Global Neighbourhoods

SAP Global Survey: Australia's Laurel Papworth

Building a Social Network for Arab Women

         

[Panel at Recent Saudi Workshop to launch Women's Social Network. Photo by Laurel Papworth]

Laurel Papworth is an Australian social media consultant, trainer and lecturer. She is best known on Twitter as Silkcharm, a name she adopted during her many years as an online game moderator for Ultima Online and Everquest among others.

More recently, I followed Laurel with fascination, as she blogged reports from inside Saudi Arabia where she was speaking and teaching at a workshop for Saudi women who have since launched a pan-Arab women's social network. I learned through Laurel that some of my perceptions of the lives of Arab women, social media and what they do online was pretty much offbase. While much of the outrages we read about are factual, there is more going on than oppression and supression. While the fashions being imposed may be circa 6th century, the thinking and online activitis is very much mdern times. There is even flirting, so long as you do it anonymously and a family member doesn't catch you.

I asked Laurel to expand on what she has already written. The following is excerpted from our email conversation.

1. You have two blogs. One shows an almost stern-looking corporate sort of woman. The other portrays a free-wheelin' Aussie with pink hair. How do you reconcile these multiple personalities?

Silkcharm, my Twitter and one blog presence evolved from the late 90s when I was a game moderator. In those days, we kept our real identity separate from our online persona.  SilkCharm is the name I have used for my primary avatar since the late '90s.

LaurelPapworth.com  is for those who feel more comfortable with a brochure 1.0 website than the aforementioned freewheeling exuberant blog. I keep it as one does a professional site - no comments or user content. Simply stark information: where I appear on TV, what keynotes I'm doing, which public courses. Plus the usual marketing guff: "this is the strategy I do with investors in Social Networks, these are my clients, this is my work at the University of Sydney and University of Western Sydney. " and so on.

I'm building a bridge from social networks back to traditional companies and these two personna suit my purpose. I want to have both sides of myself out there: the part that knows that to grow an audience one needs to have fun and play with them. And that part that knows that conservative companies would completely freak if they had to rely on my SilkCharm to sell my services to their organizations.

We are taking people on a journey, and if I need to start off by pointing them to a my 'corporate' site and then move them across to a more gonzo style blog, so be it.

Twitter is pretty well full of people who 'get it' - therefore I don't have to worry Laurel.  I point my profile to my Silkcharm blog. Blogs are, in marketing terms, one-to-many distribution channels for depth-of-content. This means the blogger sets the topic and tone for the discussion, which is usually indepth and thought out in isolation and then published. And the commenter's respond in a similar tone, usually succinctly in a few sentences.  Pretty well the opposite of Twitter which is many-to-many of streaming content. Step out of Twitter for a few days and the conversation has moved on. I use the blog to develop and build ideas and then Twitter and Facebook to distribute them. 

Incidentally, the academic Laurel (Lecturer Laurel) is different again from Corporate Laurel. But like most people, I can only cope with one or two nicknames at a time. 

2. How did you come to be invited to Saudi Arabia? Why did you decide to go? What scared you about going and can you talk about your problems getting into the country?

Why did I agree to go? Because I thought that giving Arabic women a voice was not only darned important but truly a social media revolutionary act. How could I NOT go?

How I got invited is a longer story.

I'm an irregular on several Australian podcasts including Extraordinary Everyday People with David N. Wallace  and Mike Serfang. Eventually,  Mike asked me to help him write a job description for a Community Manager position for an Arabic women's network for the Middle East. Then I was asked to keynote and run computer lab workshops at woman's network launch event in Saudi Arabia. 

We did this on the fly. Dates kept changing. Until the last minute I did not believe this was actually going to happen. There were difficulties with tickets and reservations. But there were four bigger barriers imposed on women by Saudis:

1. Women, are not allowed to enter the country without a husband or father-a male guardian or "Mahram."
2. There is a special area at the airport to escort women through. 
3. Women are not allowed to stay at hotels without a male family member.
4. Women are not allowed to drive or be transported in a car without a male "guardian."

I was not shocked by these rules imposed by Islamic culture. In 1999, I lived in Fes, Morocco, to study Arabic, sort of on a whim. But Saudi Arabia is not Morocco. And I had some real concerns.

First, kudos to Queen Sam--not her real name, but it suits her-- a young Arabic woman who was able to swing some visas for us. I don't know how she did it, but she did. So I met Sam at the airport in Dubai and got in line for Jeddah with a group of modern/traditional mixed Saudis. Some of the women wore their hair down and jeans with tops. Others were covered in the black Abaya (gown) and Tarha (headscarf), collectively called Hijabs. 

The coverup rules are based on Koranic quote: "O Prophet, tell your wives and daughters and the women of the believers to draw their cloaks all over their bodies, that is most convenient that they should be known (as such) and not molested."

About 10 minutes before we landed in Jeddah, the women changed into their Hijabs. Queen Sam and I put ours on as we were flying over Mecca, that most holy of Islamic sites. By the time we de- planed, the women were covered. All were guided to the special waiting area for their Mahram to collect them.

Except Queen Sam and I didn't have a Mahram.

So she rang up Mideast Broadcast Company (MBC) a sponsor who added great credibility to this project,  and requested a driver to collect us. Yousef, our driver, showed up 3 1/2 hours later, an apparent indication of how important picking up two women guests at the airport is considered. . 

Yousef delivered us to the Jeddah Hilton. Thankfully, we were allowed to check in. I was told the laws had been recently amended to allow women to stay in hotels. Some hotels - presumably those run by fundamentalists - still don't allow women to stay, but the Hilton was fine, and we would wear our abayas but our scarves stayed only around our necks, not over our hair.

One thing that intrigued me was that the alcohol-free restaurants were split into two areas. "Men" and "Family." If men are sitting in the family area and women come in, the men get up and move, not the women. It's more embarrassing for the men to be sitting where the women are, than dishonoring for the women to be sitting with the men. Sort of reversed to what I was expecting. It clued me in to a way to gate the online community for women only - use 'shaming' to identify male intruders. If Arabic men use the women's network, it should be made 'embarrassing' for them, not amusing. Shaming doesn't work in the West though! Some communities don't need to be 'gated' (where the member controls access to her profile) as the community manages themselves to get rid of interlopers.

3. Tell me about social media in Saudi Arabia. How is it used and by whom? How much access do people have?

This is one of the most switched on, connected, socially networked cultures I have come across - and trust me, I've worked in Amsterdam, Italy, England, Singapore, Indonesia, and right across Asia. I suspect it's because when you block one form of communication - men and women chatting and going to school together and so on -  we use other means.

First, the guys wrote their cellphone number on bits of paper and threw them out of car windows at the black clad women walking along the road. Then Bluetooth came along and changed all that. Turn your phone on, give yourself a sassy pseudonym--it's important! not to use your real name-- and wait for the offers to flow in.

And flow in they do. The guys don't know which woman is which: "are you the girl by the DVD shelves or the one by the ice cream shop?" So it's pot luck. But it doesn't matter, as most girls would never meet the guys in real life. This is cyber flirting, never to cross over from the virtual to the tangible.

So, why a pseudonym/avatar? "... a new Saudi law was submitted to the 150–member Majlis al–Shoura, calling for stiff sanctions for mobile phone "pornography," including 1,000 lashes, 12 years in jail, and a fine of 100,000 Saudi riyals, or around US$26,670." 

A bit more serious than being grounded for the week end because you got caught flirting on the phone...

I was told that YouTube and MySpace were banned in Saudi. They weren't - at least not at the Hilton in-room broadband, which was very fast (and better than Australia's). By the way, the Australian Government bans youTube and other social networking sites in government offices in Australia, and it's banned in schools in some states. So we have our fair share of censorship. I guess Australian children say "oh I better not go on YouTube if the adults are banning it".  Heh.

I thought I was going to Saudi Arabia to teach Arabic women how to blog and protect their identity online. Yeah. Right. I was kidding myself. These women are completely savvy and au fait with privacy and locking up their content. Whereas we are slowly waking up to the invisible audience and what can happen if someone mashes up our personal RSS feeds from Facebook, Twitter and blogs, Saudi women have it figured.

They are on Facebook but with a pet name like "Queen Sam." They experiment and flirt and are outrageous on instant chat channels - but in secret, privately. In a country where women are not allowed out of the house without their father's permission and a brother to drive them, they stay in contact with married sisters in other cities and best friends in the neighboring suburbs by sharing (gated/locked down) photos and poems and music. Poems more than music, interestingly.

4. In one of your posts, you wrote about an "as yet unfounded" online community for Arab women. Tell me more about it? How did these women enroll and what countries are they from? .

Why is this project important if this is nation whose women already connect, flirt, create and express online? It has to do with changing society from top down as well as grassroots up. MBC 4 (the Arabic women's TV channel) got behind creating a social network for women. And that makes a world of difference – no longer an underground movement but an online community that is ratified from the highest level – from the Royal Family of Saudi Arabia.

Perhaps the biggest leap is that MBC is behind ths project. Based in Dubai, MBC is believed to be funded by the Royal House of Saud. Some say it was set up to compete with Al Jazeera, which is regarded as being anti-Saudi and pro-Qatar.  For a media company funded by the establishment, 'giving' or supporting social media is a big step. Consider the Egyptian woman, Esra Abdel Fattah, who was jailed for creating a Facebook group complaining about price rises in Egypt  or the Saudi Arabian girl beaten then shot and killed by her father for being on Facebook. 

A brave and commendable act by MBC to launch imatter.mbc.net.

The women's online network launched just two nights ago as of this interview. It is now open to Arabic women all over the world. 286 signed up yesterday, bringing the sum total to 575 members in 48 hours… not bad!  Unfortunately, in my opinion, the British agency that installed the community solution –Dolphin – adapted the template poorly, didn't integrate (a simple bridge) the forum user database with the main community database and basically showed a lack of understanding building a community. It would've been helpful if they had got behind this project and made it a world leader, but never mind.  

You will see on the site that the primary purpose is to encourage women to submit applications for awards

• Art Matters,
• Community Matters,
• New Media Matters and
• Entrepreneurial Matters.

All to encourage women in the Middle East and other Arabic groups to state why they matter to the world and that their ideas matter.

The first 50 members were enrolled through the classes that I ran at the Effat College for Women in Jeddah. The others were encouraged in the last 48 hours through promos on MBC 4 TV station in Dubai and across the region. Queen Sam sent me a message on Facebook to say how excited she was to see the signups coming in and didn't want to go to bed. I fully understand –there's nothing so exciting as seeing a new community start to become populated rapidly!

5. How were you received at the conference? What was the biggest single takeaway for you? What did you say or do that surprised the Saudi women the most?

The conference and workshops were fun. The young women were interested in what I had to say, and  most were well traveled and educated (Saudi is a rich nation, and this is the best University for Saudi women). We talked non-stop, they made jokes about not wanting to drive cars anyway because Saudi men are such bad drivers. Every January there is talk about allowing women to drive but it comes to nought. I saw a school bus cross four lanes of traffic at high speed to take an exit.

I think my biggest takeaway was that there is no clear stance on any issue. Even I was starting to get confused – was my wearing the Abaya and Tarha a mark of respect for the women of another culture, or was I endorsing the patriarchal suppression of women?  One or two women were ribald, telling naughty jokes and having midriff tops and a peeking g-string in private, yet genuinely prudish and covered up in other situations.

I surprised them the most by showing how concerned I was about keeping my headscarf on. I really worried it would slip and reveal my hair and that would be massively disrespectful. It turns out that in Jeddah at least, most of them don't care so much except at evening prayer times when the religious police patrol the malls at prayer time five times daily to find people who are not in the mosque and not covered up. In fact, I was encouraged to remove my scarf when lecturing. Women don't cover up in front of women. It's seen as old-fashioned to remain covered at all times, and it also doesn't necessarily set the precedent for how the women lecturers want the students to relate to them. I removed my scarf, once I was convinced they weren't just being polite.

6. You wrote that for Saudi women, " one photo, one chat with a male alone can totally disrupt you life." Can you expand on that in terms of social media?

Saudi Arabia is an "honor" society. Like Asia, with their "keeping face," identity, reputation and trust are tantamount. In online communities, we develop our identity through our profile. We then build our reputation by submitting content which is judged (ratings, reviews, comments). After a period of time of building our reputation, we gain a trust quotient – the eBay method – people read our profile, watch our interaction with friends, consume our content and then decide what trust value to place on our responses to their questions and media submissions. In simple terms, a newbie on a network with a history of 1 day and 2 posts and 3 comments will not have the identity, reputation and ultimately trust that an Elder or a Leader will have.  The long tail of engagement and performance works for/against us in social networks.

In Saudi, the long tail of behavior in real life is also rewarded/punished.

"Last August, the capital Riyadh had witnessed the murder of a young woman by her father, after he came into her room and saw she was chatting with a young man she met on Facebook. Security sources assured Al-Arabiya.net that the father beat up his daughter then shot her."

While not all cases are that extreme, a woman who is discovered talking to a boy at the age of 15 may never live down the shame.  A girl who continually breaks the rules will have trouble getting married (and as jobs are limited, marriage IS her career path). The shame is wrought on the whole family – the police routinely pick up the girl's mahram (guardian) and warn him if she misbehaves or is found in a car with a man not her husband or sitting in a café in a mixed group. The shame for the father of being hauled into a police station is no small thing.

This is an interesting article on Saudi Arabia that goes into greater depthnon social media and Arab culture.

8. When building a woman's community, how can you ensure one is not a male? What would happen if that occurred?

Intriguingly, Arabic men may not like registering at the site. It's girly, pink and not macho. Not an environment these men will want to be caught in, even if the rewards of reaching a pretty Middle Eastern woman is high. A little like suggesting the football team dress as cheerleaders to pick up women – funny yes, but not typical dating behavior.

I think the girls will tease and shame the men who join. Men who join may keep their profile low key – an avatar picture of flowers instead of their own photo. There seems to be a sense of 'this stuff happens but it can't happen blatantly'. An acknowledgement that women get messages via Bluetooth on their phone, but as long as they don't act on them, it's OK.

The community can vote up or down participants so they'll mute badass boys. The usual community tools to reward good behavior and smack naughtiness. In fact, like any online community, setting up the Code of Conduct and Etiquette Statement, creating moderator sub-communities, ensuring that usability and sociability reinforce appropriate behaviors, setting good examples - tell them, show them, reward them. Reward leadership, assign roles and responsibilities, introduce karma and rating systems. They all bring about appropriate behavior and serve to limit the impact of inappropriate ones.

8. I was surprised that you said older women were pushing for change, but younger women are not; that younger women wear the Abaya [black cloak] and Toma [head cover] as badges of pride. It's a response, you say to 9.11. How so?

When my sister and I were little, we would fight each other, being nasty as only little girls can be.  We could've killed each other. Yet, if a stranger attacked either one of us, we turned in unison to protect our sisterhood and trounce the outsider. We still do it today, only not when her children and my niece and nephew are watching.

Perhaps it's easiest to see it this way: Some Americans may not agree with American Foreign Policy – or how politicians implement global initiatives overseas. They may even speak up about it – blog or talk to friends and family. Yet most Americans would not blame individual soldiers – it would be unpatriotic and downright disgraceful to be abusive to a man or woman just because he or she is in a uniform.

Now, imagine every time you travel, you are abused. Your passport is checked and triple checked. You and your wife and your children are hauled into immigration offices every time someone notes you have an American passport. Then you are questioned about why your wife wears a headscarf. Your children are called names and blamed for wars in far off places they can't even spell yet.

I think in that case, even American sons and daughters would change their mind about disagreeing with foreign policy and start to be more "patriotic" or at least, less willing to put up with criticism.  Stop disagreeing with the State and keep quiet. After all, when under attack, we must band together and forget about "petty" differences.

I suspect that is what happens to these women. They see their brothers refused entry to foreign universities, (We've just had a witch hunt against Saudi male students at some of our Australian universities,) their fathers humiliated at airports and their cousins reviled while walking down the street. I think I would be more patriotic to the abaya and scarf in that case too, a quiet show of solidarity and strength to one culture against another.

So it was easy for a woman one moment to say that women should be more free and not be penalized for not wearing the abaya, and the next to say it is a patriotic and religious duty to wear the national standard of dress for Saudi Arabia.

9. How do you think social media will change the life and culture of Saudi women? How do you see it impacting Saudi culture and relationships with the West overall? Let's stretch a bit: Do you think social media can contribute to greater peace and understanding between Arab and Western cultures?

Well to extend the discussion above, it could go either way: "Others stated that Saudi women suffered as a result to their presence on such websites, since they sometimes found mocking or insulting comments mostly written by extremists who browsed these websites and pages. "   

Web 2.0/3.0 changes the game not just in social media. Think recruitment and project management for examples. eLance and Rentacoder break the "dating" model of recruitment sites – brokerage and introductions – and manage the whole development and project cycle. Because a job on eLance covers the whole project management and escrow process, why can't an Arabic female architect or engineer, take on a project overseas, complete it, with no one the wiser that she is Saudi and not supposed to work in that field?

For women who don't have much time for themselves – family and religious duties are heavier in Saudi Arabia than the West - blogging and self expression online is a "personal me-time" that we take for granted. Also, as usual with the internet, anything banned immediately becomes more accessible and popular, so an openness is to be expected.

What we read changes our views.

But we also stay the same. If there's one thing I've learnt about social networks is that we do MORE of what we usually do. So if we are fundamental Islam or fundamental Christian, we are drawn to those communities. If we are academics interested in observing, ditto. Gun lovers find gun communities. If we are cosmopolitan, well educated, literate and polyglots, we will find a community with our values. Rednecks who are xenophobic love their online communities too. On a media platform where we don't just create the content but also filter (acting as a censor for oneself) we will continue to form and reinforce the world in our own image. For better or for worse.

 

10. Additional comments?

When I lived in Morocco for a year, studying Arabic, a young Moroccan woman asked me shyly "is it true your father sent you out to work and made you get a job when you turned 18?". Well that's one way of seeing it, though I doubt good ol' Dad will understand.  We can't judge another's world can we?

SAP Global Survey: H&R Block's Paula Drum

Social Media for Taxing Situations

It's that time of year again. Spring is in the air. Bird chirp. Flowers bloom, and in the US, a great many of us miss part of it, because it is also tax time. It is also the only time of year when the words "H&R Block" readily come to mind for a great many people.

H&R Block is the world’s preeminent tax services provider, having served more than 400 million clients since 1955 and generating annual revenues of $4 billion last year--that's pre-tax of course.  I don't know what percent of the US population uses their tax preparation services, but they can go in to any of 13,000 offices or use the company's TaxCut online and software service.

Add to this the fact that the company is based in Kansas City, and it makes H&R Block appear to be among the least likely  candidates for coverage in the SA Global Survey on social media's impact on business and culture, but recently, and quite quickly, H&R Block seems to be active in a great number of social media spaces. In fact, I can find no consumer retail or services company that is as active in social media as is H&R Block.

The source of all this activity seems to be Paula W. Drum, Block's VP of marketing for digital tax solutions. She joined the company recently--in 2006 and has driven a mass effort to reposition the venerable tax preparation company as an overall tax expert and she has used some remarkably innovative social media programs to achieve that goal.

So, I postponed my own meeting this morning to prepare this report on my conversations with Paula:

1. You came to H&R Block in 2006. You immediately began driving what is among the most extensive business-to-consumer social media campaigns in history. Yet, I could find little in your background to indicate social media experience. How did you become aware of SM and why did you think it was the right course for Block?

 

I'm flattered that you characterize our activities as "the most extensive business-to-consumer social media campaigns in history."  I've never thought of it that way.  When I came to H&R Block my mandate was to grow our digital business.  My background was in establishing the e-commerce and interactive marketing divisions for very well-known brands such as Alamo, Rent-A-Car and Days Inn. I've been in the online space since the beginning days of travel e-commerce when no one had much experience in e-commerce or interactive marketing. Those travel brands had flourished with a product that was perfectly suited to e-commerce and it was great fun innovating what was the first experience with the brand – making the reservation. Because the brands were well-known, consumers knew to seek us out directly online.  I was helping to facilitate the overall brand experience.  However, the challenge was very different at H&R Block. 

H&R Block enjoys great brand awareness (99%) but that is awareness of H&R Block as a brick and mortar tax company. Consumers were not aware of H&R Block as a strong contender in digital tax. The market leader, TurboTax, was becoming ubiquitous with approximately 70% market share. To grow our digital business and continue to position the brand overall, we needed to drive awareness that H&R Block was more than the traditional corner tax office. In my past work, I observed the growing power of social networks and user generated content.  My goal was to build awareness of H&R Block as an online brand as well as a brick and mortar brand.

 

2. What obstacles did you face at H&R Block in getting social media program implemented? How did you overcome them?

 

I was lucky. There was more support for testing and learning than absolute obstacles. In our first year I positioned most of our social media activities as "tests." They were not a substantial part of my overall media mix, so there was little perceived risk. Most senior executives did not believe that the YouTube contest was going to be as successful as it was. I also needed to convince some executives that SecondLife was a good venue for our brand as well. There were many negative articles about SecondLife before and after we launched our island, so I've had to continue to justify our activity there a few times. There were also some legal hurdles to overcome when we started blogging. Our legal department felt that a blog needed to uphold the same standards as a corporate sponsored advertisement so they did not want any executive expressing an opinion that could not be substantiated the same way that we substantiate our marketing claims. Yikes.   

Fortunately, our "small tests" had some great successes and paved the way to develop a more extensive program in year two.

 

3. What was the thinking behind your "Super Sweet Refund" YouTube campaign? Can you tell me about the responses in terms of numbers? Tell me about a few of the best/worst contest submissions?

 

I was amazed by the quality and creativity of the submissions.  There were some really great videos.  A few of my personal favorites are "Death and Taxes" and "Possibilities." We have them highlighted on our new site Digits . I still watch them. It's hard to get them out of your head once you've seen them.

To launch the contest we created some seed videos to serve as contest examples. We promoted the contest on YouTube's home page with the seed video "Candy." In one day, "Candy" received over 1.7 million views and YouTube tells us that we still hold the record for the most views of a home page video. In all, the contest videos received over 4 million views. 

Some of the biggest learnings for me were:

• How quickly our competition copied us with their TaxRap featuring Vanilla Ice.
• We should have leveraged the contest across multiple communities because people join more than one social network
• We should have made it clearer that the community selected contest winners, not us. The winning author did what it takes to win a popularity contest--She promoted herself, getting friends to vote. As a result we received a fair amount of negative feedback when her video was posted to the home page. People thought we had made the selection over other very creative contributions.

 

4. The name "HR Block Island" confused me because I have visited Block Island--off the Rhode Island Coast. But your "island" is on SecondLife.  What was the strategic goal of building HR Block Island? Did you have many visitors who were below the tax-paying age? Got a colorful tale? Can you give me some numbers regarding visitors? What do you feel it has done for the HR Block brand?

HR Block Island in SecondLife started out as "Tango Island." In 2006, we were going to soft-launch a new online tax preparation product that I named "Tango," because it is a "partnership" between a tax professional and someone who wants to prepare their own taxes. 

The new product was built on emotional-design principles and used new flash-based technology.  We thought the SecondLife community would be a great place to get some initial learning about our new product from early adopters. 

As we started building with Electric Sheep Company, I realized that this space could be much more than just a product showcase.  We were looking at the island prototypes with a Welcome Area, an auditorium, a product pavilion, office space and a ballroom--dancing is popular in SecondLife, and afterall this was Tango Island. Then it hit me that this was the perfect forum to highlight our tax expertise and offer something of value to the SecondLife community, free professional tax advice in avatar format. So the goal evolved to additionally highlight our brand in new ways, demonstrate our technical side and provide value through free tax advice. 

As a result,ComputerWorld named us among the top eight corporate sites in SecondLife.  We were mentioned in numerous blog posts, held a conference with the SecondLife Business Communicators virtually at the island.

Now in it's second year, we've learned a lot. A few observations:

• People have an unbelievable ability to multi-task. They can simultaneously make avatars dance, ask tax advice questions and follow multiple thread conversations. That's just on the computer. Who knows what else is going on? They could also be watching TV. Their two-year-olds could be crawling around the floor as is true in my case.
• Virtual Reality is very different from chat. There is something visceral about being able to see your avatar talk with another avatar. Last year, a blogger called it "the future of customer service. I believe there something to it.

To your other point, all our island visitors were of "tax age." Some, however were international visitors, who were not our target audience. There are so many colorful tales that I can tell you about SecondLife and our experience. 

Recently Stacy, a new member of my marketing team, has been coordinating our SecondLife activities.  And as you know, people choose many different forms of avatars from people, to angels, vampires, panda bears, foxes, cartoon characters, etc.  So, we are there on a tax advice night and Stacy sends me an IM saying "there is a vulture standing next to me."  I responded "Yes, I know.  That vulture is getting some tax advice from Hope (our tax pro in avatar form)."  It is truly an environment of non-discrimination!

We also have received numerous comments from our field tax professionals.  They are excited to see the brand "enter the 21^st century" as one wrote me.  It has been motivating for many of our 110,000 tax professionals to see the brand in new places and being progressive. We are even getting asked to host tax training in SecondLife.

 

5. Most readers know that I love hanging out on Twitter. But I find very few businesses flourishing there. H&R Block is prominent among them. When did you start it and why? What is the result so far?

 

Now we are getting into year 2 of our "the most extensive business-to-consumer social media campaigns in history." We took all the learnings from our blogging, YouTube, and SecondLife experiences as well as observations in the market place (i.e., The new role of citizen journalism and the power of the voice of one) and created a far reaching campaign this year. 

This campaign included Twitter, YouTube, MySpace, FaceBook, a community site name Digits, Second Life and online outreach. I have a lot of my team dedicated to pulling together a more comprehensive and coordinated program. 

Twitter is Amy Worley's baby, so I'll let her tell you about it.

[Amy] We started on Twitter in December. I went in thinking of it as an add-on, a free way to get our message out to a small, but influential, group of people.

One wrong assumption I made is that the time commitment would be inconsequential. Another was that this would be pretty much exclusively a way to push information OUT. Big mistake.

When people join Twitter, they often send an update out into the world and then go away. Nothing happens. So they don't get it. But once they move in to Twitterville, as you call it, and really listen and reply and become part of the community, they're addicted. There's nothing like it.

When it comes to truly connecting with customers, I'd say that Twitter has been the most valuable and most effective component of our social media efforts. I went back and looked at our update archive and I realized that more than half of our updates are "@ replies." Not only have we shared tax tips and advice that serve the general community, but on a one-to-one basis we've helped people get jobs and professional tax training.

We've helped others overcome the anxiety associated with doing their taxes on their own for the first time. We're having a blast participating in @zefrank's Colorwars (how could H&R Block resist a "veryGreenTeam"?). We've discovered and resolved customer support issues and we've met and thanked very happy customers. It sounds crazy, but I actually feel like H&R Block has made some friends on Twitter. We even had a customer call us out as part of @garyvee's Good People Day! We couldn't ask for more than that.

6. Have I left anything out? What other social media programs exist? What's in the planning stages? Five years from today, what do you think will have been the impact of social media on H&R Block's culture and technology?

As I mentioned earlier, we actually have a broader reaching campaign.  We started this year with the goals of positioning ourselves as a tax expertise brand and a digital brand as well.

We created many different pieces of content that we are using across many different social networks. We didn't expect every single concept to be a home run. We want to learn and iterate on what works best. Here's a brief overview of some of the activities:

• Branded video content: AKA Truman Greene We don't try to hide the fact that Truman is manufactured. Our goal was to create an engaging and entertaining way to highlight the benefits of using our TaxCut Online. We characterize Truman as a brand evangelist and we put up a new clip or two weekly. Truman also has his own page on MySpace Our intent is to produce videos that can be used in multiple locations so we can go where the people are rather than build microsites where people have to come to us.  We produce original content  and even spoof other popular videos Truman has had over 560,000 views on YouTube and has 160 subscribers as of today. He has 3500 MySpace friends.

• Digits is our own community site featuring tax advice through over 40 podcasts and relevant conversations on tax-related subjects such as rebates. While we are using Digits for brand engagement, it is really an upshot of citizen journalism t is still in the listen and learn phase and will continue to evolve.
• Facebook. We have a fan page for H&R Block Online, created with the intent to create a presence with applications relevant to this community.We hosted free tax preparation giveaways for "fans" who joined. We have also created widgets that live across online communities such as "Tax Day Countdown," among others. We have over 825 Facebook fans.

• Blogger outreach and listening.  We listen to what is being said about us in the blogosphere and feel that citizen journalists are becoming as important as traditional media. 

 

7. Are you so immersed in social media because H&R Block needs to attract younger customers? What are the key goals of the social media programs?

We do want to reach younger audiences who may be doing their taxes for the first time.  We feel that our online products serve that demographic very well.  However, our goals are broader.  We want to ensure that when people think about H&R Block, they first think that we are the experts in tax and that we have a relevant solution for their particular need – whether they want to prepare their own taxes online or have a tax professional prepare their taxes for them.

8. What advice do you have for other companies considering social media? What warnings?

I think any company should be exploring ways to engage with their customer and prospects. The investment to learn is very small. However, newer tactics are hard to measure in the same way that traditional online media such as banner advertising and paid search is measured.  It is also not about how loud you can shout or how great your brand is versus finding ways to be relevant within the community to allow real brand interactions. It is a community commitment not just a quick marketing campaign. I think the other part to realize is that while some activities are free – meaning there are no media costs – there is a human capital cost. 

Finally, it is important to have a level of sincerity about the community.  Brands that are not sincere and transparent in their motives are going to receive a negative reaction.

9. Tell me about measurement. What does H&R Block want to get from these programs and how do you measure that? What tools do you use?

 There are a lot of micro-measurements.  How many visitors, how many friends, how many video views, how many uses of an application, how many blog mentions. However, the primary measure that we are using to evaluate these programs is awareness that H&R Block has digital products. It is a long-term brand approach for us.  Not just a one-time marketing program that we are going to continue if successful and scrap if it isn't. 

10.Additional Comments?

I feel like we are still in the infancy stages of social media and how it will impact the future of brands.  I feel very fortunate that I'm able to work with a great brand that can make a significant impact in this arena.

 

Australia's Silkcharm teaching Saudi Arabian women social media

Laurel Papworth, known in the Twitter community as Silkcharm is an Australian social media consultant. After surviving 2 glitches: (1) No international servivice for her N95 & GIf and (2) no require male escort from Dubai into Saudi Arabia, she is alive and well and in awe of the intelligence & openess of Saudi women.

Laurel is there to teach Saudi women about social media. I am sure that there are no  best practices yet established in this area and that every day she is breaking new ground, even as she worries about her scarf slipping from over her blonde hair.

When she is back safely into Australia, I will have to interview her about this experience for the SAP Global Survey.

SAP Global Survey: Africa's Erik Hersman

A talk on Kenyan Violence, Hope, and Social Media

Every now and then, one of these SAP Global Surveys on Social Media's impact on culture and business changes my fundamental perspective. Such is this one with Erik Hersman [TWIT] , an American who grew up as a missionary kid bouncing back and forth between Sudan and Kenya. While most of what we see in the news about Africa fills us with horror and sorrow, Erik speaks with love and optimism.

Erik is more than a little active in social media. I've met him at three social media community events in the last few months. He has an insider understanding of both American and African culture. "The constant bridging of African and American worlds started at such a
young age," he told me that it is embedded in my character. I find it easy to switch between cultures and enjoy friends and associates on either side of the ocean."

Erik works as a web consultant and application developer, as Zungu . His clients tend
to be larger ad agencies and organizations trying to figure out how to
work digital/web communications into their brand.  He was principal developer of Ushahidi, the history-making wiki that let Kenyans generate geographiv information on where violence was occurring in their country.

Erik's knowledge of Africa is vast, but I focused just on Kenya, where he is hopeful that the usually stable country is returning to a period of prolongued peace.

1. What is your response to the current wave of violence in Kenya? How long-lasting is
the damage and, most important for this interview, what role did social media play among Kenyans during the violence?

The interesting thing about Kenya is that it has a history of peace, interspersed with small, politically motivated episodes of violence.This made the current crisis in Kenya hard for most of us to believe was happening.  We knew that it couldn't last forever, Kenyans as a whole
aren't warlike by nature, they would prefer a tranquil existence.  This is why we weren't surprised to hear of the peace agreement that was reached this last weekend.

There are three words that describe millions of Kenyan voters:

1. Disappointed with their current president, Mwai Kibaki, for playing Moi-politics
2. Angry with their ministers of parliament, voting an unprecedented number out of office.
3. Jaded  by the election results - wondering if bothering to come out for the next elections   is even necessary.

I would suggest that citizens being jaded is the most harmful in the long run.

There were a couple of interesting uses of social media in Kenya in the last year. Juliana Rotich [Twit] was upcountry when the violence broke out - in one of the worst locations. She used
Twitter, Flickr and her blog to keep everyone in the Kenyan diaspora updated.  Other bloggers like Ory Okolloh , DaudiWere and Joseph Karoki provided an invaluable service of keeping the
world updated with images and news.  These bloggers played a pivitol role in the first couple days as the government instituted a media blackout.

2. Tell me about Ushahidi.com. When and how did it get started and by whom? How fast did it's usage spread during the violence? How many people have made entries and how many people
visited it. What would you say it accomplished for Kenyans, NGOs and outside observers?

Ushahidi (which means "witness" in Swahili) was created after a blog post by Ory Okolloh mentioning how useful it would be to have citizen-generated reports of violence in Kenya, as the normal news sources weren't reporting all that was going on.  Basically, Ushahidi is a tool for people who witness acts of violence in Kenya.  They can send in reports via SMS, email or the website and it is plotted on the map.

Images, video links and data about the event can be added to the system by othersl.  All information first goes through a verification process, conducted by volunteers in the Ushahidi group who talk to NGOs, the witness and news sources.

The number of reports in continued to ebb and flow with the violence, in times of greater violence we received more reports and vice versa.  To date, we have received approximately 150 verified reports, 40k uniques and 160k views.  More important, Ushahidi has created a new type of
website within the humanitarian sphere for crisis events.  NGOs and Kenyans were incredibly happy to find out about it, and want to duplicate this type of tool in other areas of crisis around the world.

3.  In Kenya, about 100% of the visits to Ushahidi came by mobile devices. What percentage of the
population uses cellular?  How about computers? Is the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) program making any sort of impact? What about computer cafes?

That's a bit of a bounce-around question, but I'll see if I can cover each of the items briefly.  Most of the visits to the Ushahidi site came from the web.  However, the Kenyans who interacted with it did that through both mobile and computer-related means.  Since mobile phones are far more prevalent in Kenya (almost everyone has access to a phone, (families oftenshare one phone)  the easiest way to report an incident was via an SMS on their phone to our Kenyan shortcode number.

Many of the computer visits to Ushahidi were through Kenyan computer cafes. The costs of basic computer hardware, plus connectivity is too much for most of the population.  This, of course, is why the mobile phone holds the key to Africa's web and communications future.

I can't answer if the OLPC is having any type of impact in Kenya. Though, I can opine here briefly on the fact that I think any low cost computer in the hands of children in Africa is a big deal.  If you are really interested, I've posted about that.

4. Your Afrigadgets blog is amazing in many ways. I'm impressed the resourcefulness of Kenyans it demonstrates: bicycles built on bamboo frames, generators fueled by yeast and sugar. You've said the site shows Africa is the place for "innovation at the low end of high technology," what are the implications of that for a company wishing to do business in Africa?

I love AfriGadget! I have so much fun with that site, and the other editors who work on it with me are just the phenomenal.  I've stated a number of times that African ingenuity is born of necessity, thus the low-tech products and inventions seen on AfriGadget.  However, what this
also shows is the vast amount of creativity and entrepreneurship that is ready to explode in Africa given the right political and economic climate.  We see this happening even now, in depressed and backward countries all over the continent - wait until you see what these guys can do with an even playing field.

The first thing that I would do as company wishing to do business in Africa is realize that Africans will adapt whatever product I bring to them.  You can't just take something from Europe or the US and dump it in Africa expecting it to work.  There are too many cultural and geographical differences to overcome.  However, if you let the Africans lead your product development so that you get the right type of product for Africa, your chances for success and profit rise exponentially.

5. How can social media help African-based companies? How successful is something like Mama Mikes? Can you give me some additional examples of African businesses using social media?

Social media is new and hard to understand for most Western companies, even though the social media space in the general public is well ahead of the rest of the world. Generally speaking, Africans are new to the social media space. This means that companies operating there are
even further behind. Many don't even have a decent website.

If anything, social media can help in a couple of areas.  First, it allows individuals to circumvent inefficient governments and local regulations.  Second, it allows companies that pay attention, a chance to leapfrog past their competitors who are unaware of the feedback loop
that is now available.

In the "web as business" area, websites like Mama Mike's make a good deal of money because they are the only option - a first mover - in a space that has burgeoning demand.

Additional social media sites in Africa include Afrigator, Mzalendo, Muti, Mxit and others.  For a more complete list, you might enjoy my Flickr collage of African sites--with links.

6. What role can social media play in helping companies located in the US,, Europe or Asia wishing to do business in Africa?

This is a big one actually.  If you include blogs in your definition of social media, then Western and Asian companies are hamstringing themselves if they're not monitoring blogs and social media (including old-fashioned message boards) in Africa.  The types of information
available there is just too important for any organization to ignore.

Another interesting trend that I've just started to see in the last couple months is where organizations actually get in touch with bloggers, who are expert in a particular field, and get their direct input on a specific issue.  That's smart and more companies should do this.

7. While we are on the subject, business people as well as travelers are concerned with safety wherever they go. Can businesses really feel safe doing business in Africa? What role can social media play in helping them understand about safety and danger in companies with dynamic political environments?

The truth about Africa is never reported, only half of it - the bad half.  This means that the news and images you see on a daily basis are only the negative stories.  So, can businesses really feel safe in Africa?  Yes, unequivocally.  Do they need to be more aware of political and economic situations as well?  Yes, and that's where awareness and use of social media can prove to be a major advantage.

I spoke about Ushahidi earlier, what we're working on now is a global version of that platform.  Imagine how valuable it would be to know the crisis level of every country you operated in, and you were alerted about it as soon as something started to happen.  That's an interesting
idea, and one we're currently trying to work through as we create the new platform.  We see the aggregation of blogs, news and citizen-generated reports as a critical way to evaluate situations and think it could be a major help for not just businesses but NGOs and governments as well.

8. How is mobile technology and social media impacting the culture of Africa today? How will that look five years from today?

We're seeing an increasing number of Africans getting online, many times at those cyber cafes we spoke of earlier. The number of blogs, Facebook, MySpace, etc., accounts continue to grow.  This trend will continue as we see Africans finally being able to speak freely to the rest of the world, without being barricaded by prohibitive costs or government censure.

What is more exciting is the idea that someone out there is building a social application for Africa.  Something that recognizes the mobile phone as the primary platform, yet still integrates with the rest of the world via the web.  It's an exciting time, and it will only continue to
grow.  In 5 years we'll be looking at a completely different digital landscape in Africa!

9. You are a champion of tech entrepreneurialism in Africa. Yet, you've moved back to the US. Why is that?

Interesting question.  I moved to the US before I got deeply involved in technology.  I travel back and forth to Africa regularly, and my ever-supporting wife Rinnie, and three beautiful daughters ages 2, 4 and 6.likely be moving back to somewhere in East Africa when the right opportunity presents itself.  That could be this year or next, either way it will be soon.

10. Additional comments?

Just a last thought on definitions for social media.  Depending what you
categorize as "social media" there are number of ways that Africans see
and interact with it differently.  I spoke at some length of the use of
mobile phones and how they are "Africa's PC", that they need to be seen
as the primary device to develop for.  There is also the radio, and
opportunities around multi-person dialogue revolving around radio, the
web and mobile devices.  What is it?  I'm not sure yet, but there's
something there screaming to be developed.

Africans, generally, already have well developed social organizations.
Tools developed for Africa need to augment the particular types of
social organizations.  The tools in the US, like Facebook or MySpace,
are created to work within the confines of our own disassociated
organizational norms.  That's why they can't just be thrown into Africa
and expected to work.  Africa has it's own unique atmosphere and
organizational needs that require a different type of application to be
successful.

SAP Global Survey: Jay Dvivedi, Shinsei Bank

Banking on the Internet in Japan

            

                        [Jay Dvivedi, Shinsei Bank's Tech Architect]

Social media is not really a component of Shinsei Bank's remarkable advent in Japan. In fact,  Jay Dvivedi, Shinsei's CIO who joined from Citibank and was principal designer and architect of the bank's internet-based system, eschews blogging and social media in his response to one of my questions.

But Shinsei has embraced Internet technologies in a way that no other bank on Earth seems to have done. It has placed the customer at the center and adjusted services to the customer's convenience. The bank had used online technologies to get closer to the customer, and thus, is a prime candidate for the SAP Global Survey. Joi Ito has called Jay his hero, which holds more than a little credibility with us and in most social media circles.

'Shinsei' literally means rebirth and in fact the bank was reborn from Japan's 50-year-old Long Term Credit Bank (LTCB) which went under in the year 2000.  I'll let Jay pick up the story from there.

1. You used technology to build a very different banking entity.  What assets did you maintain from the old LTCB and what did you discard?

We are under a new name, “Shinsei,” but we are the old bank with over 50 years of history and very deep relationships plus 2 million new customers. A key design criteria was to retain our old banking assets and add to it an extremely large investment bank.  We had to ensure that the old be in complete harmony with the new. 

However, in terms of hardware and network we have nothing of the old. Everything is new.

The way we do it is we create a parallel environment which mimics the old.  It’s what we call "parity." New systems behave like old ones. The employees and customers don’t see any change in functions and features; all products, all rules and all processes remain exactly the same. This work was done in about a year. Leveraging the new platform, we overlay on that a product-set which can outrun the competition. 

2.    Can you give me some sense of the size and scope of Shinsei today in terms of customers, deposit, etc. How many physical branches do you have? What percentage of your customers are Japanese?

Shinsei Bank across all its businesses has total assets of approximately JPY 11.8 trillion ($112 billion USD). The key lines of business are institutional banking, including investment banking; retail banking, and consumer and commercial finance. Historically, we were an institutional bank, to this we have added a retail customer base of 2 million customers and in our consumer finance business we have around 8 million customers. The bank has around 30 financial centers to service customers. An overwhelming majority of our customers are Japanese and our heritage is all Japanese. 

3.    Shinsei’s strategy was to create a customer-focused bank. Your vision and contribution was to use standard and inexpensive technology to accomplish this. What does Shinsei do differently than other Japanese banks? How do you become more customer-focused when you have fewer branches per customer than most Japanese banks?

A key principle is that our service should be easily understood. We try to see at it as, “How does it look to the customer outside.” We ensure we don’t create any forms so that when a customer walks in we don’t confuse him.

If you walk into the bank you will be greeted by a person who will talk to you on what you’d like to do. The transaction is conducted and we give you a receipt. To open an account and set up a relationship, all you have to do is sign a simple form and you have access to all our products and services.

We offer zero-cost ATM transactions, zero-cost fund transfers and a large variety of mutual funds. Our structured deposit product offering in its first one year of launch collected over $10 billion USD.

We have very satisfied customers. We have been No. 1 or 2 in customer satisfaction in surveys done by Nikkei, Japan’s leading business newspaper, for several years.

We have simplified the mortgage process. The customer fills in an application giving us just the basic information. Who they are, the type of house they are buying, the amount of loan etc .Based on this information the machine generates templates of specific documents, including samples. The customer can spread it on their dining table and match it with what they have and send it to us. They don’t have to wait till they have all the documents. The machine assembles all the documents electronically and process the loan, giving customers a very fast turnaround.

Nikkei ran a story about three years ago on our housing loan product, rating it the best in the market. We run the entire loan process under machine control and at the time the article was written, we were processing approximately 400 loans per day.

Our approach is very different from any other bank, anywhere. We look at the entire company as a large computer. This begins when we are in front of the customer and then continues all the way through all stages including the accounting and reporting. We focus on using machines for everything that we do. We have three classes of machines: (1) machines that run the processes, (2) machines to control transactions and (3) machines to control the machines. Most banks will have several dedicated networks, one for data, one for telephone calls, and another for ATMs. We have only one and for that we use the public Internet. This is very different from what other banks do.

Professors David Upton and Brad Staats of the Harvard Business School have written an article “Radically Simple IT” in the March issue of HBR that describes what we do. 

We don’t use officers to check transactions, machines check the transaction. We don’t use supervisors to manage the workforce; machines display the flow and status of work with complete transparency so people can manage themselves. If you walk inside the company you will see everything visually as if you are in a manufacturing plant for some machines; the displays tell you what is the work, where are the people, the picture of assembly line, what is the wait time, what are the queues. Its all visible to our staff and there are one or two team leaders to watch.

We do the same thing with our customers. If you apply for a housing loan then the entire process beginning with the application and documents as the customer assembles and sends them is made visible to them. In this way the customer sees what we see. 

4.    Your first year is legendary. You built your entire Internet banking system in one year, when it was estimated it would take you three. You also came in at an astounding 90% under budget. Tell me how you did this?

The Internet to us is not banking. If you visualize that we are building a large city, then the Internet to us are the highways and everything in the company works on the internet. Our telephone calls are through the Internet. Our call center runs through the internet and we have no PBX because we use software. So internet banking is not the right context.

Most large banks have a system where they present a small window of that over the internet to their customers, and call it internet banking. Our system is so designed that what we have inside, customers see from the outside. The capability, the information that is available either inside or outside is the same. If you use the ‘highway’ analogy, the internet is just another path for customers to come to the bank. We are not solving the same problem that most other large banks are attempting to do. By defining the problem we are solving differently we simplify it enormously. Simpler problem take less time to sort out.

Our cost advantage is 1:1000. This comes from using low cost standard components. If you compare the cost of a mainframe disc versus a Dell PC disc, mainframe memory versus PC memory, the source of our cost advantage will be very clear.   

5.  You actually dumped the old bank's mainframe and replaced it with server farms of standard Dell Computers. You off-shored data to India and you decentralized data storage. How safe is that? How does that impact costs? How quickly can you scale?

This is not what we did.

In 2000, the government of Japan sold the LTCB to a consortium of overseas investors. The new management led by our then-Chairman Yashiro had committed a timeline to rebuild the bank’s foundation of one year. Our challenge was to devise work methods that would get the job done. If we had waited to mobilize the huge number of people needed for this task, we would have a huge vulnerability, getting visas, getting people to move, finding housing and so on. So we had a few hundred people come to Japan backed up by ten times that number in India and other locations.

We broke down the work and transported it by Internet to wherever people were and assembled it in the virtual space. By working with multiple teams, doubling them on critical parts, we removed any single point of failure and ensured there was no risk.

Internet is just the transport medium. By itself it has no risk. We control where the people are, what they access and no customer data is ever sent outside of Japan.

Our ability to scale up and work at very high speeds comes form our use of small discrete machines. Unlike the mainframe, which combines everything into one and is actually a big risk, each small machine is discrete and work is organized around them such that there is no single point of failure. Work is spread out. It is literally like a factory making machines or cars and the machines are deployed like equipment in a factory.

6. The bank talks about being transparent to customers about technology. Can you expand upon just what that means and why customers should care?

We are transparent to our customers through our processes and technology. This is to make sure that given our lack of experience - we have only seven years of history - we don’t mess things up for the customer.  Everything about the customer that we know, the customer knows and is able to see. When they execute transactions, they do so under their own control. We remove the possibility that one of us makes a mistake.

7. Can you tell me a story of how the Shinsei system greatly benefited a customer that could not have occurred without your Internet-based system?

Let’s look at how we have grown, what our customers think of us. We have over 2 million new customers, over $50 billion USD in new assets in just seven years. Remember, we have only 30 branches in all of Japan. We could not have done this without the type of technology we deployed.

We have a large automaker for whom we process auto loans. Two years ago they were very unhappy with our service quality and were ready to walk out. By leveraging the methods and techniques we were able to deliver a completely new capability that delighted them in just six months. They have now asked us if we would be willing to work with them in other countries. That is the kind of impact we have achieved.

8. What lessons are there at Shinsei for other technology officers in other enterprises worldwide?

Technology officers would do well to read the HBR article I mentioned to get an idea of our methods and adopt them. They can simplify greatly the problem they are trying to solve and get tremendous speed and cost advantages.

We are working with leading educational institutions to codify our methods and offer them as part of their courses. I must point out that what we do is not new. We have used industrial engineering techniques used for decades in manufacturing and applied them to the service industry.

9.    This interview is part of my survey on social media’s impact on culture and business. I   could not help but notice there is no social media component to your story. Will there be in the future? Would you not want to use social media as banks like Wells Fargo in the US do to get closer to customers and build community?

Our model is one of being highly conservative and of being where the customer is and where they want us, when they want us.

We have tried to create that model where you can call us on the phone, or you can walk over to any of our centers. Everything that you can do in person you can do over the Internet. Everything is available on all the channels. We don’t have a physical community space because we basically believe, “We will be where you are.” 

As I said, our customer sessions are highly interactive where the customer is in full control of his or her own account in all its dimensions. It’s almost as if they were moving behind the teller’s desk, to locate their ledger while they are doing their transactions. We wrap the bank as well as the technology around the customer, whether at home or on the telephone, or when they come into any of our physical centers. Technology is focused around one customer, repeated 2 million times. 

SAP Global Survey: Richard Boly, US Embassy, Rome

Using Social Media to Spawn Italian Entrepreneurialism            

               

Richard Boly and I worked together in the early 1980s at Regis McKenna, Inc., Silicon Valley's legendary PR firm. I was impressed with both his intelligence and passion, but I was not surprised when he decided that PR was not for him and decided to return to college where I lost track of him sometime around 1985. Then, in 2006, out of the blue he emailed me. He had stumbled across Naked Conversations and was startled to find my name on the cover.

It turns out Richard became a career diplomat for the US State Department back in 1994. In the time since he and I had smiled and dialed for Silicon Valley clients, served in the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, Paraguay, Italy, and Washington, D.C., where he worked on U.S.-EU economic issues.  He is the most junior diplomat to win the Cobb Award for commercial diplomacy. 

Between his PR stint and his diplomatic career, Richard was fairly diverse in his activity, starting a shrimp hatchery in Ecuador, consulting the Inter-American Development Bank, and raising money for charities.

When Richard found me he was serving in the US Embassy in Rome, where he was focused on entrepreneurialism for Italians. I remember him telling me over drinks, when we got together in Palo Alto, CA, " Italy is the most charming place on earth, but it's like living in a museum. Italians need new opportunities. They need to be closer to Silicon Valley and technology. He invited me to visit the US Embassy in Rome and speak with entrepreneurs. It has remained one of the great honors of my post-authorship career.

Richard serves now as the Coordinator of the Partnership for Growth, answering directly to the respected US ambassador, Ronald P. Spogli. In this role, he has, according to multiple sources, contributed significantly to Italian entrepreneurialism. In that capacity, he is also likely to be the person who has instigated more social media programs than any other diplomat. None of them is designed to extoll the virtues of the US. All are designed to facilitate conversations that will help Italian entrepreneurs.

Here are his answers to my questions.

1. Can you briefly describe to me your duties under Ambassador Spogli at the US Embassy?

I work full-time on the Partnership for Growth (P4G), which is an initiative of Ambassador to Spogli, and the U.S. Mission in Italy to spur economic dynamism here.  We are attempting to:

1) Move research to market;
2) Grow risk capital markets;
3) Spur innovation by strengthening the intellectual property rights (IPR) regime; and
4) Create and promote Italian entrepreneurial role models. 

What is really unique about P4G is our creative use of new media tools such as blogging, interactive video webchats, BarCamps, LinkedIn, and even the cutting edge video conferencing technology of the Italian company TVBlob.  This approach has allowed us to create a nationwide network of like-minded individuals and groups in less than two years. They help form the backbone of a developing Italian new venture ecosystem. It has also allowed us to carry our message unfiltered directly to the Italian people.

Even more amazingly, we have achieved this during a period when the U.S. “brand” has been under significant negative pressure, especially among our target audience – young Italians. 

2. Why should the U.S. Embassy care about economic growth in Italy?

The simple answer is: enlightened self-interest.

We have no better ally and partner than Italy. Their economic development is in our mutual interest. Italy’s economy has grown at an average annual rate of less than 1 % in recent years.  We risk having a great partner with the experience and capacity to join us to address future challenges without the economic resources to bring to the table. 

We don’t have all the answers.  Entrepreneurial ecosystems in America have evolved through trial and error, not some grand master plan. We share what we hope will be helpful.

P4G has taken a bottom-up, grassroots approach to promote an ecosystem that supports high-growth scalable ventures. We also try to avoid  bureaucratic inefficiency and a slow legal system.  These issues require a political consensus and more years than Ambassador Spogli has in his tenure in Italy.

3. How, when and why did P4G get started?

Soon after his arrival in 2005, Ambassador Spogli organized an offsite for his senior leadership team to identify long-term, strategic goals for the subsequent three years.  He challenged us to look beyond our daily work and identify “Big Hairy Audacious Goals” worth pursuing. P4G was a key goal coming out of it.

We believe the P4G has created something in short supply in Italy: optimism.  A 2004 Pew Research Center survey asked a simple question of both Americans and Italians: “Does success depend on factors outside of your control?” 

Barely a third of Americans said yes, while fully two-thirds of Italians said yes.  We Americans believe we are masters of our fate. This is an essential element of entrepreneurial risk-taking.  Such optimism is in short supply in Italy, where all-too-often, private actors wait for the government to make the first move, before risking their own capital.

4. And just what did P4G accomplish in the three years since that meeting?

Here's a whole laundry list:

• Fulbright BEST Silicon Valley Immersion Program. Top Italian science graduate students interested in entrepreneurship spend six months in Silicon Valley. They take a crash course in entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University and then joining a high-growth company in their field of expertise.
• Angel Investor Boot Camp.  Twenty prospective angel investors spent two days with the Golden Angel Network based at Marquette University, and two days at the Kauffman Foundation in Kansas City.  The learning and bonding that occurred led to the quick formation of the Italian Angels for Growth, a Milan based network that makes seed investments in Italian start-ups.
• Face2Face: Capturing Creativity [link in Italian].  This innovative, interactive video web chat allows students and budding innovators and entrepreneurs to watch live interviews with successful Italian entrepreneurs. Another Italian entrepreneur, who draws out the guest’s story, conducts the interview weaving questions from viewers, sent real time over the web. These live interviews are maintained as podcasts. The program has been well-received, with professors in nearly a third of all Italian universities weaving this program into their curricula.
• Deep-dive visits by serial entrepreneurs and tech transfer gurus. We’ve hosted nearly a dozen U.S. tech transfer experts and serial entrepreneurs who have shared information and strategies on the medical device, biotech, and pharma sectors.  We also joined with the Kauffman Foundation to allow researchers to easily share their innovations. We hope Italy will be the first location outside of North America to participate in iBridge.

5. Tell me more about Face2Face.  Was it the first online video program started by the US State Department? What has been the result?

Face2Face [Italian] is a video webchat “network” developed by our Public Affairs team in Embassy Rome.  The most prolific user of this network has been “Capturing Creativity. “ The real innovation of Capturing Creativity is that it is unrehearsed, unscripted and the host and guest are Italians only loosely affiliated with the Embassy.  We provide the platform, chose the guests, but otherwise let the Italians shape the discussion. 

This program has helped build both virtual and real communities on entrepreneurship. By the end of June, we will have nearly 30 hours of quality interviews with first-generation Italian entrepreneurs. I believe that this is the best existing Italian language web content on entrepreneurship.

6. Marco Marinucci, a Silicon Valley Google executive, has started Mind the Bridge.  What does the US Embassy Rome have to do with that?  What’s your personal role?

I first spoke to Marco Marinucci in late September 2007 and discussed his vision for the Mind the Bridge business plan competition.  It was a no-brainer to give Marco the full support of P4G and I urged him to speed up his launch so finalists could be announced at a high profile January 2008 Silicon Valley reception at which Ambassador Spogli would speak. We recruited great partners in Italy (First Generation Network) and Silicon Valley Business Association Italy America  (BAIA) and Silicon Valley Italian Executive Council (SVIEC). 

Mind the Bridge was launched in late November with a great social media publicity blitz.  (What do you expect from a guy who works at Google!)  We printed pocket-sized publicity cards and distributed them at universities around Italy.  We urged university professors to promote the competition among their most innovative students.  Ambassador Spogli taped a promotional video that ran on the Mind the Bridge website. 

In barely four weeks, Mind the Bridge attracted nearly 50 applicants.  Marco, BAIA and SVIEC assembled an A-team of Italian and Italian-American entrepreneurs and VCs to evaluate the submissions and chose the six finalists.  The finalists were teamed up with mentors in Italy.  Mentors will help the finalists polish their business plan and hone their elevator pitch. The Mind the Bridge finale will be public presentations by the finalists in San Francisco on April 1 (no joke!).  That same week, finalists will meet with potential investors or business partners in Silicon Valley.

7. Could you tell me about First Generation Network?  Are you involved in that as well?

First Generation, like Face2Face, grew out of a dinner I had in Milan in December 2007.  When I first met Marco Palombi, I was blown away.  I didn’t know that there were young serial entrepreneurs like him, because I hadn’t met any in Rome.  Marco said that Milan was different and so when I first visited Milan, I asked Marco to get some serial entrepreneurs together for dinner.  That night, I met Michele Appendino, who founded one of Italy’s few venture funds and who now is investing in the solar space.  I also met Gianluca Dettori, who as the head of Vitaminic was the youngest CEO of an Italian publicly traded company.  He now is investing in and mentoring a group of Italian start-ups – kind of like an angel investor on steroids. I met Massimiliano Pellegrini, who grew through the roof of Dada USA’s mobile phone content sales. 

This group observed that US entrepreneurs are treated as rock stars, while in Italy, they remain unknown. We talked about how the “young entrepreneurs” group within Confindustria (the national association of employers) had few 1st generation entrepreneurs, but were mostly the young scions of old money.  We lamented mainstream media’s unwillingness to help distinguish in the public’s mind between first generation entrepreneurs, who risk their money and reputation on a new venture, and the sons of self-satisfied incumbents, who devote more time to protecting their rice bowl than innovating.

I recounted the many conversations we had had with young Italians and the many blank looks we received when we asked them which Italian entrepreneurs were their role models.  Not only did they not have Italian role models, they couldn’t name any young Italian entrepreneurs.

I expressed my view that in achieving social change, sharing the experiences of pioneers representing the change sought is crucial.  If young Italians could see that people, just like them, had risked and succeeded (or failed, but had gone on to risk again and succeed), we could spread the acceptance of entrepreneurial risk taking.  I used the simple analogy of a packed beach on a hot summer day.  If you arrive and see no one in the water, you’ll wonder what’s the matter – sharks, jellyfish, razor coral. But when you arrive there are lots of people in the water, you’ll jump right in.   We needed to get the message out that Italy’s entrepreneurial waters were inviting and safe.

Marco and Michele began to recruit fellow first generation entrepreneurs to join the new organization, the goal of which was to provide entrepreneurial role models and mentor the next generation of entrepreneurs.  First Generation Network publicly launched in June 2007 at a “entrepreneurs’ summit” held at Ambassador Spogli’s residence.  In addition to Ambassador Spogli, luminaries who spoke to the gathering of 80 young entrepreneurs include: Andrew Viterbi, co-founder of Qualcomm; Carl Schramm, President of the Kauffman Foundation; Giacomo Marini, co-founder of Logitech; Alberto Sangiovanni Vincentelli, Berkley Professor and co-founder of Cadence and Synopsys; Renato Soru, Governor of Sardinia and fouder of Tiscali; and Minister for Innovation Nicolais.  You can watch the event (all in Italian, except for Schramm) on the web. 

Being in the vanguard has at times been frustrating for First Generation Network.  For example, the leading business daily, Il Sole/24 Ore, recently did a two-page spread asking questions of eleven Italian innovators.  Six of the eleven were 1Gen members, but 1Gen was never mentioned in the article!  Frankly, the relationship with the Embassy has also presented challenges.  As I mentioned before, “dietrologia” or divining the “real” truth is core to the Italian press and First Generation Network has not been immune to such creative interpretation.

8. Are other US Foreign Service posts involved in entrepreneurship? Do they use social media? What advice do you have for them in that area?

Yes.  The State Department and other government agencies such as the Commerce Department have programs to support entrepreneurship overseas.  Some of the most noteworthy include: Middle East Entrepreneur Training as part of The Middle East Partnership Initiative; the Economic Empowerment in Strategic Regions – an inter-agency initiative led by the State Department; the Partnerships for Promoting the African Entrepreneur; and the Enhanced Partnership in Northern Europe (e-PINE), and the Department of Commerce’s Program for Entrepreneurial Growth.  Also, the State Department “America.gov” website highlights Entrepreneurship in its “Achieving growth through open markets.”

Partnership for Growth is unique in that it is a systemic initiative born out of the U.S. Mission Italy, based on dozens of consultations with experts in both Italy and the United States.  The P4G itself is a bottom up initiative, with elements of our Embassy in Rome and our Consulates in Florence, Milan, and Naples, weaving together literally hundreds of activities that support the four key P4G pillars outlined in question one.  We have also identified and in some cases help create like-minded Italian organizations that help multiply our efforts.

9. I am conducting this interview under sponsorship from SAP, a global software company.  Of what relevance should these entrepreneurial and social media programs be to them or any other enterprise?

The simple answer follows from the rationale for the Partnership for Growth: an economically strong, dynamic, and open Italy will be a good place to do business.  Italy is a founding member of the G-7, so its economy makes up an important part of the world economy.  Since increasingly, global companies bring innovation in from the outside through acquisition, a more dynamic new-venture ecosystem in Italy will offer fertile new ground to acquire new innovation.  A more dynamic Italian economy will also increase the demand for new technologies and services.

10. Several Italian entrepreneurs have either moved to the US, announced intentions of doing so or have based their businesses in the US.  Do you think programs such as you have started might stem the outflow of young tech talent from Italy to the US?

We hope the P4G will help create an ecosystem in Italy that will support young Italian entrepreneurs.  We have no interest in furthering the Italian brain drain, and in fact, the visa our Fulbright BEST scholars receive as part of the Silicon Valley Immersion Program require them to return to Italy at the end of the six-month program. 

We understand there are many models to building a new venture ecosystem, an exciting one for Italy being the Israeli approach.  A decade ago, U.S. VCs were not beating a path to Israeli entrepreneurs’ doors, so entrepreneurs from Israel moved their front offices closer to Sand Hill Road, while keeping their technical teams back home.  This lead to a rash of Israeli IPOs and VCs decided it was a good idea to open up offices in Israel to access the source of this entrepreneurial spirit.

There are a few examples of Italian companies taking this tact, something the Partnership for Growth has supported.  Media Lario is one.  Funambol, the open source software company that allows you to push your Outlook files to your mobile phone i.e. doing what a Blackberry does, has its software developers in Pavia and its corporate offices in Redwood City.  We hope by developing linkages between Silicon Valley and Italian entrepreneurs, that we can spark more such ventures.

SAP Global Survey: Michael Krigsman of IT Failures

Using Social Media to Rearrange the Deck Chairs         

       

I met Michael Krigsman because I was cold.

I had flown to Boston in December and to paraphrase Tony Bennett, I left my coat in San Francisco. I Twittered about how most parts of me were chilled to the bone. Mike showed up at my hotel presenting me with a bright blue down filled ski jacket, which he insisted I keep. We had a drink and talked and became instant friends.

That did not mean we would always agree. Back in January, he interviewed me for his Naked IT podcast-blog series on ZDNet and we discovered we had a decidedly different views of the role of IT in the social media future of the enterprise.

Topically, he is a most worthy adversary, a well-recognized expert on enterprise-related IT issues. In addition to being author of the respected ZDNet blog IT Failures: Rearranging the Deck Chairs, he is CEO of Asuret, Inc., a software and consulting company dedicated to reducing software implementation failures.  Michael is also  CEO of Cambridge Publications, which specializes in developing tools and processes for software implementations and related business practice automation projects. He has worked with more than 100 companies on IT-related matter including this project's sponsor, SAP.

Mike gave me my turn to describe my minimalist view of IT's role on social media related issues. This is his turn to respond. On close examination, I still disagree, but on fewer matter than I thought would be the case.

1. You are best known as the "IT Project Failures" guy. So tell me, what are the leading causes of those failures? Do you think social media could somehow reduce those failures? How so or why not?

IT failures are generally caused by management errors in human, rather than technical systems. Poor judgment, dysfunctional organizational politics, and bad planning are far more likely to cause a major project failure than a database failure, for example. The high profile failures that hit the newspapers, or that I blog about, generally arise as the culmination of many bad decisions strung together over time.

Large software implementations typically involve three parties: the customer, the software vendor, and the consulting services supplier. Considering this complexity, and the sometimes-conflicting agendas that result, the high rate of IT project failures becomes less surprising.

Can social media reduce project failures? To the extent social media improves an organization’s communication and decision-making abilities, it will also improve project success rates. Social media is not a magic bullet, but represents an organization’s commitment to streamline communication, share knowledge, and work more effectively as a team. These are characteristics of both healthy organizations and successful IT projects.

2. As you know, I have a minimalist view of IT's role in social media adoption.  Back in January, you seemed to disagree. Please express your perspective and explain why I am seeing it wrong.

When an individual downloads and uses Twitter or Skype (assuming the corporate firewall doesn’t prevent it), IT does not generally play a role. But suppose a big company wants its employees to adopt Twitter in a large-scale manner, and really use social media in day-to-day activities across the organization? Although technical management and IT infrastructure planning present their own challenges, merely making software available does not mean users will actually adopt it.

More significantly, the organization must define “rules of engagement” that encourage users to embed social media in their day-to-day work. From this perspective, planning the diffusion of social media through an organization is little different from planning a  traditional enterprise software implementation. Without proper change management, training, documentation and so on, social media becomes yet another under-utilized tool sitting on a server. The annals of IT failures are filled with cases of software that was purchased, deployed, and never fully used. Social media is not immune.

Coordinated deployments of social media across a large enterprise look and behave like any other enterprise software implementation. In both cases, IT and the business are essential partners in making the deployment successful. As with IT failures in general, the success of social media deployments depend more on human, rather than technical, systems and planning.

3. You’ve said social media can “flatten” IT. What do you mean by that?

There’s no doubt that individual users can circumvent IT far more easily with social media than with larger enterprise software. If an individual wants Twitter, for example, he or she can just install it, which is obviously not the case with large enterprise systems such as SAP. Social media puts power into the hands of individuals and that power ultimately comes at the expense of centralized IT departments.

In my Naked IT interviews with Ed Yourdon (author of 27 books and 550 articles, many covering IT processes that can lead to failure) and JP Rangaswami (who functions more or less as CIO of British Telecom), they each described the history of IT as “protector” of centralized computing resources. Social media is a force in the opposite direction.

4. Is this flattening good or bad for large enterprises?

In the short-term, this flattening can create disruption and confusion which are hardly positive qualities. At the same time, IT needs to change and if social media can help bring positive movement, then it’s ultimately beneficial.

It’s time for IT to leave the ivory tower and become part of the decision-making culture of the business. The entire notion of IT as being somehow separate, or having independent goals from, the non-technical parts of an enterprise is absolutely ridiculous.

I don’t want to paint this as being entirely the fault of IT – many senior business executives don’t fully understand how IT processes function, nor do they completely grasp the ramifications that technical decisions can have on non-technical business strategies. To the extent social media empowers users, and helps non-technical senior executives recognize the impact of technology on their business, it becomes a powerful positive change agent.

5. What role do you see for IT management in corporate adoption of social media tools and programs?

IT should be an equal partner supporting the acquisition, adoption, and diffusion of social media through an organization. Strategic business computing decisions, including social media issues, should reflect the involvement of three groups: end-users, business management, and technical management. In my opinion, IT should partner with, but not drive, social media programs. To the extent that social media programs are business-based, meaning their core function is providing non-technical benefits to users, then sponsorship should lie in the business domain. In this respect, social media is a business initiative like any other, and should be treated as such.

6. Is it your perception that social media poses a threat to enterprise security? How would you say IT should deal with that threat?

In my opinion, social media has the power to bypass many well-established enterprise security systems and IT is right to be concerned. On the other hand, some argue that existing technical security protocols are sufficient and that social media is really no different from other software already deployed in the enterprise.

From an information risk standpoint, however, I believe organizations must create policies that reflect the reality of social media. Remember, these tools are all about information sharing. If the enterprise does not want information to be shared, whether due to privacy, competitive, or regulatory concerns, then appropriate policies should be instituted.

As software evolves, information sharing policies must also evolve. When I blogged that “Twitter is dangerous” lots of people came out swinging. I suspect some of those who argued were primarily concerned about possible chilling effects on social media, rather than looking at the issue on its merits.

7. Do you see a strategic importance to social media in the enterprise? Do you believe it is an efficient way for customers and companies to come closer together? Why would IT oppose that?

Any tools, techniques, or processes that dramatically improve communication and information sharing will be strategic to the enterprise. It’s not about tools, per se, but about helping people work together more efficiently, and more intelligently, to accomplish meaningful results more easily.

Your book, Naked Conversations, argued that removing intermediaries between an enterprise and it constituents benefits both parties. When direct communication between groups increases, both sides tend to move closer together, assuming a desire to remain in relationship. It’s the same with businesses and their customers, employees, investors and so on. Is closer communication between these groups strategic? I think so.

On the other hand, if IT tries to interfere with new methods of communication between e