That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

London is slowly getting back to normal today after effectively being shut down for 2 days due to a massive lake effect snowstorm.  Depending on where you are we have had between 2 and 4 feet of snow since Sunday night.  You know its bad when I made a trek yesterday from home to the local convenience store pulling a toboggan to get gas for the snowblower and milk.   And when UWO, Fanshawe, schools, malls and banks close, Canada Post stops delivery, and the city stops bus service.  Some of those remain closed today.  While the main roads are clear this morning,  and we had no significant accumulation overnight, forecasters are threatening another 20 cm of wind blown snow for later today.

Things look like a winter scene on a holiday greeting card.   Check out the photo gallery on the London Free Press web site.

I worked from home Monday afternoon and all day yesterday, and learned something about the paperless office that I need to correct.  I’m about 90% paperless.   The only things that are not electronic are some correspondence coming in, and notes that I’ve taken.  I can access our systems from outside the office via a remote desktop connection.  Even though it is not as efficient as working at your desk, it allows us to get things done. 

Where it falls apart, though, is that 10% that is still on paper back at the office.   If that 10% is something that you need to take a next step with, the 90% you can access is of little use.  So from now on I will be making a better effort to make that last 10% digital.  For the most part that means immediately scanning and filing any paper that arrives, and either taking notes electronically, or scanning in handwritten notes immediately after I take them.

Another observation is how news of closings and comments about snow and road conditions often first arrived by Twitter.  That goes for both official notices, and individual comments.  #snowmageddon, (or the technically incorrect but equally popular #snowmaggedon) became a common hashtag.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows:

I gave a presentation this morning on social media issues at a TechAlliance breakfast club event.  Thought I would share this one slide.

If someone posts something about you or your organization that you don’t like, it’s best to so some sober reflection to consider the best response.  Sometimes attempts to suppress things on the internet can backfire and bring more attention to it.  It’s called the Streisand effect.

For example, you might be better off ignoring it if the comment is on an obscure place few will see, or if the person who posted it is clearly a lunatic.

If they are right and you actually did do something wrong, you may want to post an apology.

If they simply have their facts wrong, you might politely set the record straight.

Consider if there is a way to turn what was said or done to your advantage.

If a legal response is necessary, it must be drafted very carefully with the assumption that it will be posted and ridiculed.  The traditional throw in every specious claim and intimidate the recipient into stopping approach may not be the most effective.

On Wednesday November 10 I will discuss social media issues at a TechAlliance Breakfast Club event entitled Developing a Social Media Policy for your Business. 

I’ll talk about:

• The legal traps of Social Media use.
• That fuzzy line between work and personal account posts.
• How to respond to negative social media.
• How a social media policy can help you.

I’ll also create a sample social media policy using an online tool based on audience input.

For the record, my position on social media is not to exaggerate the theoretical dangers or suggest it should be suppressed in the workplace.  But there are a few things that should be kept in mind to reduce the legal and business risks that arise from it.

Hope to see you there.

Brian Bowman has a post on his On the Cutting Edge blog that says an Alberta court ruled that the University of Calgary violated students’ charter rights when it sanctioned them for posting critical comments about a professor on Facebook. 

Omar also mentioned it in a Slaw post.  (Somehow I missed them at the time.)

That is noteworthy for its position on the controversial issue of what limits there ought to be on what one can say about another on social media.  Also for the fact that the court decided that the Charter of Rights – which applies  only to government - extends its reach to bodies created and supported by government.   At least in the way it is done in Alberta.

Mitch Joel has an excellent post entitled What You Tell a Search Box that talks about the trend to social search (such as the  new Bing / Facebook search results that will factor your facebook friend’s “likes” into your search results).

Given how much we trust our friends’ recomendations, it makes a lot of sense.  But the dark side to be wary about is how much info about us our searches reveal, if that info was ever made public, or disclosed even to our friends.

The entire post is worth reading.  Here’s an excerpt:

Here’s a simple exercise:

Write down everything (and I mean EVERYTHING) you search for online in one week. Save it in a document. After that week, go and take a look at that list. Now ask yourself the question again: do you want all of this public?

It’s the little big things.

Who cares if people know you like a local pizza joint, or that you recommend a certain coffee house? That’s fine and that’s the majority of searches, but dig a little deeper. Imagine you have just been diagnosed with MS. You haven’t told your family or boss yet. You’re looking for support, trying to figure stuff out. You definitely don’t want the insurance companies to know just yet. Would you like that public? How about this: your child is acting up in school (in this instance, your kid is the bully). You start looking online for resources and information, would you like people to know that your kid is acting up? Take any addiction (drugs, alcohol, gambling, etc…), medical issue or any other personal issue (like the odd time you watch some adult content online), and keep asking yourself if you would like all of this made public?

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.  It reads as follows.

There is a lot written about what people post about themselves on social media, and whether or not that is a good thing.   New location based services such as foursquare ramp up that controversy.  Letting others know where you are might have social advantages, and has the potential for interesting and useful services based on where you are at the moment.

But looming in the background are the dangers of that personal transparency.  Letting apps or friends know where you are is one thing – but how much of that detail do you really want the world to know?   For example, my son told me last night about a presentation made at Western’s orientation week about student safety.  They showed an actual student’s facebook page that was open to the world, where the student posted her detailed class schedule, and enough information that anyone could tell exactly were she lived.   Might as well post a sign saying when and where to take my stuff or stalk me.

And speaking of social media, it has been reported that Justin Bieber uses 3% of Twitter resources, and has dedicated Twitter servers. (BTW – Bieber’s popularity is a mystery to me -  its clearly not about his singing ability – my son, and others in the Amabile choir could out sing him any day – but I digress).  Apparently many large users have dedicated Twitter servers.  So is this the new social media metric?  Perhaps number of followers, numbers of friends, or number of visits is passe – the new metric: number of dedicated servers.

For the London Free Press – August 23, 2010

Read this on Canoe

Best Buy employee nearly fired for online video poking fun at iPhone consumers

The amusing (though sprinkled with colourful language) iPhone 4 vs. HTC EVO video on YouTube almost cost the creator — a Best Buy employee — his job.

The video portrays an electronics store employee trying to convince a person wanting an iPhone 4 to buy an HTC EVO 4G instead. The video has had about seven million views.

The video was made by Brian Maupin, a 25-year-old from Kansas City, Mo. For the past 3 1/2 years he worked at Best Buy selling mobile phones, something he may decide never to do again. This comes after he was suspended from work and faced threats of being fired.

Maupin explained Best Buy “felt it disparaged a brand they carried (iPhone/Apple) as well as the store itself and were fearful of stockholders and customers being turned off to Best Buy Mobile.”

But if you watch the video, you will see there isn’t any mention of Best Buy at all. The cartoon employee identifies the store as “Phone Mart.” The characters are not wearing anything that resembles the Best Buy uniform and are standing in an outdoor field with a pink tree.

Best Buy recently announced they will not fire Maupin.

“We have completed our investigation into the videos created and posted by Brian Maupin, the aspiring film-maker and Best Buy employee. This is an important situation for us because it involved balancing our social media guidelines with a commitment to creating a supportive environment for our employees. It’s important to note that our investigation involved three videos that were posted in late June because they were openly disparaging of our employees, our customers and our vendor partners. . . . Contrary to rumours, Brian has not been fired, and is scheduled to return to his job.”

But Maupin has chosen to take a leave of absence and is thinking about kick starting his graphic design career.

“I’m not planning on returning to work — immediately, anyway. Honestly, I don’t know how I could return considering some of the things that were said to me and not have a lot of awkwardness on the job. I’m looking at possible jobs in graphic art — nothing definite yet, but I’m searching.”

Maupin has taken a stab at the situation in his most recent video, “TweetFired”.

In TweetFired, a pants salesman at fictitious “Stacks o’ Slacks” gets a stern talking to by his boss because of the tweets he posts on his Twitter account — tweets that have absolutely nothing to do with his job. His boss has apparently been stalking him on social media, and accuses him of “painting a very negative picture of working here in 140 characters or less.”

Internet tools and social media increasingly blur how one’s personal and work life overlap. Employers struggle with the extent to which they may be prejudiced by those actions, whether they should just ignore it, and what legal rights they have over actions employees consider personal.

I was on a panel last night at the Ivey business School with Eli Singer, co-founder of Entrinsic Partners, a digital communications agency that builds corporate social media strategies. 

Eli had many astute observations regarding marketing and social media.  For example:

The choice of social media platform to use is secondary.  A strategy comes first.

Don’t invest too heavily in a particular SM product feature that you can’t control.  When facebook decides to stop the group feature you have spent all your time and money on, you are simply out of luck.

Most businesses really don’t know what they want.  Its partly fear of the new and unknown.  Delegating and abandoning the strategy to a digital native whose sole qualification  is that they use facebook won’t work.

And if you are that digital native that is conscripted to do it – approach it like any business case.

That’s the title of my Slaw post for today.   It reads as follows.

I’m on a panel tonight at the Ivey Business School talking about trends and opportunities in social media.  I’ll be talking about legal and privacy issues.

Some of the risks that come with social media arise from its newness.   There seems to be two opposing (and apparently inconsistent) factors at play whenever anything new arises. 

First, when something new comes along, people often don’t put it in the proper context, and forget all the old rules.  For example, people might make a comment on a blog or facebook that reveals something confidential, even though that same person would never have revealed that in a letter or email.

Second, humans have flawed risk perceptions.  We tend to underestimate the risks of things we are familiar with, and overestimate the risks of things we are not familiar with.  That leads us to be concerned about risks of something new, even if those risks are similar to, or less than, things we are used to.  This leads to the “lets just shut it down” reaction where employers simply block access to things.

These factors lead to some bad decisions on both ends, but also fosters debate and discussion over the issues that tend to sort things out over time.

The response to the policytool that rTraction and I collaborated on has been overwhelming.  In its first week,  over 10,000 people have visited the sites and 1500 different companies have taken the first steps in creating a social media policy.  See rTraction’s post for more details of the response.

And the only thing we did to publicize it was a couple of blog posts and tweets, and a few emails to individuals we thought might be interested.