#defrag 2009: Open Sets, Group Think on Social Media

The Open Sets portion of the Defrag 2009 agenda concluded this morning. Open Sets are just that: opportunities to pose the burning questions that keep attendees up at night and discuss potential, successful solutions in group think format.

Topics posed included:

• Early adopter program for the enterprise -- how do we ensure success?
• Convergence in social markets
• How do events close the loop for speakers to provide real-time feedback?
• Trust, Terms of Service and building social networks
• Turning good ideas into useful ones
• Encouraging users of social media to turn away from narcissism and embrace the true, social side
• Ensuring corporate social transparency
• Deploying successful social media adoption for non-profits
• If data is the ultimate goal: getting the data

For the corporate social transparency breakout, the following thoughts were provided:

1. Incorporate SaaS solutions
2. Determine how data is moved and improve the processes when necessary
3. Debate offering Facebook as an option at work
4. Discuss the merits of a corporate LinkedIn page
5. Commit the appropriate managers to programs
6. Standard desktops and lock down—what are the merits to obtaining more administrative rights for the end user?
7. Attend the Defrag Conference to understand how to moderate think tank discussions at work
8. How does a leader ensure social media success? At this time, by being more rebellious than usual
9. Don’t fire the rebels
10. Encourage the composition of more product/marketing blogs from inside the company for an external audience
11. Determine when decision-making is appropriate for the group versus the individual level from a social media perspective
12. Try pilot programs and commit organization resources to success
13. Re-establish a sense of commitment to social media projects that three years ago seemed ludicrous
14. Clearly define the social media strategy
15. Sponsor cool conferences like Defrag 2009

The group concluded that while it is important for social media project team members and their products to listen, that’s the easy part -- listening is negligible in comparison to engaging other colleagues in social media projects. Engagement is the next crucial step for corporate transparency.