Shannon and I have been microblogging for some time now on Twitter. Shannon is also addicted to Facebook and thanks to her I’ve also been known to show up there. Come be our friends and share our life, we need all the help we can get!

The point is that we’re always publishing – just not necessarily on exceler8ion.

We have lots of blogs as you might know and we even update them once in a while. Taken alone, they can be all together too quiet – aggregate them and you can see that we’re always online doing something.

That’s the point of a lifestream – you use RSS feeds to get everything into ONE portal page. ONE ring to rule them all. We’re using a hosted service called tumblr to publish our lifestreams and we’re both very happy with tumblr’s servic now that Shannon hacked tumblr to include comments.

Come along for the ride and start a lifestream of your own. It was our friend Ami Givertz who inspired me to get off my duff and create a lifestream. I was lamenting on a phone call with Ami that I often grew discouraged by the difficulty of keeping up with so many blogs and yet still wanted to have them be separate and distinct based on content focus and reader interest. So after I finished bitching Ami said that he felt the same way and had done something about it. You can always count on Ami to be an action oriented cheeky monkey!

You’ll find our last 8 posts from each of our lifestreams right here on the right rail of exceler8ion or you can go to Shannon’s directly by pinging shannonseery.com or aka thegeekmarketer or mine here on Julians.name. If you start your own tumblr then make sure to add Shannon and I as friends so we can keep track of each other.

I recommend tumblr because it’s super simple to use, not the slightest bit technical, you can use your own url (or not) and you can post ALL types of content, including text, video, pictures, and many more. It does all this with a very inviting interface that encourages you to post. Yes, and there’s the aforementioned ability to aggregate all your RSS feeds at the same time. If you’ve thought of blogging but haven’t because you don’t have the time then a tumblelog on tumblr could be just what the doctor ordered.

Technorati Tags: lifestream, lifestreaming, tumblr, tumblelog

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Oh yeah, and this video coves user generated content, social media, personal publishing, blogs, online community, video, web publishing technologies like HTML, XML, and RSS and has same great music from deus to go along with it (oops, this is the deus I meant from the music in the video – two new music finds in one!).

This amazing video is courtesy of Assistant Professor Michael Wesch, who leads the Digital Ethnography group at Kansas State University. Thanks to Organic’s Three Minds blog for making me aware of this and Patrick Dunphy (I wish I had a link but Three minds didn’t post one) for making Three Minds aware of it.

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The good news is that I finally managed to get into Yahoo! Pipes. How have you fared? The bad news is that no one in our little community has done anything with it yet (search:recruiting). Quick, first one to do something cool with it gets…

well, good question. I’m just sitting here thinking about it.

On the other hand, our active job seekers seem to have the right idea.

Technorati Tags: Yahoo! pipes, pipes

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Blog Swap

Today we’re happy to publish the following article as part of the blog swap sponsored by CollegeRecruiter, a leading site for college students and recent graduates who are searching for internships and entry level jobs and Recruiting.com. This post comes from the blog of Mick Wist of Insourced.com. Insourced is an online gathering place for job seekers, employers and recruiters, as well as a repository of information accumulated by both Insourced writers and the site’s visitors, with the latter free to contribute to the site via comments, blog posts and forum posts.

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An article in today’s NY Times (subscription required), Spam Doubles, Finding New Ways to Deliver Itself, makes it abundantly clear that we are losing the War on Spam. According to the article, 9 out of every 10 e-mails that are sent over the Internet are spam. That’s a staggering statistic and paints a rather hopeless picture of our future struggle with this societal scourge.

But while spam is generally nothing more than an incessant annoyance for most of us, spam can also bring unwanted viruses, spyware, and other intrusions that can be extremely disruptive and harmful. Many people in offices around the world are simply not savvy enough to recognize all spam and/or they let their guards down for a moment – and that’s all it takes. One errant click on an e-mail link or attachment and untold havoc can be unleashed on the network(s) of unsuspecting companies, shutting down e-mail servers and potentially corrupting sensitive data.

Even the most advanced and expensive spam filtering systems are regularly being beaten by today’s advanced spamming techniques, so perhaps the best prevention is education at the user level. All employees that have Internet access, especially new hires, should be given at least an informal introduction to spam – how to recognize it and how to avoid it, with an emphasis on exaggerated caution. It is far from the ideal solution, but since spam seems to be unavoidable for the foreseeable future, it is best to prepare your people to properly deal with it.

Mick Wist

http://www.insourced.com

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“ Scrybe™ is a groundbreaking online organizer that caters to today´s lifestyle in a cohesive and intuitive way.” -Scrybe home page.

The much anticipated Scrybe online personal organizer has launched their beta today. I’m writing about it here for two reasons. First, who isn’t interested in ways to be more productive? As far as tools go, the quality of the axe you swing does make a difference, even if the skill of the operator is more important. Second, it’s a great example of how you might use savvy online marketing techniques to promote your effort (be it a recruitment campaign, local, national, or even international, hello world, launch) as Scrybe is going for.

Scrybe made all the cool watcher lists due to a knock-your-socks-off video that they circulated on video sharing sites like YouTube. The video has been described as a savvy use of modern online marketing. Take a look at their home page and all the ‘A list’ blogger testimonials and it’s pretty obvious that Scrybe made the blogging digerati a key part of their social media marketing plan as well. Call it what you want: guerrilla marketing, word-of-mouth-marketing, buzz marketing, social media marketing, social media optimization. Whatever! I’m calling it a great example of how to make a ton of people aware of your stuff so that they’ll want to someday buy your stuff when you’ve got a budget of…well, pretty much nothing. Judge for yourself.

Remember folks, this is only the launch of Scrybe’s beta – not the final product. If you’ve watched the video, you’ll get an idea of how their use of the latest web technologies (like Ajax) are used to create what would appear to be, highly functional and useful tools.

Useful tools eh?

OK, here are a couple that make my list. Offline sync, once the Achilles’ heel of web based programs, is handled with aplomb, as are paper output modes designed to appeal to the luddite or PDA Hipster in all of us. And it all looks easy to use – dare I say it – even enjoyable to use.

So here’s the thing. I’m always on the hunt for better ways to organize my life (I use David Allen’s framework) . Yes, sometimes my lust for new tools even outweighs my desire for productivity itself. But, never for long, and I’m quick to apply a .22 to the head of any self described productivity tool if it gets in my way. For now, I’ve signed up to be part of the beta with about four different e-mails in hopes of getting in on the action. So far, I haven’t heard a peep from Scrybe. I imagine this blog post might help. At least it will if Scrybe is as up on their social media marketing as they appear to be. Because if they are, they’re monitoring the blog buzz on their launch right now and they’ll see this. So, what are you waiting for Scrybe? I can’t write my review until you give me the keys.

Technorati Tags: iScrybe, iScrybe.com, Organizer, Calendar, PIM, Personal Information Manager, Life Hacks, GTD, Getting things done, Time Management, To-do Lists, PowerLists, ThoughtPad, Social Media Optimization, Social Media Marketing, Interactive Marketing

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Over at Digg.com this afternoon there was some social unrest in the social media world. You’ve probably read stories about how a relatively small percentage of Digg.com users are responsible for the majority of the popular posts that people see on the first few pages. This is not news. What’s interesting about today is that users are heavily ‘Digging’ stories about the system not working – or being undemocratic.

As of 4:15PM EST today there were two of these stories on the front page of Digg.com. The second story, which has been dugg by over 1,400 users is about how the author’s story wouldn’t appear on the home page due to Digg.com moderators silencing his message. The author also published a story about a ‘flaw’ in Digg.com’s ’submission model.’

Meanwhile, over on the very top Digg.com story, user Taylor Hayward shows us how the top Diggers are consistently promoting each other on to the top of digg.com. HOW THE DIGG SYSTEM IS BEING GAMED BY A SMALL NUMBER OF USERS.

What’s all this mean? Is social media just showing us the undue influence of the long tail? Or, is this simply a newer rendition of Pareto’s principle at work?

My question for you is this. How much do you feel this is already happening on similar sites like Newsvine? If it is happening, what can Newsvine or the communities of other social media sites do to stop it? Or, is there any reason to stop it at all – is this just Social Media Darwinism at work, and if so, should we just let the laws of natural selection play out without interfering? Be sure to let us know your thoughts on the subject.

Shortly after originally publishing this story on my Newsvine Column, Kevin Rose, the founder and chief architect of Digg.com, posted a reply on his blog to Digg.com’s detractors. You could find this blog post because it was right at the top of Digg’s home page, right next to the stories questioning Digg. As you might expect from a social media leader, Kevin’s calm reasoned tone and response was just what the doctor ordered (to the tune of 1,754 diggs as of right now). Not only did Kevin’s message explain Digg’s current practices and ranking algorithms, it also highlighted changes that are coming to Digg that will help quell user concerns like the ones being ‘dugg’ by so many readers. If you have a blog, a wiki, or even a traditional marketing and PR team, then you have probably already inferred that Kevin’s methods are ‘best practice’ for the social media space. Pay a lot of attention to conversations about you and your brand on the Internet so you don’t miss out on these conversational Tropical storms that if left ignored, end up Cat 5 Hurricanes in the back yard of your Trailer Park. React swiftly, acknowledge and be part of the community, defend your position without being defensive, contribute your ideas, and support what you’re saying with facts and reason. If you take this kind of action, you’ll likely end up OK, if not the better for it.

Another great example of this kind of social media optimization is Mike Davidson, CEO of Newsvine. Like, Kevin Rose, Mike is flat out like a lizard drinkin’ when it comes to responding to conversations on his brand and product on the Internet. When I posted a story on my personal blog about Newsvine being out of commission last Saturday, he quickly found my story and commented on it. Not exactly the kind of thing we’re used to from a CEO now is it? When I posted my story about Digg.com on Newsvine and asked Newsvine users if Newsvine would follow in similar foot steps to Digg.com, Mike D. was right there again – only an hour and a half after I posted my story. On that topic, NO, Newsvine community members do not think that Newsvine will experience the same kind of issues that Digg.com has seen.

Why do I say that? Because I asked them in a poll on my Newsvine story and the result is a 64%/36% vote in favor of Newsvine keeping out of user hot water…

Technorati Tags: Social Media Darwinism, digg.com, social software, newsvine, digg, social media, social media optimization, social unrest

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We all want to stay connected as conveniently as possible. Take the BlackBerry, which has proven that when you solve a need (like HAVING to e-mail), and extend your capability (staying easily connected while also Golfing or watching your kids dance recital) that you can achieve cult-like popularity.

We’ve gotten a taste with connection devices like the BlackBerry but it’s not enough. It’s far too easy to say, I’d love my BlackBery SO much more if it had X.

If you spend a lot time online like Shannon and I do (and we know you do because you’re reading a blog), you get really excited when you see technology unveiled that offers cool new tools to connect to people online – in a convenient, flexible way. A lot of devices and technology fall short of this goal, either in application, design, form or function (or in every way). But we appreciate the effort, knowing that each device that misses the mark, either by the broadside of a barn or ever so slightly, brings us one step closer to an almost singular melding of technology, man and utility.

We think Sony’s new entry, the Mylo, short for MY Life Online, has just the kind of features, form, utility and gee-whiz appeal (did I mention uber cool stying) that will spark the interest of youngsters and old farts alike – because it answers some of our convenience questions. The Mylo lets you stay connected to the web from your broadband connection, lets you gorge on all sorts of web based content, along with hooking you up with IP phone technology like skype, a killer instant messaging app, music, video, and more. Combine that with lots of storage, room for more, plus a handy size and a functional keyboard and it could be the next must-use platform (ala BlackBerry).  Check out what Om Malik has to say about the Sony MYLO here.

UPDATE:  See the Mylo video from Gizmodo here.  Did you know that you can even share files wirelessly with other Mylo users?  Very cool!

technorati tags: Sony Mylo Mylo wireless recruiting

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There is no getting away from the fact that most job seekers begin forming their opinion of you as an employer from the first click of their mouse on your corporate web site. As such, how your “online candidate experience” measures up has become one of the hottest topics in recruitment this year. CareerXroads just came out with their list of the top 25 careers sites, reviewing the ability to “Target, Engage, Inform and Respect the job seeker.” According to a recent article in the Wall Street Journal on the same topic, the type of experience that a job seeker is looking for is one that:

1. Acknowledges them
2. Provides an easy process
3. Targets their interests or considerations
4. Protects their information
5. Provides details
6. Informs them about your company
7. Makes them feel wanted
8. Has a quick and easy application process
9. Application process is ONLINE
10. Has job listings that are easy to locate on the site

Most corporate careers sites don’t even come close to meeting these job seeker “bill of rights”. In fact, most are woefully pitiful with horrible navigation, lacking in updated information, confusing instructions regarding the ways for the candidate to connect with a recruiter that may be interested in them…etc. The result? A SAD overall candidate experience. Today I found something that might go a long way to helping all that.

Remember CareerBuilder’s Monk E-mail? Hilarious right? This fun viral campaign (one of the best CareerBuilder.com campaigns ever from a creative perspective in my opinion) was created by their agency Cramer-Krasselt along with the technology from an interactive company called oddcast. The Monkeys that you could add audio to and have them say whatever you wanted, is an example of the “talking avatar” products that oddcast develops. Their products can be delivered to any device including browsers and mobile devices, clearly enabling companies to personalize online communications.

Oddcast has ads running on Technorati for a new product that they have created called SitePal. According to oddcast, SitePal Avatar is:

…a virtual talking character that you can easily add to your Blog, Website, Flash movie, or even MySpace profile to express yourself online. SitePal avatars help you connect with your visitors (readers), impress your friends, and bring your website and blog to life, or just to be cool!

Such a component on your careers site could be used to provide job seekers with live audio information on where to quickly find jobs; give information about benefits; fun stories about working at your company; instructions on how to apply; and yes – even give job candidates information on next steps after they apply.  An annual subscription to SitePal is about 1/3 of the cost of a recruitment newspaper ad for a single sunday.

Go on over to the site and look at their examples. You have to see it to really get how this would work. You can see how sites are using SitePal to help close sales here (just translate this to say: how to use SitePal to sell candidates on your company and positions). You can even incorporate these into your recruiting blogs – see how one blogger is using a SitePal avatar here.

Adding a “SitePal” might be an interesting way to interact and connect with your site’s visitors and online job seekers.  Very Cool – very effective.

technorati tags: oddcast sitepal Careers Site Recruiting Blogs

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While we are not coders or programmers, Julian and I affectionately think of ourselves as “A Couple of Geeks”. We love all gadgets, computers and I have a particularly soft spot in my heart for software and ATS.

My first real encounter with Julian was actually during a National Conference in Phoenix back in our Knight Ridder Digital days (now they are McClatchy Interactive – or as we call them, “McRidder”). One of our leaders couldn’t get the projector working with her laptop in order to start the presentation. Who were the 2 people that ran up to the front of the room? Yes – you guessed it. Sparks flew the minute we began taking a look at the computer hardware and figuring out why they weren’t talking to each other. The room of people knew it too. It was a great Ah-Ha moment.

Why of course, they are both Geeks and PERFECT for each other.

Anyway – enough about us. Still coming down off the high from posting on the JobSyntax blog about the current state of Recruiting Software Engineers for the Week 2: Blog Swap – I came across this great post on The Retrospector called: Top 10 Ways to Motivate Geeks. Be sure to go to the post to read more:

1. Geeks are curious. Let them feed their desire to learn things

2. Geeks like to be self-sustaining. Let them figure things out on their own.

3. Geeks are creative even if they don’t know it. Give them a chance.

4. Geeks need tools, good ones. Give them more than they need.

5. Private, yet collaborative. Geeks need to be left alone, but not too alone.

6. Free stuff. T-shirts, food, desktop widgets, whatever.

7. Control

8. Geeks need recognition

9. Freedom

10. Compensation – Saved this for last, but geeks gotta live too

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The Recruiting Animal ponders recruitment marketing for a bit and asks in his recent post:

I haven’t seen any recruiters raving about MySpace. Maybe because they’re not recruiting teenagers. Most of us focus on LinkedIn.

But will something more be needed to find and market to the candidates of the future, Peter Altieri’s YouTube Generation?

As many of you know by now, I am the oldest of five kids. My youngest siblings are 24, 22, 18 and 16 (Yes, I was the woops child and there is 7 years between me and the next kid). Anyway, I talk to my sisters and brother about where they spend their time online. With the 24 and 22 year old, their media consumption habits aren’t all that different from mine. By and large, they don’t spend hours on myspace, but they actually don’t know what LinkedIn is either. I find that interesting about the two of them – I absolutely would have known what LinkedIn was at their age, but I am much more computer savvy and wired today than they will ever be.

As for the teenage siblings, they spend their time on myspace and their cell phones texting each other. It is their wireless devices that I really see as the main conduit for connecting to these candidates in the future. My youngest sister covets my new Internet ready, Mobile Windows 5 carrying Cingular 8125 – immediately asking, “Can I get into myspace on that?” (you can) “Wow, that is so cool.”

How will this effect recruiting? The cell phone is just how they connect. This generation will never have landlines. Sending them a text message is not an intrusion, it is just how you get a hold of them. This is how they will receive their email and soon browse the web. I see most of the connections happening via wireless devices that we still call “phones” today.

The Wall Street Journal just ran an article about a new TLD that was approved – New Domain Name — .Mobi –Could Spur Wireless Web. Similar to dot jobs, I see this development as BIG for recruitment:

Executives at Mobile Top Level Domain, headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, believe that consumers would be more likely to tap into the Internet from their cellphones if doing so were easier and faster than it is today. Monday, the company opened registration for companies that want a dot-mobi domain name.

In a matter of hours, thousands of websites were signed up, including Yahoo.mobi and Hotjobs.mobi. For now, registration for dot-mobi Web sites is open only to members of wireless industry trade associations, which include wireless carriers, handset manufacturers and media companies, including Yahoo Inc., that want to make money from providing content to the wireless Web.

I haven’t found a WHOIS for .mobi suffixes to be able to see everyone that has registered their name, but I do find it interesting that HotJobs made the list.

Even more interesting to me, if you go to the mobile friendly Google on my 8125, there are no PPC text links.

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Just read a really interesting story by Jason Horowitz over on The New York Observer called ‘Publicists Lauded for Flackery; P.R. Gods Get Freedom From Press.‘

It spells out how Richard W. Edelman, president and chief executive of the public-relations firm Edelman, sees blogs as setting them free from the tyranny of mainstream media.

Speaking at PR Week’s annual public-relations awards:

“It used to be I would schmooze you and I was your flack,” said Mr. Edelman, whose firm netted about $260 million in 2005. “Today, if we want to get a message into the public’s conversation, we just make a post on a blog. If The Wall Street Journal goes after a client, we don’t have to accept that anymore. Let’s post the documents we gave The Journal; let’s show the interviews the newspaper decided not to show. “You’re not God anymore,” he said.”

It is amazing to me that while blogs are lauded as a new and potent defense against spin doctors and marketing hype (and rightfully so) that the world of spin doctors has been similarly set free.

Now that’s a powerful shift in our collective reality.

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Although far less known, the second video (Crash Different by Hunter Cressall) is good enough to make you snort your drink through your nose. This can be spectacular when you’re drinking Red Bull while wearing a white shirt (makes a mess of that beautiful Apple polished aluminum as well). The Crash Different video plays off the look-and-feel of the Apple ‘Think different’ campaign. Hey, even if you have seen this video you could watch it twenty times and still laugh out loud (note: this second video has some profanity).

!vb:vs,15151! Now back to our normal programming…

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Fight, fight, fight!

What happens when a married couple who are deeply in love (awwwww), work in the same field, and share many of the same professional and personal interests? Do they fight all the time? Shannon and I have many similar interests like technology, computers, golf, music, internet marketing, motorcycles, and many others. Yes, that’s right. Shannon not only LOVES to play golf, she even LOVES to watch it on TV (I am not making this up!!!). While the thought for some of having no separation between work, home, and hobbies (but mostly watching golf) might send some couples screaming from their home I’d say it is as close to heaven on earth as you can get!

Shannon and I are hard-pressed to have a conversation where we don’t have a mutual interest so work discussions are just as cool as a good convo on our mutual passion for motorbikes. OK, I don’t mean to make you queasy with all these personal comments on our business blog about interactive recruitment marketing BUT we like to have fun too and today we thought we’d share some recent barbs that we’ve been trading on the subject of the Mac vs. PC platform.

It’s not fair to label either of us a ‘PC person’ or a ‘Mac person’ because we love and use both systems…WHEN they’re working. Not as much when we’re the family tech support department. I did make the switch one year ago to a Mac. Shannon quite enjoys making fun of me for buying a Mac, but the jokes are tongue-in-cheek and a play on the seemingly age old schism that exists between Mac and WinTel PC elitists that centers on the shortcomings of each platform. In my own experience I have found that Mac’s have plenty of shortcomings, just like WinTel machines, they’re just different shortcomings and I currently happen to prefer Apple’s shortcoming to that of Microsoft’s.

So you can imagine our delight when we find a couple of wonderful parodies that poke fun at both sides.

The first video is a spoof of what would happen if Microsoft re-designed the product packaging for Apple’s iPod. Yeah, we know you’ve probably seen this one ten times already given its hugely successful viral run over the last two weeks, but just in case you haven’t stumbled on it go ahead and watch the video now.

!vb:gv,4313772690011721857,1! Now, head on over to our next video post that has the Hunter Cressall, Crash Different spoof (you won’t be dissappointed).

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You may recall our post on word of mouth marketing that promoted the use of blogs and wikis as excellent word of mouth marketing vehicles. I thought I’d add on to that thread with a Top 5 list, or a list of 5ives like Merlin Mann likes to do.

Top 5 Reasons to have a business blog (elevator pitch)

1. Blogs are the most cost efficient means of connecting your business with your people (your customers, your vendors, your job seekers, your employees, your press, your critics, your champions, your next big thing (word-of-mouth).
2. Blogs are two way, interactive vehicles – a social media – they help create conversations.
3. Blogs are viewed as authentic, no bull,
   

   transparrant transparent, real, credible vs. traditional marketing approaches that are often viewed with distrust and cynicism.

4. Blogs get you close to your customer. How close? Ask Bob Lutz, VP and General Manager of GM. Go read his hugely successful auto blog Fastlane. People talk with Bob. Bob listens. Bob talks, people interact. Millions of cars are re-designed, sold, improved. Kinda cool.
5. One word: Google. An entire company built on the back of social and word of mouth marketing. And you thought it was all those TV ads they ran, er…

I just re-read what is now an ‘old’ article from Business Week that was the first highly influential business magazine article that nailed business blogging. It was way back in May 2, 2005. Here’s the article – it was their cover story.

Some helpful quotes:
“If people are talking about my brand (which people are apt to do), I’d rather be part of the conversation.” Heather Hamilton’s blog on Microsoft recruiting.

“What’s going to sell the tourism product more,” asks David Heidenreich, of Ripple Effects “a paragraph of marketing fluff my copyrighter develops or Joe from Pittsburgh talking about his whitewater rafting experience – and here’s a video of him falling out of the raft.”

What are your top 5? Do you agree with these or do you have a better list of 5ives? Come on, share the wealth.

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“77% of Google users don’t know it records personal data”

I’d like to say that with my technology and Internet background that I knew as much about Google tracking me as this article in The Register and others I’ve read point out – but I didn’t. While I’m not in the blissfully ignorant category that this story highlights it never makes you feel good about a company or brand when you feel duped by them. Never mind the fact that Google’s privacy policy clearly outlines this practice – they have to, and Google knows that very few people read web site terms or privacy policies (to our own detriment).

On the other hand, Google originally promised NOT to track certain personal data from their popular e-mail service, G-Mail, and later went back on their word (yes, their policy states they may do that as well). How will job seekers react if Google becomes an online recruitment powerhouse and then turns the tables on them?

Google’s recent stand against the Government is bringing their tracking of personal information in to greater focus for all of us and recent news suggests that Google’s stand against Big Brother may have more to do with their own Orwellian self interests than the protection of your privacy. Apparently, Google might be a bit embarrassed by all the porn that searchers find on the engine every day. We’re not getting on the ‘beat Google with a stick bus’ just yet, after all, they’re just a business out to make money and we’ve got no problem with that. What I do object to is some of the holier than thou philosophies (do no harm) that they espouse when they act no differently than other businesses.

Is there any movement on people taking note of corporate morals and ethics? Sure. Take a look at the news portal, ethike* that specializes in news on corporate citizenship, ethics and morals from around the world (I’d recommend that you read their About Us page). Perhaps we’re on the cusp of a whole new business world that the currently idealist Gen Y will help turn in to a future pragmatist’s manifesto.

*In the spirit of openness I wanted to mention that ethike contacted me a month ago about some potential business dealings between us. I do not mention them here to promote them for my benefit but because of the relevancy that their site has on the topic of privacy and corporate responsibility that this story is about. Wow, I feel like a big honest windbag now.

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Heard of DIY maps?  If not, check them out here and ask yourself if there’s a good way to use their data/map analogy in your business.  We liked how indeed used DIY to show jobs per capita in cities throughout the U.S. as shown here. Our old home in the Bay Area topped the list with San Jose coming in with 121 jobs for every 1,000 people.

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Lately we’ve seen a lot of really smart folks talking about Wikis on HR blogs (read some here, here & here). For all the talk there haven’t been a lot of specific ways offered on how we might use Wikis in recruiting and management of human capital. There’s a good reason for that and it might not be what you think.

Let’s start by saying what needs to be said. By in large, people don’t know how to use Wikis in the recruitment space because they haven’t started using them yet. Guess what? That’s how Wikis are for pretty much everyone – even our beloved freaks and geeks in the tech sector where Wikis originated. Wikis are hard to ‘get’ from a distance. If you start using a Wiki you will begin learning why they’re useful and soon you’ll have five or ten new ideas about ways to use them for your efforts. Why should people in the recruiting space use Wikis? Because they add communication channels to human interaction and provide a perspective of your work that you won’t likely find in another venue. Since our world is all about information, any means we have to open up communication channels and gain context between people is critical.

Before I get any further you may want to just understand some of the basics about Wikis and what you can do with them. Here’s a good resource. If you find yourself looking at the list of functionality, scratching your head and wondering out loud why these Wikis are any different than web sites you’ve used before, don’t be surprised. Many parts of a Wikis functionality, say a forum page, aren’t any different than a web forum like we’ve been using for years on the web. Yes, Wikis are not that different in simple functionality from regular web sites but their subtle differences have great significance.

A couple of years ago I was talking with an employee who worked on my Advertising Operations team at Knight Ridder Digital and we were exchanging ideas about some of the challenges our team had with communication and certain types of work falling through the cracks. Our team members were located in Miami and San Jose and in turn supported internal and external clients in a a few dozen locations in every U.S. time zone. We had routine meetings, production systems to track work, Webex webinars, conference calls, a crack like addiction to IM and blackberries and exchanged tens of hundreds of e-mails every day about our work. Somewhere in all that Internet scramble things weren’t working. Big shock right. My employee, Erik Andreasen, suggested that a Wiki might be the trick. I said to Erik ‘a whati?’ He smiled in the knowing way of any good geek and took a few minutes to introduce Wikis to me. I was pretty excited as he explained the concept.

It wasn’t long before I was talking regularly on the phone with Ross Mayfield, founder of Socialtext, and learning more about Wikis. Ross is a great guide for all things Wiki and especially business Wiki usage and I’d highly recommend his product. Ross was the first person I heard that used the term ‘occupational spam’ to define how people had begun seeing productivity losses because all they did was answer e-mail. Worse, people who were using e-mail to manage critical work, even small pieces of it (and yes we all are), were constantly stressing over missing important information burried in their inbox and then having to deal with the consequences. Ross coached me through various things I could do with Wikis and how to use them with my team but he told me the secret to ‘getting’ Wikis was just to use them. He told me to build some piece of regular workflow or daily team habit into a Wiki and watch what happened organically. That worked. Sure, he gave me concrete and subjective benefits of Wikis but he kept reinforcing the point that I had to figure it out myself. Far from a sales pitch without backbone I found Ross to be right on the money.

I’d like to say that we went on to use our Wiki for a multitude of things but budgets at the time were such that $200 a month was too much! Ross did give us a lot of latitude in our ‘trial’ and we did use Socialtext enough to see that it would have really helped us. Of course, it wasn’t really too much money but at the time no one understood Wikis and I had a difficult time just explaining the concept to my VP of Technology during a budget crunch. Today, it wouldn’t be so hard to convince him since everyone is implementing a Wiki because they’re ‘it’ right now.

As I mentioned before, Wikis don’t necessarily add functionality beyond what you can do with other web based tools but they do add depth and richness to your work in a way that other tools simply don’t. That’s how I’d summarize my experience with getting work done using Wikis – they add another dimension. In information work – adding dimensions to your work isn’t a small thing, subtle perhaps, but not small.

Speaking of small. I’ll close with a slight twist on Wikis that you really need to know about. There’s a chap named Jeremy Ruston who took the Wiki concept and adapted it to what he defines as ‘microcontent.’ In the same way that you don’t always write a full story on a blog, or a full letter in an e-mail you have microcontent. So he shaped a Wiki in a fashion that would best help him corral microcontent and called it a TiddlyWiki. See, you thought Wiki was the worst name you’d ever heard of and now we have TiddlyWiki. When I heard about TiddlyWikis I was twice as excited about them as I was when I learned of Wikis. Almost everything we do in our information economy jobs is about microcontent. We don’t write papers in business anymore, we don’t do full research studies, we guestimate 95% of the time, we don’t often run fully integrated advertising campaigns, and we don’t watch all of the TV show. We don’t usually digest much of anything these days in huge gulps other than stress. Instead we take sips from a thousand different wine glasses each day and swirl the wine around in our mouths trying to identify the ingredients so we can understand them, appreciate them, and find out which ones are worth swallowing.

Start using Wikis to collaborate with peers, manage a project, keep group meeting notes, track customer service, or edit documents together. Pick something that you’ll use often and just follow the discipline of using it and soon your Wiki will be growing like a Chia pet.

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