tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5664285157888270882024-02-19T06:19:56.372-06:00social abacusseeking social psychology in social media: musings on measurement, mining, analysiskatehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.comBlogger90125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-33398631124526757922012-10-24T08:54:00.000-05:002012-10-24T08:54:01.258-05:00Business decisions based on sentiment<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwNeQvtuZY2wx1OmwozkagNz_0Powzlyz3FBh5kj4lH2Bx8t2JAcn7FYI3iDZzTRdyXuC8T7UY3UhJxTMIGyNmvZcQff1hRnZ-rt-d4WdOvbY9VJyrNbvL2GFnQbP9AGFhDSTmZ4m0ZGM/s1600/paul_ekman_facial_expressions_affective.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="264" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgwNeQvtuZY2wx1OmwozkagNz_0Powzlyz3FBh5kj4lH2Bx8t2JAcn7FYI3iDZzTRdyXuC8T7UY3UhJxTMIGyNmvZcQff1hRnZ-rt-d4WdOvbY9VJyrNbvL2GFnQbP9AGFhDSTmZ4m0ZGM/s320/paul_ekman_facial_expressions_affective.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Photo credit: Paul Ekman's facial expressions, paulekman.com</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Every executive I've spoken to since 2005 has been tantalized by the
promise of using social media sentiment as a KPI. Sentiment was hyped to be the most actionable of all social media
data, a tidy shortcut to <a href="http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2011/11/data.html" target="_blank">business decisions</a>, not too unrelated from perception-based metrics of old with massive scale. <br />
<br />
<br />
This continues to be a promise, with examples cropping up of campaigns being tweaked, products
reintroduced or discontinued, all based on sentiment. Real business decisions.<br />
<br />
At the same time, more <a href="http://socialabacus.blogspot.com/2011/06/social-media-measurement-winning-or.html" target="_blank">scrutiny</a> is being
placed on sentiment-- how it's calculated, whose sentiment it reflects, what data it needs to be validated by, and why it fluctuates, in the context of vertical norms and benchmarks.<br />
<br />
The market appears to be <a href="http://www.informationweek.com/global-cio/interviews/7-ways-sentiment-is-hard-to-decipher-onl/240002020" target="_blank">maturing</a> rapidly about the different ways it's calculated, as witnessed in part by listening platform differentiation based on sentiment technique. Often it's a make-or-break decision to have the possibility of customized sentiment rules in a platform. Academia mirrors this trajectory with papers in psychology, computer science, and communications optimizing algorithms and language processing techniques.<br />
<br />
We've fixated on how closely we can mirror sophisticated human judgment. And incremental improvements arise frequently. So much so, it's made me wonder whether accuracy is the most important part of this equation. What about the relationship between sentiment (emotion, incl.) and behavior? Or more precisely, how much of (the variance in) purchase behavior can be predicted by sentiment? In order for executive decisions to be based on sentiment, we need to know which behaviors are reliably tied to sentiment. The academic literature runs sparse (and/or wild) here-- as do publicized business cases. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://www.dataroundtable.com/?p=10689" target="_blank">Structure</a> (amidst big data) does not necessarily beget (revenue yielding) behavior. Our hopes are only partially fulfilled; our work, only partially done-- in order to enable business decisions based on sentiment, we need more research on the behavioral relationship. <br />
<br />
If you can
make it to San Francisco next week, I'll be discussing this topic at the <a href="http://www.sentimentsymposium.com/" target="_blank">Sentiment Symposium</a>. Until then, I look forward to hearing from challengers here. Executives, tell me your greatest examples of
business decisions based on sentiment. Academics, share your research on the relationship between sentiment and behavior. Together we'll derive hypotheses as
to when we can and cannot act on sentiment. <br />
katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-7342213135782023932012-08-31T14:51:00.002-05:002012-08-31T14:51:17.340-05:00The fear, laziness, ignorance, and plain old difficulty of getting out of our own shoes<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I
think that we’re so caught up in our worlds that if we want to make
these quantum leaps we have to step out of the world a bit. It opens
your eyes to the possibilities."</span><br />
<br />
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">"</span><span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The
more you look outside the more you realize that some of the ways that
we have defined what we study within the field aren’t necessarily
getting at the right thing."</span></blockquote>
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">I'll leave these quotes anonymously sourced for now. They're from two psychologists-- the first, a personality psychologist, the second, a cognitive one. They're reflective of a growing appreciation of working in a cross-disciplinary fashion-- specifically going outside of psychology into business, computer science, and politics. </span><br />
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">The problem is the classic <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/low_concept/2003/04/the_poetry_of_dh_rumsfeld.html" target="_blank">Rumsfeldian</a> "unknown unknown"-- a now tired way of saying we don't really know that there is an outside of our field, or how to get there. </span><br />
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">It's hard to stray from a given <a href="http://socialabacus.blogspot.com/2009/01/business-design-for-social-animals.html" target="_blank">path</a>. </span><br />
<ul>
<li><span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Often you don't look for comparisons, because it doesn't occur to you that things could be another way. "Normal" is typically hard to define without comprehensive data. </span></li>
<li><span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Other times different cultures (used broadly) speak different languages-- progress is challenging when we call the same things different names. </span></li>
<li><span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Sometimes we're stubborn and resistant to different or dissenting views. </span></li>
</ul>
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><br /></span>
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">How do you consciously take on a new perspective? <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/know/2012/02/24/game_changers_metcalfe/" target="_blank">Bob Metcalfe</a> often gives the advice of taking a new route home- consciously getting out of your routine and trying to notice something new. My approach has always been proactively questioning definitions-- recognizing that concepts can be operationalized differently to prevent assumptions. </span><br />
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Often in psychology experiments (and contextual inquiry), participants will be asked to wear cameras affixed on (<a href="http://consumerist.com/2010/12/nyu-professor-installs-eye-in-the-back-of-his-head.html" target="_blank">not IN</a>) their foreheads. This helps the researcher understand life from another perspective, very literally. </span><br />
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Maria Montessori, whose birthday it is today, asks parents to think about life from the child's perspective by getting down on your hands and knees and exploring your home. </span><br />
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;">Try it. I love how such a literal example can have such a huge impact. It's more surprising than it seems. Imagine if you did the equivalent of this with your work. What does your work look like to a psychologist? To a doctor? To a marketer? To something/ someone you're not? </span><br />
<br />
<span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span><br /><span id="internal-source-marker_0.6075732912195084" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: 'Courier New'; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"> </span>katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-91862957406164116982012-08-22T12:10:00.002-05:002012-08-22T12:10:31.675-05:00On Inchworms and Nightingales, or measuring social media<br />
<a class="rg_hl uh_hl" href="http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&client=firefox-a&sa=N&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&biw=1326&bih=682&tbm=isch&tbnid=q1ru5HT0x5r30M:&imgrefurl=http://kissthebook.blogspot.com/2010/05/inch-by-inch-by-leo-lionni.html&docid=BzLoW5pRvZfJrM&imgurl=https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBzSa0RQFg_mFWGxkLuxWBHVRr6JkN20lSf4mRqgqrJCDjZs-HcWNAIRPJzl9JjJLHuR0d0EAFhdM6zrYUE2opX3C0DuWswsq7R0RGbh02R5001d2db0XQR6AZrIhdX5culJ_IUULQ/s1600/Inch%252Bby%252Binch.jpg&w=487&h=600&ei=kQQ1UOGfM4eq2gXN84G4DA&zoom=1&iact=hc&vpx=466&vpy=183&dur=216&hovh=249&hovw=202&tx=101&ty=130&sig=110661123041775392833&page=1&tbnh=135&tbnw=110&start=0&ndsp=21&ved=1t:429,r:2,s:0,i:85" id="rg_hl" style="clear: right; float: right; height: 249px; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em; width: 202px;"><img alt="" class="rg_hi uh_hi" data-height="249" data-width="202" height="249" id="rg_hi" src="https://encrypted-tbn2.google.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcTwG9fhdyp3pVgvEIyNUa3vQHrCUiOeCbOo-16Q7eAXanlzxYX1" style="height: 249px; width: 202px;" width="202" /></a>My son has a tendency of having me read him the same five books every night for a a few weeks. So on, about, our 40th reading of <a href="http://www.randomhouse.com/kids/lionni/" target="_blank">Leo Lionni's Inch by Inch</a>, my mind wandered as I read about the clever inchworm who inched away from the nightingale, when challenged to measure her song. You see, the inchworm had already won over the likes of the crow, flamingo, toucan, pheasant, etc. - simply by measuring their tails, beaks, or legs. I was frustrated with the inchworm-- <i>why would he inch away like a coward, when he could be creative and attempt to measure the nightingale's song in an unconventional way, even if a song is difficult to measure.</i><br />
<br />
I immediately thought of marketers in social media-- running from challenges like measuring customer satisfaction or advocacy, engagement, simply because they're kludgey in social: <i>people express them in different ways, they're ambiguous concepts with specific methodologies, the sample isn't representative..</i>. These constructs are indeed complex, but not impossible to measure. <br />
<br />
In psychology, they measure <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elaine_Hatfield" target="_blank">love</a>, <a href="http://www.pursuit-of-happiness.org/history-of-happiness/ed-diener/" target="_blank">well-being</a>, <a href="http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/5198" target="_blank">hope</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Big_Five_personality_traits" target="_blank">personality</a>-- really ambiguous constructs. But they do it systematically and so it's repeatable and testable, or adheres to basic measurement criteria. <br />
<br />
<a href="http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/4506" target="_blank">This is what</a> I'd like to discuss at SXSW, with <a href="http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/faculty/gosling/" target="_blank">Sam Gosling</a>, personality psychologist extraordinaire and author of the book <a href="http://www.snoopology.com/Main.html" target="_blank">Snoop</a>, What Your Stuff Says About You.<br />
<br />Sam studies how personality is revealed in everyday life. He systematically measures:<br />
<ul>
<li><b>The environments we select and create</b> - physical (bedrooms and offices), virtual (webpages, FB), aural (music), and social (places); </li>
<li><b>Personality</b> - our own perceptions, others' perceptions; and,</li>
<li><b>Accuracy of the relationship</b> - things that really do reveal personality, things that people judge our personality based on, etc. </li>
</ul>
Of course I have a bias that almost all answers to business questions have roots in psychology. This time, it's an obvious fit. Some of the measurement challenges that marketers are grappling with today could really benefit from understanding the way psychologists have developed common coins to help draw general conclusions (read: measurement standards) and creative
means of going beyond standard assessments with more innovative
methodologies (read: proxies) to capture different levels of behavior.<br />
<br />
I hope this post will start a conversation to surface some of the measurement challenges you're working through-- particularly those where you're interested in how a psychologist would approach them. Please share your questions and <a href="http://panelpicker.sxsw.com/vote/4506" target="_blank">vote for our session</a> if you're curious to hear and discuss more. <br />
<br />katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-71164746903699081152012-06-25T11:39:00.001-05:002012-06-25T11:41:10.372-05:00on knowing people<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpuZnk53qqTw4wIVw5mbzUNpwwQXgXeFq-npdw_onBGLbDW7_pMKiZ_9yfCQkEdAfCXtUoD1AeDSdz4ZbBrhYmA6T6QXvIhonSux5rNkl2VvfYcqUxBqj3o0QjhUDu4xN1_v-zLkrYA-A/s1600/knowable+-+abstraction.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpuZnk53qqTw4wIVw5mbzUNpwwQXgXeFq-npdw_onBGLbDW7_pMKiZ_9yfCQkEdAfCXtUoD1AeDSdz4ZbBrhYmA6T6QXvIhonSux5rNkl2VvfYcqUxBqj3o0QjhUDu4xN1_v-zLkrYA-A/s1600/knowable+-+abstraction.tiff" /></a>People are interesting. <br />
<br />
Interesting, as defined in many ways and identified in even more. But this 'interestingness' is:<br />
<ul>
<li>Casually applied - assuming people do/want things and, for example, designing programs or products to fulfill needs we don't really have, </li>
<li>Sometimes misapplied - misunderstanding findings; overly <a href="http://socialabacus.blogspot.com/2009/11/awaiting-igon-valuation.html" target="_blank">simplifying</a> complex concepts; and,</li>
<li>Often spectacularized - media coverage of psych studies, for example, showing how irrational people are. </li>
</ul>
<br />
Usually, it's ignored.<br />
<br />
Last week my Knowable intern, Nicole, and I completed our first round of interviews with psychologists - mainly social psychologists, but also including cognitive, personality, developmental, and evolutionary psychologists. The main goal of the interviews is to begin to catalog some of the ways in which we people are interesting, how we know it, and why it's interesting, or where - outside of academia- it can be applied. An important and unique component of these interviews is that they're meant to be accessible to a non-academic audience. We want to have these conversations in a way so that anyone and everyone can better understand what's known and start to think about better harnessing it. <br />
<br />
The project, which you can begin to read about below, is meant to be a first step in the longer-term goal of connecting academic psychology with business. I'll start to use this space to talk more about what we're finding and how we're planning to make this connection in the short- and long- term. In the meantime, if you're a psychologist and would like to be involved in the project, or are a product designer, developer, or storyteller in business with a particular interest in psychology, <a href="mailto:inquiries@knowableresearch.com" target="_blank">let us know</a>. <br />
<br />
<br />
<b>The gist: </b><br />
<br />
I've been out of academia for nearly ten years. <br />
<br />
Working at a <a href="http://www.crunchbase.com/company/buzzmetrics" target="_blank">start-up</a>, a <a href="http://www.nielsen.com/global/en.html" target="_blank">market research firm</a>, and a <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/" target="_blank">consultancy</a>, with
many of the largest global brands, I've identified a big opportunity to
generate more awareness of psychological findings. From marketing to
product development, businesses are hungry to understand why people do
what they do; yet they act in absence of the wealth of research that
psychologists have amassed. <br />
<br />
I'm trying to identify the right way to bridge these worlds of academic psychology and business. Involvement in business for academics can lead to expanded funding opportunities, a new perspective on current research questions, and identification of additional, unanticipated applications. As businesses become aware of the relevance of this research and the minds behind it, they can, in turn, better design their services to meet the needs of users and consumers. <br />
<br />
As an effort to begin connecting these worlds, we're creating a quarterly newsletter with an accompanying analog experience, or "box of research" that highlights select psychologists‚ research interests, tastes and perspectives to pique the interest of this different audience. Rather than using published research as our starting point, we've been conducting interviews for two main reasons: <br />
<ol>
<li>So that I rely on my own experience in "both worlds‚" to ask mutually relevant and interesting questions </li>
<li>To make the content more approachable (i.e. create a casual, personable context). </li>
</ol>
<br />
In the future, we'd like to help establish more direct links between academics and business people to ask and answer more focused questions. The tagged database of interviews we maintain will help us act as brokers of these relationships. <br />
<br />
We're open and eager for feedback. Please <a href="mailto:inquiries@knowableresearch.com" target="_blank">contact us</a> with your design, development, or storytelling quandaries. Psychologists, if there are particular applications outside of academia that resonate with you, let us know!<br />
katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-79333549038085571212012-05-18T17:02:00.001-05:002012-05-18T17:02:14.463-05:00Publicly living in the implied presence of others<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh1y1bPoehE0tv-mFt47msV1ZCgDO4v_hUT_0LlthRFd_nS0G_UN0QoZrhEeuglpEkcpL9ScY4C0rw1VuHLMfnACmlxOsQGNGqcC8WvI_fHz06kEeJwAOEc4EI0altBWx8RmLBodtztZw/s1600/Facebook-bell-ringing.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="177" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhh1y1bPoehE0tv-mFt47msV1ZCgDO4v_hUT_0LlthRFd_nS0G_UN0QoZrhEeuglpEkcpL9ScY4C0rw1VuHLMfnACmlxOsQGNGqcC8WvI_fHz06kEeJwAOEc4EI0altBWx8RmLBodtztZw/s320/Facebook-bell-ringing.tiff" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />
I will reserve POVs on the $104B valuation for other <a href="http://www.businessinsider.com/facebook-employees-celebrate-this-is-what-brand-new-millionaires-and-billionaires-look-like-2012-5" target="_blank">platforms</a>, but want to praise the conceptual winner today: the validation of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_psychology" target="_blank">social psychological</a> being.<br />
<br />
Today, we celebrate the IPO of the company, entity, and social force that has made explicit the previously invisible ways we communicate our thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. I realize this isn't the case for everyone, but saying "thoughts, feelings, and behaviors" is a scripted schema in my book, as memorized from the classic definition of social psychology,<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
The scientific study of how people's thoughts, feelings, and behaviors are affected by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others. (Allport, 1954)</blockquote>
In other words, when I think about Facebook and this script rolls off my tongue, I realize a less scandalous and/or money-making version of <a href="http://www.thesocialnetwork-movie.com/" target="_blank">The Social Network</a> might have depicted (a less entrepreneurial) Zuckerberg interviewing all social and personality psychologists, understanding the plight of observing people in labs, and deciding to revolutionize the way experiments are done.<br />
<br />
The little code-- brains, and momentum that motivated 900M people to hop on and interact for us all to observe and engage with is social psychology's moment in the sun.<br />
<br />
Facebook is a petri dish of social psychological experimentation. It's us proclaiming our identity to others as we are and as we want to be seen-- the seeds of social desirability, self-verification, social comparison. It's us leaving and perceiving behavioral residues as cues to our personalities. It's us demonstrating our psychological orientation to the world through language. It's a constant reminder of our need for belonging. <br />
<br />
Whether we have an illusion of transparency or control, suffer from the imposter effect, have egocentric biases, need social validation... some of my favorite psychological concepts, Facebook lets us express our social psychological selves and celebrate in others' expression.<br />
Congratulations, Facebook! <br />
<br />katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-22723920612925151662012-05-10T10:54:00.004-05:002012-05-10T10:54:54.319-05:00Listening for stories, a uniquely human, unautomated response<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJky7s1TQQ1jt77oki-_ynqF3sHGpa3wwfQMzzPri9a7q1iGJHhOhWYuPmiKQqJOG_xqa8VMMdS1IroFybaPH0c_-oQfdt1oUk0dro-XuOFeQi9gG_aY7tbfXOFOrg5zGceKj3L-MRGgA/s1600/3578468294_a22342f725_n.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJky7s1TQQ1jt77oki-_ynqF3sHGpa3wwfQMzzPri9a7q1iGJHhOhWYuPmiKQqJOG_xqa8VMMdS1IroFybaPH0c_-oQfdt1oUk0dro-XuOFeQi9gG_aY7tbfXOFOrg5zGceKj3L-MRGgA/s1600/3578468294_a22342f725_n.jpg" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo credit: <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/tambako/" target="_blank">Tambako the Jaguar</a></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Sometimes I find myself wandering in conversation. I get distracted by peripheral cues on speakers (tattoos, verbal mannerisms) and hypotheses of my own I'm continually testing (<a href="http://pigee.wordpress.com/minimal-and-incomplete-methodological-literacy-in-personality-psychology/#comment-12" target="_blank">building a case</a>). <br />
<br />
In light of my past post on <a href="http://socialabacus.blogspot.com/2012/04/listening-for-stories-storytellings.html" target="_blank">storylistening</a> in business, I've started thinking more specifically about what it means to be a good listener, without technology. The other night a friend (who happens to be a preeminent communications researcher) suggested "patience" and "imagination." Patience for a story to develop, imagination to string it together. <br />
<br />Imagination has stuck with me-- and might be the perfect concept to help turn storytelling on its head (to story listening). We naturally think about the ability to capture people's imagination with stories we tell, but what about using your own imagination to capture other people's stories, as listeners? <br />
<br />
This reminds me of what Robert Sapolsky highlights in his book <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Why_Zebras_Don%27t_Get_Ulcers" target="_blank">Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers</a>, about the role of stress making us vulnerable to disease. Sapolsky explains that an unfortunately unique human ability to worry is what predisposes us to stress (thus illness) over Zebras, for example, who focus on acute physical stressors (e.g. running from predators, asap!).<br />
<br />
Worrying, in some ways, is about being imaginative-- thinking about the future, letting our minds wander as we play with potential scenarios. It's the downside of imagination. In listening for stories, we have to learn to harness the ability to be imaginative without wandering aimlessly, or ruminating. We have to imagine characters for whom who we may not have faces to place, we must infer emotions, deduce feelings, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Imagination" target="_blank">'form images not perceived through our senses'</a>. But we have to do this in a focused way.<br />
<br />
To listen for a story strikes me as a uniquely human thing to do; yet, something we don't naturally slip into as automatically as our stress response kicks in with 'worry.' If we hone our imagination as we listen, I think stories will more easily emerge. <br />
<br />katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-44515885777774654522012-04-30T14:59:00.001-05:002012-04-30T15:00:10.091-05:00Listening for stories, storytelling's analytic stepsister<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW013yTbGSTOIBmToG7wowBg0xS96_ti4wpDoT2QcDVkAlHcs1dUlQE-_v8zQ9XwjiIRhfbvXsntHxVdRxjxrM_Umje-9vBU47sKa2eWgRLtiCsaM50kgUEXFNfmHNkCB3Z9k7WODYR_o/s1600/RamanSharma_speaker.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="238" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW013yTbGSTOIBmToG7wowBg0xS96_ti4wpDoT2QcDVkAlHcs1dUlQE-_v8zQ9XwjiIRhfbvXsntHxVdRxjxrM_Umje-9vBU47sKa2eWgRLtiCsaM50kgUEXFNfmHNkCB3Z9k7WODYR_o/s320/RamanSharma_speaker.tiff" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Loud speaker, credit: flickr.com/ramansharma</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It's hard to tell a good story.<br />
<br />
But storytelling is very hot-- big organizations <a href="http://t.co/eqRgPobk%20" target="_blank">commission</a> storytellers to story their brand or events. <br />
<br />
Storytelling is not just <a href="http://www.facebook.com/TheMoth" target="_blank">hip</a> to <a href="http://abcstorydepartment.wordpress.com/" target="_blank">do</a>. It's become a marketing mandate: Don't message, story! <a href="http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CC0QFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.edelmandigital.com%2F2012%2F03%2F01%2Ffacebook-brands-story-to-tell%2F&ei=H7mZT570DMmK2gXw0q2DBw&usg=AFQjCNGV4BHni_QiKuZGXF235CFxfBAURw" target="_blank">Facebook</a>, naturally, has played a role in its mainstream adoption. There are also TED videos on <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/joe_sabia_the_technology_of_storytelling.html" target="_blank">storytelling</a>.
And blog posts abound with tips to create suspense and tension, or use
storytelling vocabulary like "themes," "formulas," or plain old "plot."
<br />
<br />
Like most 'big things' in business, there isn't an
algorithm for creating stories. But even from a very removed stance, we know a
good story requires a good listener; a listener who gets to know the
characters, buys in to the premise, and becomes totally absorbed. With the race to capture the '<a href="http://socialabacus.blogspot.com/2011/09/social-media-measurement-this-time-for.html" target="_blank">signals from the noise</a>,' I often worry this skill of listening to and *for* stories is
dying.<br />
<br />
Tandem to the trend in telling stories must be a trend in listening for stories; think of it as the analytic stepsister. <br />
<br />
If you-- or an organization-- is too
focused on creating and telling your stories, it's only an incremental
improvement from creating messages and telling them on a 'one-way-street'. To really embrace storytelling, you need to incorporate elements
of the audience-- listen to their cues, their digital body language. <br />
<br />
Here's where some of what we know from psychology can be helpful (e.g. cues taken from person perception, relationships, 'the self', narrative psychology) :<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Listen for context</b>
- Context is already a big word in listening-- typically it refers to
the category
within which a brand/ product sits. Instead, think of the context
of your customers' and users' lives. Listening for the roles they play,
their goals, the skills they have,
their values. Many contextual cues can be aided by technology. Think
about new queries you might run with sample roles, for example (i.e.
aunt, teacher, photographer, geocacher). </li>
</ul>
<br />
<ul>
<li><b> </b><b>Listen for facts and feelings</b>.
Our industry is obsessively focused on sentiment. While sometimes
emotion-laden content signals an impassioned customer on her way to
checkout, a lot of the good stuff happens in neutral (content and moods)
and is conveyed through other types of words (<a href="http://www.secretlifeofpronouns.com/" target="_blank">pronouns</a>,
<a href="http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2012/04/30/151550273/to-predict-dating-success-the-secrets-in-the-pronouns" target="_blank"> anyone</a>?). Stories are rarely all drama, or exclusive positive or
negative sentiment. Don't ignore content that doesn't contain strong opinions. </li>
</ul>
<ul>
<li><b>Listen for plot</b> - Abandon preconceived notions so you're open to twists and unexpected story development. Self-defining moments are rarely borne out of habits and routine. It's easy to miss out on seminal, story-building
momentum (i.e. unintended product use) by trying to confirm your expectations. This leads to the most labor-intensive advice: you must be inductive and deductive. Use specific queries, but more importantly explore freely. Become intimate with the data, qualitatively. Read. Read. Read. </li>
</ul>
<br />
<ul>
<li><b>Listen for rhythm</b>.
You can't listen for stories in snapshots (i.e. one-time audits). You
need to understand the order of events and how incidents are layered over
time. People go through stages-- not just from <a href="http://www.briansolis.com/2012/01/the-hierarchy-of-contagiousness/" target="_blank">awareness to intent</a>, desire, and action; nor do they reliably <a href="http://darmano.typepad.com/logic_emotion/2007/04/whats_the_story.html" target="_blank">visit, engage, share</a>. They follow winding paths with firsts and lasts and several moments in
between. <a href="http://darmano.typepad.com/" target="_blank">David Armano</a> often refers to the "rhythm" of a story akin to the soundtrack in a movie. Rhythm is another area where a taxonomy of stages and incidents can support your thorough qualitative scrutiny of the data. </li>
</ul>
<br />
Listening for brand mentions-- and even doing customer service in a limited and transactional manner, will only buy you the "psychology of a stranger." That is, it won't take you very far in
getting to know your customers. Advocacy, by any name, has reciprocity at its heart. You must
listen to their stories if you want yours to be remembered and retold.<br />
<br />
<i>*Apologies to any readers unfamiliar with the industry term "<a href="http://www.forrester.com/The+Forrester+Wave+Enterprise+Listening+Platforms+Q2+2012/fulltext/-/E-RES61648" target="_blank">listening</a>"-- a technical term referring to the monitoring and analysis of social media. </i>katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-14297464821150237362012-04-23T23:25:00.000-05:002012-04-23T23:25:20.574-05:00Open QuestionsContinuing along the vein of design vs. science, here are a few things
on my mind that will hopefully evolve into posts one of these days:<br />
<ul>
<li>Developing a framework for varied 'methods toward action' across
discipline including "business decisions" "empirical questions" and
"sense-making problems." What other terms live in this category?<br />
</li>
<li> Exploring the merit of personas as design tools vs. personality types as aids in understanding and predicting future behavior. Many have strong reactions against each/either of these methodologies. What is the best way to paint a picture of someone to anticipate needs? </li>
</ul>
Please let me know if you have related thoughts...katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-37240946739074883792012-04-04T16:37:00.002-05:002012-04-04T16:37:39.129-05:00You know what I mean?<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOW2Z_God90SyBX5UayPM9QiXN5sAo-lpiZU3eIi4yuujPMrAa4UPMbQ3eBr0n6YpKDsNJmkCtYdwp1xAOc6TKtq8BSfIlHcKyg-SKWKKdJIATfFQDQhrDmrKgpBC0Eujpecl0xqx_48o/s1600/situation.tiff" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="216" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOW2Z_God90SyBX5UayPM9QiXN5sAo-lpiZU3eIi4yuujPMrAa4UPMbQ3eBr0n6YpKDsNJmkCtYdwp1xAOc6TKtq8BSfIlHcKyg-SKWKKdJIATfFQDQhrDmrKgpBC0Eujpecl0xqx_48o/s320/situation.tiff" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jersey Shore star Mike "The Situation" Sorrentino, MTV</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We tend to be overconfident. As people, as brands, and as products.<br />
<br />
Sometimes this manifests in the expected ways of <a href="http://www.prdaily.com/Main/Articles/How_to_be_a_selfrighteous_jerk_on_social_media__10886.aspx" target="_blank">chest-thumping</a>, <a href="http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2008/08/how-to-set-an-e.html" target="_blank">ego-traps</a>, and <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/humblebrag" target="_blank">braggadocio</a>, but every now and then our overconfidence acts in more subtle ways.<br />
<br />
We don't listen because we think we already know. We don't take other people's perspectives because we think we're right. Sometimes it's more complicated, we assume other people understand us - especially close friends, romantic partners, customers, or users-- even when we don't do a good job explaining. <br />
<br />
As a result, a joke might flop-- or worse offend a close friend, because we assume our friends fully understand our intentions to be humorous. Or in the business world, a product falls flat, because we assume our users understand our intentions to meet their needs.<br />
<br />
My point: in general we think our 'people' get us better than they do. We're overconfident in predicting how well other people understand us, and how well we understand them.<br />
<br />
This
is a perfect example of how the close-relationship literature is
relevant to businesses who believe they're "in relationship" with
customers. Especially brands who try to fluidly translate what they 'Listen' to into content or product developers/ designers who synthesize what people say into experiences. <br />
<br />
From one of my clever <a href="http://psychology.williams.edu/profile/ksavitsk/" target="_blank">college psychology profs</a> in a <a href="http://news.uchicago.edu/article/2011/01/20/couples-sometimes-communicate-no-better-strangers-study-finds" target="_blank">press release</a> about a particular experiment he conducted on overconfidence and the "illusion of insight" we have with our well-known acquaintances:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
"Although speakers expected their spouse to understand them better than
strangers, accuracy rates for spouses and strangers were statistically
identical. This result is striking because speakers were more confident
that they were understood by their spouse."</blockquote>
In other words, think about the last time you said "you know what I mean" to your partner... He/she probably didn't! <br />
<br />
A common exercise in couples therapy is to have a spouse go into "listening mode" and repeat back what he heard his partner say in real-time. Often he 'repeats' something quite different than his partner thinks she articulated. Imagine the analog in business. Try spontaneously repeating back what your customers/ users are saying.<br />
<br />
Make sure you actually understand, and don't just have an illusion of understanding or insight. A lot of the changes made to our communications and products are based on the *presumed* knowledge about our acquaintances. <br />
<br />katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-17615894811985677562012-03-28T16:22:00.002-05:002012-03-28T16:22:42.574-05:00Pinning to tell our stories<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg10pXXi9sI6i5NOrNsCZXLVPN5ZmFoQEo-8qDwVeVrKEhBYJR_TBjQN-RusgsWArLsqizCi2bW2QmC8jnMSnfyH3D54pdT3peg6N35cBfO9M1rkES6xjazP2DVzR8tf9MMbymNrnHDuOw/s1600/hanschristianandersen.tiff" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="198" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg10pXXi9sI6i5NOrNsCZXLVPN5ZmFoQEo-8qDwVeVrKEhBYJR_TBjQN-RusgsWArLsqizCi2bW2QmC8jnMSnfyH3D54pdT3peg6N35cBfO9M1rkES6xjazP2DVzR8tf9MMbymNrnHDuOw/s200/hanschristianandersen.tiff" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Hans Christian Anderson Statue, Central Park<br />
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My streams were filled with links to the <a href="http://columnfivemedia.com/" target="_blank">Column Five</a>/<a href="http://www.flowtown.com/blog/why-is-pinterest-so-addictive" target="_blank">Flowtown infoposter</a> "Why is Pinterest so addictive" last week. This only added to the <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/03/21/pinterest-popularity-explained-infographic_n_1370238.html" target="_blank">traditional</a> and <a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=pinterest+addictive&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8&aq=t&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a#q=pinterest+addictive&hl=en&client=firefox-a&hs=Cm0&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&prmd=imvnsu&source=lnms&tbm=blg&ei=03ZzT7mPG6L62AXI4cXNDg&sa=X&oi=mode_link&ct=mode&cd=4&ved=0CB4Q_AUoAw&prmdo=1&bav=on.2,or.r_gc.r_pw.r_cp.r_qf.,cf.osb&fp=ac019615ea70a3af&biw=1419&bih=724" target="_blank">social media</a>
conversation about the conversation. Naturally people are hungry for
answers to this question, given the accelerated growth Pinterest has
seen and it's enviable ability to cultivate attention. According to
ComScore, we're now talking ~18M Uniques spending about 3+minutes per
day! <br />
<br />
But what I got from the infoposter is
really*how* Pinterest serves as a vehicle for the addiction. Flowtown
does point out attributes like "refuge" and "get popular" and as <a href="http://news.yahoo.com/why-pinterest-addictive-infographic-221209862.html" target="_blank">Mashable says</a>,
posits a hypothesis around "digital hoarding," but for the most part,
the infoposter is centered on the site's design and simplicity, which
enable participation. What's missing is an analysis of the psychology of
its active participation to explain the 'why'. <br />
<br />
To
me, its stats are the manifestation of a great value to users-- some
need being met and/or other fundamental psychological processes at play.
<br />
<br />
Taking "addiction" lightly, pinning is a way of
expressing who we are and the stories we tell. Pinterest = Narrative
construction. It's an easy-to-use instrument to establish our identity
--to ourselves and others.<br />
<br />
<br />
I realize it feels comical or to some, superficial to think of how pictures of <a href="http://mashable.com/2012/03/12/pinterest-most-popular-categories-boards/" target="_blank">home goods, arts & crafts, style, and food</a>,
are helping us make sense of ourselves and communicate that to others,
but these are the exact collections of artifacts we've used to tell our
aggregate historical and cultural stories time and again. As an aside,
spending money is also a means of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emotional_self-regulation" target="_blank">emotional regulation</a>, particularly (albeit with limited evidence) for women.<br />
<br />
The idea I'm drawing from is <a href="http://www.redemptiveself.northwestern.edu/mcadams/" target="_blank">Dan McAdam's</a>
"Life Stories," from his integrative theory of personality. While some
personality psychologists endorse models of fixed traits, McAdams sees
traits as the outline only-- he explains that we're constantly stringing
together traits, fleshing them out, and personalizing by adding to our
'story'. This, in turn, evolves our identity, guides behavior and helps
orient ourselves socially. It gives us purpose. <br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<span id="freeText16260814853742041551">To McAdams,
we're constantly creating, telling and revising our stories. It's an
ongoing process that, in my view, Pinterest facilitates.</span><span id="freeText16260814853742041551"> Check out <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Stories-We-Live-By/dp/1572301880" target="_blank">McAdams' book</a>, read the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/22/health/psychology/22narr.html?pagewanted=all" target="_blank">review</a>, reference his <a href="http://www.sesp.northwestern.edu/foley/profile/?ProfileID=46" target="_blank">papers</a>. If nothing else, think about your unfolding story, or your role in your customers' stories as you pin. <br />
</span><br />
<br />katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-7774609394489114322012-03-20T00:12:00.000-05:002012-03-20T00:12:55.997-05:00Reading-and-sharing: nurturing the ties that bind<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmLVm6RXF9Zn7tM7Vvuyd9NVs-PsAunPFgty11h__6LftPA4m1lEQhCkzcDv7wHIk0pHuM78Ee1J8XJCmZd3NUPqykxok1k6EgpYpAOv2_fksNo3LQLRc7XSf0MS6XxUzA8n76OVFz2Sc/s1600/salondethe" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgmLVm6RXF9Zn7tM7Vvuyd9NVs-PsAunPFgty11h__6LftPA4m1lEQhCkzcDv7wHIk0pHuM78Ee1J8XJCmZd3NUPqykxok1k6EgpYpAOv2_fksNo3LQLRc7XSf0MS6XxUzA8n76OVFz2Sc/s200/salondethe" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo credit: amateurgourmet.com</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My friend Amanda was talking me through the woes of reading a(n actual) newspaper from her hotel bed. Despite being free, she had become so accustomed to the immediate gratification of sharing content during/ after reading that it left her news-intake experience incomplete.<br />
<br />
This shouldn't be foreign to anyone. <br />
<br />
While some "bumper-stickering" occurs with certain article-sharing (people making <a href="http://www.snoopology.com/" target="_blank">identity claims</a> via social readers, for example), we can all relate to the idea that some content makes us think of specific people that we want to reach out to in real-time to experience the content with. It enhances the experience: a primitive form of augmented reality, maybe.<br />
<br />
I think it also serves a more evolutionary purpose: social network management. This is analogous to the link between <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robin_Dunbar" target="_blank">gossiping and grooming</a>. <br />
<br />
I've <a href="http://socialabacus.blogspot.com/2009/01/twitters-group-mind-echo-chamber-or.html" target="_blank">blogged before</a> about Wegner's notion of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transactive_memory" target="_blank">transactive memory</a>, a concept I love about how we get information into our heads (encode), arrange and add context (store), and eventually access when needed (retrieve) *as a group*. In my mind, this is underpinning of the success that Twitter is. It also helps explain this tendency we have to read-and-share as a means to coordinate our social network. That is, by sharing certain content with specific people, we more effectively encode, store, and retrieve information as a social network. Think of it like really effective curating. Simply by sharing links, we're making sense out of our expanding networks. <br />
<br />
But something else happens when we read-and-share. We create virtual spaces. As the great sociologist <a href="http://www.pps.org/articles/roldenburg/" target="_blank">Ray Oldenburg</a> might say, we create "<a href="http://www.pps.org/articles/roldenburg/" target="_blank">a third place</a>." Places, really. Salons. Sharing links creates places for us to meet and talk about our shared interests. Traditionally a "third place" is a place of refuge. It's not your home, not your job. So these virtual salons we create let us escape-- or augment our reality-- while performing social network maintenance: clustering and categorizing our network.<br />
<br />
I mentioned this to <a href="http://www.stoweboyd.com/" target="_blank">Stowe Boyd</a> the other week-- our tendency to create 'salons' by sharing links (and related information). He likened it to the new form of passing out business cards. A form of saying, "meet me there" rather than "shoot me an email!" This works-- think about what's running through your head when you <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/katenieder/status/177588234421927936" target="_blank">tweet out an article</a>. <br />
<br />
Like visualizing a race course before running it in order to be better prepared at
racetime (i.e. to better predict and control differences in terrain and speed), reading-and-sharing better prepares you for future social interactions. I think it lets us escape while strengthening our metamemory of the knowledge that binds our networks. <br />
<br />
Is that how you would characterize how you were feeling, @mercerthompson?<br />
<br />katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-71840000790278039412012-03-16T00:33:00.002-05:002012-03-16T00:33:24.576-05:00Measuring, changing behavior<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwHx1S3F0Y2l4Bf8JL1lhM6hV0kKqSnTpzUMtsoDJblrNYamkXqpbF9YI6sJTnvJXQTLh6tFAi8RD96acfqviHjRaa99z4oSZh-srU3MWUikHw0DvLjGWwr2M0DynSbom7WM8IBTojbfY/s1600/nike_fuel" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiwHx1S3F0Y2l4Bf8JL1lhM6hV0kKqSnTpzUMtsoDJblrNYamkXqpbF9YI6sJTnvJXQTLh6tFAi8RD96acfqviHjRaa99z4oSZh-srU3MWUikHw0DvLjGWwr2M0DynSbom7WM8IBTojbfY/s1600/nike_fuel" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Source: Nike.com/fuelband</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
With more people trying to crack the social media measurement nut, my focus has shifted to the study of behavior change. Because if I haven't made clear my beliefs <a href="http://socialabacus.blogspot.com/2009/11/awaiting-igon-valuation.html" target="_blank">before</a>, Brian Solis seals the deal with his redactment: <a href="http://www.briansolis.com/2012/03/social-media-is-about-social-science-not-technology/" target="_blank">Social media is about social science, not technology</a>. So often SM metrics are diluted by what *can* be measured-- and with that ever-proliferating (<a href="http://storify.com/" target="_blank">stories</a>, <a href="http://pinterest.com/" target="_blank">pins</a>, <a href="http://plancast.com/home/all/102677" target="_blank">plans</a>, <a href="http://highlig.ht/about.html" target="_blank">highlights</a>...), it's easy to lose sight of what most people are interested in: effects and impact, or in other words attitude and behavior change. <br />
<br />
This is what stuck out to me at SXSW 2012: the number of apps (and ideas) that have emerged to focus on changing behaviors: recycling more, exercising more, using public transportation, eating healthier foods. Each of them, through the ability to:<br />
<ol>
<li>Capture behaviors in real-time</li>
<li>Track behaviors over time (sometimes with annotations)</li>
<li>Gain context by comparing amounts relative to our network(s)</li>
</ol>
One of the more prevalent SXSW 2012 themes, crystallized by <a href="http://storify.com/mbjorn/ambient-location-and-future-of-the-interface-ambe" target="_blank">Amber Case</a>, is that we are increasingly <a href="http://www.web-strategist.com/blog/2012/03/13/sxsw-2012-as-crowd-swells-new-technologies-emerge-for-intimate-relationships/" target="_blank">sentient</a> beings, <a href="http://www.pre-commerce.com/index.php/2012/03/08/jim-stewartson-and-the-fourth-wall/" target="_blank">cyborgs</a> in our own right-- thus more and more able to capture these behaviors seamlessly, starting with our mobile phones. However, I also appreciated <a href="http://roseology.com/" target="_blank">David Rose</a>'s contrarian view that discouraged mobile usage toward more utilitarian incorporation of technology, e.g. into furniture and <a href="http://www.vitality.net/glowcaps.html" target="_blank">medicine containers</a>. <br />
<br />
What's amazing to me, as a psychologist, is how unaware we are of our behaviors without external cues and how we really need these technological advances to inform us. Better awareness of our behaviors is critical. Some psychologists believe <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Self-perception_theory" target="_blank">observing our behaviors</a> is how we come to know ourselves. Perhaps it seems preposterous that we would be blind to our own behaviors, but often people go to extreme measures to better understand their 'daily footprint'. For example, 30-day Master Cleanses; <a href="http://www.ted.com/talks/rachel_botsman_the_case_for_collaborative_consumption.html" target="_blank">not using a car for a month</a>; <a href="http://designmind.frogdesign.com/articles/green/trash-talk-interactive.html" target="_blank">walking around with all your trash</a> for a few weeks.<br />
<br />
Sometimes it's more simple-- mere awareness transcends deprivation- invisible metrics are made visible and put <a href="http://socialabacus.blogspot.com/2008/12/happiness-metrics-in-my-hands.html" target="_blank">in the hands of users.</a> <br />
<br />
Using apps that facilitate this awareness is a great experiment for those (e.g. brand managers, product developers) trying to crack the measurement nut. Become aware of how your own behavior changes to start thinking about what really matters when you're measuring your consumers' behavior. I often find this is the best framework for measurement in addition to reporting. <br />
<br />katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-83493084376678249122012-03-07T15:23:00.000-06:002012-03-07T15:23:35.185-06:00wicked problems and scientific design<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUUamqjtc6rGF-EP9g3UnUUdL0rpX9j84AIXYoFCeizVAJPkFLRyQ-gV4Xv9-KeBQtp1Xt71jZhdpcmuyZFH65aN8aFA7ZdEOHTwDPae00H0czspxxsztqoczur4kmsMg9k3d9LjxaIWQ/s1600/muybridge.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="258" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjUUamqjtc6rGF-EP9g3UnUUdL0rpX9j84AIXYoFCeizVAJPkFLRyQ-gV4Xv9-KeBQtp1Xt71jZhdpcmuyZFH65aN8aFA7ZdEOHTwDPae00H0czspxxsztqoczur4kmsMg9k3d9LjxaIWQ/s320/muybridge.jpg" width="320" /></a> What is the role of a social psychologist in solving <a href="http://www.wickedproblems.com/">wicked problems</a>? <br />
<br />
Further, is she required to elect between the<a href="http://www.experiment-resources.com/"> scientific method</a> in which she is trained or the <a href="http://designthinking.ideo.com/">design process</a> for which she has seen more popular reception? I hate to confuse the morass of types of reasoning that already exist (deductive, inductive, abductive...), but could there be a <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5mqNcs8mp74">hybrid approach</a> that causes the most <a href="http://www.claytonchristensen.com/">disruption</a>-- the most lasting behavior change-- in the context of wicked problems? <br />
<br />
I'm fascinated by differences in the scientific method vs. the design process and am doing some research understanding the nuances in each-- the reasoning, process, and possible outcomes.<br />
<br />
Intuitively, we perceive that design involves more creativity compared to science's falsifiability; more empathy compared to science's controlled objectivity. Several have more extreme and controversial views on which has more merit and the generalization that science aims to prove, while design, to improve.<br />
<br />
Roger Martin argued a few years ago that the scientific mandate to *prove* things <a href="http://www.fastcompany.com/blog/linda-tischler/design-times/whats-thwarting-american-innovation-too-much-science-says-roger-mar">stymies</a> innovation. Around the same time, <a href="http://emergentbydesign.com/2010/01/14/what-is-design-thinking-really/">design thinking</a> was heralded for its breakthrough potential, led in part by the critical acclaim of <a href="http://www.ideo.com/by-ideo/change-by-design?cbd">Tim Brown's book</a>. More recently, and ironically I might add, design thinking has been criticized as a "<a href="http://www.fastcodesign.com/1663558/design-thinking-is-a-failed-experiment-so-whats-next">failed experiment</a>" in its mainstream adoption and packaging as a business process, devoid of creativity. Funny enough, some of the original (popular) thinking on the scientific method-- by Einstein-- cites the role of "creative imagination" in science:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
<span class="reference-text">"To raise new questions, new
possibilities, to regard old problems from a new angle, requires <b>
creative</b> <b>imagination</b> and marks real advance in science."</span><br />
<span class="reference-text">- <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method#CITEREFEinsteinInfeld1938">Einstein & Infeld 1938</a></span><span class="citation" id="CITEREFEinsteinInfeld1938"> </span></blockquote>
I point out these select examples only to emphasize this methodological quandary is a complicated issue.<br />
<br />
Which do you perceive leads to more disruption? Particularly as wicked problems abound and we have no choice but to move away from reasoning and explanation toward diagnosis and behavior change. Which is more apt? <br />
<br />
<span class="reference-text"></span><span class="citation" id="CITEREFEinsteinInfeld1938"><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Standard_Book_Number" title="International Standard Book Number"></a></span>Back to my research. Let me know if you have thoughts.<br />
<br />
<i>Photocredit: Eadweard Muybridge, digitaljournalist.org</i> <br />
<br />katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-38906800194381200882012-03-05T07:01:00.001-06:002012-03-05T07:01:00.362-06:00Starting Up: Infusing business with social science<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsNJh7scQcaG_eppK9PCcKBjUhXUbIOMnwsPt92YlWlaxsSEL300_2SmvGZyDLgNerQXgulTQ_5JUl79SFgxK5lXT8o5EtyORoXsdVcgehPpKpUEM1wzZypmGOuhPNXzZzh7T3NIhO_Fg/s1600/Lewin.tiff"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 122px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgsNJh7scQcaG_eppK9PCcKBjUhXUbIOMnwsPt92YlWlaxsSEL300_2SmvGZyDLgNerQXgulTQ_5JUl79SFgxK5lXT8o5EtyORoXsdVcgehPpKpUEM1wzZypmGOuhPNXzZzh7T3NIhO_Fg/s200/Lewin.tiff" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5716276597449451858" border="0" /></a><br />Over the past seven years I've become increasingly frustrated when people talk about things like influence, engagement, community, or collaboration (to name just a few) without enough of a nod to the wealth of data in social science.<br /><br />I've blogged before about my concern that business is "<a href="http://socialabacus.blogspot.com/2009/11/awaiting-igon-valuation.html">awaiting igon valuation.</a>" This is the idea inspired by Steven Pinker's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/15/books/review/Pinker-t.html?_r=2&pagewanted=2">review</a> of Malcolm Gladwell's “What the Dog Saw,” that there are solutions available to some of today’s more complex business problems, but they need to be made into banal generalizations before catching on.<br /><br />Starting today, I've decided to apply myself to this 'cause'. I'm dedicating myself-- with a new professional venture-- to defy igon valuation and introduce more of the richness from psychology to business via research. KNowable Research, name courtesy of my former colleague, <a href="http://www.beingpeterkim.com/">Peter Kim</a>.<br /><br />The origin of my idea is simple-- and you can walk through this from the perspective of an individual or a business:<br /><ul><li>Online and mobile platforms for social interaction and the resulting data have made the formerly invisible dynamics of human attitudes, cognition and behavior more salient.</li><li>This awareness has changed the ways we relate to people, places, and products.<br /></li><li>To be successful, businesses require a deeper understanding of these 'ways we relate' and the underlying thoughts and attitudes, through known principles from social science. </li></ul>In subsequent posts, I'll walk through the above in more detail. I'll also provide more information about my plan, as things unfold. I'll be developing my ideas again here(!) and look forward to your feedback, reactions, ideas, perceptions, and any other elements of your psychologies you choose to share.<br /><br />More to come.<br /><br />*<span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">Photo credit: Kurt Lewin, the father of social psychology. Image in public domain via About.com</span></span>katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-14706140285485588152012-02-28T22:00:00.001-06:002012-02-29T00:55:28.728-06:00Minding the gap: Academia and Business<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZdd4PWSceARXsFYBXYc311pzueYNF_M_AphIx56ku0Grb1uUvgMED1HLUKNpbNXFzl81pnIzHyb-ygQXF8n90A3pO-ayVQK5y0_cUOysDXRYgYuX9ZS9xbhPVFnWvMiwnUqLYjPCQ_sU/s1600/UTtower_BlazerMan.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 133px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiZdd4PWSceARXsFYBXYc311pzueYNF_M_AphIx56ku0Grb1uUvgMED1HLUKNpbNXFzl81pnIzHyb-ygQXF8n90A3pO-ayVQK5y0_cUOysDXRYgYuX9ZS9xbhPVFnWvMiwnUqLYjPCQ_sU/s200/UTtower_BlazerMan.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5714444014286983250" border="0" /></a><br />After a 7-year hiatus, I've been back on the UT campus, teaching, for about two months now. Each week, I notice different aspects of the great divide between academia and business. Each week it seems larger, but I'm beginning to better understand some ways to bridge it.<br /><br />I've been toying with the idea with respect to social science for a few months now. It began with a small frustration: Why aren't social scientists more involved in conversations about 'our' work with the general public-- the way<a href="http://malcolmgladwell.com/"> some journalists</a> are? For example, discussions of collective action and all things collaboration and co-creation show little awareness of the early work on the pitfalls of <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brainstorming">brainstorming</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink">groupthink</a>, <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_loafing">social loafing</a>, or even <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_Identity_Theory">social identity theory</a> to name a few.<br /><br />Last week I spoke with UT Psychology alumni and proposed a few possibilities:<br /><ol><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Terminology</span>: Academics and businesspeople speak different languages -- in content and style. </li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Comfort</span>: Academics have safeguards against going beyond the constraints of an experiment; businesses often make 'business decisions' with more directional insight. </li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Information flow: </span><span>(</span>Right, chicken vs. egg.) There's very little flow of information from one world to the other. No means to efficiently access research (PsycINFO!) and firewalls that protect business questions. </li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Currency</span>: While everyone wants fame and glory, it seemingly comes in different forms for academics and businesspeople. </li></ol>Or does it? Do they?<br /><br />In his <a href="http://www.utexas.edu/gamechangers">UT Game Changers</a> talk this evening, <a href="https://twitter.com/#%21/bobmetcalfe">Bob Metcalfe</a> laid out three broad reasons as to why it's difficult to build an entrepreneurial culture at research universities. Paraphrased below, his reasons overlap with some of mine above, and otherwise extend the list:<br /><ol><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Stigma</span>: Some believe commercialization is crass</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Reward structures</span>: Participation in entrepreneurial activity is not aligned with incentives</li><li><span style="font-weight: bold;">Means</span>. Some researchers believe they don't know how</li></ol>Why do you think the gap exists? How could the theories and ideas from social science have so much relevance to business today, yet play so minimal a role in the broader conversation?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-size:85%;"><span style="font-style: italic;">PhotoCredit: flickr.com/BlazerMan</span></span>katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-20212743339231726512011-10-25T09:00:00.001-05:002011-10-25T09:17:12.682-05:00Listening: make the effort!<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP2Ilz8qRPJ98TpWCs9rtOOotLA5DAWEOubge94uHuHrKPRhMIJmZ6Zyf7ww0mQhe2JBdu4P-dZyrPaLiRim6pjycn6l_URu77X4aPud8iV8T9wJv1cLaJZ5pk_5Ka_sN0onlIg7kca_U/s1600/listener.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 168px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiP2Ilz8qRPJ98TpWCs9rtOOotLA5DAWEOubge94uHuHrKPRhMIJmZ6Zyf7ww0mQhe2JBdu4P-dZyrPaLiRim6pjycn6l_URu77X4aPud8iV8T9wJv1cLaJZ5pk_5Ka_sN0onlIg7kca_U/s200/listener.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5667257988437820834" border="0" /></a>Like many other<a href="http://homepage.psy.utexas.edu/homepage/group/busslab/david_home.htm"> evolutionary adaptations</a>, we’ve all evolved to look like good listeners-- in life, to give off the cue we’re available for emotional support, and in marketing, to show executives and/or the public, we’re aware of what’s being said about us and/or our brands. Problem is, in marketing, as in life, many of us are not good listeners.<br /><br />Many are reliant on technology to do all the work; to spoonfeed insight into the perfect, executive-friendly dashboard.<br /><br />As a result, what I see today is rampant platform-hopping. Listening in 2011 has largely been marked by the quest for the ultimate platform. Clients switch listening providers for prettier user-interfaces, better-slicing-and-dicing, ease of direct engagement, access to the Twitter API... the list goes on, and many of the reasons for switching are warranted.<br /><br />The error is simply in expecting the technology to do all the work.<br /><br />This error has also led many to make the pessimistic statement: "Listening platforms are commoditized."<br /><br />Is this the case? Is there really <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity">no qualitative differentiation</a>? Partial fungibility? Can a listening platform really be a commodity in the <a href="http://socialabacus.blogspot.com/2011/06/social-media-measurement-winning-or.html">absence of standards</a>?<br /><br />I would argue, <strong>not yet</strong>.<br /><br />Further, have they jumped the shark? Is the pessimism warranted? <strong>No.</strong><br /><br />I see platforms vary widely on the surface, and then in more meaningful ways like data coverage, data quality, and mining methodology. But despite these differences, they all do a pretty good job in serving up insight; several have an impressive edge.<br /><br />The problem is that the insight delivered will not be useful for your organization until you expend some effort, personally. In my <a href="http://www.innotechconferences.com/austin/speakers/kate-niederhoffer/">Innotech talk </a>last week with <a href="http://www.twitter.com/katerushsheehy">Kate Rush Sheehy</a>, I argued there are three main things that matter when trying to be a good listener. The first, the most important, is a precursor and a contingency:<br /><br /><strong>Get involved in the data.</strong> <em>Physically</em>. This task is not below anyone. Change up your Boolean operands and see the impact. Read through your results. Know what “spam” really means in your landscape. You must immerse yourself in the data before you can warrant switching. It’s not fair to you or the technology.<br /><br />Listening platforms are growing in every sense-- in number, in prowess, in prevalence, and in importance. There are amazing advances in NLP, sentiment analysis, geo-location, and data warehousing enabling faster, more precise analyses to occur. But no matter how good the technology, good listening will always be effortful.<br /><br /><em>Photo credit: flickr.com/CarbonNYC<br />This post also appears in the <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/2011/10/listening-make-the-effort/%20%C3%A2%C2%80%C2%8E">Dachis Group Collaboratory</a><br /></em>katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-61350617201102907382011-09-13T07:01:00.002-05:002011-09-13T07:08:48.332-05:00Social Media Measurement: This time for realz<p><br /></p><p>We have crossed the <a href="http://www.beingpeterkim.com/2011/04/banking-jnd.html">just noticeable difference</a> (JNdiff) in the threshold of signal: noise when <a href="http://reality.media.mit.edu/serendipity.php">serendipity</a> has been compromised.</p> <p>The noise out there can be infuriating. Too much clutter; no sense of what goes with what; what's a "need to know" vs. a "nice to know" vs. a "never wanted to know."</p> <p>I often find myself talking clients off the ledge as they attempt to prioritize social media efforts, given inexplicable differences in results across listening platforms, varying calculations of influence, and the age-old question of "what's good" when it comes to buzz and sentiment. Further, knowing 'how well' you're doing in social media has only become more problematic with the increasing shift in interest from amassing eyeballs to mobilizing and rewarding them.</p> <p>As an industry, we're plagued by inefficient categorizations, unstable rankings of authority, and unpredictable, black box algorithms guessing what matters most.</p> <p>Perhaps as a result, we see more organizations shifting in the same way that we, as people, do as we go through adolescence-- from giving disproportionate weight to what others say about us, to being more concerned with our own actions. That which we can control.</p> <p>Being in control of our actions requires a different type of measurement and management. To help organizations in said efforts, we're announcing today our public launch of the Social Business Index (SBI), the first application on our Social Business Intelligence as a Service (SBIaaS) data services platform.</p> <p>Having worked in social media analysis for seven years, it's become clear to me, the trick to finding meaning in social media is to be intimate with your dataset (for context), and to monitor relative comparisons to yield meaning. We've thoroughly taken this to heart with the SBI.</p><p>Our dataset includes the social accounts of thousands of companies, their subsidiaries, and brands, in addition to the social accounts of their engaged market (e.g. anyone who interacts with a given account). Using natural language processing and machine learning algorithms, powered by our own <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/teams">strategists</a>, we identify specific activities that are being executed by a given brand -- emanating from their social accounts. This is a critical distinction from the way things are being measured today. We're not exclusively monitoring reactions, or buzz in response to a real or perceived tactic. Instead, we're starting with the action per se. We're measuring what you, as marketers, are doing-- in addition to the way your market responds.<br /></p><p>We've captured specific behaviors correlated with outcomes such as Brand Awareness, Brand Love, Brand Mindshare, and Advocacy. In aggregate, this gives us a company's Social Business Index Score-- a ranking, analysis, and benchmarking of Social Business adoption and performance.</p><p>Go to <a href="http://www.socialbusinessindex.com/">socialbusinessindex.com</a>, learn more, and sign up.</p> <p>We're excited about our progress in digging out of the black hole of social media measurement. We acknowledge our approach will evolve over time and we look forward to your collaboration to do so. If you work at a company covered by the index, register for private access to deeper analytics. If your company is not currently covered, request coverage.</p> <p>If you're just curious, take a look at our ranking and best in class analysis by browsing at <a href="http://www.socialbusinessindex.com/">www.socialbusinessindex.com</a>.</p><p>This post also appears on the <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/2011/09/social-media-measurement-this-time-for-realz/">Dachis Group Collaboratory</a>, where you can find my colleagues' related posts as well.<br /></p>katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-71372255675356557742011-06-14T09:42:00.006-05:002011-06-14T10:43:26.088-05:00Social Media Measurement: Winning or Winging it?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJ9qPX734m-0nhNfzNjYlOL1Pcqh10Ep41y-PxoG-tNMRQRyQJqc61_I5kUgD8UPi_93E2Uaful12-npHQbOAnJVCyYrIwqe5HSLhDDG95egJ6VycoUx28jsgmjHbpjiQu7mB1mch0gY/s1600/wings.jpg"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 188px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhoJ9qPX734m-0nhNfzNjYlOL1Pcqh10Ep41y-PxoG-tNMRQRyQJqc61_I5kUgD8UPi_93E2Uaful12-npHQbOAnJVCyYrIwqe5HSLhDDG95egJ6VycoUx28jsgmjHbpjiQu7mB1mch0gY/s200/wings.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5618096926206042290" border="0" /></a><br />People are "winging it" with measurement in social today. Marketers embarrassedly tell me this daily.<br /><br />In my social psychological opinion, those of you who aren't abiding by any standards, measuring a little sentiment here, a little influence there, and a lot of buzz everywhere are falling prey to a cognitive bias: <a href="http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=imposter+effect+Clance+and+Imes+1978+psychology&hl=en&as_sdt=0&as_vis=1&oi=scholart">The Imposter Effect</a>. You're denying yourselves the credit of being bona fide experimenters.<br /><br />With <a href="http://kdpaine.blogs.com/themeasurementstandard/social_media_measurement/">no standards yet</a>, and no evidence that a global social media metric standard spans all business goals and outcomes, the best thing you can do in measurement today is effectively operationalize your variables. Operationalize in the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operationalization">scientific sense</a>: define the ambiguous concept you're trying to get at by coming up with a relevant way to measure it. We're an industry without gold standards. You have no choice but to wing it, but you can still do so empirically.<br /><br />When social scientists study things like "health," "happiness," and "satisfaction" with marriage, jobs, or life, we rely on proxies. You often hear things like "health, as defined by number of doctor visits in a month," or "happiness, as defined by size of smile." In lieu of (or sometimes in addition to) getting self-reports of "how healthy/happy you are," these objective measures act as a best bet or starting point, eventually with some validation as to why that operationalization was selected.<br /><br />Take a typical desire in social business measurement today: "we want to tie engagement to business results." So, how do we operationalize engagement? Importantly, this doesn't mean you should settle for a<a href="http://socialabacus.blogspot.com/2008/10/chasing-engagement.html"> kitchen sink approach</a> and add up everything to yield engagement, instead chose wisely - a realistic manifestation of what it means to be engaged. As I've said <a href="http://socialabacus.blogspot.com/2008/10/influence-influenza.html">before</a>, think about:<br /><ul><br /><li><strong>Objectivity</strong>-- Really think about what engagement means; don't arbitrarily involve variables simply because they’re available (e.g. # friends).</li><br /><li><strong>Reliability</strong> - Look for something that gets at engagement over time. Don't incorporate variables that measure the same thing multiple times (e.g. friends on Facebook + followers on Twitter + connections on LinkedIn).</li><br /><li><strong>Validity</strong> - show that your variables predict a meaningful behavior (e.g. statements of connection with the brand and likelihood to purchase, etc.). A great trick in defining variables is to think of the inverse. Get positive results of what you want (i.e. engagement) and negative results of what you don't want (i.e. disengagement).</li><br /></ul>As always, when you operationalize, highlight the right aspects of your business-- things that measure important movement and things that matter to those who consume the numbers.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">This is also posted on the </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/category/blog-post/">Dachis Group collaboratory</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. Join the conversation there to access a wider network of social business professionals.<br /><br />Photo Credit: flickr.com/mlrogers<br /></span>katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-8688411553285318272011-03-09T09:00:00.002-06:002011-03-09T11:56:57.934-06:00ATX: the world's social business hub<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpav4JuBAO6c36WfVJEZlJS1e3lWdZsLPwx03MJZUGRWxPPrKme2qwjnQHjTtpCSOLHeQUg8A7E_NR5kaG-t_eeVL5JNY1F8lI8sGgmwF_c24151sYgOPKhaQ7UbbHK7Dn0FgoXGe2eoM/s1600/TSQ+COWBOY-blog.gif"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 200px; height: 134px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpav4JuBAO6c36WfVJEZlJS1e3lWdZsLPwx03MJZUGRWxPPrKme2qwjnQHjTtpCSOLHeQUg8A7E_NR5kaG-t_eeVL5JNY1F8lI8sGgmwF_c24151sYgOPKhaQ7UbbHK7Dn0FgoXGe2eoM/s200/TSQ+COWBOY-blog.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5582139780669453986" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">This post was done in parallel to a group of social business thinkers and practitioners, synthesized and excerpted by Peter Kim </span><a style="font-style: italic;" href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/2011/03/atx/">here</a><span style="font-style: italic;">. </span><br /><br />I left my hometown of NYC for ATX to cure myself of <a href="http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9407E7D6123EF93AA25756C0A9609C8B63">pedestrian rage</a> (NYers version of road rage). This shocks people-- to have left New York City (said with a Texas accent like in the old El Paso commercials) for a funky little Texan town. Truth is, all that NYC offered didn't stack up so well for me, compared to Austin's riches.<br /><br />I came for the intellectual curiosity UT Austin uniquely offers-- academic freedom most schools don't manage to breed. I came for the start-up spirit Austin Ventures nurtures-- premium value on entrepreneurialism unseen elsewhere. I came for the work ethic that preserves the best of east coast ambition with the backdrop of west coast yoga retreats. I came to raise my family in a place where people genuinely want you to succeed in life.<br /><br />Quality of life in Austin is simply higher than in the more fast-paced, cut-throat, nail-biting enclaves of the US. Austin is the perfect mix of intellect, athleticism, family-friendliness, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit. And like attracts like: this unique combination makes us the most ripe breeding ground for social business - thinkers and doers. You won't believe the people you run into at <a href="http://www.blogger.com/wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/lamar/">Whole Foods</a><a href="http://www.blogger.com/wholefoodsmarket.com/stores/lamar/"> headquarters</a>...<br /><br />People often dream of moving to NYC. Living in today's Austin makes me wonder whether people will soon dream of someday making it in Austin with the same tenacity. Austin is a great place to work and live. If you're smart, <span style="text-decoration: underline;">w</span><a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/about/employment-opportunities/">e're hiring</a>;<a href="opportunities@dachisgroup.com"> join us</a>!katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-21419111460324723392011-01-03T10:01:00.002-06:002011-01-03T10:27:58.897-06:00Token 'Future of' Post: Listening in 2011<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirYiRfqocut-rXmKC_q-J9Li9GhRxLdcuStasEWO6i5f0sVdzyNuibwVQH92SgbQn8PVZIauhqR7dLph_SeN6oGyNIrzgJf4sYzgZHfPIRPpqek_zT1FDRLkqCiZP0th1nB_j4e18xZ0c/s1600/coffee.gif"><img style="float: right; margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; cursor: pointer; width: 199px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEirYiRfqocut-rXmKC_q-J9Li9GhRxLdcuStasEWO6i5f0sVdzyNuibwVQH92SgbQn8PVZIauhqR7dLph_SeN6oGyNIrzgJf4sYzgZHfPIRPpqek_zT1FDRLkqCiZP0th1nB_j4e18xZ0c/s200/coffee.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5557805061345783522" border="0" /></a>The problem with the new dark coffee mugs in the office is that we used to have white ones. Thus, what used to be a known-- the stains, has became a known unknown: a dark mug hiding the stains within. Gives me pause every time I use them- I know something's there, I just don't know how bad it is. Humor me for a second and see how I'm like a proverbial client in a non-customer-centric organization: I know my customers are complaining, but I don't know exactly what they're saying, or how much better my product could fit their needs.<br /><br />Listening (née social media monitoring) used to be a means to uncover known unknowns like this-- predictable sets of things known to be possible.<br /><br />The future of listening was the promise of evolving to <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unknown_unknown">unknown unknowns</a>-- things we didn't even know could be out there. For example, the prospect of happening upon unexpected audiences (i.e. Dads?) talking about your product being used in <a href="http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/our-way-the">unintended ways</a> (i.e. eye cream for cellulite!).<br /><br />Six years of listening has turned up hundreds to thousands of those kinds of anecdotes, yet still there is no precise science to uncover unknown unknowns. We still somewhat systematically rely on a backbone of metrics such as discussion volume, sentiment, and topics. Sometimes we try to identify "influence," although there is no agreed upon algorithm to capture "influencers." There is also no clear winner/best of breed technology with 100% accurate sentiment mining or topics analysis.<br /><br />I think it's time for us to agree that isn't the future of listening. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/01/02/science/02see.html?_r=1&ref=technology">Technology will not get to the point</a> where we can algorithmically detect weak signals in real (enough) time to prevent crises or perfect product development-- much more than we can today.<br /><br />The future of listening will transcend technological advancements. The future of listening-- the near future-- is making it work in an organization. Operationalizing listening as a standard business process. The future is a flow chart that integrates people (e.g. customer service, product), process (e.g. escalation, resolution), and technology (e.g. from listening to CRM) and disseminates results to a wider group of stakeholders.<br /><br />I don't think the fundamental challenges of listening have been solved; and, don't want to encourage stagnation. We should forever challenge ourselves to better understand the complexities of language via semantic analysis and capture and classify new types of data (e.g. check-ins, metadata), but we should go ahead and make listening part of everyone's daily life without waiting for perfect technology and standardized metrics.<br /><br />That is the future. Serve the coffee in the potentially stained mugs. People need their caffeine to function.<br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;"><br />Photo credit: cudmore on Flickr</span>katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-68138633809105151362010-12-21T07:01:00.005-06:002010-12-21T07:27:33.844-06:00Welcoming Powered to our Ecosystem<div style="text-align: center;"><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3knYxExA7i0SBxw8-rRdFoOFilPxx-MFkoCDcewyCshvcMOSh7FCfSL2LTqxkhjX7dvG_Wz3fEVcfsM723pJ8gmXvkXxhwTmm3qdDALG3keCBMNOYc7vezgcfW-t4MLa-d7eu3airavU/s1600/powered_logo.gif"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 165px; height: 63px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg3knYxExA7i0SBxw8-rRdFoOFilPxx-MFkoCDcewyCshvcMOSh7FCfSL2LTqxkhjX7dvG_Wz3fEVcfsM723pJ8gmXvkXxhwTmm3qdDALG3keCBMNOYc7vezgcfW-t4MLa-d7eu3airavU/s320/powered_logo.gif" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5553012340389320050" border="0" /></a><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYbo3CRApjEHA3oSUCCFY60VLfyS488sVUIf1ReL0prBas4TiN5wCaj-6qZqRFVywopSacI_PrQQp-emULAkXWTVFGIJpQ-wgeSoz1OdOMeDRTriEP39JtzmJrZMnapwdp0_VK9xrpKW4/s1600/dachis-group-logo.jpg"><img style="float: left; margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; cursor: pointer; width: 211px; height: 57px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYbo3CRApjEHA3oSUCCFY60VLfyS488sVUIf1ReL0prBas4TiN5wCaj-6qZqRFVywopSacI_PrQQp-emULAkXWTVFGIJpQ-wgeSoz1OdOMeDRTriEP39JtzmJrZMnapwdp0_VK9xrpKW4/s320/dachis-group-logo.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5553011476920847154" border="0" /></a><br /></div><br /><br /><br /><br />What better occasion to hop back on the blog than our <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/about/news/dachis-group-acquires-powered/">acquisition of Powered</a>, today! As <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/2010/12/Dachis-Group-acquires-Powered/">Peter Kim</a> mentions, this acquisition makes us the largest Social Business consultancy in the world.<br /><br />Many will be quick to note that <a href="http://www.blogger.com/www.powered.com">Powered</a> is a social media agency-- "helping brands realize the potential of social media programs to drive tangible business results." I will just as quickly point out the emphasis on the latter half of the sentence (business results) over the former (social media). While their services span platforms marketers are intimately familiar with, (i.e., Facebook and Twitter), they are highly relevant to the "other side" which we so often fool ourselves into thinking is an alternate universe, E2.0.<br /><br />After having gone to an all-girls school for the first 10 years of my life, I vividly remember my first class with boys. This was quickly proceeded by my first lunch in the cafeteria with said foreigners. I remember being shocked when I realized how similar they were... how they talked about the same exact things as we did, in the same way. I had this same realization at my first <a href="http://www.e2conf.com/">E2.0 conference</a> when I realized that marketers and IT professionals too speak the same language.<br /><br />This is important to understand when thinking about our recent acquisition: Dachis Group is a Social Business consultancy. Many of the Social Business constructs we talk about today transcend divisions between marketing and IT.<br /><br />While this acquisition directly expands our <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/social-business-design/practice-areas/">customer engagement</a> practice, keep in mind we're all "<a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/2010/05/not-just-listening-anymore/">listening</a>" to various stakeholders. We're all interested in <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/2010/09/planning-a-community/">seeding, feeding, and weeding our communities</a>. We all need <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/2010/07/your-policy-should-reflect-you/">governance</a>, education, and playbooks as we migrate to new platforms. We all need to evolve our thinking around <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/2010/11/how-are-you-measuring-your-social-media-game/">measurement</a>. We all need social strategies-- and the methodologies by which we arrive there are in fact quite similar for 'E2.0' and 'Social Media'.<br /><br />We welcome Powered, and its subsidiaries, <a href="http://crayonville.com/">Crayon</a>, <a href="http://www.stepchangegroup.com/">StepChange</a>, and <a href="http://www.drillteammarketing.com/">Drillteam</a> to the <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/">Dachis Group</a> family and look forward to designing better, social businesses across both of these worlds.<br /><br />Welcome to our ecosystem, Powered!katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-15348007245499664802010-09-20T21:48:00.010-05:002010-09-22T09:39:41.603-05:00the bias lurking in your listening<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC3RSB950OFcSBNCiCW4KOiTJMx1HFAWfsq1rkxrzzikHBrk6qT4-chmMwnHTylikPtKJ4-N10-4IeaHs7tCCPE3_16zWgw82JFIBXGt9yqlVzP-WNR62btTJwnzDb2Df0I0DzS-OGZEM/s1600/feet.JPG"><img style="margin: 0pt 10px 10px 0pt; float: left; cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 214px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjC3RSB950OFcSBNCiCW4KOiTJMx1HFAWfsq1rkxrzzikHBrk6qT4-chmMwnHTylikPtKJ4-N10-4IeaHs7tCCPE3_16zWgw82JFIBXGt9yqlVzP-WNR62btTJwnzDb2Df0I0DzS-OGZEM/s320/feet.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5519214574892653122" border="0" /></a><span style="font-style: italic;">[This post is cross-posted on the <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/2010/09/the-bias-lurking-in-your-listening/">Dachis Group Collaboratory</a>]</span><br /><br />The other day my father asked me if I was happy and I responded “I don’t know.” He laughed out loud, as if to suggest it would make more sense for me to say yes or no, something definitive.<br /><br />I didn’t know what he meant by “happy” and wanted clarification before I gave an inaccurate answer. <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/07/magazine/07HAPPINESS.%20...?pagewanted=all">Happiness</a> can be so complex. How did I know if he was asking me about my current mood or my long-term satisfaction with life?<br /><br />Like any researcher, if I don’t understand the question being asked, I’m reluctant to give an answer.<br /><br />This rarely happens in an interview. Never happens on a survey. People will always provide an answer as much as meetings will fill the entire hour. Inherent in those answers is an assumption that each other’s definition of a given topic/construct are the same, take happiness. Guess what? This happens in Listening too.<br /><br />Although Listening implies gathering naturalistic data, it’s subject to the same bias as the forms of research above. Perhaps because automation is involved, people forget you’re still asking a question, despite how passively you’re listening.<br /><br />Each of your “alerts” is a boolean query, which is just like a good old-fashioned research question. It's what you're asking of the internets. It requires clarity. Sometimes the bias manifests as simply as a query that contains only your brand name, the way you know it and market it, as opposed to incorporating slang and nicknames. Sometimes it’s more complex-- you think the “functionality” of your product (e.g. cellphone) has to do with its feature set (e.g. app market), but it’s really about perceived value or how easy it is to use (e.g. haptic feedback). “Quality” is another good example of where definitions can vary widely.<br /><br />Someone once cited some research (that I cannot find) suggesting that when expecting parents discuss their anticipation of a new child, the male partner envisions the imminent child as a 3-year-old; the female pictures a newborn baby. Although unspoken, the parents are completely misaligned in what they’re bonding over throughout pregnancy. This is the exact kind of vivid image to think about when you Listen-- something that conveys how differently people could define your topic of interest.<br /><br />To be a <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/social-business-design/">social business</a>, we need to smarten up on Listening, or more accurately, anticipating answers. Question clarity in Listening demands both query precision and comprehensiveness. Be sure you’re capturing the specific data you’re hoping for, and being exhaustive in the ways it could be conceived by others.<br /><br />This, by the way, is also why Listening demands data integration. More on that next time.katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-76724515290308217072010-08-19T08:15:00.002-05:002010-08-19T09:44:36.127-05:00Fans and Followers; Apples and Oranges?<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkBZnwCQ4RmWaqnkPfvGXic5LBCtWrdT44RBoLHKZDIMG_fLRfxt2qdR2FNcL6h-xt6Vn45o5GdbIzI1Ci_-ov8AMelYWF_IdGo82Ec52ZyvL116zw-wVWi0jUAOZRLwhyphenhyphenWVCXPVghUeE/s1600/Nutrition+label.jpg"><img style="margin: 0pt 0pt 10px 10px; float: right; cursor: pointer; width: 167px; height: 200px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjkBZnwCQ4RmWaqnkPfvGXic5LBCtWrdT44RBoLHKZDIMG_fLRfxt2qdR2FNcL6h-xt6Vn45o5GdbIzI1Ci_-ov8AMelYWF_IdGo82Ec52ZyvL116zw-wVWi0jUAOZRLwhyphenhyphenWVCXPVghUeE/s200/Nutrition+label.jpg" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5506972979986357922" border="0" /></a><br />“Think of it like a nutrition label”<br /><br />I keep hearing this come up... with respect to <a href="http://www.usgbc.org/DisplayPage.aspx?CMSPageID=1991">LEED certification</a> on buildings, <a href="http://walmartstores.com/Sustainability/9292.aspx">Wal-Mart’s sustainability index</a>, and several other newsworthy scoring systems of late.<br /><br />Is a nutrition label the ultimate scorecard?<br /><br />What’s interesting about nutrition labels is that they present several numbers-- everything isn’t added up into a single grade or score. In today’s business world, there’s a tendency to add everything up, particularly when it comes to incorporating social media metrics as KPIs.<br /><br />This is a trap!<br /><br />One number doesn’t necessarily provide a shortcut to all the varied aspects of business. That’s not to say we should open the floodgates and serve up raw data. Like individual food items impacting your nutritional profile, several variables play roles in your overall social media presence and your overall business performance.<br /><br />A scorecard should provide guidance on what we cannot immediately discern the health of, be it a food, community, or business. The trick is to find the right level of aggregation. That is, we need to elevate low level behaviors to the appropriate categories and then leave them there, not continue to aggregate (i.e. create one score).<br /><br /><a href="http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=325">Edelman’s SMI </a>was one of the first to add things up across platforms. At the time, it was pioneering and innovative. Jonny Bentwood and David Brain were creative and transparent about their methodology. They were also wary of and vocal about the subjectivity involved.<br /><blockquote>“This is definitely adding apples to oranges we admit. So for example, we are placing a score for Facebook depending on the number of friends someone has. For Twitter, it is the number of friends, followers and updates. And if that is not insulting enough, we are then coming to a comparative weighting of someone’s Facebook score against their Twitter and blogging score. And the most sinful step is of course the final one where we have added those scores together and come up with a total Social Media Index.”</blockquote>You, like the rest of the business world, are probably interested in building the ultimate scorecard. You might even be engaging in methodology like the above.<br /><br />Make sure you are highlighting the right aspects of your business-- things that measure important movement and things that matter to those who consume the numbers. Choose metrics that impact your “overall meal”-- like calories and fat, but also recognize there is value in certain parts of the whole, like qualitative assessments.<br /><br />What does your organization's nutrition label look like?<br /><br />[This post is cross-posted on the <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/author/kate/">Dachis Group Collaboratory</a>]katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-2092011066178630622010-05-20T10:23:00.004-05:002010-05-20T11:04:02.906-05:00in memory of Devendra Singh<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii682oocHOKf8x_HWRPPc2ro63NGSJuoOu3mnB0pm7odITaTmTPfTgq3LmpM_UurELXYx27G4HQb-pf60tVHFkF8x30Yv1Ep94ShNONjAhrqkGxZ7e61ArMHBUgUybD2l6jK_3_GYHe94/s1600/singh-whr.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 214px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEii682oocHOKf8x_HWRPPc2ro63NGSJuoOu3mnB0pm7odITaTmTPfTgq3LmpM_UurELXYx27G4HQb-pf60tVHFkF8x30Yv1Ep94ShNONjAhrqkGxZ7e61ArMHBUgUybD2l6jK_3_GYHe94/s320/singh-whr.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5473383118633474802" /></a><div><br /></div><div>Devendra Singh was a clever and charming firecracker. So smart. So gentle. So caring. So persistent. </div><div><br /></div><div>In my dissertation acknowledgments, I wrote this about him: </div><div><blockquote>Dr. Singh has shown me that loving what you do will keep you alive. His wisdom about life, enthusiasm for teaching, and concern for my well-being have bettered my life in countless ways. I have learned from him how to think like a scientist and will forever remember his unmatched ability to captivate a classroom. </blockquote>I remember the first class I ever TA'd for him. We walked slowly for several blocks in the brutal Texan summer heat. I didn't think he would make it. When we arrived in the classroom, he got up on a table, sat cross-legged-- looking half like a child, half like a yogi, and hacked away until he caught his breath. When it was time for class to begin, he was ON - no signs of distress until the 'high' of teaching escaped, an hour or so after class. </div><div><br /></div><div>I've never seen a classroom of college kids listen as intently as they did to Dr. Singh, day after day, no matter what the content. I've also never seen someone command a room so powerfully with such a gentle voice, strong Indian accent, and transparencies dating back to the 60's. </div><div><br /></div><div>Dev loved teaching. He also loved when people appreciated his teaching; thus our relationship. He inspired everyone who stepped foot in his classrooms. And this, only one of his many dimensions-- brilliant researcher, devoted and very, very proud father, gourmet chef, and so many other facets that came up over the years. </div><div><br /></div><div>Dev was groundbreaking and controversial. He would be disappointed in me to know I memorialized him without mentioning his research on the evolutionarily preferred .67 waist-hip ratio and the adaptive significance of female attractiveness. Students were literally on the edge of their seats when he gave the backstory on this research-- again, using his old transparencies. </div><div><br /></div><div>I know he suffered over the past few years, especially this last semester when he was prevented from teaching. I'm so sad he's gone. Missing him so much already. </div><div><br /></div><div>May everyone have a fig today to honor the passing of this inspiring man. </div><div><br /></div>katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-566428515788827088.post-4259064386062950802010-05-18T22:25:00.008-05:002010-05-19T07:48:20.418-05:00not (just) listening anymore<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYSxsdVIbCUksOtHfkEDdjovKayJih4sucY8tKf9i12yKshdxE5mrxSKG-SGdvZ2g1wMR03oimuwYxEMHVM5LjooEebpG6IpIc3oRM_awrhcTDMc3ZvRt4LkqZFLNrB-gFe-faApRJfEE/s1600/Social+CRM+-+blogpulse.jpg"><img style="float:right; margin:0 0 10px 10px;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 320px; height: 195px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYSxsdVIbCUksOtHfkEDdjovKayJih4sucY8tKf9i12yKshdxE5mrxSKG-SGdvZ2g1wMR03oimuwYxEMHVM5LjooEebpG6IpIc3oRM_awrhcTDMc3ZvRt4LkqZFLNrB-gFe-faApRJfEE/s320/Social+CRM+-+blogpulse.jpg" border="0" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5472830579363557362" /></a><br />The Listening space just got exciting. Again.<br /><br />Or should I say the Social CRM space?<br /><br />Coming from what used to be called a <a href="http://en-us.nielsen.com/tab/product_families/nielsen_buzzmetrics">social media monitoring research firm</a>, I find changes in this space very interesting-- whether they revolve around the quest for the ultimate metric for engagement, the hot new look of a dashboard, or the advancement of semantic technology. Most interesting is when companies join forces, including oldies like <a href="http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/nielsen-to-acquire-remaining-interest-in-buzzmetrics-will-merge-internetonline-operations-to-create-fully-integrated-suite-of-services-58895787.html">BuzzMetrics and NetRatings</a> and <a href="http://blog.cymfony.com/2007/02/many_of_you_may.html">Cymfony and TNS</a> and, those hot off the press, <a href="http://www.biz360.com/pressreleases/prbiz360attensity100428.aspx">Attensity and Biz360</a> and <a href="http://scoutlabs.lithium.com/">Scout Labs and Lithium</a> - both of which are being billed as dominant forces in the suddenly expanding Social CRM space. <div><br />Merging open and closed networks is an important move for businesses; so is responding in real-time; so is amassing massive amounts of data. Each of these, a promise of social CRM. <br /><br />And with each of these much-anticipated-features of Social CRM comes important watch-outs: <br /><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Merging networks:</span></div><div>One of the most important precursors to merging data sets is data quality. Have you evaluated the breadth (e.g. which networks, blogs, forums, Usenet, tweets, videos, etc.) and depth (e.g. comments, likes, wall posts, etc.) of the data set you're querying? Be wary of the mechanics of your data before you assume they can be married. <br /><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Real time response:</span></div><div>An often overlooked aspect of real-time response is a corresponding workflow to enable a sufficient response. Are there <a href="http://blog.cotweet.com/2010/05/social-media-made-easy-tweets-and-taxes/">formal processes in place</a> to connect the subject matter experts to the consumers? Before trying to respond too quickly, prioritize the signals you're responding to and make sure there's a process in place to both facilitate response and fix any associated problem. </div><div><br /></div><div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: bold;">Amassing data:</span><br />People love to talk about warehouses full of data. With APIs opened up, are you hoarding additional data or making sense of it? Make sure you're not mindlessly <a href="http://www.sixtysecondview.com/?p=325">adding apples and oranges</a>. Add variables together with cause, and look for patterns <a href="http://www.dachisgroup.com/2009/11/three-masquerades-of-metrics/">beneath the surface</a>. <br /><br />I'm really excited about Scout Labs and Lithium joining forces, largely due to their stellar casts of characters. <a href="http://twitter.com/jenniferland">Jenny Zeszut</a>, <a href="http://twitter.com/margaretfrancis">Margaret Francis</a>, and Jochen Frey at Scout Labs; <a href="http://twitter.com/cothrel">Joe Cothrel</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com/mich8elwu">Michael Wu</a> at Lithium all are enlightened minds I always learn from. Congratulations to all of you!</div><div><br /></div><div><a href="https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=207363&sessionid=1&key=472C1A3B2021CA3C8783A1ADB1FA7A01&partnerref=pk&sourcepage=register">Your customers are indeed everywhere</a> and you need to be as well. My colleague, <a href="http://www.beingpeterkim.com/">Peter Kim</a> is hosting a webinar on this today. <a href="https://event.on24.com/eventRegistration/EventLobbyServlet?target=registration.jsp&eventid=207363&sessionid=1&key=472C1A3B2021CA3C8783A1ADB1FA7A01&partnerref=pk&sourcepage=register">Join him</a> as he shares his observations on social media trends and the market factors driving businesses’ need for expanded customer intelligence over the Social Web, Wednesday 5/19 at 3CT/4ET. </div><div><br />I'm anticipating a lot more creative moves in the listening space in the near future. Just be wary of the basics before you identify your new Social CRM provider.<br /></div><div><br /></div>katehttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09452254310603787822noreply@blogger.com0