Internet TV ::

Project Canvas, the BBC, Five, BT and ITV mooted platform to deliver TV through the web has been given a further boost with an announcement from the BBC Trust.

Social Media ::

Telstra is an Australian telecom company, providing mobile, phone, internet and TV data services.

They have asked their employee this question on YouTube:

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This Australian giant is, however, leading the world in training staff in how to engage in social media, thus acknowledging its importance and seeing it as not a passing trend. Rather, it is training all 40,000+ staff in how to engage in social media and – very significantly – setting out the ground rules and a code of practice for employees.

Training is mandatory and a formalised policy of “3Rs” – responsibility, respect and representation has been instituted.

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They have created a YouTube video to explain:

The company has taken another bold move – in the interests of transparency - and published the social media training guide online, so that anyone can check it out, learn and critique.

The guide starts with the bacics – explaining the platforms, through to addressing more complex issues such as if an employee blogs and is critical of the company. The guide is here:

Telstra commented:

“while this communications environment has risks for corporate entities and individuals alike, we believe that with the right training and policy support the potential benefits far outweigh the risks … We have decided to open up this course to the scrutiny and feedback of the ‘outside world’ as it may assist other organisations and help raise the level of awareness about social media with staff.”

There will be many commentators who will be critical of this move. I think is is very smart and, for the first time, see a a major organisation being proactive in embracing social media.

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Update 18.12.09 – 11.14

A tweet from Twitter by Innocent Drinks seems to have lost sight that the message is everything – and something said in jest can be read otherwise.

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Trend Watching ::

Contagious Magazine publish an annual round-up … always an interesting read.

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Management ::

Be there a new world order or not, and I’m undecided whether if it’s all just a natural progression, albeit at anexponential rate, the 10 Workplace Skills of the Future or the skills workers should strive to have and the skills employers should seek out and promote – as written up by the Institute For The Future.

Is this an antidote to the Gen X/Gen Y divide?

The skills are:

Ping Quotient

Excellent responsiveness to other people’s requests for engagement; strong propensity and ability to reach out to others in a network

Longbroading

Seeing a much bigger picture; thinking in terms of higher level systems, bigger networks, longer cycles

Open Authorship

Creating content for public modification; the ability to work with massively multiple contributors

Cooperation Radar

The ability to sense, almost intuitively, who would make the best collaborators on a particular task or mission

Multi-Capitalism

Fluency in working and trading simultaneously with different hybrid capitals, e.g., natural, intellectual, social, financial, virtual

Mobbability

The ability to do real-time work in very large groups; a talent for coordinating with many people simultaneously; extreme-scale collaboration

Protovation

Fearless innovation in rapid, iterative cycles; the ability to lower the costs and increase the speed of failure

Influency

Knowing how to be persuasive and tell compelling stories in multiple social media spaces (each space requires a different persuasive strategy and technique)

Signal/Noise Management

Filtering meaningful info, patterns, and commonalities from the massively-multiple streams of data and advice

Emergensight

The ability to prepare for and handle surprising results and complexity that come with coordination, cooperation and collaboration on extreme scales

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Research ::

A day in the internet (click image for the whole story), by Online Education.

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Advertising ::

A seasonal treat for foodies.

Or, how culturally different we are when comparing Japan to European food tastes.

The app and ad I do like shows McDonald’s use of QR Codes.

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Viral ::

This is the Toyota Yaris viral ad created following an online competition run by Toyota.

An example of getting too involved in the process over the outcome?

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Trend Watching ::

Seth Godin today publishes an eBook entitles What Matters Now. The aim is mass distribution in advance of a paperback being published.

Seventy big thinkers have opinionated and the aim is for 5 million to read these.

Interesting …