Josue Sierra

Rob Neppell just launched a new company:

Kithbridge, Inc. was launched as an evolution of one of the blogosphere’s original and most successful blog-tracking sites, The Truth Laid Bear. While The Truth Laid Bear provides a portal and blog search engine for individual bloggers and blog-readers, Kithbridge provides customized technology, services, and strategies for businesses, political campaigns, nonprofits, and other organizations which seek to fully engage with the growing and dynamic world of the blogosphere and new media.

Kithbridge’s founder and president is Rob Neppell, known online by the pseudonym “N.Z. Bear”. In 2002, Rob created the first and still-definitive blog tracking system, The TTLB Blogosphere Ecosystem, and over the past five years has earned a reputation as one of the key innovators in the new world of weblogs and citizens’ media.

If your company is wanting to make inroads in the world of new media, Rob is your man. You can read more here.

I just ordered my own copy of Communicating Design, by Dan Brown. I’m trying to strengthen my skills in Usability and Information Architecture, and this book sounds like its just the thing for me.

Christian Crumlish published a review in Extra! Extra!, his company’s blog:

I probably learned the most from his discussion of concept models, because I have the least amount of experience preparing these types of documents and I’ve always found them to be somewhat intimidating. He explains how to build them up from granular bits and also helps clarify a number of different approaches to connecting the nodes in such documents. He also includes as an illustration a version of Bryce Glass’s after-the-fact Flickr user model, an instant classic of the form.

You can get your copy in the Amazon link to the left, or read more at the Communicating Design website.

I bought this book about a month ago, but just picked it up this weekend. It’s by author Les T. Csorba, a former White House Advisor for Presidential Personnel and is now a Partner at Heidrick & Struggles, Inc.

So far is sounds real good. I have been reading a lot about trust in my Project Management course this semester, so I am curious to dig into it further. Should be an interesting read — I’ll make sure to come back and let you all know what I think.

In the meantime, you can get your own copy by clicking on the Amazon link on the right.

Sorry I have been missing in action in these last couple weeks. Summer term started (MBA) and my wife was out of town for a week, so I decided to take some time off from blogging. But, I’m still here.

Maybe I should outsource my blog writing? LOL Here is an article that got my juices flowing. What if I could come up with a great software idea, pay somebody in India to code it for me, and then put it up for sale? Hmm…. check out the article. I could see myself paying for tutoring or other personal services.

Sending personal work offshore requires Internet proficiency, and some patience as well. Though a few firms have begun tailoring their services to consumers, most deal primarily with businesses. Tapping this bargain work force means knowing about the online bazaars where workers abroad compete to bid for small projects.

Some big free-lancing sites include Elance.com, Guru.com and Rentacoder.com. In a recent study on the growth of offshoring services to small businesses and homes, market researcher Evalueserve found more than 90 such online marketplaces, with 500,000 vendors from low-wage countries using them.

Consumers must also be able to recognize when a routine task can be done digitally, and across time zones. Earlier this year, Dan Frey went in search of an artist to illustrate a children’s book his mother had written for the grandkids about her life growing up in New York City. He thought about finding a student from a local art school, but then it dawned on him that he could outsource it without leaving his house. The job didn’t necessarily require a face-to-face meeting — he could just email the draft.

I’m taking a Project Management course this summer semester, and my main reading assignment is “The Distance Manager” by Kimball Fisher & Mareen Duncan Fisher. I have poured through the first 3 chapters so far and it has been awesome! Even though many of the management and organizational development principles outlines are targed at Distance Manangers, it seems to me that many of these are more and more applicable for regular project teams.

I saw a comic strip a while ago where a co-worker leans over the cubicle and asks the other team member, “Why won’t you answer my emails?” I think this illustrates the growing physical “disconnect” that can exist even within the same physical work location. My point is that because of the communication techology and other rapidly evolving factors, “Distance Management” principles are more and more applicable even in teams located on the same physical location.

Jacob, a blogger at Silas Notes and staff member at Silas Partners highlights a blog post that “discusses the need for a Chief Digital Officer, someone who is concerned with all the digital communication of your organization.”

These are considerable responsibilities. It’s a bigger job than “webmaster.” It requires both broad vision and technical insight. It’s a role that must challenge existing silos and old habits. It requires interaction with all other parts of your organization. It’s a role for a champion. As such, it’s a senior position, reporting to the top.

Having worked in the online world since 1999, it amazes me that this is the first time I see this so well articulated! I’m seeing a growth of professionals who know how to walk in both worlds, but at the same, I still see so-called “internet experts” who are technology neophyte. Ignoring the importance of this role can be costly to a company and to a non-profit.

I liked how Jacob used the post to sell his employer’s services. I have to agree with him. If you can’t afford your own full-time staff, outsourcing is the way to go. If you don’t know who to hire, outsource. There are plenty of “experts” out there that don’t know what they are doing, and will waste you money. Sometimes, when in doubt, outsourcing can provide you with the hands-on experience to better grasp the needs, before you go out and bring right person on staff.

The most striking part of this position is how it moves among the silos that many organizations create. I see us doing that more and more with our clients. We are “hired” by the marketing department, but by the end of the project we have helped to put together and lead a number of cross-functional teams.

The part that is often missing is the “reporting to the top.” Often we are one or two levels removed from the ultimate and/or strategic decision makers and that is frustrating.

Overall I’m hopeful that more organizations realize the digital communication is not just a way to do what we used to do faster and with more bells and whistles, but a new way of doing things that requires specialized knowledge and management.

I have worked with TriNet Internet Solutions — the company that recently bought Silas Partners. They have a solid team of experts, and did an AMAZING job of helping Focus on the Family — a larger ministry — navigate through the process of getting a cutting edge media distribution platform developed and launched. It was the most enjoyable project I got to work on while working at Focus on the Family. (Note: last sentence edited for clarification)