Lon Safko accepts a limited number of speaking engagements annually to share his stories of how shifting your perspective can lead not only to greater innovation, increasing your bottom line, but also helping humanity.

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Executive Interviews
Expert Insights
A special thank you to all of those who have participated in the Expert Insights, Executive Conversations. These podcast conversations with industry giants has brought an incredible array of fascinating insights. We added quite a few new names to the already impressive list of participants for you to listen to.

One interesting conversation I recorded this week was with Mark Kingdon, the CEO of Linden Labs, the creators of Second Life virtual world. In addition to the great conversation was that it took place in Second Life; in The Social Media Bible Garden. This interview actually made CNN News this week. Check out the podcast, video, and great photographs of that event.

Please take a moment to listen to these amazing people as they share their incredible industry insights. Conversations since the last update:

• Peter Booth Wiley, Chairman of the Board, of John Wiley & Sons Publishing
• Mark Kingdon, CEO, Linden Labs, Second Life Virtual World
• Adam Broitman, Crayon Marketing, Director of Strategy and Ringleader
• Biz Stone, Cofounder, Twitter
• George Strompolos - Content Partnerships Manager For YouTube
• Jody Gnant - Livecaster, Community Marketing, & Musician
• John Pollard - Founder & CEO of Jott
• Kakul Srivastava, General Manager of Yahoo!’s Flickr
• Francine Hardaway - Founder of Stealthmode Partners
• Michael Gerber - Author of “The E-Myth” And Entrepreneur Advocate
• Patrizio Spagnoletto, Senior Director of Marketing Yahoo! Search Marketing
• Rishi Chandra - Product Manager For Google Enterprise
• Stephanie Ichinose - Director Of Communications For Yelp

The Complete List of Conversations

Absolutely amazing, thank you!

The SMB Book Cover
Final Design (Almost)
The SMB book cover design is nearly complete. JW&S’s creative department has chosen a high-end silver-metallic cover stock with neon yellow-green accents. The only remaining design element yet to be decided on is the image / logo.

If you have an idea for what type of image should represent The SMB book, please suggest it. If your idea is chosen you will be given design credit in the book!

Contributors
Still Available
There are still some opportunities to contribute and participate in The SMB. I am looking for a few individuals who can provide expertise in an interview and with technical edits in: Social Networks, Web Page Design, Forums, Blogs, Wiki, Photo Share, Audio Share, Livecasting, Virtual Worlds, Gaming, Applications, Aggregaters, RSS, SEO, Mobil, and Interpersonal.

So if you have any of these expertise or know someone who does, please contact me and participate in The Social Media Bible!

Thank you all again for your contributions, participation, and support!

Lon Safko - The Voice Of Soical Media

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Every corporation both large and small will have to engage in social media sooner or later. Those that wait will be left behind by their competition.

Blendtec is famous for its bevy of inexpensive “Will It Blend” videos posted on YouTube and shared by millions.

Adobe maintains a list of interesting company related websites and conversations on the social bookmarking site Delicious.Best Western sponsors a blog,“On the Go with Amy,” where the author travels the country writing about her experiences.

Cadence recently relaunched its website that now prominently promotes the company’s community.

Cisco hosts 12 blogs addressing a variety of audiences for their global business.

Coca Cola Conversations is a blog written by company historian Phil Mooney that focuses on Coke collectibles.

Dell leverages a variety of social media platforms for customer engagement, including an island in the virtual world of Second Life.

Ford publishes news releases with lots of multimedia content and employs a social media news release format to display them in their newsroom.

Fujifilm recently launched a social network to build a community of photo enthusiasts around its newest camera.

GM uses blogs to communicate directly with its customers around topics ranging from design to green tech.

H&R Block created a Facebook fan site to aggregate its social media activities, engage customers and offer tax advice/resources.

HP used Twitter to power a scavenger hunt at a recent conference.

HSBC built the HSBC Business Network Most-Networked-Executives to connect entrepreneurs using blogs, videos and forums.

IBM was the first large enterprise to embrace employee blogging and now boasts thousands of blogs related to every facet of its business.

Intel has also developed many social media touch points with its software communities, which includes blogs, Twitter and virtual worlds.

Intuit sponsors the Tax Almanac wiki, where anyone can find and contribute to this resource for tax information.

Jeep connects with customers via a community page with links to photos on Flickr, the company’s MySpace and Facebook pages and a list enthusiast groups.

JetBlue employs social media as part of its training for JetBlue Airline-Mergers University, as this video explains.

Johnson & Johnson uses this blog to show another side of the company, with frequent video posts and interviews.

Lenovo launched “Voices of the Olympics Games” to aggregate posts from the athletes competing in Beijing.

Marriott CEO Bill Marriott An-Interview-With-Ian-Schrager posts regular updates and stories from his travels to Marriott properties around the world to fuel the content for this entertaining blog.

McDonalds maintains a blog to highlight the company’s corporate social responsibility Forget-Social-Responsibility Jan-08 efforts.

National Geographic uses Google’s new virtual world, Lively, to bring people together around its new show, LA Hard Hats.

New York Times is beta testing a Firefox add-on that allows users to share and comment on stories through a decentralized social network.

Nike started a social community on Loopd to connect athletes interested in surfing, BMX bike racing and similar activities with the brand.

SAP sponsored a global survey of social media professionals to learn more about social media worldwide.

Sears partnered with MTV to create a social network around Back to School shopping.

Southwest Airlines employees share their stories and communicate directly with customers through the “Nuts About Southwest” blog.

Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz’s blog is the example most often cited for what the CEO blog can be.

Starbucks started MyStarbucksIdea so that customers can submit ideas for the company which are then voted on by other users, the best of which will be implemented by the company.

Toyota started its own virtual world to promote its products in Japan (site is in Japanese).

Visa launched The Visa Business Network application on Facebook to connect small business users and to help them promote their businesses to a larger community.

Wells Fargo blogs target two audiences; one examines the company’s history and the other is for students interested in getting their finances in order.

WWE has a Facebook application The-New-Faces-at-Facebook , among other social networking tools and widgets, to bring fans closer to the action.

Xerox blogs address several of the company’s core B2B constituencies.

Zappos uses Twitter for employees to communicate with Zappos customers about their shared love of footwear.

Note: I received this via email and cannot find the original source. If someone knows it, please comment so I can give proper credit and links.

Lon Safko

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Botanicalls

Everything you need is listed on their web site. All you need is a DYI moisture sensor, an Arduino electronic board and either an old Blackberry or laptop with internet access. They provide the computer code download which allows your plant to communicate directly with you through Twitter, the extremely popular microblogging service.

Botanicalls code will allow your plant to Twitter or “Tweet” you when:

• The moisture level of the plant’s soil drops below the satisfactory threshold, it will send a status update that your plant needs to be watered.
• The soil moisture drops below a critical level the plant will Twitter your with the message that it is urgently in need of watering
• There is a rapid rise in soil moisture detected as a watering event. The plant will then determine if the soil moisture has risen to the desired level for a proper watering. If it has, then it will twitter its thanks.
• A watering event occurs, but the soil moisture has not reached the desired level, the plant will send you a tweet that it was watered, but not sufficiently. And,
• A watering event occurs, but the plant was not in need of water yet, the plant will twitter to complain that it is being over watered.Imagine, now you can get continuous complaints from your plants that you aren’t paying enough attention to them…

Imagine… Your house plants can now complain there aren’t getting enough attention

Lon Safko

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The project is now finally underway with John Wiley & Sons to produce the largest book ever written on Social Media, called The Social Media Bible.

The book contains three parts; the first part is an overview of all of the social media components and their history. The third part is how to apply social media to a company to increase revenues. And, the middle part, a reference which is the largest part, are profiles on all of the social media participating companies. Companies like Jott, WordPress, Twitter, Yahoo!, and LinkedIn will be represented in this huge directory / reference bible.

We want every company that has contributed in any way to the Social Media Ecosphere included! I need help finding and contacting all of them! I don’t want to miss a single one. Let’s put the value of our own trusted networks to work.

PLEASE, text, twitter, Jott, blog, call, and email this to everyone you know! We want every Social Media technology that should be in the guide, in the guide!

This is the link to the on-line form where each company can input their basic information for the profile: http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=2mVrAUTbTEzoikD3ecPEiA_3d_3d

The initial web site has only just been set up and is really under construction. This site can be found at http://www.TheSocialMediaBible.com, and my background is at http://www.LonSafko.com.

If you have any questions whatsoever, please contact me at lonsafko@lonsafko.com.

Please, help us to be sure that everyone is included.

Thank you!

Lon Safko & David Brake

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On Saturday afternoon, March 15th, I was one of the guests of honor at this year’s American Cancer Society’s Relay For Life. The event was like many other events I have attended in the past. The room was a modern elegant theater style auditorium, the podium was strategically set on a lavishly decorated stage with large screens at either end of the stage. While I sat in one of the many comfortable director chairs set on the stage for the guests and speakers, I could see my partner Linh Tang and several of our designers sitting in the audience. I could hear the D.J.’s background music playing one of my favorite Beatles songs, and the M.C. at the mic repeating the infamous pre-show “testing, testing, testing”, sound check mantra.

I watched the nearly 400 attendees filing and flying into the theater rushing to find just the right seat with the best view of the stage; and that’s when it happened. I heard someone yell, “I think were crashing! We’re going down!”. At that very moment, everyone froze; literally. The number of attendees (or avatars), exceeded SecondLife’s computer capacity and we crashed their servers. Second Life was down…

Once everyone quit-out and restarted SecondLife, we were all back in our seats where we left off as if nothing ever happened. The M.C. assured us all that everything was how O.K. and we would begin our ceremony shortly. He told us all that this turn out was even greater than last year’s celebration where the ACS raised more than $120,000 in donations for cancer research. He further announced that there were 82 teams totaling more than 1,200 Relay participants from around the globe. He went on to say that “With these numbers, this was the largest event in SecondLife ever and as SecondLife was the largest virtual on-line community, we were participating in the “largest virtual activity” in history!” With that the D.J. played “We Are The World”! Wow!

The reason for my attendance was to represent Paper Models, Inc., my three-dimensional advertising company that creates three dimensional paper models that replicate fictitious or actual objects and landmarks. Back in October of last year we worked with ACS to develop a paper model replica of their Memory Tree; which is the highlight of their ACS Island headquarters. There, you can meet survivors, patients, councilors, and care providers. You can also walk over to their Tree, click, and download your very own 3D Paper Model Memory Tree. That’s what we do, transition objects from the virtual world to real world often with embedded advertising, and we just did it again!

This year Steven Groves came up with the idea to create a Cancer Society Donation Kiosk Design Contest in Second Life. Virtual designers from around the world would compete in designing a donation kiosk that would be placed throughout SecondLife allowing people to donate Lindens (in-world dollars), to help fight cancer. The winner would win a combination of cash, gift certificates, and recognition.

While we thought there would be a dozen or so designer competing, 125 designers registered. 22 designs were chosen to compete by an international panel of judges of which I had the honor of being one. The 22 designs were displayed at the ACS Island headquarters and were voted on by the public narrowing the contestants down to just twelve. It was then the judges had the difficult decision to pick only one in each of two categories; high prim and low prim count. A prim being an individual element or graphic comprising every object in SecondLife. Paper Models would create a 3D paper model of the winning kiosk entry.

A week earlier I participated in the judging and a meeting that you just couldn’t image a few years ago. Myself, Estaban Graves (Steven Groves), my partner Linh Tang, several members of the judging committee, and representatives of ACS. We walked around looking at the entrants and discussed each of their virtues. We voted and chose a winner. Within moments, a beautiful young avatar walked up to us and introduced herself as the designer of the kiosk we just chose to win. How exciting! I was in Gilbert, AZ, Steve was in Scottsdale, Linh in San Diego, and the designer was from Orlando, FL. We were walking around and communicating with each other through verbal speech. It was as if we were in the same park even though we never left our respective offices from around the U.S.

Within a few moments of us meeting the kiosk designer, I was joined by other avatars who I didn’t recognize. When Ro Brandenburgh introduced himself, I quickly realized that these new additions to our meeting were our three designers who had many of our incredible paper model landmarks and school projects. What made this meeting of the avatars so exciting was, these three of our designers are in the Ukraine, the former Soviet Union! Although I have worked closely with them for more than a year, I have never actually met them or spoken with them. We communicate through email only.

Suddenly I was surrounded by all of the key players in this project from around the world; all in one place at the same time to meet, bond, exchange ideas, and work together as a team. It was truly amazing.

The ACS Relay For Life event turned out to be remarkable and memorable. There were speeches by survivors that were both heart wrenching and heartwarming. The awards were terrific, the music was great, and after there was networking and even virtual dancing to real live music.

I consider myself very fortunate to have been born at a time where I could meet with my employees from around the world without ever leaving my office. Where the first generation who only sees people and not color, race, or religion, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the disbanding of the Soviet Union, the affect Hong Kong is having on the Republic of China, the Euro, and even the global “Green” attitude. For the first time in my life I got to participate and watch other people from around the world come together to fight in a war, a war on cancer and not each other.

To download your free paper model of the SecondLife American Cancer Society’s Donation Kiosk, Please Click Here.

To download the Press Release, Please Click Here.

Please remember to donate to ACS’ Fight Against Cancer. It could just save your own life someday.

Lon Safko
Innovative Thinking

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