Be social and the networking will follow.

Oxymoron of the week: 'Let's incorporate social networking".  Just look at that sentence!Incorporate. Social. Like saying,  "Let's engineer some fun." I hear this sentence uttered a lot these days, in corridors, over pret-a-mangers and bento boxes. Everyone's trying to make up the creek with a better paddle, Twitter and Facebook being two of them. "Social Media Director" is the newest gig on deck. But Facebook and Twitter are not social networking. This I am certain of. They are merely tools we tenuously  by which to build off-line trust that will endure should they be compromised. It's already happened - witness the recent spate of fake FB friends telling you they're stuck in some far off country and need money wired urgently. And note what happens when your broadband connection craps out – you groan but basically get on with your offline life without dwelling in it because you have to. Fortunately, most of us can detect a spammer because spammers don't know how to talk to people. That's because they're not interested in people. They're only interested in themselves, what's in it for them.  They have the empathy of a hit and run driver. If you're a true social networker, you love and care about people who help themselves.  You naturally put self, and your immediate needs, second. You notice when a community member is sick, in need, or poised for an introduction. You will make that connection happen, before brushing your teeth. You are a catalyst. The real test – will your community rally to your side in times of real need?I work for a small, made-in-USA bicycle manufacturer in the Pacific Northwest. We were invited to exhibit in NYC. We simply didn't have the money to produce and ship a special fleet of demonstration bikes cross-country at short notice.The only thing I could do was turn to my community – my customers - and see who showed up. This was my plea: http://www.bikefriday.com/images/email/1604The result: a booth staffed entirely with customers displaying their own bikes. Customers took over the desk like staff, mingled with the public, telling them about their bike and how it had changed their lives. These customers  weren't company men, they were community men. It was clear that people responded to them as such, rather than keep a polite distance and avoid eye contact as we tend to do when exhibitors try to engage us at trade shows.

Here's what it looked likeLast night I attended a presentation on France by a customer who, as a secondary feature, traveled across on our product. I admit I found myself shifting  in my seat, sheepishly embarrassed at how he raved our product – thus keeping me in a job. A customer evangelist begets customer evangelists. I've also just returned from three weeks in Japan. There, I was amazed to discover how enthused our customers are about our bikes."We are true customer evangelists!"  said one couple, who rode a long way to be with us, on their matching  bikes. We've created our cult without  Facebook and Twitter (although we do have accounts there that I haphazardly update).  We did it with an old-fashioned, text-based listserve, we visit and homestay with our customers and we answer every email, one to one. The blogosphere doesn't need another forum of grunts, half-baked sentences and lazy emoticons promoting ambivalence to your life's work.  It just needs to be more social – genuinely social - and the networking will follow. The Galfromdownunder has returned from 2 months evangelizing in Asia where she sat back and let her customers do their darndest. More about that here.

Giving Thanks

Ask anyone on the street or in your office the last time they've heard so much as a real thank you from the boss. Oh sure, the boss may have said, "thanks" in passing. That is in passing the employee on the way out to lunch to meet a client. The employee is left wondering if his or her efforts were really worth it. Chances are they won't be raising their hand when the boss asks again for volunteers to stay late.

It's Thanksgiving and your employees know they should be thankful they have a job. Well I'm sure they are, but are they thankful you are their boss? Will a better boss be high up on their wish list this Christmas? I'm wondering if Santa will have enough to go around. Here's why. According to recent research from Delta Road, a Denver-based Career coaching firm, eighty-one percent of 700 employees surveyed classified their immediate supervisor as a "lousy manager."

What Makes Someone a Bad Boss? Delta Road's study found that the following were characteristics displayed by "bad bosses:"

* don't involve employees in decision-making

* don't buy into work-life balance

* flat-out rude to workers

* think intimidation is an effective management tool

* endorse the "my way or the highway" theory

* subscribe to the "churn and burn" management theory

* don't ask employees for their views or ideas

If that were your boss, would you still be thankful for the situation you are in? Don't bother looking for a quick fix. Becoming a good manager takes effort. Sometimes it's difficult to see how poorly you are doing until someone holds up a mirror and shows you what you really look like.

If you are working on your New Year's resolution list this Thanksgiving, be sure to add taking a deep look inside and asking others for feedback. You don't have to be a lousy boss. In fact, your people will be willing to stay with you if they see you are making an effort to improve. According to the survey, Seventy-seven percent of employees surveyed said they would seriously consider staying in their current position if their bad boss made an honest attempt at changing. Begin by thanking your employees for a job well done and don't forget to take them out to lunch every now and again.

Roberta

Roberta Chinsky MatusonPresidentHuman Resource Solutions413-582-1840Roberta@yourhrexperts.comwww.yourhrexperts.com http://www.yourhrexperts.com

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Leading in Social Media Monetization

There are not many people I sit around thinking about meeting. It's not that I have a super-elevated opinion of myself. It's more than I'm your average (or not so average) jaded New Yorker who has seen things and met some people. A lot of things and a lot of people.

There are not many people I sit around thinking about meeting. It's not that I have a super-elevated opinion of myself. It's more than I'm your average (or not so average) jaded New Yorker who has seen things and met some people. A lot of things and a lot of people.

But, as stalker-ish as it might sound ever since I started working in IT more than a decade ago, I've wanted to meet Anu Shukla.

She's the former CEO of Rubric (which was handily acquired for *cough$366millioncough* ) and now she's the Founder & CEO of Offerpal Media [Editor's note: Offerpal recently hired a new CEO and Anu Shukla has left the company], the leading company that makes it possible for social app developers to make more than a few bucks.

In short, this woman is my idol. (Ok, I don't really have idols, but you get what I mean.)

Listen to this interview as I try to sound cool and nonchalant about finally getting the opportunity to speak with her. We talk about the future of Offerpal, what's going on in the social space and, of course, monetization. The 22-minute interview starts as soon as you click...

P.S. Drop a line in the comments to give feedback on the interview.

Chrome OS Is Still Not an Attack on Windows

Google's OS was sneak peeked today at the Googleplex. The Wall Street Journal digital called it a "direct challenge to Microsoft Windows." Really? Let's clear up some confusion once and for all: Putting the word "OS" after something doesn't mean it's a shot at Redmond. (Screenshot below courtesy of Gizmodo.)

When we first heard about the Chrome OS this summer, I argued that it was destined for relatively simple embedded devices like kiosks. What we saw of Chrome today backs that hunch up.

According to the principals involved in the today's sneak-peek, the Chrome OS is being optimized for the devices that will pop up in between smartphones and laptops. This is, in fact, the only segment of the computing world that Windows doesn't serve. Right now, many netbooks run Windows XP, but are phasing out support for that version.

In a nice piece of cognitive dissonance, the WSJ reports: "Every [Chrome] application will be a Web application. There will be NO desktop apps. Chrome OS is essentially a browser with a few modifications. All data in Chrome OS resides in the cloud."

That's meaningful. Google is very good at Web apps, but even they cannot overcome the Web's restrictions. WebKit, the core rendering engine of Chrome, doesn't support multi-threaded JavaScript: That means any app you run in Chrome OS can only use one thread of the processor in your computer. Multi-threading is what makes apps like iTunes do so much work so breezily on Windows and Macs.

Using Web apps also limits what you can do with the hardware. That's one of the reasons that Chrome will be a "locked down" file system. As WSJ reports: "It's a read-only root file system... All user data is encrypted and all user data is synced to the cloud. Essentially, Google uses the PC for caching. Again, if you should lose your machine, you buy a new one, fire it up and it syncs with the cloud restoring your previous computing experience." Great for cheap (or apparently, disposable) computers, but not great if you want to, say, install a program that can burn DVDs.

Neither is Google convincing people to "ditch their hard drives" and store everything in the cloud, as Wired misleadingly argues. Think for a moment about how stupid this would be: As soon as you're out of range of WiFi or 3G, you lose access to most (if not all) of your stuff. Forget listening to your music on a plane, or watching a movie at your country house that gets crappy 2G reception. In fact, forget watching a movie at all, unless it has YouTube-level quality. Google knows you need local storage--that's why it's not letting you install Chrome OS on your home computer. It will be available only as a baked-in OS on low-cost netbooks.

To be clear, I'm not knocking Chrome OS--it'll be great for netbooks and other in-between devices--but it's just not meant to compete with Windows or the Mac. If anything, it might compete with an upcoming Apple Tablet or Microsoft's ailing Windows Phone OS. But Chrome OS is not going to be sitting on your desk at work. One possibility: It will veer in the direction of Linux development, as PC World argues.

Chrome OS is expected to debut in "about a year," says Google.

How to Win Business

Paul Venables, 30 Second MBA faculty-member and ad man, on what makes a company succeed and how a leader instills success.

I have an ad agency. It does great work. It's a fun place to work. Growth and revenue and new business wins are absolutely nothing more than a by-product of those two facts. Our approach to new business might seem a bit unconventional, but Fast Company asked me to share it anyway.

Don't do it for the money.* I don't know of a single creative person I respect who gets out of bed every morning to earn a paycheck. When things get tough, and that's the default mode in this business, particularly at this time, "the money" ain't going to pull you through. Better to make a reasonable fee working on something you genuinely have passion for than to make gobs on something you wouldn't shed a tear over if it fell off the planet. Because, if it's the latter, it will in fact eventually fall off your client roster. *Note: Good luck with this one if you're part of a holding company.

Don't do it for the creative opportunity, either. Sounds blasphemous coming from the Creative Director of a creative shop, I know. But I've been there. The creatives licking their chops thanks to some brand or product or category. Chasing a piece of business simply because it's a "creative opportunity" is dangerous business. Those magic quoted words have a way of rendering all other ills invisible. But a sexy product and a with-it brand cannot begin to compensate for a passionless, clueless or flat-out lazy marketer.

Do it for the people. The brand, category and product don't matter. The people across the table do. We need to feel a client's passion and energy. We know after they finish the meeting with us, they still have to run through the halls of their headquarters tearing down silos, championing the work and fighting off naysayers. We can't succeed without that ingredient. It also doesn't hurt to like them as people. When you're sitting in a dark edit bay at three in the morning, it helps to remember you're doing this because you believe in and care about the people you're working for.

Chemistry meetings cut both ways. Potential clients stroll into our offices for chemistry checks thinking they're doing all the checking. On the other side of the table, we're asking ourselves: Do we like these people enough to go into battle with them? Do we think their business model is sustainable? Have they made other changes in the organization necessary for success? Are they at all in denial? Do they understand what marketing can and can't do? Is there going to be a key decision maker who is not present? The result is, well, let's just say we say "no thanks" an awful lot.

Scare them. Be so honest about their business, their thinking, their assumptions that you put them back on their heels. A good client will appreciate being challenged in a thoughtful, earnest way, and you'll get to a better solution quicker. A bad one will fire up the bullshit generator and stick their fingers back in their ears.

One last thing. Oh, and then you simply have to have several brilliant strategic insights and a razor-sharp creative idea that you blow out to exploit every known medium. But that's the easy part. Finding the right people who will understand and appreciate it all is the bitch.

Paul Venables is part of the 30 Second MBA faculty, as well as the Founder and Creative Director of a hot independent west coast ad agency by the name of Venables Bell & Partners. Clients include Audi, HBO, Barclays, Intel, The Coca-Cola Company, ConAgra Foods, and ConocoPhillips. Prior to opening VB&P in 2001, Venables was Co-Creative Director, Associate Partner and heir apparent of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. By the end of his six plus years there he was running over $400 million in business and had won various and sundry industry awards for clients like Pacific Bell, Discover Card, Porsche, Bell Helmets, Nike, Polaroid, Netflix, HotBot, and SBC.