Henriette Weber

Today I write history – well a little bit of my own history that calls for champagne, dancing and a bunch of laughter- I uploaded the free introduction to my book called “return on involvement – how to use the social web to create business unusual” (in danish only so far – sorry non-danishspeaking people). The book in itself is going to be available for purchase medio june. But that’s not what I want to talk about. I want to talk about the process of writing this sucker =). It started out in January 2008 where I decided that I needed to put all my thoughts on the social web and business down in a structured format – which became known in my head as “the book”.

When the first draft of the book was finished – A danish publising house contacted me because they where curious about the book. We arranged for a meeting, and after a couple of meetings – they decided they wanted to publish it – i was exstatic for a while but my smile soon faded. The book they wanted my book to be, where not the book that I had written.
they wanted a how-to book on social tools
I wanted to write a book about why social tools are necessary and what effect they can have on business – which meant no deal, they called it off first, but I am glad they did today.

A couple of days after I decided to do my own publishing house – Toothless Tiger Press , mainly because I could not see what my former publisher could provide me with at high cost, that I could buy myself and with a greater gain in the end. I don’t really think we are going to be having that many big publishing houses anymore – to me, what I have encountered that a publishing house does – doesn’t really have a place in todays world of connectedness on the internet. You have to transform and you have to transform big time. =) Toothless Tiger Press has been used as a platform for my own (only) free ebook on rockbandism so far.

In January I decided to add two more chapters to the book, in february the first round of editing started, march 2nd round of editing and in April my hands where off the manuscript and I could leave it in the hands of my excellent editor for the 3rd round of editing. These days it’s having it’s final layout, a last round of editing and then it hits the bookstores in Denmark. Meanwhile I have hired someone to translate it all to english – so you english speaking people won’t wait long ( we are talking mid-september or someting here)..

The absolutely hardest part for me, has been to let go of the book. In this area of work you can continue to work on it forever and ever. It was my wonderful husband who told me that if I didn’t stop adding stuff to this book he would go insane – and I really couldn’t have that on my shoulders. I am one of those people who are so terribly afraid of being un-original and not-that-genuine at all. So I really wanted to do my best. I think it has it – a bit of everything that I believe to be important, combined with a couple of why? how-to’s and best practice.

I hope you will all enjoy it when it launches both in danish and english !

So the videos from two talks I gave 2 weeks ago in Hamburg and Stockholm are online.

Here’s the one from next09 called: “rockbandism” or “why every company should be a rockband” based on my ebook with the same title – filmed by the amazing Andrea Vascellari

Here’s my talk on “return on involvement – how you can use social to create business unusual” from disruptive media a couple of days later i Stockholm.

Here’s where you find the video

This week I am working on putting last hands on a new ebook that is probably going to be entitled “from hopeless to hot – a crashguide in social marketing” – I don’t know yet – I change my mind all the time =) anyway the suggestion came from Eva Jonassen who send me a mail with the coolest suggestions…

Also I have made up my mind to move socialmediacamp copenhagen from the 5-6 of june to the 12th of september – this is mainly do to heavy workloads on the PR and publishing side of my big book (entitled return on involvement – how you can use the social web to create business unusual” which is due to come out shortly.

that’s about it these days – what’s happening on your side on the internet ?

I can’t sit still these days – so I have decided to do another event within the field of social media : Socialmediacamp Copenhagen.

Socialmediacamp Copenhagen is an un-conference that seeks to research and teach people about social media: blogs, podcasts, video, social networks, online communities and transitional web apps. An un-conference is a conference/workshop-y format where all the participants is prepared to participate in the camp in different ways. Putted another way, you have to prepare something that you’re passionate about that could occupy the other participants for a minimum of 30 minute

Who is it for ?

Basically everyone can participate in Socialmediacamp Copenhagen, no matter if you are a super social media user, an expert or a newbie. If you have any interest in Social Media Socialmediacamp Copenhagen is the place to be. So take a look at it, and sign up.

ps. Crossposted on Toothless Tiger.com

at Next09, Hamburg 5th and 6th of may, I am tranforming my “why every company should be a rock band” ebook into a new speech – the overall theme of the conference is shared economy, but I will be talking about shared branding and where it is that rockbandism is actually helping you a whole lot with your branding. I would maybe even go as far as saying that rockbandism is the precondition for good branding these days. I have been thinking a lot about how you share your brand, mainly I think it’s interesting who you want to share it with ?

- It could be your customers, potentiel customers and the market out there, but it could also be your suppliers and your stakeholders. I work with social branding everyday where you actually talk about what return you get from involving your customers in your company (and there’s a whole lot of strategic work involved in this question, because why on earth would people involve themselves in your company ? – ta da – rockbandism is why.

And a part of rockbandism is actually to share your brand inwards – aka. making sure your company is authentic and a rockband. If you are a company like innocent drinks it’s would take a huge blow to your authenticity if somebody found out that you actually shipped your goods around the world with planes. (They don’t – it’s not an option for the logistic managers at innocent drinks, planes are out of the question).

So if you really want people to involve themselves in your rockband – you need to share your brand inwards before you share it outwards. Other approaches than that would be a shame.

Another thing that you could share is the management of your brand, where you lead the brand and put the management and decisionmaking out to the users, but again, how do make sure that people actually wants to manage your brand ?

hm. more to come.

ps. crossposted at Toothless Tiger

Picture from flickr by Khe

There’s something I really hate as an entrepreneur and as women who runs a business – phonecalls. Not just the chatty cool conversations you have with people you have already met and like and stuff, but the ones with people you have never even seen in person. Outbound or inbound it doesn’t matter – if it’s not arranged in a mail or something I hate them.

The other day I had a guy calling me up on the phone, telling me that he wanted to arrange a social media marketing speech at the executive network he was employed in. That’s something that makes me really happy normally because I love speaking and I am darn passionate about what I do – so thumbs up.

BUT as the conversation progressed, I found out that

1. it was in the other end of the country and

2. they didn’t want to pay me to actually do the speech.

Hm. They would pay for  travelling cost. Hm hm. I decided to tell the guy nicely that I like to get payed for what I do, and since I have a lot of clients paying for speeches, I would really think I was freeloading on them, because they actually pay me to work. The problem was that this was for a business that charged somewhere between 10.000 kr and 16.000 kr for a yearly membersship, and they had no intention of paying me. It wasn’t an NGO, it wasn’t a good cause or an excellent conference, this was hard work.

Today something like the same happened again, which I also politely declined and told the women on the phone that I didn’t work for free.

I don’t work for free. I think the free phoners are rude people who has no respect for me or my work.

Don’t call me if you want me to do stuff for free. hmpf.

SXSW has been great. Yesterday Bruce Sterling took the stage and did a keynote – and it was an absolutely amazing keynote. He also mentioned the “global microbrand” a term that Hugh Macleod has been discussing for a couple of years now.

Global Microbrands are or companies without space and time, that everybody know of, in small fragments of a much bigger industry. So people behind these microbrands are extremely valuable speakers at conferences, advisors etc.

I have actually been thinking about it for a while – I love my work. I love running Toothless Tiger, but sometimes it seems like I don’t “do” anything. I talk. I tell people what to do to make things work on the web. My clients think I rock.

Yesterday I even caught myself considering a really great joboffer for a fulltime job. Something I don’t do normally.

I think that even though I like the might and glory of being somewhat of a global microbrand (I don’t see myself as a global microbrand – im probably a mutation of it =) I really want to do something. Because in my head it feels like Im not doing anything. I don’t work. I talk. I write. I help people do kickass projects. But I don’t have a project of my own that I can take to webheaven, a project that is useful for other people and that I have time to work on.

My project is so far going to involve geekculture, sustainability, action instead of talking and is going to be based on community and the now-open-sourced-former-fantastic-rockstar-client jaiku.com. I think I might toy around with it since even though with all this twittering, my heart still belongs to jaiku. Maybe I’ll even do two projects. A geekculture one and a actionpacked sustainable community based on Jaiku.

I dunno yet. In my honest opinion Jaiku is the best functional microblogging service out there. It’s just not being developed anymore and I want to change that.

I have volunteered to do marketing for blogprisen.dk - and we did an “employee meeting as a podcast on blogmagasinet.dk“ - it was really fun and Rasmus did a good job editing the podcast from 1.5 hours to 20 mins. So go listen (it’s in danish)

it’s not really within any subject – but today I was headhuntet for a job at… my competitors!

Even though I would claim that I am overqualified I wouldn’t even get to the interview.

Ohh and this quote has been twisting and turning in my head for the last couple of days:

We are going to be known as the generation who was having a teaparty close to a natural disaster, and all we had in our minds was and if the table cloth was a damask”.
Carsten Jensen, “Information” last saturday…

I am talking about transitional web apps at mobile 2.0 on thursday at FDIH together with Karin Høgh and Morten Bay.

DO show up, it’s going to be a blast!

I will only argue my point of view from a technology perspective ( hence, it is not said that it can’t be used elsewhere)…

if you look up innovation on wikipedia you will see this =

“the process of making improvements by introducing something new”

if you look up creativity you will see this =

“creativity is a mental process involving the generation of new ideas or concepts, or new associations between existing ideas or concepts”

But it is my understanding that a lot of people has a problem differing innovation from creativity.

What we came down to at the creativity workshop ( I conducted at Shift06 together with Dannie Jost) was that innovation was very hard to achieve nowadays – because so many things has allready been developed. Also the word is slightly misused by a lot of companies, kind off like a cool factor worn down.

Creativity on the contrary is in the eye of the beholder. It depends on the domain you are in and what culture you are exposing it to – mainly I would say it is very hard to be called creative in technology.

Are bloggers creative ? – well if you ask somebody who hasn’t read blogs before, then yes !. If you ask Doc Searls there’s probably a lot of things he has read already and he would characterize as “same old same old”…

we get more accustomed with other people’s experiences and ideas, in different domains.

the same would go if we talk about art. is street art creative ? – yes, if you live in a city where street art isn’t the norms. But if you allready own a Banksy book and live near Brick Lane in London, I doubt you will find new street art extremely creative.

so what is my point here ? that for people to do something ( projects, art, technology, blogs) that are creative, you have to show it to the right people. For creativity to take of, you have to find people that are not used to your kind of creativity.

that’s all !

KnowHR blog has posted the top 10 best presentations ever..

I am in particularly fond of Andy Kaufman’s “mighty mouse” and Rupert Everett’s ” I say a little prayer for you” making it onto the list.

but very good list – and a lot of learning and creativity…

found on Guy Kawasaki’s blog – of course on his geek week post