First published on CloudAve.

In two weeks time I’ll be winging my way across the world for the inaugural San Francisco holding of the Enterprise 2.0 conference. As is the norm before large events like this, the emails have started pouring in already asking for times for briefings on products and services to be released during the conference.

In a bid to save frustration on all sides, and as a suggestion to my fellow media attendees, I thought I’d publish here my simple guide to securing time with me (bear in mind there’s hundreds of companies going to be at the event, I’m in SF for just one week and I like to sleep from time to time);

1. Please make it relevant. I’m a Cloud computing and SaaS guy with an interest in business process software and the culture shift needed to ease adoption of “Enterprise 2.0”. Sorry but there’s a bunch of things that simply aren’t in my sphere of interest. Please do some research and read my stuff to get a feel for what will interest and be relevant to me
2. I live in New Zealand, that’s a long way from SF and is in an entirely different timezone – if you want to engage me in a pre event briefing (something I’m not at all against), please take the time to work out when might be a suitable time for me. While I’m a very early riser who partly works in Pacific time, 3am is not a good time to be showing me the latest micro-blogging service for enterprise
3. Find out ways to engage me when you’ll get good attention. I’m a fitness fan and jog most mornings, especially when attending high-stress events like Enterprise 2.0. If someone comes to me and suggests a chat over a leisurely 5 mile run they’re likely to capture my undivided attention – it’s a good opportunity!
4. Work out what pushes my buttons – we all get jaded from lots and lots of calls and a million and one “me too” offerings. Find some way to reach out to me (and Cocktails are definitely NOT my thing) and your chances go up exponentially. I’ve written fairly extensively about a couple of companies lately precisely because their PR people connected with me in all the right ways – this is in no way a “pay for play” situation, merely a way to ensure you’re heard above the hubbub

So there you have it – a simple four step guide to ensuring your investment in media relations pays off. I’d be interested to hear what my fellow media attendees thoughts are….

Image via Wikipedia

Cross-posted from CloudAve by Ben Kepes.

Gentry Underwood, the head of Knowledge sharing at design house IDEO claims that designing solutions that work requires finding the triggers that drive individual motivation. Designing simplicity and intuitiveness into the UI and building the solution to integrate into existing workflows.

The very structures we use to handle scale as organizations grow inhibit collaboration and knowledge sharing while the hierarchies inherent within organisations encourage silos. Many organizations that try to use technology to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration don’t see much ROI and a thought that is close to my heart, think about the people - it’s not just about the technology. In the past IDEO experimented with always-on video conferencing, called “wormholes”.

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