Mar 18 2008
Viva Elsua
Jerry Bowles posted a great interview with IBM’s Luis Suarez. From his most interesting perch on the Canary Islands, he is perhaps one of the best examples of the social media evangelist trend so many big companies are employing with respect to challenging the status quo.
“I had been playing a very interesting role of evangelist all along, creating lots and lots of demos and tutorials on how to make use of social media in a business environment, including proving its business value and what the corporation gets, as well as what the employees get from all of it,” he says.
Social Media champions inside the enterprise are important agents for change. The savviest practitioners understand this and take great care to build social sense into their programs. For example:
- Ensuring that people with social skills are chosen – or at least allowed to emerge – to lead the projects
- Appealing to both the group and individual needs of the participants
- Where it makes sense, building communities around particular services as a way to scale the population of users.
Forrester’s Charlene Li touched on this subject last week with her presentation at SxSW. You can view her slides via slideshare here.
Luis is an inspiration to all of us. As an indie and outie consultant, I rely on Luis for no small amount of inspiration. His attitude and enthusiasm rock! If I could work with Luis and his team at IBM, it would be one of the few things that could attract me back to salaried employment.