Here comes a very special gig post. So, if you usually ignore my gig announcements, please consider reading (and commenting) this one.
Early this summer I was approached by the Stockholm University Library (SUB). They (Camilla Smith and Helena Hedström) had successfully arranged a serie of internal Web 2.0/social media seminars for the library’s staff. Now they wanted to go further and produce both a conference and initiate a network for Nordic librarians. Hence they asked me if I was willing to be one of the speakers. Of course, I have always (well, during my almost 20 years at the Stockholm University) been impressed by SUB. In particular how they have approached and implemented electronic stuff. So I said yes, even though their budget is very tight.
After the summer the three of us discussed the way the confence could be set up and marketed. With virtually no money, being librarians – not marketers, it could be seen as a tough challenge. My advice was to live as we preach. That is, use social media to present and discuss social media. I told them to create a name for the conference, register a domain, set up a WordPress blog, and go ahead. So they did, with the help of Peter Elging, who also is with SUB. In addition I directed them to a couple of persons who might be willing to take care of some audio/video recording and podcasting matters. With the exception of the latter (which will follow), the rest is up and running.
Take a look at www.nordlib20.org, I am amazed by how far they have reached with so little resources. I am looking forward to the development of that particular social media space(s). And of course my key note on the morning of November 21.
[Update after the gig]: A jam packed day, with lots of ideas, conversations and inputs. One of the most fun parts, I think, was when we kickstarted the Cover-it-live session. Anyway, here are my presentationa slides (pdf, 12 Mb), a link to the mobile live stream recording at Bambuser, and our photostream at Flickr. I sincerely hope you will start a wiki, and it is up to you how much you will share (I will share a sub set of what I found in a later blog post). Furthermore, some embed code for donations – pleeeze. Meanwhile, here is my guiding point for blogging, wikiing, and more.
One of the results of my gig at FRII before this summer is that I have been invited to Redd Barna in Norway (part of the international Save the Children alliance). Joining us are also fund raising managers from Sweden (Rädda Barnen) and Denmark(Red Barnet). The meeting will take the form of a seminar (where a provide an overview of the social media developments) and a workshop (where we all discuss cases and possibilities). If you have any suggestions for insightsful cases we would all appreciate to know about them.
[Updated with some corrections, see overstrikes and end of post].
Imagine you are doing a gig for professional AV-producers. You notice that there is a big white Sony truck parked outside the conference venue. On stage, during your perfomance, you see two huge video cameras operated by seemingly skilled professionals. The country’s president sits in the front row, less than 10 meters away. You think: "Ah, there will be a nice video from this event". And you hope the arrangers will publish it on the Web afterwords. Which they did…three weeks later (I publised a couple of video streams live).
So what? A good video can wait a few weeks. Things always comes in between (you might notice that this post is published over a month later than later). But my sad state of mind stems from how the production house have published their result. In short. The video, with a couple of exceptions, does not contain my illustrations (slides and videos). Furthermore it is published in a fashion that makes it extremely hard to find and almost impossible to share. Goodmood has (on purpose?) made it virtually impossible to rip their videos. Which means I can not re-publish it myself. Less download it and play it on my mobile players (Nokia, HTC, iPhone, etc). You can, with some effort, find it through one of my video pages. On top of that the video does not contain any information about its context and where one might find more (i.e. a link to the conference web site). In sum, there is no viral value to be found. Time and money virtually thrown in the drain,
As far as I can judge, the video in question was produced and published by Goodmood. Their vision is to be "the leading European software company specialising in the development and delivery of applications and services that enable easy publishing, management and delivery of online video". Sorry guys, but you have a long way to go. Compare my post on Video sharing considerations that I published about a year ago.
I am in a bad mood for two reasons. The first is ego, we did not get a super professional video from one of my gigs. The second is experience, I recognize this case as yet another illustration of the state of the art in many established firms. On the personal side exactly the same thing happened to me close to two years ago, when World Television filmed another of my gigs. More on that occasion in Swedish, and as translated by Google. In that case I ripped their video and re-published it on Viddler in order to support further sharing.
Hopefully this post may help those of you that arrange meetings to further understand some of the important aspects of video publishing in a social media environment. If not, please let us know.
[Update 23:30] One of the incumbents have asked me via e-mail to correct "a few factual errors" (they also add other insights which I may not share). The video was published two (2) weeks after the conference, then it took another week until I got the message. There is also a video production/editing firm and web sponsor involved, and they most likely contribute to the end result. All parties had decided not to include slides in the video this year. In sum, my impression from the new information I got is that the customer is not always right, it seems to be difficult to make everything right, and one should not always trust your supplier.
[Updated after the gig:] A fascinating afternoon – thank you! Here are my slides (pdf, 4,7 Mb), a link to the Bambuser live video. So far (15:55) no one (except me) has mobilized any images to energy@weconverse.com, but you still have some time to get them into the tagged stream. Of course your wiki is a good option for conversation, but hopefully there are things you want to share with the rest of the world. Perhaps by commenting here?
Vattenfall is producing a full day internal seminar on PR for their Nordic staff who are directly enganged in media relations. I have been asked to spice the event with inspirations from the latest developments in social media. For the moment I am not sure what to cover, but think mikroblogging, novel forms of video services, mobility, and apps will have a given place. And of course the issues around the concept of ”social media release”. Other speakers and consultants will reinforce with practical details on cases, including social media monitoring.
A recent personal experience with Dell Customer support confirms that they provide pretty good service. As a backgrounder you need to know that in a couple of months it is about two years since I switched from Toshiba to Dell. Toshiba had for almost a decade made wonderful high quality laptops that suited me perfectly. Most important, although I carry the laptops with me all the time, I can count on one finger how many times the Toshibas broke. Actually, it was a disk crash that I could fix myself. (Note, I am talking about high end professional models. And that I physically treat them as gently as I can).
Unfortunately, in my view, Toshiba lost their lead in the race for the kind of machine I need. And the, at that time, new Dell XPS M1220 seemed perfect. The only thing that worried me was the infamous "Dell Hell" that Jeff Jarvis had experienced. Even though it ignited over two years earlier, and Dell for sure had reacted and improved, I was concerned. (You can follow Jarvis’s experiences as they are tagged with "Dell" in is blog BuzzMachine.)
Anyway, in November 2006 I bought the XPS M1220 and it was delivered before they promised. The first time I was going to use it live in a gig I could not get the video out to the projector. In a desperate state of mind I called Dells premier XPS support, and a nice English support person helped me with the setup. Took less than 10 minutes and I started the presentation on time. In May 2007 I had more severe troubles. The machine acted strange and froze occasionally. After I managed to convice support that it was a hardware problem (not software), Dell sent a repair technician who replace the motherboard. He came to my office, worked with the laptop for less than 30 minutes, and it was OK again.
Last December I ordered a Dell XPS M1330. It too arrived on time, actually a little before what Dell promised, but later than I expected. I guess I was hoping for the strategy "deliver beyound expectations". Even though I had noted a lot of customer issues with M1330 problems in forums, including those hosted by Dell, my machine worked pretty well (after I got rid of McAfee’s security software).
In August, the same morning I was leaving to go for a gig in Finland, I screwed up. For some strange reason (tired?) I put a micro SD flash card into the DVD-slot. It just slided in and disappeared behind the dust covers. I could hear it scramble. Called Dell support. The answered immediately and said they would send a repair technichian to replace the DVD drive. At what cost I wondered? They said: "No cost, it is easy to make a mistake like that". Because I was going to travel, and could survice without a DVD, I could call them to book a visit from the technichian later on. Fortunately the SD card actually slipped out by itself a few days later.
Then in late August the machine started to give me real problems. It froze, slowed down, became very hot, the fan was on high speed a lot of the time, and so forth. I tried removing varius applications. Ran some hardware tests and replaced the hard drave. Last Friday it just died when I was driving to the country side. No movie for my kids and no PC for me (whatever was worst). While driving I tried to call Dell support. But it was outside normal office hours and I was connected to India or somewhere. The phone lines were terrible. I could not hear them, and they could not hear me. Tried a few more times over the weekend, but same lousy lines. Saturday afternoon I filed an e-mail report through Dells support site, but never got any respones.
Fortuneately I had kept the M1220 as a spare horse and I managed to copy the most cruical content over to it. That, and by using Gmail, I could "surivive" for a while. Monday morning I got in touch with Dell in Sweden. From that on everything has been excellent. The same afternoon I agreed that their technician would visit a friends office to fix my M1330 the next day as I had to go to Enköping for a gig. Tuesday morning he called my friend who could not answer. Unfortunately my friend could not interpret the message on where to call back. But Wednesday morning they called again and the same afternoon my laptop was fixed. The only problem I have found so far is a lost screw. It was left in the old motherboard for the mobile broadband card inside the machine. Can´t accuse Dell for that, because I removed the card.
Lessons? First of all, my setup is a mess. I am using Windows, carry the laptop everywhere, and install all kinds of software. It is a miracle it works at all. These things are complex by definitions. Second, my experience is that critical support works best through Dell’s local (country) support organizations. Third, I have to spend some time (in this latest case 10+ hours) and some money (here a spare hard drive) to figure out, and perhaps fix, the problem myself. I rather do that, then try to ignorantly convince support that they need to come over and fix the hardware. Fourth, do’nt depend on a Windows machine that has been off line for a week. Today it has been extremely slow, busy upgrading itself outside my control.
In sum, I think Dell support serves me very well. I just wish they had better off office hour interactions.
[Update 2008-09-16] As usual the support people with Dell frequently told me during our telephone conversations that I will be invited to rate their performance. This morning I got an e-mail survey from Dell. As always when I get these I start filling them in, but give up after a couple of pages. They rather make me frustrated when trying to express my experience, than provide a good feedback channel. In this case the survey is about "Dell technical support on 2008-09-10". The only thing happening that day was that the repair technician left a voice message with a number to call him back on, and that one could not hear that number. Hence the repair was delayed 24 hours. Is this glitch what I should rate, or is it the whole experience? Let me instead answer the Ultimate Question "How likely is it that you would recommend Dell to a friend or colleague? On the scale 10 (loyal enthusiasts) to 0 (unhappy customer) my Answer is 8 (satisified but unenthusiastic).
As always when I get these I start filling them in, but give up after a couple of pages. They rather make me frustrated when trying to express my experience, than provide a good feedback channel. In this case the survey is about "Dell technical support on 2008-09-10". The only thing happening that day was that the repair technician left a voice message with a number to call him back on, and that one could not hear that number. Hence the repair was delayed 24 hours. Is this glitch what I should rate, or is it the whole experience? Let me instead answer the 
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