by gregoryheller | Dec 15, 2011 | Uncategorized
I think that most organizations are a little bit afraid of video. And if they are a little bit afraid of video they are even more afraid of live video. Video, the conventional wisdom goes, is expensive and hard to produce. Your chances of doing it wrong are higher than of doing it right, and either way the cost and time involved is probably out of reach. Live video, well that is just crazy talk! Anything could happen! As we all know, the cost of video cameras has come way down, the once much heralded inexpensive Flip camera is now obsolute because of smartphones with high quality video cameras! And editing technology has also become cheaper and easier. For years now every Mac has shipped with iMovie, but today you can edit video with a range of online services including YouTube. Video engages people. How many times a day do you want a few minutes of video on the web? That clip from the Daily Show, a segment from the local news, something on YouTube (perhaps involving a cute animal) a friend posted to Facebook? Or maybe you were glued to live streaming of the #occupy demonstrations this fall? How can nonprofit organizations make use of video easily, and without great expense, to connect with their audiences? My, perhaps counter intuitive answer, is through live streaming. Yes, jump in on the deep end. With live streaming video there is no post production necessary, just a camera and an internet connection. UStream has garnered much press because of the #occupy movements and it is a great platform, scales well,...
by gregoryheller | Dec 10, 2011 | Uncategorized
I recently saw the wonderful documentary, Eames: The Architect & The Painter, and if you are a fan of the furniture, films or other design of Ray and Charles Eames like I am, you have to see this film when it comes to your town, or becomes available via DVD or some streaming service. Even if you are not obsessed with the work of the amazing couple, you have certainly been exposed to it, and I think we all can learn from the example they set. So much about this film impressed me, but one lesson more than all the others resonated. Ray and Charles sold their process to their corporate clients, not their knowledge. When they approached design challenges for their clients, they looked at them with a fresh perspective, and learned about the challenge, the industry, the technology, and that process of discovery is really what they sold, the work product was almost an artifact of the process. Charles liked to say, “Never delegate understanding.” The Eames methodology of addressing subjects as a novice, learning about them, and translating that learning into a product seems similar to Zero Gravity Thinker solution to the expertise/innovation paradox. I had a moment of synchronicity at Ignite Seattle 16 on wednesday evening when Beth Kokol got up and spoke about Hackademia: her work at the University of Washington to get students to solve problems they have no special expertise in. While there is certainly room, and need for knowledge and expertise, we cannot be so cocksure that we ignore the value of a fresh perspective and the innovation it can give rise to....
by gregoryheller | Dec 6, 2011 | Uncategorized
If you’ve been feeling like more people have smart phones than don’t, you are pretty close to being right. Third quarter numbers from Nielsen show that in certain age groups more than 50% of people have smart phones, and overall, 43% of all US mobile phone subscribers own a smartphone. Amongt mobile phone subscribers aged 25-34, 62% report having a smart phone. A November Wired article related stats from a recent study indicating that nearly 30% of mobile phone users worldwide are using smartphones. that same article reports that 11% of all mobile devices are running Android, 5% iOS and 5% Symbian OS. When you look at the market share among just smartphones, 43% are running Android, 28% iOS, 18% Blackberry. Pew Internet & American Life Project reports that as of August, the number of adult cell phone woners who’ve downloaded an app to their phone increased to 38% and half of adult cell phone owners have apps on their phones. However less than half of adults with apps on their phone paid for them, according to another Pew study. A few quick things to note: adoption in the studies above is adoption of smartphones among mobile subscribers, not all people, though numbers in some studies of that nature show vast penetration of cellphones period. There are still people without cellphone smart, feature or otherwise (sometimes easy to forget in our industry). So what does all of this mean? For starters, I think we are at a tipping point. The cost of smart phones, even the iPhone is dropping, with Apple offering earlier versions at bargain basement prices...
by gregoryheller | Dec 2, 2011 | Uncategorized
Perhaps it is just the end of the year approaching, and we are all getting a bit reflective, and thinking ahead to New Year’s Resolutions, or maybe something larger is happening. I seem to be coming across many articles on the topic of productivity, work life balance, distraction (or focus), multi-tasking, personal energy management and burn-out. The proliferation of many, smaller, always on, wirelessly connected screens has completely broken down the barrier for many “knowledge workers”, digital creatives, and even nonprofit program employees and executives between work, and non-work. A friend was over the other evening and seamlessly went from reviewing a text message from her husband (who was coming to pick her up)to reading work email before jerking the iPhone away from her face and saying, “I’ve got to stop!” In the conversation that ensued she revealed that she often starts reading and responding to email from home, before breakfast, gets to work (as an executive at a nonprofit organization) continues responding to email, and then finds herself responding to yet more email in the evening. I am sure that we can all relate to this experience. We recognize the disfunction of it, but can’t figure out how to break the cycle. I was excited to read about a Harvard Business Review Article called the Productivity Paradox: How Sony Pictures Get’s More Out Of People By Demanding Less. The abstract of the paper (I haven’t read the whole thing) offers what is probably the most important lesson: These behavioral changes are sustainable, though, only if leaders at the most senior levels of an organization are willing to...
by gregoryheller | Dec 1, 2011 | Uncategorized
Yesterday I wrote about a recent study suggesting that millions of baby boomers want to start their own nonprofit organizations or social ventures. This morning I returned to a tab opened in my browser a day or two ago, an article on the Harvard Business Review blog, “Don’t let What You Know Limit What You Imagine.” I’d highly encourage reading it, but for now I will draw some connections between it and my post yesterday. The author, Bill Taylor, references a book by Cynthia Barton Rabe, The Innovation Killer, in which she talks about how experience in a field can become a detriment to innovation and success. Her answer is that organizations should hire “zero-gravity thinkers,” innovators “who are not weighed down by the expertise of a team, its politics, or ‘the way things have always been done.'” It strikes me that all of these do gooder baby boomers looking for an encore career could be the perfect “zero-gravity thinkers” for so many existing nonprofit organizations in need of a little innovation and rejuvenation. The career experience of these boomers, and their insight from different business sectors could be a tremendous asset to all manner of nonprofit organizations. Of course the role of “zero-gravity thinker” within a nonprofit organization should not be limited to successful boomers looking for fulfilling encore careers. Young, passionate, idealistic job seekers can fulfill a similar role if they are given the space and respect to contribute their perspective at strategic levels within an organization. If your imagination is limited by all that you know from years of experience in an organization or field of work,...
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