2010/02/28

Are We Experience Facilitators - [chrisbrogan.com]

Posted: 27 Feb 2010 07:05 AM PST

I just heard this from Trey Pennington at this offsite summit event that’s the after-event for Like Minds in the UK. I can’t really talk much about the whole conversation that spawned this, but I wanted to pull out this nugget that Trey said:

We are experience facilitators.

My take on his line is this: we’re building bridges between companies and customers in how those two parties experience their interactions. Want that a little less fuzzy? (Remember, this is a thought in progress.)

We social media marketing types can help companies build better experiences back and forth between companies and people. So, the project New Marketing Labs did with Sony about DigiDads was to work with dads and their children to tell interesting stories using Sony products. Our role, NML, was to help the DigiDads experience some new things with some new products by recommending some interesting group projects. Our role with Sony was to facilitate that relationship and help make that bridge.

There are other projects with other clients that make sense of this, too, but maybe you’ve done this yourselves.

Do you see that? This is related to my ideas on guest experience design. How can we improve the experience of customers (b2b or b2c)? And part of this is the facilitation we can accomplish via social media tools. Be it communication or media exchange or idea sharing, etc, there are many possibilities.

Do you see this at all?

More coming soon. I’m really really really big on this idea of guest experience (instead of customer service) and the value of things like social media to participate. I’ll wait for Trey to write up the idea I had for his new client. : )

What do you think?

The Anywhen Manifesto

Posted: 27 Feb 2010 05:00 AM PST

I’m at war with those who threaten anywhen (the state that the Internet provides us by allowing me to write this when I want and you can consume it when you want). To that point, I’m writing a very small manifesto of thought. Here’s what I believe with regards to anywhen. You’re welcome to sign on (or not).

The Anywhen Manifesto

We believe that time-shifting is every bit as important as work-shifting.
We will push back on the unintentional urgency people put on us.
We will seek out time-shifting-friendly means of interacting (like Google Wave).
We will attempt to respond in a timely fashion, but as it meets our other duties and obligations.
We will do our damnedest, but forgive our occasional drowning spells.
We will create in ways that promote time-shifting-friendly consumption.
It’s not all about realtime.

There. It’s not much, but it’s what’s on my mind. Maybe it’s just further purging.

Photo credit col adamson