Social Media at EMC

Ever get the sense that something big was going to happen soon?

My spider sense has been tingling for the last six months, and it just keeps getting stronger.

Social media (blogs, wikis, forum, Second Life, et. al.) are collectively poised to transform many of the core business processes that underpin any large company, including EMC.

IBM has launched after this in a big (although strangely IBM-unique) way.  And many of our industry peers seem to be active as well.

And, for a variety of reasons, I seem to be standing somewhere near Ground Zero for social media at EMC.

Grass Roots Everywhere

I'm one of the early corporate bloggers for EMC.  This particular blog (warts and all) has been very successful on both a professional and personal level.  Way more than I could have ever hoped.

But there have been some interesting side effects.

First, many of us have gained a new appreciation for the potential power of social media.  An honest, straightforward discussion between motivated people is far more valuable than any amount of slick marketing.

More cost-effective, too ...

Second, I've been incidently exposed to dozens and dozens of nascent social media efforts across EMC.  Some are brilliant, some have the right idea but haven't thought through execution, and others are just random thoughts.

Never noticed them before, but now they're everywhere.

Third, I've been barraged by all sorts of boutique consultancies offering help in every detailed aspect of executing a social media strategy. 

That is, assuming we *have* a strategy.

You Do Have A Strategy, Don't You?

Yes and no.  We have one, but like all things, it could be better.  And I'm personally interested in getting involved.

Anyone who knows me knows I love doing strategy work.  I've ended up doing strategy in a very intuitive and personal way. 

Yes, we have all sorts of very smart analytical types who can create nice charts and taxonomies and ROI and ... well, that's not the essence of a strategy from my perspective.  People tell me that my strength is my intuition.  I guess that makes me a non-linear thinker in some regards.

I try and answer four basic questions:

1 -- what's the opportunity?
2 -- what do we have to do to get it?
3 -- how do we avoid the downside?
4 -- how do we differentiate yet remain true to our culture?

Sure, lots of nuance behind these questions, but these are the pillars of any strategy.

When I've got the answers to these questions, I try to package the results in memorable, easy-to-remember sound bites.  Rather than have big meetings with lots of people and powerpoint, I try and infect the organization with these memes in a viral fashion.

It's been pretty effective in the past.  Not perfect, but good enough to suit the purpose.

So, I think I'm beginning to have answers to all of these questions.  At least, preliminary answers.

Is This An Interesting Topic For This Blog?

I don't know.

In one sense, it's an extension of themes I've introduced before.  That we're all becoming knowledge workers.  That collaboration and non-linear workflows will dominate the high-value work landscape.

In another sense, it's kinda off-topic.  It isn't about technology, or customer engagements, or the IT industry, or trends, or industry competitors, or alliances, or anything else I've written about.

So, in the spirit of social media, what do you think? 

Would you be interested in a blog recounting the evolution of social media strategy at EMC -- even if you don't work for EMC?

Let me know -- thanks!

Comments

[MarcFarley]

Great topic Chuck. I've seen the way it works for my daughter and her friends. I used to think it was going to be a creep-fest with lurking weirdos, but its defintely not that. Social networking in a business or professional context could be very valuable as a way to gain confidence in one's opinions or concencus among a group of peers. I'd like to see what you are thinking.

[Julie Gibson]

Hi Chuck,
I am one of the people who looks after the Customer Support Forums which you discovered a few months ago. I also have a little wiki on the aspac web server, but its a very early style one and only a few of us make use of it.

I love that you've brought up this Social media topic, but it seems weird that its on this external blog and not internal. I don't know where to go with all my
ever growing concepts concerning this stuff. My words for it is knowledge networking (I work out of the Knowledge Centered Support team so its reasonable to have that sort of focus) All these new forms of web interactions could do so much to increase the way people withing EMC communicate, but we're depending on the people with some inbuilt interest having some access to tools. i could only put up a wiki because of the local happenstance here in North Ryde (Sydney Australia) - a lab, a helpful server admin person, a server already set up to be used locally with linux.

Working with the forums has made me a bit too aware of how far we will have to travel in bringing the broader EMC population along this path. there is an ever growing demand for EMC internal forums but a complete lack of understanding of how to make them work. That means rather a lot of empty shells.

I've been looking at ways to help but I only do the forums support as a part of my job as a technical writer for the knowledgebase. We need some concerted effort in this direction.

Would you like to join the forums steering committee? (That's just a bit of aussie humour)

Thanks for being there and being aware.

Julie

[Julie Gibson]

I just noticed your final question -

Would you be interested in a blog recounting the evolution of social media strategy at EMC -- even if you don't work for EMC?

YES

I'd be very be interested in HAVING a social media strategy, whether by evolution or revolution is fine with me.

[Julie Gibson]

Games and/or Secondlife (some dispute about whether this is a game or not)

In the spirit of team building across the miles I came up with the idea of running some games (Chess to start with so it wasn't too worrying) But I've essentially been told that This will not be allowed. Any comment?

The way I see it is that we encourage the off social event like playing football, but that requires everyone being in the same place at the same time. Many people at EMC play games out of hours why not have a few online events within teams to encourage a little more contact?

I'll go away now Chuck!

[Fred-san]

YES !!!!
Chuck, I always check for your blog (Ok, I'm not using RSS ... yet!) Your topics are insightful and give me further ideas for refinement. Social Media is an interesting area, especially if you look at it from the psychological sense as well as evolution of technology.

Best Wishes on the new blog.

[James]

Would love your commentary on http://wordofpie.wordpress.com/2007/07/20/ecm-standards-saml-and-the-dfc/

[Chuck Hollis]

Hi James:

Went and saw it; found it very interesting, but I don't think I have enough domain-specific context to comment one way or another. I suppose it goes on my ever-growing list of "cool discussions to go learn about". Thanks!