharing, helping, teaching, and learning. Who wouldn’t want to be a part of that?
Are you keeping your network active? Are you an active part of your community? Make a commitment to contribute to your community by networking. And may you never need to draw on the goodwill you’ll be creating.
Posted by Chuck Musciano in Leadership.
Tags: Best Of 2009, Communication, Management Skills, Networking, Social Media
My grandfather had a saying: “A weak memory makes strong legs.” This seems to be coming to mind more often these days, as my short-term memory seems to expire faster than I can get the items I set out to retrieve. Multiple trips ensue, helping my legs and overall cardiovascular health, but wasting time and energy.
Forgotten items create more work, both at home and on the job. While personal memory problems may be inevitable as we become more, ahem, mature, organizational memory loss should be completely avoidable. Unfortunately, almost everyone is terrible at capturing and using our organizational memory.
Everyone you work with has huge amounts of useful information stored in their heads. From the moment you begin employment, you are gathering information about what you do, why you do it, for whom you do it, and how you do it. When you start out, everything is new and you spend lots of time gathering data that everyone else long ago internalized. Simple questions confront you all the time: who is in charge of that? Which form do I need? Why does this work that way? Your coworkers patiently explain all this, bringing you up to speed in your new role. After a while, you internalize this information as well, to the point that you stop thinking about it.
When the next new person arrives, they begin the same process. It is highly unlikely that you documented everything you learned when you started (who has the time for that when you are just getting started?) so this poor soul goes through the same process. Time is wasted as the weak organizational memory forces them to do a lot of walking.
I have been on teams that set out to solve this problem. We created formal guides and detailed documentation for our organization in the hope that new hires would get up to speed faster and waste less time. We tried to create an organizational memory but in the end, failed. Why? Continuous change.
Capturing most of this information results in a snapshot of a continually evolving process. That snapshot works for a short time, but eventually fades. Even after a few weeks or months, there are enough blurry spots in that snapshot that people will once again have to manually fill in the blanks. As soon as people lose faith in the documentation, they abandon it and go back to the manual process.
Like real memories, captured organizational memories fade rapidly over time. To reinforce real memories, you must replay them in your mind. To reinforce organizational memories, you must constantly revisit and update them. This is time-consuming and expensive, and ultimately not cost effective. Except for the most important processes that require rigid definition and oversight, most of our business rules exist in the (very) fluid minds of the participants.
The idea of easy, effective knowledge capture has been an ongoing goal for the past thirty years or more. It has yet to become a reality. Our collection tools are simply not capable of collecting all that we do and learn in real time. Currently, people are looking to social media as the next magic bullet that will make this a reality. As tempting as this sounds, I don’t think it will pan out from a data collection perspective.
The real answer, I think, is to accept that organizational memory is best retained in the heads of the people in the organization. It may be that these social networking tools will allow us to find the person who knows what we need better than any previous tool. It may be that capture has never been the problem, but that the connection network has been deficient. Social networking may let us connect the perfect capture tools (our brains) in better ways than ever before. As I’ve pointed out before, knowing who knows is the key to success in any field. We may be on the verge of solving the problem of finding who knows better than ever before. Memories may continue to fade, but the walking will be greatly reduced. We can only hope.
Until then, I’ve got other problems. Where did I put my keys? Time to start walking…
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