Kiwi Scrum

June 2009, Newsletter

Hello Everyone,

Kiwi Scrum has 978 members. Why not make up an email to your workmates recommending LinkedIn? Now with 42 million business members. Point your NZ friends to the Kiwi Scrum webpage.

The June LinkedIn hint:

Far too few of you have made the effort to join LinkedIn Groups besides Kiwi Scrum. Joining groups offers you an easy (and FREE) way to connect with interesting people, and allows other people that same option to connect to you.

Generally when evaluating a connection request, give the person the benefit of any doubt. "I don't know" is a distinctly unfriendly response. "Archive" it instead.

The Useful Common:

Yes, this newsletter is late again; but I've been working for you.

Take lots of time to study this research that I'm just completing. Even after doing the work myself, the full implications of my findings are slow to influence my thinking. So much of what I found out shatters my understanding about how Internet wise New Zealanders are.

Here's the link to the Bryndwr Survey 2009. There are anchors on each section so you can point people to items you need to discuss. EVERY member should examine this work and take it to your management meeting for discussion. There is also a printable version.

Engage with other people and Groups:

A lecturer in art therapy from a German university, asked me three months ago, "why join LinkedIn?" She's now got 29 connections, she's installed Skype so she can talk to them. She's joined nine professional groups on LinkedIn. She rings me on Skype and thanks me for all the help I've given her, and she's incredibly positive about the life changing and profession changing effects joining LinkedIn has had for her.

So are you having that experience too? ENGAGE with other people. Don't just sit there, DO something.

Do something really easy. Take the Bryndwr Survey 2009 information to people you associate with. There's a long and important discussion in that. Are those people ALL in Linkedin? Get them connected.

Invitations

Facebook is a family based network according to my respondents. I know there is a LOT of pressure in the business community to make Facebook a commercial tool for making sales. I think if that was to become a reality Facebook would die. So join Facebook, be active there, but keep the focus on family and real friends.

Are you aware that of 90 people approached only THREE were members of LinkedIn, none of them have many connections and none of them had heard of Kiwi Scrum. Be sure that all three were invited to connect to me and to join Kiwi Scrum, but NONE of them have done so. Such is life; you can lead a horse to water, they say.

Volunteers

in the last few months I've helped my Art Therapist friend find her place on LinkedIn. She doesn't know it, but in describing her fear of being robbed or ripped off, and her reluctance to add other people to her LinkedIn network, she was speaking for lots people, and teaching me lessons that I need to learn. I'm so grateful for the insight she was able to give me into her fears, and for the trust she eventually invested in me.

The Value of Community

I've spoken here, about creating community lists. As far as I know, nobody has taken up the challenge. Too hard?

In Canada, a small town experiment in broadband use was implemented in 1996. Part of the deal was a local community email list. Everyone was subscribed. When the experiment went nose down in 1998, the local list was the only service the community was determined to keep.

If we are going to resolve the problems that the Bryndwr Survey 2009, identifies, the way forward has to be local, social and low key. Small groups, online yes, but also offline if that's what people want. Let us together build some local online groups that people are determined to keep.

Regards
John