(originally published in November, 2007)

Wiping a tear from his eye, my Dad said, “If someone had told me that my youngest son would one day be sitting in that same seat as me, I never would have believed them.”

Last summer, my Dad and I paid a visit to an old friend of his.  A Halifax bomber that has been restored and resides in Trenton, Ontario.  It was a road trip with my hero.

My Dad is a World War II veteran, living in Ontario.  He just turned 88.  He flew 34 missions, bombing targets “in the Ruhr Valley – the Germans’ back yard”, as he says.  He was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, and has been quoted in a few books about the war, and his squadron number 426, ‘The Thunderbirds’.

This is my father in June 1944, at base camp in England, scanned from “Thunderbirds At War:  Diary of a Bomber Squadron”, Laurence Motiuk, 1998.

He arrived in Europe early in June of 1944 to begin flying sorties.  On D-Day, he flew two missions.  He flew Halifax’s.

In Trenton, Ontario, a restored Halifax pays tribute to the war effort, lovingly restored by teams of volunteers over a period of several years:

This is the story of my trip, with my Dad, to see the aircraft he flew for me, for us, so many years ago.

When he came home from the war, he didn’t fly for over 20 years.  “You can’t explain it”, he says, referring to why he rarely spoke of the war, or why he didn’t care for flying.  When I asked him if he ever just flew for fun during any downtimes in the war, he said no – “it was a job”.

He has, however, told me stories of flak exploding off his wing tips, or being caught in the search lights, and being lucky enough to escape them, through skill and the good fortune of finding some cover in the smoke rising from the fires of bombed targets.

One in ten men did not return.  And usually, the first 5 missions, or the last 5, were the deadliest.

On this trip, I heard another story.  The time a young airman insisted my Dad go to his quarters to see the pictures of his wife and two daughters.  “Two more missions”, he told my Dad, “and I can go home.”  He didn’t come back that night.  And it was my Dad’s job, as it was every night, to take some wax and erase the names of those who didn’t return, and put new names in their places.

“They said ‘We can sustain 10% losses every mission’”, said my Dad.  He shakes his head.  “Every night there were 80 aircraft with 7 or 8 men aboard each plane.”  He doesn’t say anything else as he contemplates that.  I’m silent too.  I can’t think of anything to say either, at the callousness of war.

You can’t help but be impressed by the size of the aircraft when you enter the exhibition area.  “They didn’t really look that big out in a field with a few dozen others around”, said my Dad.  I couldn’t imagine that.  I stood near the nose of the aircraft and looked up at the bomb aimer’s position.  It had to be a few stories high.

My eyes naturally went to the cockpit.  My Dad was the pilot, and I imagined him sitting there.  At 24 years old, commander of his crew of 7 other young men.  Responsible for their lives.  The same crew he would be with on every mission during the war.

Before every mission “I used to stand <on the ground> under where I would sit, and look at the night”, said my Dad, “I’d wonder every time if this was the last time I’d see the sky”.  How brave is that?

We wandered around the exhibit, and while I studied the details of the aircraft, my Dad glanced at this or that.  He knew every detail, already.  We came upon “Bob”, the man inside the ropes, there to answer questions.  Bob told me the story of this particular aircraft, what it was doing, how it was shot down, where it was found, and how many hours it took to restore.

We wandered some more, to some small CCTV monitors, they had set up to show various angles from inside the plane.  I knew that both my brothers had been actually inside the aircraft, and I longed to be inside, too.

We went back up to Bob, and chatted, hoping to ‘warm him up’ for a behind the scenes tour.  He offered to my Dad, “You want to go up?”  My Dad said, no, that he’d already been inside, but that he’d like me to see it.  Bob said, sure.  And the gate opened.  I thought I had won the lottery.

Bob took me around to the port side of the plane, where the crew embarked on every mission.  I looked up, way up, at the cockpit.  I was tingling.  I crawled in the opening, and my immediate impression, was how small the inside is, compared to the behemoth impression you get looking at the machine on the outside. The next thing that struck me, was how steep the incline is to go forward.

First you go through the “safety cage” (“Yeah, right, like THAT was a lot of good”, chuckles my Dad) where the crew sat for take-off’s and landings.  I had to literally crawl what felt like straight up.  I came to the forward part of the aircraft.

Bob, continually behind me, points out the various crew positions.  “That was your father’s position”, Bob tells me.  A tiny chair, on the port side of the aircraft, on the side of the passageway to the bomb aimer’s position.  Underneath, his co-pilot and ‘wireless operator’ in spaces which seem no bigger than a hotel fridge.

I make my way to the bomb aimer’s position.  “Left skipper”, I can hear him saying.  “Bombs away!”

“Put your hand on the seat, and use the step on the right” Bob instructs me, pointing at the pilot’s seat.  I look to the right, and there’s nothing but a little one inch knob of metal jutting out of the inner fuselage.  That must be the ‘step’.  I get myself into the chair.

It was overwhelming; looking at the view my father had, all those years ago.  The old instruments, the windows with little view, the smell of the old bird.  I look out the port side window, and there is my Dad, looking up at me, in his chair.  He took this picture:

There was my father, war hero, looking at me in his seat, over 60 years later.

I wanted time to stop.  To absorb it all, as a dozen war movies flashed through my mind.  Trying to picture my Dad giving orders, the terror of the mission, the relief of seeing England upon his return.  Bob said, “We have to go”.  I felt sad the experience had to end.  The complete polar opposite of what my Dad likely felt when he left that aircraft.

We spent another moment with the Halifax.  “It’s all covered in dust – they should wash it”, said my Dad.  He still maintains a reverence for the machine that brought him home.  “I used to stand those things on their wing tips”, he said, referring to the way he used to pilot the craft.  I’ll bet you did.  I would have loved to watch you fly like a bird.

“I still remember seeing the runway.  The last mission, I still remember seeing our landing strip and thinking ‘I’ve made it.  I’m going home’”, said my Dad.  I think I’d remember that, too.

“I don’t know why I made it.  I must have been meant for something else”.  Maybe, that was to have me, so I could tell the story of one soldier’s story, to the thousands who visit this web site on a regular basis.

This Remembrance Day, think about the heroes who made it possible for our lives today, and those who continually sacrifice for our way of life.  The experiences they have, and the silent memories they carry, forever pay for the comfort we enjoy.

And to my Dad, I would like to say thank you.  For all you’ve done, I am very proud of you.  More than you will ever know.

You will forever be, my hero.

(Flt. Lt. J.T. Sheridan, DFC, passed away, peacefully, in March 2008).

I saw this tweet come in….

It only took a few clicks to find out that a group of bloggers were banding together for a live virtual auction and fundraiser to help Feeding America. They would be using the hashtag “GNO” (the group formerly called themselves the Twitter Girls’ Night Out) to track the conversation.

On a professional level, a large part of our client base is non-profit. There are numerous examples of Social Media for non-profit, but the timing was right for me to observe as the event took place. So, I did.

I find the easiest way to track live tweets that are hashtag’d is by using tweetchat, so I fired that up and even before the event started, the tweets were rolling in.

The Community eXperience turned out to be an amazing stream of passionate, supportive, cohesive, gracious and appreciative group conversation among some real people just donating some time to help a cause. Truely, an example of the power of instantaneous collective messaging across numerous disparate boundaries.

I can’t find the effects (yet) of this event, but will update this post when I do - the final tally won’t be out until Friday. But, this even will surely become part of the conversation when I speak to this topic early in the new year.

On a personal level, I have found that through the years you become aware and compassionate about many causes, as life’s experiences help you gravitate emotionally towards particular areas of human suffering that need to be addressed. Food for the hungry is one that goes back to my childhood.

When I was a little boy of 8 or 9, I used to go out Saturday mornings with my Dad to accompany him while he did errands. It was our time together. My Dad was a man of some stature in the small town I grew up in; well-respected and carried himself accordingly.

But if we ever passed a old homeless man (”winos”, “rubbies”, or “bums” my childhood friends would call them) they all knew him and would smile and say hello to him by his first name. He’d give each of them a bit of change (not all of it) from his pocket.

I once asked him why he did that. “That”, he responded, “is somebody’s little boy”.

The timing of this post is to help promote a cause that will continue to raise money until November 21, 2008. As my martial arts sensei once told me, “You can’t do everything, but I want you to do what you can do”.

In the spirit of the Community eXperience, this is my little contribution to the cause. What’s yours?

“a majority of the blogs out there are created by teenagers (I would assume those teenagers are from class backgrounds where the afterschool or weekend job is unnecessary and  access to everyday computer use goes without saying).  The economy of time as a measure of successful blogging might also mean that working women with young children are underrepresented on the blogosphere, or at least are less likely to have successful blogs.”

OK, bloggers, you kids you.  Get back to doing real work.  I guess that means me, too.

Could this be the entrenched notion that today’s decision maker has towards investing time in building community?  That these new social media tools, are merely the playthings of people with too much time on their hands?

The experience of hearing objections to implementing Social Media seems to suggest this.  It seems a common objection we hear in our business is that organizations don’t have time or people to devote to building community, because they are all still busy doing things the old way.  The comfortable way.

The Old Way (or doing business in “analog”) is not entirely wrong as Terry Starbucker says.  Successful organizations are built upon that.  But any successful business person will tell you that looking for new ways to maintain constant improvement is an “analog” custom.  So why the fear of digital means?

The Old Way suggests that spending millions on TV ads that are not watched is a good investment, and sound ROI.  That print advertising which may or may not be actually seen is somehow rational.  That installing very expensive IVR systems to really frustrate your customer somehow improves your bottom line.

The logic doesn’t fit.  Spending hours of employee time, buying the same products, and doing things the same way because you are too busy to try something new, is the hallmark of extinction.

And just try and tell Motrin that Moms are under-represented in the blogoshpere.

Huh?  Like many, I question the business model based on one tool (sorry, “platform”) with a micro-purpose.

“Tell me I need a blog and I’ll kick your ass straight through those <expletive> doors.”  That’s what the President of a very successful company said to my business partner, not long into our introductory meeting.  He’s rich.  He’s influential.  The company is doing just fine, thank you.  He has no time to blog, much less microblog.  Good thing we didn’t mention Twitter.  He’s also a seasoned hunter.

An important part of my job is to sit back and observe what goes on in the social media space, so our clients don’t have to.  This week, these past few months, however, the Twittersphere is strutting an importance I think is greater than the sum of the parts.

Take this example:  “Janet” joins Twitter and pretends to be an official rep of Exxon Mobil.  “See?”, says the Twittersphere.  “Another excellent example of why Twitter is so important.  Hooray for Exxon!”

Poops.  Jeremiah Owyang breaks the news: Exxon has never heard of “Janet”.  Their reaction?  “We need to be diligent about what is being said about you, by you, and those pretending to be you”.  Doesn’t sound like a panicing company to me.  He/they have likely never heard of Twitter, either, but I don’t think it seemed to matter too much.  They’ve ignored Twitter since the incident.   What does that tell you?

Personally, I was duped by the importance of the news, too.  The day the ‘brand hijacking’ story broke, a non-social media aware friend picked me up for a BBQ:

Him: “Hey, what’s goin’ on?”
Me (half-jokingly): “Exxon Mobil has been brand hijacked on Twitter!”
Him: “What’s a Twitter?”
Me: “Oh, a really popular network I hang out on.  Get in the game, pal!”
(he turns on the car radio - Jeff Healey is playing)
Me: “You know, I’d love to see this guy.”
Him: “That might be hard.  He died of cancer about a month ago.”
Me: “What?  I never heard that!”
Him: “They didn’t tell you on Twitter?”

Lesson - I gotta get out more.

Now, I think more are re-thinking the value of Twitter.  Is it really as important as all that and a bag of chips?  Don’t get me wrong, I happen to really like it.  But I don’t think it is as important as those who have fallen victim to the “ego”.  And it has it’s limitations, ‘platform’ or not.  As Mashable reports, we are starting to see a Twitter casualty count.

Basing a service company on Twitter, might be akin to creating an organization solely devoted to advising clients to buy advertising on one TV channel, during one show.  Hmmmm…..

In any case, if I were an investor, or a potential client, I’d be happy to hear the CEO say “Rest assured, I’m not taking it lightly anymore“.  Well, better late than never, I suppose.

With the explosive hype despite continual “fail whales”, I can’t help but wonder what’s behind Twitter.

I think if I were Mel Brooks or Zero Mostel, I’d be nervous.

In the current days of a highly connected world, the IVR system is a very loud and clear message to your customers, that you have gone to great trouble and expense to ensure that you cannot speak to them.

It is your very own corporate equivalent, of the Great Wall of China:

Back in the ’70s, George Carlin once pondered, “What if they let all the people in the world on hold, talk to each other?”

The late Mr. Carlin had the right idea.  Disconnection is bad; conversation is good.  If you want to ensure your customers are totally disconnected from you, get an IVR system.  IVR is bad; Social Media is good.

(reblogged from SocialMedia404.com)

Penelope is a career adviser, author of Brazen Careerist: New Rules For Success, and an excellent read as a blogger.  She is brash, honest, witty, and gives a lot of herself in most posts.  You should check her out.

Why am I blogging about a career adviser on CXMatters?  Read on.

Penelope blogged about her experience using a few social media tools like Twitter.

Essentially, as an expert in this area, she advocates the use of different social media tools for different reasons.  In other words, pay attention to the Community eXperience (CX).

Facebook was created with a CX in mind.  A college party.  Find a place online to plan ‘em, chat about ‘em, and post the pics afterwards.  And today, it still is a little on the wild side.  So are many other networks that have sprung up on this model.

Twitter, I’m pretty sure, was not built with any sort of CX in mind at all.  Build a tool, throw it at the wall, and see if it sticks.  It worked for Twitter.  It hasn’t seemed to have worked for Plurk.

LinkedIn has a completely different feel, or CX.  It’s like being in a library.  SSSHHHHH!!!!!

And so on.  Each has their own distinctive characteristics to be aware of.

Penelope points this out, in context of personal branding.  Breaking the rule of consistency in message is a no-no in personal branding, but the right thing to do in social media, if you are going to participate (”It’s a fine line” - her frequent saying).  She’s realized that because the CX of each community is different, one-size-fits-all messaging does not work.  Look at how some companies, even “hip” ones like Yahoo, use Twitter.  *yawn*.  No authenticity.

Remember this point, if you are going to join any social media site.  The CX is bigger than you.  Either ‘play with it’ to see if it suits you as Penelope suggests, or just don’t go there.  It will do you more harm than good.

Social media is all about conversations.  Are your customers and/or stakeholders talking about you?  Should you join the conversation?  Or perhaps, start a conversation where none exists?  What kind of Community eXperience does your organization need?

“I need a FaceBook page.  No, wait.  A blog and a discussion board.  Wait, wait, I’ve got it - we’ll get an island in Second Life.”

Why?

Establishing a social media program that is not a waste of money, is a difficult issue for an organization to tackle.   That’s why there’s SocialMedia404.  We make it easier.

My business partner and I have recently “soft” launched this new business.  The heart of our approach, is outlined in a framework we call “OASIS”.  A practical, and effective, path to social media.

We’re in soft launch at the moment, as we quietly test-market and exercise the methodology and tools that comprise the framework.  We discovered immediately, that our clients “got it”.  The first two we contacted, engaged us on the spot to build social media programs.  The next three we called are framing their needs around an OASIS assignment.  We expect this to be a busy second half of 2008.

So cruise on over to our Alpha site, and have a look at OASIS.  I’d love to hear your comments.

Funny thing is, I recently started a social network for my own high school reunion, happening this weekend.  Some things never change…..

A social network has to have some value: the members of our private network are only there, because they find value in reconnecting with old friends.  They are otherwise busy somewhere else.  If you build it, they will not necessarily come.  Sound familiar?

It has to be easy to use: some of my former classmates never really go online past google or outlook.  They are figuring out this white-label site, because they click on stuff, and nothing breaks and they are not insulted.

Citizen controls are crucial: before joining the network, as one former class-mate pointed out, they check out what they can control. If they have to give things away they are not comfortable with, they do not join.  Which leads me to….

Embrace the spectator: the vast majority of your network, will merely observe, and not participate.  Take this as a Good Thing.  While many Community Managers look at direct participation measures, their focus should really be examining derived measures to determine the effectiveness of their social media program.  Despite the explosion of voices online these days, realize that people are cautious by nature.  Natural selection and all that.

Get over yourself: not news, but worth mentioning.  My former classmates respect each other for the lives they have lived since high school.  There were cliques, sure, while we were there.  But now?  Pffft. We’ve all been through the wars, gone various routes, had success and failures, and those things are no longer important.  We’re alive and getting together,  That is what matters.  Show respect for everyone in your community.

Jenn has made a really good analogy - social networks are like high school.  You can’t be in every club, and still get good marks.

But, you can find one or two clubs that are right for you.

I was just spending some time exploring BrightKite, the location-based version of Twitter. BrightKite will determine and present to your stream of updates, the 140 character updates (and photos) from those who are in a location near you. Of course, it can update Twitter.

How does it know where you are? You either tell it, or, you let it find out with your mobile phone. Spooky to some, but the privacy options are quite good for this first invitation-only version.

I’m waiting to get into Yahoo’s FireEagle beta, so I don’t really have anything to compare to BrightKite. But while exploring BrightKite, I was alerted to Twistory by a tweet from Jeremiah Owyang (a real analyst).

I’m late to the party here, since Twistory was announced ages ago at the MobileWebCamp. Yesterday, that is. But it’s yet another interesting application of what you can do with Twitter.

Twistory gathers tweets, and places them into your Google Calendar, iCal, etc and looks like this. Now, ya gotta ask yourself, why would you want to do that?

Hmmm. Words in visual form? We are a graphical species, and pictures speak louder than words. Organizing a history pictorially could be valuable. Maybe. But how could business benefit?

Why would you keep a visual history? Maybe it’s you’re running a quick and geographically dispersed project, and you need to have immediate conversations among team members. I can see how this would be a better Community eXperience (CX) than, say many email threads, and quicker to implement than your own forums or wiki.

Or maybe you have a dispersed sales team in that last push for big end-of-quarter results, and you as manager, need to have immediate contact with your soldiers in the field. Or you area a team attending an event with multiple streams, and need to keep others abreast of various track activities.

One thing is becoming clear - we are becoming more comfortable, more active and involved, and more interested, at life as it happens 140 characters at a time. There’s a new bite-sized CX out there. And this post is WAY over 140 characters, so I have to end here.

But as far as Twistory goes, I’m not sure if it’s added-value to Twitter, or just a clever display of programming skills. What do you think?

What Is It?
For the uninitiated, Twitter is known as a “micro-blogging” service. In other words, you have a maximum of 140 characters to write about whatever you’d like. That doesn’t seem like a lot, but it is amazingly powerful. And, it fits perfectly with the lightning-paced lives we lead in this world overloaded with information.

How It Works
I don’t intend to write a review or help file for Twitter. But here’s what it’s all about as succinctly as possible. Once you’ve signed up, have a look for some people you may know, and hit the “follow” button. Their updates (known as “Tweets”) will automatically show up on your own dashboard. In 140 characters or less, you’re starting to get a more instantaneous feel for what’s going on in your world. Far faster than email or even RSS can provide.

But like any web site and/or blog you may have, it helps if someone is actually reading it. In Twitter, these are “followers” - other people signed up to the service, who are interested in what you’re up to.

What To Expect

1. Complete strangers will start to follow you. If that spooks you, they can be blocked. Personally, I don’t really mind.
2. People you follow may not follow your tweets. Don’t be offended. Many of these people are already following updates from dozens, hundreds or sometimes thousands of people.
3. Intertwined with interesting stuff, will be lots of updates about what people are having for lunch, or how their walk with their dog went. If you’re expecting something more formal, then Twitter is not for you. These are people, they have lives, and this service is about information from the moment. To me, it’s part of the charm.
4. Expect (eventually) to inadvertently follow someone who bombards your dashboard with updates, or occasionally, uses Twitter as a social marketing tool in a not very subtle way. Here, you have choices: you can (a) decide not to follow them anymore, (b) turn their tweets into an RSS feed, or (c) do nothing (always a choice).
5. It can be distracting. I have Twitter open on my laptop using an iGoogle browser widget. I’ve also been using the Twirl desktop application. Problem is, sometimes finding out what people are up to is a little too addictive, and then seeing updates from many people popping up all the time became too obtrusive. I’ve unloaded Twirl, and instituted a longer period between iGoogle updates. I have to work, you know.

Twitter - Push
Many of you will have accounts in social networking spaces, such as Facebook, and use these spaces to keep your current status up to date. You rely upon this one network, as the information spot for the most current status of all your friends. But people like me, who have an existence in dozens of communities, cannot possibly go to each one and update status (what I’m doing) all the time. Using Twitter I found a tool called HelloTxt. This nifty service lets you post your status to a number of popular networks, all at once. Highly convenient. Highly recommended.

Twitter - Pull
There are also a few ways to keep track of what’s going on with the people you follow, using services outside of Twitter. Tweetscan scours all tweets for keywords, and Summize which rates popularity of information, also uses tweets as input (see Patrick Mason’s excellent post).

Twitter’s Power
But the real power, and reason I’m writing this post, is Twitter’s Community eXperience (CX). Twitter allows anyone to set up a group id, and people can post and receive tweets from this group id. This is an extremely handy feature. For example, it allowed me to attend Forrester’s Marketing Forum in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, then the IA Summit in Miami a week after that. Right now, I’m following the Web 2.0 Expo.

People who participate in the group Twitter, can instantly let everyone know about what is happening right at that moment, instantaneously. It’s a terrific way to “attend” without having to wait for updates on a conference web site, or find a blogger who writes about it at the end of the day from their hotel room. You have dozens of bloggers, writing all at once, in one place.

It also allows you to participate directly, by tweeting directly to someone who is physically there. This direct yet remote interaction is one of the most powerful aspects of Twitter. And it all happens in near real-time.

The Twitter Community eXperience

Remember the CX is enabled by understanding 3 things. The CX Diagram shows us what to understand when architecting a successfull community:

1. Twitter users want instant access to status updates from key individuals. They want to provide the same.
2. Twitter users frequently use the interface to quickly update each other, and the community at large, in group activities. They also participate in discussions, and submit suggestions if asked.
3. Twitter provides a quick, clean, simple interface with no focus on gadgets and widgets. Ease of pain for the provisioner.

The CX becomes the collective buzz as a result of instant status updates between you, your world and the interconnected worlds of your followers and those you follow.

There are people who ‘get’ Twitter, and many who don’t. But to paraphrase a beer slogan, “those of us who like it, like it a lot”.