Kiwi Scrum

July 2009, Newsletter

Hello Everyone,

Kiwi Scrum has 1026 members. It's really good to know the grape vine is working. You really do need to build your own connections. Next month I'll crunch some numbers for you on Kiwi Scrum connections. Most of LinkedIn looks like this, which is what Christchurch looked like in July, 2007.

The February LinkedIn hint:

People like myself who've invited more than 3000 people to LinkedIn can't invite any more. If you want to connect to some of the best people you have to be active about it. Very often they can't come to you. If you didn't invite ALL of the Kiwi Scrum open networkers into your network, you have not been listening.

Only about half the members of Kiwi Scrum are connected directly to me. They were all invited to do so. But they don't understand why they should. They didn't read the help notes. These notes you should print.

The Useful Common:

How much email does the average person get? How many people watch YouTube Videos? How many New Zealanders are using Twitter? Online banking is more popular than both Google searches and Trade Me. The Digital Natives are NOT more internet skilled than their elders.

Where is this wonderful data? The Bryndwr Research Group 2009.

Engage with other people and Groups:

Have you seen Made From New Zealand? This is a venture that's entirely in line with what we're doing here. I don't know nearly enough about it, except that I've just joined. It's Wellington based there is a lot of energy coming from there. Silicon Welly, seems to be involved. All of the 4 named directors are members of linkedIn, but none of them in Kiwi Scrum. Three of them have more than 100 linkedIn connections. Something more of you should try to achieve.

If you have a New Zealand Business, register at Made From New Zealand. You can also join their Made from NZ LinkedIn Group.

LinkedIn Answers

FIRST, grow your connection base. Then use LinkedIn answers to get help with problems you face. It's not happening, because even with all my connections I get only one or two questions a week.

Volunteers

I run a group looking at the prospects for collaboration across the Internet. You can join the group, there are 34 of us right now, and we're finding progress a bit difficult. One of our members Mawuna Koutonin suggested that more people should make an effort to recommend people they know. So I tried to do that here. It's not very tidy, and even what I did takes a long time. So is it useful?

Using Web 2.0 Tools

In this part of the letter I usually talk about democracy, but I'm really on about being involved, getting engaged. Doing something to help the group, or to help someone else. From my survey it seems that 60% of Internet users are very reluctant to use any of the Web 2.0 tools. They don't join, they don't answer questions, they never get involved in group work. They kill at the root, any chance that the Internet will be life changing for them.

Regards
John