Category: social marketing (Page 8 of 47)
My take on Santa with help from the Internet of Things!
Millennials are those born between 1980 and 2000. (See my blog at http://socialbusinesssandy.com/2014/12/18/infographic-the-millennial-experience-why-it-is-important/ for a view of their characteristics which are very positive!)
Today I was flying back from California and read a report by MSL featured in Fortune. It found that Millennials are partnering with business for Social change, not government.
Some facts:
- 83% of millennials want business to do more to help the future
- 78% recommend companies base on the good they do
- 69% of employees want their companies to make it easier for them to get involved
Let’s join the Millennials in spirit and action!!! I know I am!
The Millennial Experience
themillennialexperience.weebly.com/
IBM Cloud
ibm.com/cloud
Last night I was at a holiday party, and my colleague asked me “what are you going to blog on tomorrow?” So I told him I didn’t know but as the night went on, and he asked me questions, he received a lot of value from a few simple learnings so I thought I’d share with you and hope I deliver value to you as well!
1. #IWillRideWithYou The tragedy that occurred in Sydney Australia broke my heart. But one thing that came out was a powerful and positive use of social media. After the tragedy, there were some women from certain faiths that were fearful about the repercussions to them. So a group started the hashtag that assured that “I will ride with you!” to support them. This use of social was a reinforcement that social is a positive force!
2. Social Selling. I was struck this week by 2 phrases that I heard from major Fortune 100 companies and start-ups. The first was that ABC is now not Always Be Selling but now it is Always be connecting. The second was your Networth is your Network. Powerful Tidbits!
3. Images are currency. Images have surpassed text as the currency of choice in social conversations. This week alone in numerous conversations I heard about how companies are using emojis, emoticons, and stickers as integral parts of their social media conversations. Have you heard of the Unicode Consortium ? I just learned about them and found over 200 new symbols. And from my techy meetings, I learned that emojis are “code”, not images, so metrics can be driven through textual tools.
What were your AHAs this week? Please share!
Early education is so important! That’s why I blogged recently about teaching binary code to toddlers (see my video blog post at http://socialbusinesssandy.com/2014/12/08/video-blog-teaching-binary-to-toddlers-is-it-important-for-all-to-code/). And I believe we should be encouraging kids of all ages to learn how to code and create software that serves a purpose.
What we learned recently is that if you combine pizza with Bluemix, what you get is a room full of students who are ready to create and deploy mobile apps!
At the IBM Innovation Center in Austin, we had 24 middle school and high school students, plus their parents, attend a Kids Code! event. The room was filled with eager students excited about creating their own web-based mobile apps! As they worked on their projects, hands would eagerly go up whenever the students had a question. Everyone was working patiently and diligently! And their parents were engaged, too, as they assisted and worked closely with their students to finish the coding task.
Every now and then, you could hear sounds of delight as students one by one were deploying their first mobile app! It was such a great learning atmosphere!
One of the more fascinating things was the tools each student would use to code with Bluemix. Some were using laptops, some using tablets, while others were using smartphones! I think that is so wonderful because these are the tools of today!
IBM will host more events like this around the globe. However, if you are interested in getting your student involved in coding now, there are great resources online to help you get started. Coderdojo, Code.org and Hour of Code are all great resources you can use to expose your student to the fun and creativity of coding! It might start a lifetime of software creation!
Helpful links:
Coderdojo -> https://coderdojo.com/
Code.org -> http://code.org/
Hour of Code -> http://hourofcode.com/us
This blog is my third on Internet of Things.
I began by discussing how the IOT is both like, and unlike, the Internet. It is critical that you focus on that which differentiates the IoT from the Internet and refineyour expertise, skills and partnerships to capitalize on those differences.
Then we discussed the innovators and the operators. There are two basic groups of IoT use cases. One is centered around enterprises and entrepreneurs looking to invent new IoT products or services, and the other focused on those looking to optimize their operations
The third concept I’d like to share is one that starts to create some level of relationship and hierarchy around technology. But really, this point is less about prioritization and more about understanding how the pieces of your infrastructure puzzle fit together to bring you the best big picture the IoT has to offer.
The IoT is the next concentric circle around the cloud. And of course, it is populated by things. But it’s also populated with people.
All the work we are doing now in the cloud, analytics and mobile is significant, and there is immediate business impact for all of it. And we typically have a very clear perspective on why we do it, how we justify the investment. And until now, the reason for why we have done it hasn’t been immediately focused on the IoT.
But the truth is, whether we know it or not, when we make those investments in cloud, analytics and mobile infrastructure, we’re laying the foundation for the IoT.
And that foundation work is vital, if often under appreciated, because everything else depends on the stability of that layer. Ask any architect, and she’ll tell you how important a solid foundation is to the overall integrity of the structure, to the whole. Everything else depends on it.
And we have evidence all around us that poorly established foundations will ultimately unsettle even the most beautifully designed architecture.
So when we build our Internet of Things, we must build it on a robust and highly secure foundation. In other words, we need to balance our focus on “things” with an equal focus on the people who use those things.
And if we don’t, we can expect the structure to ultimately crumble.
Without the right foundation, the right infrastructure, our Internet of Things is a house of cards waiting for a puff of wind to come along and rip it apart. But with a strong, stable foundation, we give our IoT structure the opportunity to stand straight and tall as a beacon for those that follow in our tracks.
Now where does all of this leave us today?
We must have the courage to undertake the journey, to be bold in our actions. (Yes, I did write a book called “Get Bold”) There’s no question that we’ll need to adjust course, optimize, iterate. We also know that we’ll need to have the right partners with the right level of expertise and experience and broad level of capabilities.
And we’ll need to keep moving down this path. And when there is no path, we must be willing and able to forge the way and blaze our own.
Because while the IoT is arguably defined, at least in part, by the new treasure troves of data now being generated and made available to us…
… it’s also certainly defined by a constant, unforgiving and irrefutable demand for innovation.
And the key today is that, as your competitors arrive at your milestone of innovation, you’ve already moved again. Because you never stopped innovating. You are, and must be, absolutely relentless in your pursuit of innovation.
We must all learn to translate this ever-growing global network of data and ideas and “things” into something that makes your business more profitable—and then make sure we’re in a position to accommodate it. Something that helps your city run more smoothly. Helps you save more lives. Helps us all answer that question, “why bother listening?”
So let me know your approach to IoT!!!
