Business/Social Networking and REINVENTING Your...

How can BUSINESS and SOCIAL NETWORKING help you deliver a renewed personal brand, reinvent how you present your business/organization's offerings, and open up new alliances for innovation and collaboration at this time of CHANGE, CRISIS, and OPPORTUNITY? This is the question up for exploration at the Global Dialogue Center ONLINE Conference Center. Jane Scandurra, former IBM Senior Marketing Manager turned filmmaker, entrepreneur, and master of popular "CONNECTION tools" like LinkedIn, Facebook, Xing, and Twitter joins me to explore the answers to this question on TUESDAY, MAY 19 as part of our continuing "Economic Conversation Series."

WHEN and WHERE:
CONNECTING for Success in Hard Times 
How can Business and Social Networking help you?
Tuesday, MAY 19, 2009 
1:00 p.m. - 2:30 pm Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)
10:00 a.m. - 11:30 a.m. Pacfic Daylight Time (PDT)
with an informal "virtual break" following (30 minutes)
No fees. Registration is required; login sent via email.
Register here:  http://tinyurl.com/MAY19Dialogue
(Note:Allow a few seconds for the url to open)
Online at the Global Dialogue Center ONLINE CONFERENCE CENTER...
www.puttingourdifferencestowork.com/dialogues.html 

Business and Social Networking
--- a personal testimonial
I admit I'm hooked on the possibilities of business and social networking. At this point, I feel like it continues to be an ongoing discovery with many dimensions, platforms and opportunities for both business and personal growth. It may not replace face-to-face communication, but there are some things about it that break down barriers that separate us and it seems to open up new pathways we couldn't have imagined. I've been experimenting and connecting with people worldwide for well over ten years and love the sense of pioneering that comes with it. The formats have changed---today we continue to be surprised with a constant stream of the next great idea. There is no doubt that it is offering new opportunities for contacts, collaboration, peer-to-peer mentoring, and knowledge exchange. IBM started its social and business networking platform a few years back called the Greater IBM Connection. We are all forging its broad trails across the world. What's great about it is that it a place for both past and present IBMers --- a gathering place for people that share a similar bond, yet have have unique differences in our experience, knowledge and talent. My book Putting Our Differences to Work has some great stories about business and social networking. On page 100, I wrote about the Greater IBM Connection. This is an excerpt:

Whether it's attending a meeting in 3D or some other kind of a gathering of early explorers of this new web-based dimension of connecting, you can't help but see and feel the potential for bringing talent together across the world. It is a more hip IBM, more open, with the friendliest people. You can sense a "simmering pot" with a hearty soup being made with nearly unlimited potential for nourishing, nurturing, and engaging talented, innovative minds"

IN FACT, I met Jane Scandurra at the Greater IBM Connection --- She's the one joining me as a co-host for the CONNECTING for Success in HARD TIMES dialogue on May 19. Amazingly, we've never physically met or seen each other, but we've done some amazing things together across the distance to support one another's work and to produced meaningful events for others. This time, we are teaming up to host this special conversation to share what we've learned and also invite others to do the same as part of my ongoing Economic Conversation Series. Hope you can join us!

REINVENTING YOURSELF:
More Lessons from AMERICAN IDOL
After I braved :-) writing LESSONS from the Talented to share lessons we could all learn about ourselves and for ourselves from the likes of American Idol's Adam Lambert and Susan Boyle from Britain's Got Talent, I again learned a few more lessons. This time the lessons came from Simon Cowell as he described why Adam Lambert's brilliant performance of "If I Can Have You" was so exceptional. Simon's comments become sage advice for those working to REINVENT themselves. Let me translate from his feedback to Adam Lambert.

• Do something that exceeds expectations for excellence.
  (SC: "You did something unexpected.")
• Make sure what you do is memorable and enduring. 
  (SC: "It was memorable.")
• Use your skills to execute second-to-none.
  (SC: "Your vocals were impeccable.")

These three pieces of GREAT advice. They make a great "yardstick" for our own efforts to present ourselves, our work, and our businesses.

Cheers!

Debbe Kennedy
founder, Global Dialogue Center
and Leadership Solutions Companies
author, Putting Our Differences to Work (Berrett-Koehler 2008)
The Fastest Way to Innovation, Leadership, and High Performance
YouTube Book Review by futurist Joel A. Barker