Posts Tagged 'social media'



7 things you didn’t know about me

Not sure who came up with this idea to begin with, but I must say it has a nice touch to it. Usually, what you know about a blogger derives from his/her posts and About page. Getting to know the personal stuff (7 of them at least) makes the bond between the blogger and the readers stronger, and in my opinion, improves the conversation.

In case you haven’t heard of ‘7 things you didn’t know about me’, the rules are simple:
A person writes a post, with 7 things his/her audience didn’t know about him. At the end of that post he/she names 7 other people and leaving a comment on their blog, to let them know. And from there the wheel goes round and round. Shira Abel, a friend and fellow-blogger, tagged me in her note, so here are ‘7 things you didn’t know about me’:

1) I’ve been on driving (officially 😉 since the age of 16, got a Tractor license, and actually owned one. It was my vehicle for 18 months, driving to high-school and stuff, until I got my car permit. No, I didn’t take it Friday nights… 😉

2) Had Asthma when I was a kid, the changing seasons were a disaster for me – held an inhaler in my bag. Starting swimming and playing ball (see thing #6), which eliminated it completely.

3) In a relationship for 5 years now, with the most amazing woman whom I love, respect and admire, that had taught me so much about myself. She’s at the last year of her Ph.D studies in Clinical Psychology, 2nd year resident at a mental health center.

4) I’m a semi-farmer, born and raised at Kfar Azar, worked the field on the weekend with my dad and little brother. Until I moved out, never knew what’s it like to live in the city – guess that’s why I don’t fancy it so much now…

5) Bought my first bike (50cc) when I was 22 or 23, working at Tel Aviv – was the smartest way to commute. With the third (and last) bike, Kawasaki Ninja ZX-6R, I crashed heading back from the Dead Sea, after an IBM event. First thing I did was rush to the bike. Only afterwords I realized I had sprained my ankle…

6) I love playing basketball. Been playing since I was 10 or something like that, was part of the High-School team (Blich) and IBM team. Still playing twice a week with friends (but open to suggestions ;-).

7) Spent a year at the army (as an officer) with foreign citizens who came for a 11 weeks boot camp program – met some great people from around the world (Australia, UK, Latin America, USA, Canada), who were willing to drop all formalities (Dr., Ph.D, MBA Executives) – just to be bossed around for 11 weeks.

Those were my 7 things. Now it’s up to those people to follow (tagged people who haven’t been tagged before): Shooky Galili, Ido Kenan, Lior Sion, Efrat Kotler, Bruce Elgort, Rebecca Markowitz and Jonathan Burg.

Lotusphere 2009 – Now in Session !!

It’s happening people, started yesterday, throughout the week, IBM is holding its annual and largest Lotus event of the year – Lotusphere 2009. An estimate of 10,000 customers and business partners will attend the 16th Lotusphere, and I can guarantee some surprises and major announcements!!

The first one was announced 2 hours ago, at the Opening General Session, which you can follow, live, at the LotusphereBlog.com:
LotusLive.com (formely known as BlueHouse)
LotusLive provides essential collaboration services to simplify and improve your daily business interactions with customers, partners and colleagues. Work with people seamlessly inside and outside your organization and streamline communications. LotusLive helps you bring people and information together quickly and simply in an easy-to-use environment, designed with security in mind.


You can already head over to lotuslive.com and register for a free account, that would allow you to share and network with your colleagues, and even conduct live e-meetings with your network. I’m already there, look me up.


You can head over to the News section at Lotusphere.com, and learn of the new solution as they come available. If you’re an early adopter type of person, like me, head over to lotusphereblog.com, and learn first-hand – from public bloggers covering the event.

Or Yaacov, Editor at The People, is at Lotusphere, delivering live coverage of the event. You can catch his daily updates here.

Social media adoption – the IBM story

Last week I had the pleasure of talking to a group of college students from Canada, who came to Israel with Hillel Foundation of Toronto. They visited IBM for half a day, and we had a good discussion about social media and how IBM adopted it internally. As anyone, they were looking for the ROI, so I gave them examples of how social media at IBM helps me on a daily basis.
All of them were Gen Y of course, so at the first portion of my presentation (what is web/enterprise 2.0) I just hit ‘next’ all the time.. 😉

Since most participants knew what social media is, an interesting discussion started, of why it’s important and how such tools will benefit them – in the coming months. Some of the students were already part of the social media space, either working at VCs or other organizations aimed at helping SU companies in their early stages.

It was an excellent opportunity to share some of the work IBMers are doing using social media tools, for the past 5 years now! We have lots of social media tools (see slide above), some stay as research projects while others grow up and become IBM solutions (such as our social software solution – Lotus Connections).

The presentation from last week is available at my slideshare space.
Feel free to leave your comments and thoughts!

Israeli Hanuka Tweetup

If you’re following me you know there’s an Israeli Tweetup (Twitter + Meetup) this Wed (or Thu). Everything is outlined at the FB event, no point repeating it here in length, so just a quick summary:
One of my good friends across the pond said this dude is coming to Israel, and is very much into social media and collaboration – worth meeting with. Quick look at his credentials and I already commented on his Israel Visit post to start the discussion. I wanted to suggest we’ll meet over beer and burger, but what’s the point without the community?!

In just 36 hours, only social, no email/phone/sms, we managed to organize this tweetup, with 20 people attending and 36 maybe’s. We dubbed this meeting as Israeli tweetup, since we’ve been talking about doing something like this for some time now.

The details, which more of are available at fb:
Date & time: Wed., Dec. 24th, 20:30 (3rd candle of Hanuka)
Where: Tel Aviv. Aroma Namal at the moment, but probably will change to TLV University
Who: anyone who wants to come

See you there :-))

Photo: Alex De Carvalho’s blog
Twitter Israel: SeoVice

Twitter made us $1M

Yoav from Blink caught this VentureBeat story some days ago, and wrote a subsequent post (in Hebrew) titled ‘What’s in it for me?‘. In his post, Yoav talks about the thing that’s in the heart of any discussion about social media – ROI. From VentureBeat article:

Dell says Twitter has produced $1 million in revenue over the past year and a half through sale alerts. People who sign up to follow Dell on Twitter receive messages when discounted products are available the company’s Home Outlet Store. They can click over to purchase the product or forward the information to others.

Yoav quotes Seth Godin by categorizing twitter more as a reach tool than a sales tool – a claim I totally agree with. Nevertheless, when we discuss about social media, monetization, business value – we cannot overlook the bottom line, which is money.

As a social media evangelist, I want more people and more companies on board, not because they have to but because there are results and value. Making $1M in revenues will certainly bring more people and businesses into the social media space – because they’ll see both the value and the return.

Links:
Yoav Farhi – What’s in it for me? (Hebrew)
VentureBeat – Twitter has made Dell $1M in revenues

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Mobile & Media Consultant. I help startup companies launch products to the consumer market. Reach out: dvir.reznik [at] gmail.com
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This is my personal blog. The postings here do not represent the thoughts, intentions, plans or strategies of my past employers or of my clients. It is solely my opinion.