Emerson Exchange 2007 Workshop Resources
Getting the Most Value from the Internet: How New Web 2.0 Tools and Techniques Can Help You Innovate
Presentation by Jim Cahill and Deb FrankePresentation
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Thank you for joining us today. We hope you find our presentation, Getting the Most Value from the Internet: How New Web 2.0 Tools and Techniques Can Help You Innovate, to be time well spent. I'm Jim Cahill, self-proclaimed Chief Blogger and marketing communications manager for Emerson Process Management. I'm Deb Franke, e-Marketing manager for Emerson Process Management. We're both part of the Process Systems and Solutions business.
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Slide 3As an introduction, we'd first like to thank you for spending your valuable time with us today. We know you have many choices and hope to make these next 45 minutes as valuable as possible. I'm sure you all have different reasons for being here and expectations of what you'd like to see covered. We'd like to begin by pointing out the index cards each of you have to get the key questions and things on your mind, or come to your mind over the course of the presentation. We'll collect these at the end and try to answer as many as we can. Also, all of the questions and answers will be available on the Emerson Process Experts blog, with any luck, later this week. The last slide contains a URL of where this and other resources will be.
Slide 4A curiosity about Web 2.0! Maybe the thing we share that has brought of together today is a basic curiosity about this thing called Web 2.0. Curiosity is actually a great place to start because Jim and I have found in the three years of working with Web 2.0, that curiosity is a very important key to success. When you are curious, your mind is full of questions (and you're comfortable with those questions). Web 2.0 is always changing and with the emerging technologies and community inputs; your curious mind will help you. So by virtue of you showing up for this workshop, you are on the right path. Jim and I are going to share our personal stories with the hope that you will take this curiosity and turn it into action. Our hope is that you will make the most of these new technologies to help you innovate and truly be more productive in your daily life.
The best way to begin is to think about what Web 1.0 is. The best definition we can think up is a one-way or monolog conversation that consists of words, images, and media on a web page.
So what about Web 2.0? What is it? Why do we care? You might imagine from our definition of Web 1.0 being a monolog, that Web 2.0 is not, and you would be correct. The common thread to all things affectionately dubbed Web 2.0, is two-way or many-to-many communications. The great world, wide web is thriving because of its increasing ability to connect us together to share our expertise, ideas, passions, and more.
We also care about Web 2.0 because having the right tool can make all the difference in terms of long-term success. It isn't that we need to work harder .. those who work smarter will have the most success and Web 2.0 tools are the smartest ways to work.
Slide 5We'll follow two paths during the course of this presentation, looking at consumption side of information, and then looking at the information-producing side. Deb will begin by taking us down the information consumption path of Web 2.0.
Slide 6As Information Consumers the most powerful Web 2.0 tool for greater productivity and rapid problem-solving is search. Is there anyone in the room who hasn't googled? We "Google" because it's magic. In fractions of a second, Google has scanned billions, maybe even trillions, of web pages and delivers what you're trying to find. Google's great but most of use are self-taught and we want to make three points about getting the most out of Google.
Slide 7Our #1 tip for search, use many keywords to find the best answers. The more keywords you use in the search bar that describes exactly what you seek…the more likely it will be the top results. Based on the monthly search reports we see from both our websites and the Google Search Appliance, most people are using a single word when searching. Start filling up the search box with exactly what you want and see how much more efficient Google is at delivering the content in the top results.
Slide 8Tip #2 is to use the "right Google". Google.com searches the Web but Google offers specialized searches too. Google News takes you right to the most current news items. Search once and be done. We'll talk a lot more about RSS in a minute.
Slide 9Another specialized search is the Google Blog Search. Start with the Google Blog search when you are looking for Advice, How To's, and conversations. A real life example is shown here "How to Add RSS with Sharepoint". When you think… "I wonder how to" or "has anybody..?" or "What do other people think?" … use the Google Blog Search.
Slide 10Search once and be done. Persistent search – use to monitor search results and continue to learn. RSS enabled search results let you save time by subscribing and not having to repeat the search today, tomorrow, next week, and a year from now. It's your personal 24/7 channel of results. We suggest that you set up searches on any topics that interest you: your company, your products, your competitors, your suppliers, even yourself in what is called a "vanity search". So use persistent searches to know quickly and with minimal effort the conversations going on. It's ok for your interests to change. With a one click delete, disabling the feeds is very easy.
Slide 11For those of you unfamiliar with how to subscribe to RSS feeds, let's see it in Action. Google Reader is a good choice to see RSS Readers in Action. Notice how Google has a single link to make subscribing as easy as possible.
Slide 12Let's take a look at a screencast showing how to add a feed using the freely available Google Reader. There are also many other freely available ones that are web-based, or client-based like IE7, Outlook 2007, and the other web browsers. Also there are stand-alone applications like the Great News Reader we recommended earlier with the RSS Starter Kit. I like Google Reader since they have a mobile version, which works on my SmartPhone.
Screencast narration: Let's start by going to the Emerson Process Experts web site. You'll see and orange subscribe button. Let's click it. Now you see the RSS-feed page. All we need to do is grab the URL in our cut-and-paste buffer and go to the Google reader. Once there, we'll click add a subscription, paste, and voila, we're subscribed. Now any time I do a new post on Emerson Process Experts, we'll be notified when we go to Google reader. The information comes to us, without having to go out and visit the Emerson Process Experts site.
Slide 13Our second screencast shows how you can jumpstart your RSS reading library by adding the collection of bloggers available on the Emerson Process Experts right-side blogroll. A blogroll is a list of blogs that the person who runs the blog reads and wants to share with others. At the bottom of the blogroll, I have a link the list of all the blogs which you can import into your Google Reader other other RSS reader to get started. Keep the ones you like and delete the rest.
Screencast narration: Let's start by scrolling down any of the pages in the Emerson Process Experts blog. It's below all the category listings and monthly archives that have been created over time. Click on the blue icon or "Import my blogroll" hyperlink. Save the file to your desktop. By default, it's called export.opml. An OPML file is a collection of RSS feeds in an agreed-to, standard format. See the definition in Wikipedia if you're interested in more about OPML. Next, we go over to the Google reader and click "Manage subscriptions" at bottom left. Once there we click on "Import/Export" and select the export.opml file that we saved to our desktop and hit "Upload." That's it. You are now subscribed to some of the leading editors who are with us this week, DeltaV News, some industry-specific blogs, and other automation-specific blogs and news feeds.
Slide 14Thanks Jim. Now that we've looked at some areas of Web 2.0 from an information consumption standpoint. Let's review the three main tips: (1) use many keywords to find the best results; (2) use the right Google, Google News for the most current items and Google Blog Search for conversations and how-to's; and (3) Search once and be done. Use persistent search to monitor topics of interest. Now let's head down the path of sharing your expertise with the world on the information production side.
Slide 15Let's start with the basic question, how visible do you want to be? If not too visible, feel free to turn on your iPod and tune out! But before you do…
Slide 16Even if you wish to remain invisible, it's not easy to do! My simple Google search for Jim Cahill austin texas reveals my phone number, address, and even a map link to my house. It's a good thing Google hasn't gotten my new address… yet! Yes, there are ways and schemes to sweep your tracks and become invisible, but all I can say is best of luck to you.
Slide 17Studies show that overwhelmingly, the search engines, primarily Google, are where we begin our quest for information. This study of Business-to-Business buyers, which would be most all of us in this room, shows the overwhelming majority start with search instead the other primary options listed. So, if you want to be known and visible for your expertise…
Slide 18How visible are you in Google? As this screen capture shows, I'm in a real fight for "Google Juice" supremecy with two Jim Cahill's, both politicians—a mayor of New Brunswick New Jersey and a Sacramento City Council member. So give the proverbial Google vanity search a try… how visible are you?
Slide 19We recommend LinkedIn as the place to begin. The price is right—free. It's a business-based social network that allows you to put out any information about your self, like education, experience, accomplishments, hobbies, etc. You can put out as much or as little as you are comfortable with sharing with the world. It is also a place to link with others you know and meet through the course of business. When you link, you are connected not only to them, but also to their network. In our synopsis for this presentation, Deb and I have extended an invitation for you to link in with us. We hope you do.
I'll also mention that Facebook is performing some similar functions. We haven't recommended it, because we haven't spent much time looking at it.
Slide 20One example why this might be valuable is for others from your past trying to find you. This example shows searches of my name and some of the places I've been through my university and professional career. I've done a couple of searches showing my name and former places I've worked or gone to school. Each one returns my LinkedIn page as the top result. This is an easy first step on making your expertise available for others to find.
Slide 21Before we depart LinkedIn as a topic area, I'll mention that I've had chance to meet and link with some neat people, including a writer with the Wall Street Journal. More on that later…
Slide 22Earlier on our information consumption path, we showed the Google Reader as a tool for subscribing and reading RSS feeds. One nice capability it has is a Share function. If you read something, you'd like to share with others, simply click Share. You have a personal URL that is created that you can share what interests you with others. In fact, others can subscribe to your shared reading feed so they can be alerted of things things that you find interesting. This is almost like having your own blog, without having to write anything! You can share your URL and RSS feed in your email footers or other ways in which you communicate.
A famous technology blogger, Robert Scoble, is an incredible reader of blogs. By subscribing and reading his Google Reader shared list, you can can quickly get up to speed on some of the breaking technology trends. I'll read his feed from time to time when I'm on an airplane or have other free time.
Slide 23One thing I found when moved between work, home, and other PCs was that my favorites did not travel with me. Free, on-line social tagging services like Del.icio.us help address this by keeping the pages you visit and find valuable avaiable on-line, no matter what computer you're on. You can tag the page with any keyword or keywords you want. This helps you categorize the content in the way it makes most sense to you. You have the option of keeping your tagged pages private or sharing with the world. The benefit of sharing with the world is that it helps others looking for similar items find it more easily because you've raised it's visibility in the search engines. Like Google Reader, others can also subscribe to your feed.
Slide 24Let's take a look at a screencast demo to see it in action. Here is a look at a page with an account I created for EmersonsJimCahill. You can see I've built a long list of tags. Let's take a look at one of the examples blog humor. It goes to a favorite Gaping Void cartoon, on why all bloggers blog. Hugh McCleod has it right that secretly we all want to be discovered by a famous blogger, which makes all our content become super visible, so we can retire rich. If you're going to use the Del.icio.us site I recommend you add the toolbar buttons to your browser. They are available for all the major web browsers. Here's where they are in my Internet Explorer 7 demo. Let's go to one of Terry Blevins and Greg McMillan's Modeling and Control blog posts. Simply by clicking the post to Del.icio.us, adding a note and giving it some tags, we've saved away something that interests us, and help make this content easier to find for ourselves and others searching for it.
Slide 25Another way to share your expertise is to offer comments on others blogs you come across. Whether it's the Emerson Process Experts or Modeling and Control blogs, one of our esteemed automation magazine editors, or other blogs, we all appreciate the dialog. You can add your perspectives and experiences whether you agree, disagree, and feel something is missing. It benefits others who may come upon the blog post. Here's an example of a post I did, mentioning an article John Rezabeck had written comparing HART and Foundation fieldbus, a topic that can raise some passions. I added to the conversation by linking to his article and mentioning a whitepaper that Emerson's Tom Wallace had written. John came back and added his thoughts to my piece. All this helps further the understanding of these key digital communications technologies.
Slide 26OK… Let's up the degree of difficulty for sharing your knowledge… Wikipedia. This is where you can create whole new topic and share your expertise with the world. Like everything else we've mentioned the price is right… it's free. To add, you simply need to create an account. As I've been blogging, I've created a few new topics including DeltaV and some of the standards like S88, S95 and a few others. By getting it started, others have come, edited, and improved the posts over time. I try to put base level knowledge in Wikipedia and link to it from the Emerson Process Experts blog.
One caution if you decide to go this route. Right now, editing requires a cryptic HTML-like syntax. It's not yet WYSIWYG.
Slide 27Many photo sharing sites have emerged. Yahoo's Flickr is one that we have used. Like the others, it's free, and only requires that you create an account. You can add your comments to photo, where it can actually serve as blog, if you are one to tell your stories with pictures. Here's an example of site we were piloting adding pictures of Duncan. One neat thing I discovered was that if you have a camera phone and a blog site, you can take a picture and mail it to a Flickr email address. Your email subject becomes the subject of the blog post, and the body of the email is the blog post content. My current smart phone unfortunately does not have a camera so I haven't used this in a while.
Slide 28Here's an example of a family blog I created to chronicle the building of a house we did last year. It's a way to share progress with friends and family. In my case, I have a server in my home running Movable Type blogging software, but there are many free blogging sites, like Wordpress, Google's Blogger, Yahoo 360, and Microsoft's Windows Live Spaces.
Slide 29Our path at Emerson on the road to blogging and gaining organizational acceptance was to begin with internal, intranet-based blogs. We opened this up to any employee who wanted to try and share their expertise. Here's an example of Deb's blog where she shares her marketing wisdom and articles she comes across for the benefit of our global organization for anyone in a marketing role. We have an intranet based Google search appliance which crawls all these blogs and makes the posts available for those searching for information. I also have an internal blog where I offer tips and tricks to our global sales force. It's a way for me to untrap the knowledge that been collecting in my email inbox and sent items folders for many years.
Slide 30It was a long journey to gain organizational acceptance to have an external blog of a year and a half. The Emerson Process Experts blog has now been running over a year and a half and a second one ModelingAndControl.com with Automation Hall of Fame members Terry Blevins and Greg McMillan in operation for a year. We hope to see more Emerson voices join the blogosphere in the coming years. If you ever consider going down this path, please contact us, so we can share our experiences. Even in our high-tech city of Austin, Texas we've been sharing our experiences with some of the folks battling their organizations to blog.
Slide 31I alluded earlier to my LinkedIn exchange with a Wall Street Journal reporter. An amazing thing happened when I was able to speak with her on a corporate blogging story she was doing and lo and behold she quoted me in the story. This is not to brag but to show the transformative power of putting your expertise out there and having it be discovered. I would have never suspected that within a year my words would appear in the leading financial publication in the U.S.
Slide 32Another example of the transformative power of these Web 2.0 technologies is this example of a recently published book. Both Deb and I are quoted in it. This began with academic institutions coming upon the blog and asking for our input for their study which we agreed to do. When it was published, the author John Cass put a comment on the Emerson Process Experts site asking if he could quote us for the book he was working on. We agreed and the book was published several months later. Again, this is another example of putting your expertise out there and being amazed where it can land.
Slide 33We have one more example of the significant reach and the impact of conversations – this one begins in the offline world.
Friday, December 17, 2004 I'm at the first American Marketing Association one-day blogging conference in Seattle and we do a Marketing Wonk dinner at the Westlake Food Court. 10 of us are sitting around talking about all sorts of customer service and marketing topics including examples of when companies that pride themselves on customer service have let you down. Four of us thought of Amazon and how in various situations we looked for a phone number but couldn't find one.
Slide 34Ben McConnell returns to Chicago and writes a blog post about our conversation and the bigger question "Does phone number invisibility hurt Amazon's customer service reputation? He has taken our little food court discussion to the worldwide web audience.
Slide 3511 days later in The New York Times Technology section writes "Try to reach customer service at Amazon.com to fix a problem with an order and you will encounter one of the most prominent and frustration aspects of the Internet era: a world devoid of humans." Wow! The New York Times was calling this underground movement to publicize Amazon's customer-service number but it was simply 10 people sitting in a food court then a conversation on a blog.
There are three important lessons here: (1) your words matter, whether you are in a food court, the airport, or anywhere. People are listening and your words just might appear on someone's blog. (2) It is increasingly difficult to hide. (3) My problem was solved. When I return from the holiday break, everyone knows Amazon's telephone number.
We share with you our personal stories not to impress you but to impress upon you what is possible. Put these powerful tools to use in your daily life and be part of this great conversation; you won't be disappointed.
Slide 36So what would a PowerPoint presentation be without some bullets! The intent of this slide is that there are a whole lot more to Web 2.0 than the examples we discussed today. This list may include other sites and services you're familiar with or not. If you'd like to learn more about any of them, give it a Google!
Slide 37So what's next? For those of you who are ready to be visible in Web 2.0. We recommend you start with this book "The Virtual Handshake". Immediately following this presentation, Jim and I are heading to the cybercafé to help those of you who are fired up to begin right now. We'll have a few copies of the book with us.
Slide 38If you want to wait until you return home to get started, the link you need to know is EmersonProcessXperts.com/ExchangeResources . It contains all of the links we've talked about today, including a free e-book link to "the Virtual handshake" and the Q&A summary of questions from both workshops.
So let's get started with those questions… please pass to the front all of the index cards and we'll power through as many as possible in the remaining minutes.