I highly encourage you to take the 20 minutes to watch/listen to the entire presentation.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I’m curious to know your thoughts.  What did you think of this presentation?  Did it get you thinking of how you could do your business a little differently?  How are you using these tools that we call social media?

Note: This a post as part of the series of presentations  from the Inbound Marketing Summit that was held at Gillette Stadium on October 7-8, 2009.  You can check out all videos on the Inbound Marketing Summit Blip.tv channel.  Content from all over the interwebs are being aggregated over on Delicious.  All posts on this blog will be tagged ims09 for aggregation purposes.

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So, I’m about to walk on the stage at my first international speaking engagement.  It’s a pretty damn big deal to me.  I mean, I’m a nobody.  Our company has not even reached it’s first birthday, dammit.  I’m just some dude that is ridiculously geeky and is passionate about social justice.  I’ve been attempting to construct a business amalgamation of these two loves for almost a year, and bam, here I am in London, staring at a room replete with hard core NGO fundraisers.  They brought me over because of an exclusively web-based project we lead to build a school in Leer Sudan earlier that year.  We raised over $100k.  We had no budget.  We had no HQ.  We had no staff.  We broke ground.  They’re looking at me. Craving. Lusting.  I know what they want.  They want me to proclaim the “Social Media is the golden ticket” gospel, that if you do A, B and C you too can raise $100,000 on Facebook.  They want me to tell them that they can hop on Twitter and in a Midas minute, they’re every tweet shall deliver gold.  Then they want me to sell them a $29 5-point pamphlet to Online Fundraising Success…  And then there’s me.  I’m about to drop a Manhattan project style bomb on these blokes (wait that’s British, right). A paradigm that is well understood in geek circles, but is uber au courant in this neck of the woods (Old School Non-Profit World). The Social Web is more about humans and less about tech.

The session actually went pretty well.  Based on my experience perusing blooper reels of British Parliament on YouTube, I thought there was a better than average probability that I would either get booed off stage or punched in the face.  After the talk and the glad-handing, Melissa and I went to nab some lunch.  A lady, who’s name I cannot for the life of me remember, asked if she could join us.  She was in the session and wanted to delve deeper into the subject matter presented.  We chit chatted a bit.  At one point, I said “Well, it’s not about what you can acquire with social media, it’s about the connections themselves, they are the value”  Then she looks up at me, with what seemed to be half of her salad in her mouth, and inquired, “Well then how do I use social media to raise money?”

It hit me, while speaking about the social web and it’s inherent ability to connect with supporters, collaborate with and mobilize them I was using phrases like “use the social web” or “leverage the social web”.  But by using this vernacular, I was depicting an image of the Social Web that made it more like a handy dandy, shiny new Tool that can you can use to get stuff and less like a new opportunity to connect with people who are impassioned by the same things as you are.  I was like an artist that pulls out a canvas and tries to sketch his best friend, but ends up drawing a robot.  You don’t use your friends.  You don’t leverage your friends.  And if you do, you are most likely an asshole, and your “friends” know it.

I hear people say it all the time while speaking about social web technology, “these are just tools”, and they are right.  ”Twitter, Inc” is just a pile of servers and a repository of complex code, but Twitter is useless save the people that embrace and uphold it.  Although the technology is the glossy exterior we see, the people, the community, the relationships, the friends, the connections, the human interaction…these are the “real” elements, the “real” value, without which Twitter would be relegated to obscurity at worst and a tech geek circle jerk at best.  The “tools” empower relationships.  And these relationships are not to be “used”.  They are not to be “leveraged”.  You don’t use your friends.  You don’t leverage your friends.

You share with your friends.
You collaborate with your friends.
You are honest with your friends.
You empower your friends.
You listen to your friends.
You partner with your friends.
You ask your friends for their advice…maybe for their help.

The idea is to embrace the social web not use it.

I know it’s only a matter of semantics.  But you know what, salad mouth lady taught me that semantics kinda matter…

In reality what matters infinitely more, just as in personal relationships, is motive.  Those that approach the social web seeking to “use” and “leverage” are not so different from the MLM‘ers of the 80′s that sought to take advantage of every relationship they possessed to make a buck.  They are no different than the televangelists of the 90′s that sought to take advantage of every network in which they maintained authority in order to raise a buck.

Chris Brogan calls it the Human Web.  He’s right.  That’s it.

It’s not Web 2.0.  It’s not the New Web.  It’s not even the Social Web.  It is the Human Web.  And as it continues to evolve and transmogrify, we should seek to inform those that are new to the party, that although what has happened may appear to be a story of technological advancement, it is most certainly not.  It is the same story it has always been. The setting has changed.  The backdrop may be all helvetica font, and lime greens and sky blues, and sleek UI’s, and cute looking birds, and iPhone apps.  But it’s the same story it has always been, humans finding new ways to connect with each other.

How do you describe the New/Social/Human Web?

Is motive as important in the Human Web as it is in “real life”?

If you can’t view the video, you can also find it on YouTube.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Note: Apparently I was tapping the laptop as I was recording so my apologies that it’s a little bumpy

To pick up a copy of Trust Agents, head on over to: http://bit.ly/buy-ta.  I really hope that you’ll support them and pick up a copy of 20 of the book.

If you already received your copy, what did you think about it?  You can let me know your thoughts in the comments below, or better yet, write/film a post reviewing the book and tag it #trustagents.

a personal assistant to a politician or political candidate. A body man accompanies the politician or candidate virtually everywhere, often arranging lodging, transportation or meals, and providing companionship, snacks, a cellphone, and any other necessary assistance.

After learning about Reggie after watching a MSNBC special on an inside look at the working White House, I did some more research.  Reggie has become one of the most well-known body men in political history, due in part to his role as a basketball player with the championship Duke University team and his try-outs with two NFL teams.  There have been some very interesting articles on Reggie and surrounding him considering himself the “Chief of Stuff”.

When President Obama was on the campaign trail, ESPN caught up with, then, Senator Obama and Reggie to profile the Chief of Stuff.  It’s a fun video to watch, in my opinion, since it’s another look behind-the-scenes.

If you can’t view this video in your browser, you can also find it here…

Not only do I find motivation watching people like Reggie Love do whatever it takes, working 18-20 hours or more per day, when I first heard Reggie describe himself as the “Chief of Stuff” it resonated with me.  As General Manager at both New Marketing Labs and at my steakhouse, I tend to focus on operations, processes, and doing my best to ensure everything runs smoothly.  Along the way there are tons of “stuff” that needs to be dealt with on a daily basis.

Also, there a lot of things that I help Chris Brogan with throughout the course of the week.  Now, Chris never asked me to take on a role as his personal aide, though I am his right-hand man with a lot of things.  He does after all have a personal assistant in Kathryn Jennex.  However, I’m always concerned with ensuring that Chris is taken care of and that his other obligations outside of NML are taken care of.

So, why do I do this?  Because first, foremost and most importantly, Chris is a close friend of mine who I want to see continue to succeed.  He doesn’t like doing paperwork, organizing or worry about the detail stuff.  That’s not what he’s best at.  I, on the other hand, enjoy doing that and actually need to be organized to function properly.  So, as much as I can, I work with Chris to make sure he doesn’t have to worry about all that “stuff” that would slow him down.  I also work with our internal team to ensure that we’re aligned on processes, staying organized and always moving things like side projects along.  With how busy everything gets, it is very easy to let certain things go astray.  I try my best to ensure that doesn’t happen.

That role doesn’t stop with NML or Chris though.  I function in this role at the steakhouse and at home too.  Joe, my best friend and business partner at Caminito, is just like Chris in how he feels about “stuff”.  Joe is best at being our Executive Chef, not at organizing, planning, logistics (except as it relates directly to the functioning of service).  At home, I naturally fall into this role because of how much I do it by day.  I handle the bills, the scheduling of maintenance, logistics, and anything else that will help Laura and I out.  That’s not to say that Laura doesn’t do a ton of “stuff” that keeps us functioning.  Things like laundry, dirty dishes and tons more seem to always escape me.  She keeps me in line with that stuff.

I guess that makes me a “Chief of Stuff” kinda too, huh?  I’m okay with that and actually enjoy it.  So, my official title may be “General Manager” but I thing “Chief of Stuff” is a little more fun

What are you the Chief of?  How do you handle all of the “stuff” that needs to be taken care of on a daily, weekly or monthly basis?

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]]> http://justinrlevy.com/2009/07/being-the-chief-of-stuff/feed/ 11 http://justinrlevy.com/2009/05/a-couple-more-lattes-please/ http://justinrlevy.com/2009/05/a-couple-more-lattes-please/#comments Sun, 10 May 2009 00:26:30 +0000 Justin Levy http://justinrlevy.com/?p=1148 A little over a week ago I convinced Chris Brogan to shave his head for charity.  We decided that we wanted to donate laptops to kids (not OLPC because Chris donated to them last year).  To date we have raised $6,400 from nearly 150 contributors (thank you!).  But, we’re still under our goal of $10,000 by May 24th.  So, I’m asking that you give up just a couple lattes to help some kids that need these laptops way more than any of us need to visit a coffee shop a couple days this week.

So far we’ve had corporate donations from:

Citrix Online (disclosure: client)

Radian6 (disclosure: conference sponsor)

AMD

Crocs (with 200+ pairs of shoes)

…if you’re interested a corporate donation, please let me know and I’ll be in touch.

As Chris recently asked: Can you help us prove that social media can help causes like this?

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You can follow some of the fun from Twitter using the hashtag #baldbrogan and check out what Chris Brogan had to say over about shaving his head for charity here.

Video of the head shaving and photos to follow soon…

Current Corporate Sponsors

Citrix Online (also a client)

Radian6 (also a conference sponsor)

AMD

Crocs (donating 200+ pairs of shoes)

….this will stay updated as we get more corporate sponsors

Can you spare the price of value meal from McDonald’s to help out underprivileged families?

Thank you to all of you who have already contributed and continue to contribute.  Chris Brogan and I both truly appreciate and we know that the families in need will as well.

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My preference for an RSS reader is Google Reader.  I like Google Reader because it allows me to use keyboard shortcuts so that it increases the speed at which I can go through my feeds.  It also allows me to link up with other people and read what they find interesting and choose to share with me.  This cuts down on some of the feeds I have to subscribe to and also exposes me to other new feeds that may be of interest to me.  I currently subscribe to about 200 or so feeds and usually scan/read between 300-600 posts per day.  Of those I try to share the best and leave comments on a handful of them.

Two videos helped me to increase the speed at which I’m able to consume this much information and I think they will be helpful to you as well, especially if you’re just starting out.  Check out these two videos, one from Chris Brogan and the other of Robert Scoble being interviewed by Tim Ferriss.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

I hope these videos were helpful to you in some way.  Do you like these types of posts?  If so, what other types of hacks, tips and tricks would you like to learn about?

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I have decided to set sail aboard a pirate ship with Chris Brogan.  We have just raised the sails and pushed away from the dock  This pirate ship is New Marketing Labs, our new media marketing agency and educational company.  In my role as General Manager, I will be working hand-in-hand with Chris and will be responsible for the operations and execution of our agency work with our amazing clients.  I will also be responsible for assisting in the delivery of our educational events, including our New Marketing Summit events, New Marketing Bootcamps, webinars and a host of our awesome ideas that we’re busy coming up with.  Over the next weeks and months we will have exciting announcements which will be my new “secret projects” that I tease all of you with.

While all of this is going to be A TON of work, I’m looking forward to hustlin and working my head off.  This is an amazing opportunity and I thank Chris for believing in me.  I can’t wait to learn from the teacher.  I also look forward to working with all of the wonderful people that I’m going to get to meet.

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