CrowdVine - Meet Smarter

Earlier this year, I accepted an advisory and research position with CrowdVine.  CrowdVine is in the “white label” social networking business.  The company helps people in groups, associations, and attending events to meet smarter through their software solutions and associated services.  You can learn more about the current product features here:  http://www.crowdvine.com/home/features

I can’t believe my good fortune! It is an honor to work with and learn from CrowdVine’s visionary product team and their dedicated customers.  The company is viable and boot strapped.   My role is to help the CrowdVine community “cross the chasm” in pursuit of a sustainable social networking platform.

My thoughts on social networking, product management and community management will likely be organized on CrowdVine’s blog in the future and cross referenced here when appropriate.

Welcome to your Network!

A friend pointed me to the postcrossing service the other day.

I love the idea of this service.  I have many international friends and love to travel.  When I am unable to enjoy these interests, receiving little random notes from around the world sounds like an interesting substitute.

I think this is yet another idea that could have a positive transitional impact within large, globally dispersed companies.   Forging a company culture is a processing of forging employee communication and connections.   Getting to know your Indian, Chinese, Latin America, and other geographically dispersed counterparts is potentially awkward to do via email and instant message.  Video messages and conference calls can also be intiimating for those on both sides of the call.

Why not have a company sponsered penpal service!  If can work for 2nd and 3rd graders, then it probably should be able to work for those grown up kids with business cards.   I can’t think of a more user friendly and personable way to share insights on the company, concerns, or to start building relationships beyond 9-5 and across organizational structures than with this post carding service.

Robot are coming!

One of the best facilitation tools in my toolbox relates to the anti-brainstorming. Here’s how it works:

1. Get your group to focus on what your product / process / thing would look like if it were completely broken.
2. Do this exercise out loud and be stunned at the high energy of the participants.
3. Control the energy by time bounding the exercise. Real the group back in by translating the “broken statements” into their inverse statements.

I want to the thank the company Rockwell for allowing me and my future groups to skip this tool for all future sales, communication, training video brainstroms. From now on, I will just show the following video ! I can’t tell if this is a sales video or “dirty talk” for electricians!

Rockwell Retro Encabulator

I recently read a summarization of Aristotle’s points of virtue. As someone who studied both business and philosophy in college, I find it interesting that the concept of virtue is a best an individual concern. Aristotle defines virtues in reference to their excess. As IT professional I can relate to that analytical approach. Often times, business users have a very difficult time defining when a business system/process is working well or what it means to “work well”, but they have a better time understanding when it is not working well.

In my business readings over the years, I have noticed much talk about of “corporate culture” and “socially responsible” within business texts, but a basic virtue assessment is missing from popular business literature. Even the great business ethics cases studies are driven with an evaluation of the values of market economy, competitiveness, and policies related to information sharing – not the virtues of man or of the business concern (a collection of men). Is the modern business enterprise beyond virtue? Does participating in the global economy (an organization made by man, of man, and for man) presume a disconnect between the virtues most natural to man?

I think not. Below is a virtue map that I will use in future management endeavors to understand and make better project and program decisions beyond analytic constraints of dollars and cents.

Can Aristotle\'s virtue map be applied to the modern business, a collection of men organized to serve men, or is there another value system more applicable to these \"wisdom of crowds\"?

While I am thinking “outside the box” on my current job search, I am also a closet compulsive when it comes to playing around with anything web 2.0. In as much as the web 2.0 things I check out also support my job searching activities, then I will highlight them in this blog. The following is a quick pro / con evaluation of a new job searching tool called Job Fox:

Overall Impression: Neutral. I will wait to see if this site actually facilitates meaningful employer/employee interaction or just the same spam threads of Yahoo Jobs, Monster, and Dice.

Pros

• This website has a seemingly sophisticated skills assessment mapped to your candidate profile. The process of filling out the skills assessment may seem daunting for someone who does not have 1/2 hour to devote to the activity, but it does build some confidence in the candidate that they are in for a more meaningful “job search”. The interactivity (skills suggestion) experience of their skills list was impressive and the overall performance of the website was acceptable.
• Interesting job ranking algorithm that describes how employer job posting match your skills profile. The fact that I saw / found job postings that were beyond my former professional job functions and industries was impressive. This “job fit” information has the potential to be presented in graphical way (maybe a heat map) for greater end user satisfaction.

Cons

• Could be my specific computer set up, but the website seems to be having some trouble rendering on my Firefox, Mac OS X combo.
• The resume upload and skill assessment section was a bit long. It got the point that I was rushing to fill out the questionnaire just to skip the activity.
• Seems like the service is again following a traditional model of gaining as many candidates for employers as possible based on their skills gimmick – - in place of building / facilitating deeper connections. [Side Note: This is one reason why I believe LinkedIn could be the killer application in the job/recruiting space. JobFox should be an affiliate / partner with LinkedIn if they are interested in competing in this space in a true Web 2.0 way. The next pinnacle for Online Job Search tools is to move beyond being simple "filters of people" and towards "connectors between people".]
• I like the idea of a “trackable resume”, but it isn’t clear how else I can integrate and promote my JobFox profile within their “system” or in the many other tools in my digital life (blogs, IM, Skype, Email, etc). They need to work on creating a job ecosystem that better maps to the API of my life and job searching needs .