Another sign of the digital age, after 74 years, Kodak is going to take everyone's Kodachrome away! From Paul Simon's famous song:
I'm trying to determine the ROI / business value of social media sites for my company. A common assumption is that if one's company is not end-consumer focused, there may be less value found upon social media sites like Facebook, YouTube and Twitter. However, if you are trying to take the pulse of the "conversational web", these services handily beat traditional web sites. Over the past 24 hours I've discovered the truth of that hypothesis. In my case, I ran Grandma's Marathon yesterday during "black flag" weather conditions (i.e. dangerous heat). I decided to create an animated slideshow with music of the experience.
Being curious about yesterday's race, I queried Google on "Grandma's Marathon". Almost 100% of the first 20 results (farther down that most people would ever read) are traditional news media reports of the race. However, if one runs the same query via Twitter Search, the results are dramatically different, you learn what it's like to actually run in the race. The first tweet was by Graeme Thickins, a web 2.0 reporter who actually linked my video.
Thus, always know your audience and your purpose. One needs to stay abreast of both the traditional and conversational web. You'll be better able to understand the parts to the puzzle.
Lake Superior did not provide her air conditioning today at Grandma's Marathon. Instead the wind blew from the West and the heat rose to dangerous temperatures (87 degrees at the finish). I hope you enjoy the short video; you'll learn what it's like to run a "black flag marathon". The Northstar Nerd ran a personal worst by almost 50 minutes (5 hours 17 minutes), but I finished. Next Winter, I promise I will never again complain when cross-country ski racing in a sub-zero Loppet! The cold will feel heavenly!
Follow this link for a higher res version of my video. Most photos were taken by my family, but some are from the Minneapolis Star Tribune and Duluth News Tribune.
Finally, view my 2010 Grandma's Marathon Man Cam Photos. The weather was much nicer (i.e. cooler), and I improved on my 2009 result by one hour!
Paraphrased from the Duluth News Tribune:
The medical director, Steve Harrington, almost shut down the race down while it was in progress: "Race protocol calls for the medical director to confer with executive
director Scott Keenan on matters of an
unsafe race. They discussed the option of stopping the marathon and
having runners brought in off the course by bus, and Harrington said it
very nearly happened."
There were 577 runners treated at the finish-line medical tent. Most were treated for
hyponatremia (low sodium) and hyperthermia (heat stroke), with one
runner showing a temperature of 108 degrees.
Gold Cross Ambulance had 83 calls with 53 transports, including 36 to Duluth hospitals, the most in Harrington’s time with the marathon.
Black Flag Marathon on PhotoPeach
Innovation is not just nice; it's a requirement. Take a look at the chart below which is a prime reason the newspaper industry has tanked. Throwing up walls around your products will ultimately not work; one must take risks and move forward. My thanks to Graeme Thickins for the Tweet about the Business Insider "Chart of the Day". Click upon the chart to view full sized / resolution. It will allow you to read all the data points and explanations.
Sometimes it's hard to believe how new all the various Web 2.0 tools which we now take for granted really are. Over the past several months I've worked hard at finding formal academic research which attempts to demonstrate the business value / ROI of social media for non consumer focused industrial companies. Well folks, it's slim pickings out there! While I believe in the value of social media and have many examples where the enhanced communication has delivered value, this field seems to be too young to have attracted many formal academic studies. In addition to my own efforts, I've had two research librarians look hard for content. While it's easy to find articles in magazines and journals authored by so called experts, thorough studies using metrics are almost impossible to find.
Here is what I've found. If you know of other sources, please post a link in the comments.
From the University of Southern California, I found an excellent report on the ROI of virtual teaming (Meeting the Performance Challenge: Calculating ROI for Virtual Teams). This 47 page report studies two teams in detail including a global alliance research and development team. Here a quote I particularly like:
And my other favorite quote from the study:
I actually posted via Twitter in my attempt to solicit benchmarking partners. Here are links to a couple of those Tweets (I found even less academic research surrounding industrial use (non consumer focused) of Twitter and micro-blogging):
I did come across one other intriguing academic research effort led by Professor Sandy Pentland of MIT. He is the recent author of a book, "Honest Signals … How They Shape Our World" (podcast). The professor and his team are doing some cool research on social networks and cell phones. The research participants wear a sensor device which delivers data to the research team. Unfortunately, the data around social interaction with cell phones while interesting, does not really pertain to my corporate work.
For those of you with access to APQC, they also have a very thorough benchmarking report (200+ pages) on "Accelerating Collaboration and Knowledge". However, formal studies of micro-blogging (Twitter, Yammer, etc) in which I have a particular interest are rare.
Once again, if you know of examples, or work for a large industrial company and would like to benchmark, post a comment or give me a shout.
Update on June 25th: Posted CalTech NASA Collaboration Research Study