My experience is that collaboration can be very difficult, if not impossible, if a group isn’t working towards the same plan or goal.

A group or team can attempt to move forward without a plan or a clear set of goals, but the outcome, if any, isn’t likely to be very good or successful, and probably pretty painful.

Every group or team is different, complete with conflicting personalities, ideas, motivations and beliefs. I believe this kind of diversity makes the best kind of team, but if there isn’t a plan or goal to focus on, successful collaboration will be impossible, the differences will be emphasized rather than the common goals; chaos and piss-off will ensue.

I’ve experienced this many times, and I can’t believe how many collaboration and/or project managers still don’t understand this. The plan or goal will allow people to move past conflicts and differences towards successful completion of goals.

For entrepreneur’s, small business owners, and self-starters of any kind I would say that you should get started using social media. In fact, this should have been the first post in the Social Media Take Away series, but hey I’m improvising and making things up as I go here…

What is social media?

Social media is any web tools that allows groups to generate content and engage in peer-to-peer conversations and exchange of content (examples are YouTube, Flickr, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, etc…)

Social media is particularly valuable for entrepreneur’s, small business owners, and self-starters in-general, I’m thinking artists – painters, musicians and the like, because it gives them low cost, high value, far reaching exposure for whatever they’re doing. As I write more about the social media value, I’ll cover some of these. For starters, I would say see this post on Twitter or items tagged with social media on this blog. Though, I’ll be covering stuff more in-depth, and high level, alike as I develop this feature of the blog.

As I was cruising through my Google Reader today I had a realization — Don’t provide an RSS feed to your content, if you’re only going to provide a teaser title, sans the actual content, that links to your Web site. Yes, it’s true, you can get better measurements, and better ad hits if people visit your site, but if that’s the motivator, might I recommend FeedBurner (for measuring feed stats) and RSS feed ads to monetize the feed.

Otherwise, content providers just create another irritating step that I’ll breeze past nearly every time if only out of spite. The site in question is that of a large PR organization that I’ve talked about on here before, but try as they might they just don’t seem to get the digital perspective. I know they’re old school, and they’d like to folks to go to their site, and probably even read their newsletter, too… which may even be available via a SASE on printed paper and you might even get it in 6-8 weeks, come on… this is the Web, and the point is to spread your ideas, your perspective, and your voice out there, not lock it down behind another cumbersome layer of linkbait just to lock folks into your site. This is so very old school print media and Web 0.5 at best…

So the new rule for RSS Feeds is this: include the content in the feed, even if only a few paragraphs, or don’t bother offering an RSS feed, at all, as you’ll just make the people who want to read your content irritated. After all an irritated reader won’t be a reader of any kind for very long.

Some of my regular readers may have noticed that the site has been changing over the last month or so. This really started with the merging of the Digital Imperative blog and my music/design site. I wanted to bring my career workinline with my creative and artistic work here at mattborghi .com. Since then I’ve been reading some of your comments, emails and past posts (of which this is post #90) and thinking about the editorial direction and content overall of The Digital Imperative. This week it became clear to me that while I might talk about Google, Twitter or Yahoo, or Web and Digital Strategy or communications, as well as posting videos or Mp3s of recent work at the core of my message is that of entrepreneurship. Whether you’re a corporate entrepreneur working inside the walls of a Fortune 500 company, the small business owner who’s reach is much more local than global or a Do-It-Yourself artist trying to gain a broader audience for your work — Entrepreneurship is an attitude.

It took me talking to a trusted colleague this week for that to become clear to me. We spent a good amount of time talking about what it means to be a small business and a small business owner. Entrepreneurship encompasses a series of soft skills, including ambition, persistence, organization, attitude and most importantly a belief in one’s self, but there are many other words that describe what an entrepreneur or entrepreneurship is.

I plan to spend more time talking about entrepreneurship and what it means to be an entrepreneur. Keeping in mind that my definition of an entrepreneur is looser than most. I define an entrepreneur as someone who works to put something together and is willing to take the risk for it.  This goes together with the newly-crafted editorial statement that I crafted for this site: The best investment you can make is in yourself.

So that’s the plan, and the direction I plan on taking with things. I’ll still be talking about social media, Web strategy, communications and the like because of course it’s absolutely the entrepreneurial spirit that drives one to undertake these things, especially as best practices are being written as we go. As always, I welcome your feedback, and look forward to the continued conversation.

This post was one that was originally posted here, but kind of got lost in the mix, and I wanted to repost it for two reasons. First, this is a great example of using the Web to create and be creative. I was surfing Flickr, a free picture sharing site, and I found this great series by Indy Kethdy, he had them marked with a Creative Commons license, so I downloaded them, created a video, and then composed a soundtrack to the photostream. Then I posted the video on YouTube to share. This sort of the full-circle of open sharing, social media and creativity on the Web. My second reason is less profound, I know the site has some new readers, and I thought that they might enjoy checking out this video montage. Enjoy.

Indy Kethdy Video Montage with Matt Borghi Soundtrack

Surfing Flickr, as I so often do, I find images that inspire me. Last Friday night, though, I found the fantastic work of Indy Kethdy. I spent hours, and hours pouring over his pictures of Lake Michigan from around Wisconsin. I started to hear music in my ears, and imagined putting these images to sound. I was in luck, because Indy had set his pictures with a Creative Commons license that allowed me to make a video of his photos, put them to music, and then post it here for you to view. I highly recommend visiting Indy’s Flickr page – http://www.flickr.com/people/indykethdy/ and getting a taste of his excellent artistry first-hand. First, though, check out the video homage and the music that I created from the inspiration of his gorgeous still images:

Came across an interesting article here about a local Michigan company, Oneupweb from Traverse City, traveling around the state in a motor home offering up free advice on digital strategy, SEO and online marketing in general.

My initial reaction to this article was two-fold: First, what a great idea and second, this such an excellent example of a socially responsible Michigan firm doing their part to try and help those struggling in the Michigan economy.

However, what Oneupweb teaches here isn’t just about helping Michigan, but really it’s about outreach and social responsibility. As I said in my post here, the Web has always been social and it’s always been about sharing with others. It’s one thing to to do this only in the digital domain of the Web, from the comfort of one’s office or living room, such as I’m doing now, but it’s something else entirely to take this sharing and exchange on the road to meet the man on the street where he lives. Very inspiring.

A lot is being said about “free” these days, especially with the release of Chris Anderson’s book on the subject, but ever since I came online I’ve been interested in the economics of free, whether it was freeware, free music, or free information.

Story: I ran a series of free Mp3 downloads back in 2003 at mattborghi.com, and those downloads brought in more hits to my Web site than being featured on the nationally-syndicated space music program, Hearts of Space. To be fair, the program didn’t feature my music, exclusively, and no link was included to my site, but I thought that it would at least have generated some inquiries, and it did. However, I didn’t see nearly the response that I thought I would from that exposure compared to the interest generated by the free monthly download series.

It’s with that experience in mind that I released a variety of my long-form ambient music tracks to be freely available (some of which are from that monthly download series). Here’s the official announcement from my homepage at mattborghi.com:

Freely available Mp3s of long-form ambient works

I have freely released several hours worth of my long form works in mp3 form here, approximately a dozen tracks. Most of these tracks haven’t been available in quite a long time. Some go back as far as ten years and my early Mp3.com page, some were out-takes from records, and the 2003 series was a monthly download series that I did throughout 2003 during a particularly prolific period. I hope to add other long form works over started adding these tracks.

My reasons for doing this are two-fold. First, these tracks haven’t been available in a long time, and to me it makes more sense to put them out into the universe, where people can enjoy them, than let them take up space on my hard drive .

The second reason has to do with my how I measure the success of social media. Social media metrics and measurements are something that many folks talk about, and ponder but I think that good social media metrics aren’t in hit rankings or page views, but rather in how many people you are getting your ideas out to. The more people that download you free ambient music tracks, watch your videos, read your blog, etc… and comment on, think about, bring up in discussion, include in status updates or generally take an interest in your ideas is the best way to measure the success of social media.

Change is hard, there’s no question about it. Sometimes, even a change for the better is tough for a team or an organization to make peace with; and things are even worse if the change isn’t for the better. I’m not talking about the slow gradual change of degradation, as much as I’m talking about quick changes, and their short, sharp shock effect. These changes, while quick in execution, to some appear to be better and more effective (I blame this one to many Dog Whisperer episodes where the watcher begins these techniques on humans) have far-reaching effects that definitely effect morale and an organization’s culture.

In our particular epoch, this post-9/11, quasi-depression era that we’re living in, people are often running scared, and any change, one way or another, fuels core fears – loss of job, loss of home, loss of health care. There’s not a lot that we can do about this except to be mindful and sympathetic.

It’s easy to lose sight of the human element when you’re working on the digital strategy side of things. However, this sympathy and mindfulness of where your users live will help a great deal in developing a strategy that’s both successful for the organization and for the human beings that you’re hoping to connect with.

There’s a lot of talk about social media and the role that companies can and/or should play in social media; but the one thing that I’ve learned is that there’s almost no place for social media in the closed organization. Companies that aren’t transparent and are secretive don’t have much of a chance with social media because social media really requires you to put it all out there, and open yourself to public scrutiny. With that said, it’s important to note that if you’re a closed company then your employees and customers are probably already out there in the social media sphere talking about you.

This is where I qualify the first sentence where I talk about there being “almost no place for social media in the closed organization”‘; there’s always plenty of room for “reputation management” or as it was called in the bygone days of yesteryear damage control. However, this part is also likely lost on the closed organization, because they believe that keeping their head down and going with the flow is the best approach, and sometimes it is, a little passive for my taste, but I could see how some might view it as effective, at least from the perspective of ‘if you ignore something it will go away’.

However, I would submit that in the age of social media, or the Web, in general, an organization that tries to live under those old rules is really just signing their own death certificate. It may not happen right away, but like so many great companies that have crumbled, it will happen slowly, until all falls apart, and everyone stands around in the aftermath scratching their heads and asking how this could happen. Yes, it’s a leap from not using social media to an organization’s foundation crumbling, but it becomes less of a leap when the organization has closed up so tightly that they’ve turned their back on their customers.

Innovation can’t happen in the closed organization. Innovation, by its very nature, requires openness and transparency. This is true, because innovation, generally, like great inventions, comes from necessity, and if an organization or a group is trying to innovate under false pretenses, or a feigned necessity, then whatever is created on is built on a cracked foundation, and surely won’t last or at least last very long.

Merriam-Webster defines innovation as 1.) The introduction of something new 2.) A new idea, method or device… In either of the instances above, an organization or group needs to start the discussion not with regard to what it takes to be innovative, but rather by looking at what is broken, then reviewing organizational structure, past fixes/workarounds, and best practices if they apply. If none of these pieces fit the problem, then, and only then, it’s time to innovate.

Sadly, a lot of organizations don’t get this and throw this corporatism around lightly.