Archive for July, 2009

I had the privilege of hosting 3 of the 27 Conversation Central sessions Synopsys featured at DAC this week, and it was a great experience on multiple levels.

Each of the three “Competitors in Cyberspace: Why Be Friends?” sessions were joined by social media-savvy participants from Synopsys, Cadence, Mentor, Denali and other EDA companies. The perspectives and contributions each brought to the table proved to be central to the value of this timely and relevant conversation.

The sessions were also joined by customers (including Broadcom and ARM) and independent EDA bloggers, all of whom provided valuable context regarding community expectations about what’s cool (mutual respect) and what’s not (mud wrestling) between competitors in cyberspace.

It turns out that there is broad agreement that the same values that make blogs useful and relevant for readers also form a logical foundation for good relations between bloggers: transparency, authenticity and intellectual honesty.

Here is a summary of the general consensus that emerged during the three sessions:

• There is broad recognition of the advocacy role fulfilled by company-sponsored blogs
• Customers appreciate respectful discourse between competitors
• The inverse is also true: nobody benefits from personal attacks or otherwise bad behavior
• The community benefits when factual errors are corrected
• Posting a comment on a competitor’s blog is OK, consistent with the other guidelines

The original concept for the title of the Competitors in Cyberspace sessions was intended as a double entendre: “As competitors, why would I want to be friends with you?” as well as “Let’s explore common ground that’s good for the industry and advances the interests of all concerned.” As one voice among many, I believe it’s profoundly positive that the focus of our conversations landed squarely on the latter.

Many thanks, one and all, for contributing your thoughts and ideas so generously at the “kitchen table” that was Conversation Central.

Karen Bartleson
Rich Goldman
Sean Murphy
Michael Brito
Ron Ploof
Tom Diederich
Harry Gries
Ron Wilson
John Blyler
Brian Fuller
John Cooley
JL Gray
Robert Dwyer
Joe Hupcey III
Kenneth Chang
Lori Kate Smith
Deepak Das
Lou Covey
John McDonald
Frank Schirrmeister
Janick Bergeron
Tommy Kelly
David Lin
Jason Do

Measured by the timeline of human history, Social Media is a brand new phenomenon (for that matter, so is the entire Internet).

Social media is typically defined as the online technologies and practices that people use to share opinions, insights, experiences and perspectives with each other. Sounds a lot like how people interact in the real world as well as in cyberspace and that’s an important point. Social media might be new, but communication between people is ancient.

Blogs, forums and social media sites (such as Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, and LinkedIn) provide new conduits and cool user interfaces for people to interact, but the interactions themselves begin and end with individuals seeking to be known, to be heard and to participate in the communities that matter to us.

As the exhibit floor at DAC opens on Monday, July 27, Synopsys will provide a bridge between the cyber world with the “real” world by hosting Conversation Central, a series of 27 social media-related interactive sessions led by well-known EDA bloggers, social media experts, and experienced journalists. The bridge is the opportunity for DAC attendees to converse face-to-face with thought leaders many have only met through their Internet-based blogs.

We’ve invited well-known EDA bloggers such as JL Gray, Harry the ASIC Guy, Sean Murphy, Ron Wilson, John Blyler, Brian Fuller and John Cooley to host the 30-minute sessions. In addition, multiple Synopsys bloggers will participate in meet-and-greet sessions 12:30-1:00, Monday through Wednesday.

The trucks bound for San Francisco next week loaded with everything needed to construct multiple trade show booths will include the components parts of a 14-foot Twitter Tower. What’s a Twitter Tower? Stop by the Synopsys Standards Booth 1016 to check it out: multiple 42″ plasma screens displaying real-time Twitter streams and other DAC-related content.

I will be hosting a session 5:30-6:00 Monday through Wednesday called “Competitors in Cyberspace: Why Be Friends?” All DAC attendees are invited to attend and participate, especially our competitors.

This will be the first time Synopsys has hosted this type of social media-focused event. In addition to the wisdom and interactive spontaneity of the actual conversations, our hope is that Conversation Central will also strengthen and enhance the connections between all who attend. Please join us!

Adam Mertz is a product marketing manager at Jive Software, a global leader in Social Business Software (SBS) headquartered in Portland, Oregon. In the following interview, Adam describes the business case for social media as viewed from four operational perspectives… and more.

By the way, if you’re planning to attend DAC later this month in San Francisco, please join us at Conversation Central at the main Synopsys exhibit booth. Numerous top bloggers in the EDA space will be hosting the interactive conversations — here’s a preview of  the Conversation Central sessions.

Rick: Although social media is considered mainstream for Gen Y, corporations led by Baby Boomer and Gen X executives are less likely to embrace social networks as having significant business-related value. From your perspective, what is the compelling business case that makes social media important?

Adam: The compelling business cases are quite specific to each department.  I’ll provide business case examples in four specific departments:

Marketing

For marketers, social software is no longer a choice – you must participate.  Whether B2B or B2C, it’s a certainty that prospects, customers, and partners are engaging in conversations about brands and products on the web.  If marketers are not tapping into and leveraging those conversations, then they are no longer sufficiently managing the company’s brand.  The compelling business case for marketers revolves around building the pipeline, driving sales growth, increasing loyalty, and identifying market trends.  By building a community where they can actively listen, engage, and drive traffic from across the socialsphere, we’ve seen several clients significantly improve their Search Engine Optimization (SEO) strategy (user generated content in a community = goldmine in driving Google search results).  Additionally, a company’s community can be used to augment in-person events like conferences where people can better connect and share both before and after the event itself.  We’ve also seen companies such as T-Mobile (past webcast) leverage social business software internally to drive sales productivity where new sales reps often pose questions (vs. sending an email to one person) where all reps throughout the country can see and respond.  That knowledge is then captured for the future as well.

R&D

For product and R&D organizations, social business software offers an extraordinary opportunity to gain feedback from hundreds or thousands more people both outside and inside the company.  The compelling business case tends to involve decreasing the cost to collect and prioritize ideas (i.e., hearing the voice of the customer) and ultimately building a culture of innovation for fleshing those ideas out and accelerating time to market.  Today, many R&D departments initially believe social media’s biggest help is on the collection/prioritization process.  However, those with a fuller understanding of the power of social business software see that the latter half of the equation is an even more compelling business case.  Often times, it’s not a problem of ideas as much as bringing those ideas to market.  One example is our Chordiant case study where the 2 years prior to implementing Jive SBS they had three product releases.  In the two years after implementing Jive SBS they had 18 product releases, which has created significant and real differentiation for them from competition.

Support

Support has long seen a compelling business case as SBS provides a way for them to defer support costs (customers answering other customer questions) while increasing satisfaction levels.  However, Support is now seeing the compelling business case to move beyond the external side and to implement social software for service agents as well.  By bridging the public and employee worlds together and making answers, comments, and conversations visible to employees, companies can effectively increase service agent productivity and improve response times to customers.

Operations and HR

Several compelling business case points here, including decreasing new hire ramp time, travel expenditures, better leveraging and/or replacing content management systems that have become silos and dead-end document repositories.  Breaking down the silos while capturing knowledge and expertise that formerly might be passed between one or two employees in an email opens new doors to creativity and productivity across the organization.

Rick: How are online communities different from real-world communities – or are they basically the same?

Adam: Online communities very much mirror real-world communities in that you have active members (those who create discussions, documents, etc.), those who contribute to those conversations (commenting, rating, bookmarking, etc.), and those who just listen in and are a bit more passive.  One statistic that illustrates this similarity, from the Center for the Digital Future, was that the majority of online community members feel as strongly about their online community as they do about their real-world communities.

Rick: As a social media platform provider, your organization works with a wide range of B2B companies. What are the most compelling 2-3 conversations currently taking place in this space?

Adam: Several interesting conversations are taking place and you hit on one of the most popular in your first question – the compelling business case.  The reason SBS is and will continue to gain more traction in the enterprise is because SBS is moving from a tech-oriented toolset to being seen as solving line-of-business challenges.  This, of course, directly relates to many measurement aspects.

Another big discussion currently centers on connecting public socialsphere conversations to the employee community and making it easy for employees to see and leverage the ideas and commentary taking place in order to more quickly respond to changing market conditions.  Mobile is also a hot topic.

Rick: What are the most important questions strategic planners should ask themselves when developing a social media roadmap?

Adam: Strategic planners need to think about the long term and the absolute necessity on the horizon to connect the employee and public worlds much more tightly.  They need to be careful on which vendor or vendors they choose to work with to implement their strategies given the rapidly changing landscape and harsh economic conditions.  We believe that 2009 will be the year that many SBS vendors will sink or swim and if a lower-tier vendor is chosen it could save some money on the front end but ultimately wind up thwarting long-term efforts if it doesn’t scale.