We Baby Boomers are benefiting significantly from the gig economy, says author, speaker and optimist Tim Drake. Not just as consumers by it providing lower prices and more convenience, but as participants too. It’s an important bolt-on to something bigger, he says, enabling new ways of doing business to emerge, and a fresh outlook on what ‘work’ is. But is it something we should think about taking a much more active role in? Baby Boomers fit into what I call …
Category: Personal Development
Last December, when I started telling friends that I would be joining IBM as a full-time employee, I received some mixed responses. Of course, all were well-wishing but some came with quizzical looks and the question “IBM? I couldn’t imagine you at IBM!” It turns out that the question was based on a view about me as a communicator, and about IBM and what the company does that was out of date. That view was based on what IBM largely …
Closing General Session at IBM Connect 2016: Discover Your Inner Artist: Wrap up your week on a fun and exciting note. Liz Urheim, Vice President of Collaboration and Smarter Workforce, will share her perspectives and summarize the week. She will then be joined by Erik Wahl, author of Unthink, who will inspire you to let go of your traditional thought patterns. His unique artwork-infused presentation will help you better understand how to create disruptive strategies of innovation. In this session you will …
I’ve been thinking a lot about social business lately. About what it is – broadly, focused on people (behaviours, mindsets) and organizations (culture, vision, leadership) – and about what it isn’t (an extension of, or level up from, social media). For the past dozen years, I’ve been directly and actively involved in one way or another in social media and social business, as a consultant, as a client, as an experimenter, as an early adopter (and leaver), as an …
On September 7, I co-hosted and recorded the last episode of For Immediate Release: The Hobson and Holtz Report with my podcasting partner, Shel Holtz. It’s a ritual Shel and I have followed every week for the past ten years and nine months since we published the first episode on January 3, 2005. If you’re a regular listener of FIR (the show gained that moniker in its early days), you’ll know that we announced the ending of this podcast in …
I remember when I first started hearing about Twitter, in the summer of 2006 less than six months after the service started earlier that year. As the year progressed, the name kept popping up in blog posts and comments – what social media was, really, back then – until I decided to see for myself what this thing was all about. And so, today marks my eighth #Twitterversary – eight years ago on this day, I signed up with the handle …
If you were not happy – outraged, even – with how Facebook behaved over the mood experiment they conducted last month, an experiment from a Dutch creative agency might be right up your street. What Facebook did was manipulate information posted on nearly 700,000 users’ home pages that showed that the social network could make people feel more positive or negative through a process of emotional contagion. Now Dutch creative agency Just has come up with 99 Days of Freedom, …
In just three weeks’ time, on June 18, FutureComms14 takes place in London. This one-day conference, organized by MyNewsDesk UK, will firmly ask a big question: “What’s the future of communications?” The line up of speakers will offer some compelling answers to it that will undoubtedly include insights. You really can’t ask for more from an event. I’ll be there, too, moderating a panel discussion on the technologies of PR and chipping in with a few perspectives as well in …
A really good conference for communicators takes place in London next month, and plans are well advanced for a day of valuable professional development, strongly focused on the question “What’s the future of communications?”and how to address it: The disciplines of PR, marketing, social media and digital are converging and evolving at a breathless pace. Modern marketing communications is real-time, multimedia and multichannel. The challenge we face is to learn new skills, master new technologies, while maintaining focus on the …
