71: Getting Bold with Sandy Carter

Episode 71, recorded on Friday 30th September 2011. We discuss Sandy’s new ‘Get Bold’ book, the adoption of Social Business, the role Lotus has to play in IBM’s Social Business strategy, how IBM has learnt from the Lotusphere 2011 OGS and much more….

Hosts

Stuart McIntyre (blog | twitter | company) & Mat Newman (blog | twitter | company)

Guests

Sandy Carter (blog | twitter) is a recognized leader in social business, a best selling author, and one of the most influential women in Web 2.0 technology. As IBM Vice President, Social Business Evangelism and Sales, she is responsible for setting the direction for IBM’s Social Business initiative, a $200B market opportunity. Her numerous industry awards include: “Brand Leader of the Year” from the World Brand Congress, “Top 10 Women in Social Media” from Altimeter Group and Fast Company’s “Most Influential Women in Technology.” She is an avid social business evangelist, blogger, and twitterer. She holds an MBA from Harvard and a Bachelor of Science degree in math and computer science from Duke University.

Topics

Introduction

VP of Social Business Evangelism – What exactly does that mean?
What have been your highlights of the first year in the job?
How have you found it – specifically interaction with the community?

The book

Why did you write the book?
Why ‘Get Bold’?
Is the timing right?
Who should read the book?

The AGENDA methodology

Can you outline the key elements in the AGENDA methodology? How did this come about?
How essential is it to have the ‘right’culture in place?
In the section on Gain Social trust, you write extensively on building relationships – what approaches would you recommend considering ‘internal’social compared with ‘external social’?
How does engagement work for B2B organisations?
“Business processes are the ‘soul’of your company – to truly be a Social Business, you must embed social into your soul.’ Is that the key, that an organisation needs to add social into their business, not try to change the business into a social business?
You mention 48 hours being too long to respond in a social world, does that mean businesses must plan for every eventuality before they engage in social to ensure they are able to handle any situation that arises?
What does ‘Return on Everything’mean? Have businesses accepted this, versus a strictly financial ROI analysis?
Recognition of audience feedback during LS11 OGS – what part has this played in the organisation of this year’s conference?
Much of the focus of the book is on external social business, yet IBM’s most well known solution of Social Business is primarily an internal tool (IBM Connections). What can internal social offer the business? How ‘big’does a business need to be before it needs to or can get social internally?

Future of email

Phil Salm wrote an excellent blog post earlier this week that pointed out the obvious and gained a lot of attention – Email is still ubiquitous, by pushing Social, could IBM be seen to be foregoing the email market too early?

Lotusphere

Sandy, you’re famous for your blue jacket – Now that Mary Beth Raven has departed, will you take on the yellow shoes?
Is the old Lotus brand (now IBM Collaboration Solutions) still core to the Social Business vision (as it was in 2010/2011), or is it more about Analytics and Business Intelligence now?

Looking forward to 2012

What are you expecting to be the major trends in Social Business to be in the next year?

Tips

Mat:
With the star of this weeks TWiL being Social Sandy how could I not mention WildFire! the Social Plug-in for Lotus Notes, post your status and get your activity streams from all the major networks, including IBM Connections, Sametime, Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin delivered right into your Social Dashboard – Lotus Notes, see http://wildfire.openntf.org for details and to get the latest download.
Sandy:
On Sandy’s behalf – buy the book! (Amazon US paperback | Amazon US kindle | Amazon UK paperback | Amazon UK kindle)
Stuart:
The Lotusphere Blog is back… We’d love to share your Lotusphere story, either via a podcast or in Q&A form on the site. Contact us if you’d be interested!