Andy Piper

Andy Piper
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  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM Going beyond blogs... there are a whole bunch of new technologies out there which let us extend and strengthen our communities even more. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM But let’s just remind ourselves... Just because everyone is a publisher - doesn’t mean we can publish anything, throw posts all over a wall, and expect an audience Scrutiny is high Communities are eagle-eyed and will call out our mistakes It is important to engage and build trust and integrity NB Tom Coates “This is not a brothel” post (plasticbag.org). Bloggers don’t want to be marketed to, and blog readers will build up trust with bloggers who demonstrate integrity over time. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM Here’s an example of an IBMer’s blog (mine – egoist that I am…) Through my blog I’ve been building strong connections with partners, customers and colleagues. I make a point of sharing the URL with customers - they can immediately learn who I am and what skills I bring to their business. I’ve also been finding that people I connect with want to connect with me across the media - LinkedIn, Facebook etc. We have both technical and business execs blogging (Mark Cathcart, Ed Brill, Bob Sutor) We have development teams soliciting feedback from customers and feeding it into the product - Lotus Notes 8 created in a highly collaborative way... Hursley on WMQ blog… etc. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM IBM hosts a few blogs, but mostly we are encouraged to run our own. It’s about being out there, engaging with people as people, building communities. It’s a trust thing too. IBM doesn’t want to go out and join every community as IBM. There’s typically a bad reaction when companies do this. Well-known blogger Tara Hunt said recently: “Connections over time equal trust. And trust is the basis of Social Capital - otherwise known as Credibility” We can improve credibility by engaging individually and demonstrating competence and knowledge Blogging can build trust in an organisation and openness... and individual connections can bring recommendations... but it is important to engage in this space for the right reasons. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM We started with some guidelines. You may be aware of the IBM Blogging Policy and Guidelines. They are linked with our general Business Conduct Guidelines. To take an important line from the opening paragraphs: “In 1997, IBM recommended that its employees get out onto the Net – at a time when many companies were seeking to restrict their employees’ Internet access. We continue to advocate IBMers’ responsible involvement today in this new, rapidly growing space of relationship, learning and collaboration.” So IBM’s embrace of these technologies builds on a history of openness and innovation. The message - don’t fear employees, competitors or the public - let them engage constructively Our blogging guidelines are widely recognised, used as a template, and have been used as a basis for other policies covering podcasting, virtual worlds and conduct in social media Incidentally, note that we built these guidelines on a wiki internally, too. It was a collaborative exercise. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM IBM’s culture has always been innovative and open. We did set some ground rules. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM Embracing blogging and social media has been a success for IBM How did we approach it in a meaningful way? How did we get over the fear and reach out to new communities? 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM We also use Lotus Connections to connect with customers via Lotus Greenhouse, and partners via Lotus Connections for Partners. So how have we gone about building communities externally? 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM So we built this environment internally. In early 2006 I started to get requests from sales colleagues who knew I was a blogger, asking what IBM would recommend to customers, how to get started. This year, IBM is has made major product releases in these areas. Lotus Connections and Lotus Quickr Connections is made up of Profiles, Communities, Blogs, Dogear and Activities We built Connections from BlogCentral, and BlogCentral now runs on it. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM So what we’ve built is a vibrant knowledge community - making the world smaller. Participation has grown quickly. What I’ve found is that blogging can democratise an organisation... flattening it and making management more accessible. Who was I? A product specialist in a small, geographic team; in one brand, in one business. Now, my own network includes a much wider pool of people than I’d ever thought possible. (NB this is by Darren Shaw from IBM Hursley – a great shot of the Great Hall of the British Museum) 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM I’m a fairly well-known blogger now, so when I get back from holiday I’ll typically have at least 10 email requests for assistance based on something I’ve written about! Here are some of the kinds of things that people say when they get a handle on blogging. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM Here’s what it looks like Note the profile picture drawn from the employee directory. I can search by entry content, tag, etc. The sidebar holds more - find entry by date, tag cloud etc. – it is extensible. There’s a rating system Users can have multiple blogs 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM Anyone in IBM can start a blog Our “BlogCentral” system is based on our intranet directory, so you just login and create a new blog. The system supports team blogs as well as personal ones, though – I’m a member of several group blogs. BlogCentral hosts 30,000 individual weblogs (over 400 group blogs) over 75,000 entries and 70,000 comments over 13,000 distinct tags. The system has been through a number of revisions as we’ve grown and learned. So we’ve learned to support a large infrastructure 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM So how did we go about introducing the concept of blogging (and other social media)? We have something internally called the Technology Adoption Program (TAP) This is for early adopters to try out new technologies, and this is how we introduced blogging. The growth internally was organic and by word-of-mouth. Let’s take a look at how it grew. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM These are the kinds of things that you might expect to have heard a couple of years ago. We faced a number of challenges. A highly mobile, global workforce who face information overload yet lack visibility into the company and awareness of work overlap. Acquisitions and expanding teams. It’s important to bring new employees into the fold in a more friendly way. An increasing number of mobile and worldwide employees, providing a geographic challenge for employees to identify experts, skills, and projects. Organizational changes happen frequently, as it is common for people to transition roles within the organization, and people have difficulty keeping up with the movements. So you might have heard people saying things like this. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM So - we’ve gone down a route of embracing social software from one of need as well as interest. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM Let’s position IBM - scale and organisation Apparently (!) IBM is the world’s largest technology company (I heard that – not sure what the measure is!) Over 350,000 employees;165 countries Employees are highly mobile There are several large divisions: - Systems and Technology - Consulting Services - Software - Research Not everyone at IBM is technical. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM Since I’m on first, it is worth asking how many of your companies are blogging internally? Externally? I’d be interested to swap stories later in the day, particularly if you’ve been blogging for a while I read yesterday that only 5% of UK corporations use blogs on a regular basis, according to the WebTrends-commissioned "Marketing in the Dark" report, conducted by Loudhouse Research in January 2007 (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?id=1005311&src=article_right_sitesearch) 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM Here’s where we are going. I’ll talk a bit about IBM’s “blogosphere” – both internally and externally, how we’ve been using blogs. We’ll also talk about how we’ve engaged with customers, partners and each other outside of the firewall. Finally, I want to look into the future. 3 years ago
  • Andy Piper Andy Piper commented on Social Media At IBM First of all… Who am I? Well, my day job is as a software specialist in IBM Software Group. I work with WebSphere software (WebSphere is our integration brand), and I go out and consult with customers to help to make their projects a success. I’ve been doing that for the past 6 years. Completely separately from that, I’m also a passionate blogger and evangelist for social software. I’m an “early adopter” at IBM. This is where I work. Well, it’s actually IBM’s Hursley Laboratory near Winchester... my team is based here, but I’m not here as often as I’d like to be. This is a photo of the nice House, the overall site is much bigger. I’m usually out with customers. 3 years ago
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