We talked about the new role and the old role, tools of the trade, advice for folk and businesses thinking about getting into social media and the separation between yer professional and personal activity online. Sim complimented my eyebrows at one point, which was extremely gracious of him.

Recording the show was a lot of fun – thanks to Paul and Spain for having me on, this new off shoot of the popular NZ Tech Podcast looks like it’ll be a worthwhile listen if you’re into This Kind Of Thing.

You can listen to my episode in a variety of fashions here.

Some brief thoughts:

Being trolled is part of the territory for doing corporate social media. Of course, social media is just people. And some people can be dicks, bluntly.

Basically, someone has to be prepared to cop it, and it’s kind of up to you to develop a range of coping mechanisms (hence my ‘harden up’ comment). It gets easier over time! Caring a lot is a bit of a pre-req for doing the job well and properly, but the downside of that is taking the nastier comments to heart and wanting to throw things against things so they break.

The solution? Realise it’s not you, take breaks, make sure you’re well supported by your company. Easier said than done sometimes, but what’s the point of doing a job that’s easy, hey?

Anna definitely  kicked the crap out of me at pithy tweet-able soundbites. Nice work. And Mike showed there’s some excellent thinking and different knowledge out there beyond the usual voices. Well done.

I was most impressed by Chris Keall’s ‘take panel questions from your phone’ paradigm. Typical innovation incubation on the fly by our top tech scribe.

I realise I talked mainly about Telecom examples, rather than the new job (which is going really well BTW). That’s because I honestly haven’t been trolled very much at all in the new role – which is a nice change! The team going well is obviously a big factor, but even so, the ‘other distractions’ don’t seem to have generated much heat online.

I haven’t been to SMCAKL for a while, but it seems to be on the right track, by the evidence presented on Tuesday night. Fair play and all the best to the organisers and sponsors, it isn’t easy putting something like this on.

This is the first time I was trolled on the @telecomnz account, about a day after I took the job.

What attracted you to your new job?
Sport and cricket in particular is EXTREMELY relevant to my interests, and being able to combine it with the social/ digital/comms fields was very appealing indeed.

I’m certain that 8-year old cricket crazed Richard would approve of my new career path.

Read the whole thing over at the NBR.

I really loved it there – somehow, I got ample rope to hang myself with on a number of occasions. I went from being kind of buried deep, deep in the organisation (I wasn`t even sure what business unit I was in for the first couple of years, probably more reflective of my own lack of interest than anything) to working right where the shit was hitting the fan and the decisions were being made most days. I am very lucky to have been given the opportunities I was given – and I got to work with the most awesome bunch of people you could ever wish to have as colleagues, and I am not even just saying that.

I really enjoyed the Telco industry, there was much drama between the competitors, industry bodies, media, government. I particularly enjoyed getting to know people at other Telcos when I was at Wholesale, the dynamic of being both competitors and customers and having a beer with the next bloke anyway is unique, to an extent, in NZ.

Just hanging out with some colleagues.

The other awesome bunch I got to work with is the Online Response Team, Telecom`s famous(ish) group of volunteers that manage the social media accounts, largely out of the goodness of their hearts. I was part of the team, then became its `leader` (quotes very much intentional) when the social media manager role was created. The model is one I really believe in and I think it worked really well for Telecom, lending the dirty great corporate a little more humanity, which is important, especially in the early days of the ORT. The folk involved in setting  that up, not to mention the Telecom ONE unconferences that  happened each year despite  the political and resourcing  challenges involved, deserve much kudos.

It  was most fun when things went wrong. XT, Chch earthquakes, Abstain, Stephen Fry, network outages and Yahoo! Xtra, you name it. Social media and Twitter in particular were very much part of the front line response to all this, and it was exciting. I spent more hours than I care to think of at work and at home on audio conferences (I even discovered how useful bluetooth ear pieces are, to my shame) with dedicated, capable and passionate folk trying to put things right – we were really good when things were turning to custard. Crisis comms is something I really enjoy, and without being a dick, Telecom is one of the best places to do it -  it’s a New Zealand headquartered company, and we were it, there was no head office coming in to take over when things got interesting.

I guess the down side of doing social for such a large, service orientated company is the `always on` nature. There was never a moment, when I was with the kids at the beach, on the bus or out drinking when I wasn`t thinking `I wonder if something is kicking off on Twitter?` Often folk  in social media roles are their own worst enemies, preferring to spend their bus journey looking at the work Twitter instead of playing Angry Birds. It is a great and wonderful thing that folk have a public, social way of getting a company`s attention, but in darker moments it felt like a public 0800 complaint line. Corporate social media asks a lot of the people responsible for doing it, and while spreading the responsibility among, say, customer service or  marketing or PR or wherever may take away some of its charm, spontaneity and human-ness, it`s important for the people themselves` human-ness that this very public face of the company is empowered and well supported, both process-wise and emotionally. And they get an actual break every now and again (even if this must be rigorously policed!).

I`m not a legitimate geek by any stretch, barely able to operate a mouse properly, but I loved working at a tech company, with lots of people that Knew What They Were Talking About. In the social media role I got a deep appreciation for mobile technology – a good and fast smartphone with a sharp camera and decent connectivity is the knife and fork of the role. I was extremely lucky to be handed a succession of shiny toys to play with, and I`ll miss that a lot! I liked that at Telecom we worked on making people`s lives easier and better – although, going by my own experience, I sometimes worried that we were just making it easier for people to work *all the time*. Telecom is of course a large (by NZ standards) corporation, with all issues that brings – restructures are part of life, and we got used to them to an extent, but I`m feeling for my ex-colleagues now. I understand why, but it won`t be easy for those involved, something Telecom acknowledges themselves, of course.

Anyway – it was great, and it has taken something special to get me out of there. I`d like to thank (if they`re reading!) all my ex-colleagues and managers for being so cool. Thanks for having me.

At New Year’s at the Mount, there was still Rena debris washing up.

Thanks to my four year old, I’ve enjoyed getting to know the wacky world of model railways.

I did a lot of bad food photography – I’ve left most of it off this post, except for CHIPS OMELETTE! H/T The Kitchen Maid.

Lunch at Euro. Recommended.

I baked a lot of bread this year.

I also started blogging as part of the Corporate Lunchbox team – it’s fair to say my contributions have been sporadic so far. These burgers are from Char Grill.

I did enjoy a lovely meal at Depot.

The fantastic @cateowen let me sit in the 3 News chair. In fact, most of the cool shit I did this year is thanks to Cate. Ta

I got to be Jeremy Clarkson for a weekend.

And here is THE JUDGE!

Had yet another v. successful Lads Weekend, at ‘catching fish’ and ‘binge drinking’ levels.

Work-wise, I enjoyed myself thoroughly, even though it was another challenging year. Lot of issues, lot of change. I was even on the bloody telly at one point. I’m missing a lot of the folk in this picture.

The Telecom ONE unconference was another raging success, with bonus manly-disregard for safe trailer stacking practise.

My rugby team The Chiefs only went and bloody won the title. I was very happy.

The 40th birthday parties kicked right in.

Two childhood flashbacks – I fished these MAD magazine paperpacks from a paper recycling facility because HOW COULD YOU THROW THEM AWAY?!?!, and commandeered the family lego for my kids.

I got on Instagram, and found it’s useful mainly for taking photos of ‘things’, or close up photos of objects. They could be it Def Leppard tapes or drawings of a man with a toilet for a hat. For proper photos, it’s still Flickr.

I met Hillary Barry. She was lovely and didn’t mind having her photo taken with Mr Arkward arm.

I had a STORMING year, tech-wise.

This photo is the remains of my beloved HTC ONE X – which I smashed, to be replaced (thanks to me bursting into tears in front of our FANTASTIC device team in a most un-manly fashion), with Samsung’s S3, which I also lurve. Both these phones are big, with bright, vivid screens and superb cameras. Fast. You name it. I rely on it / them a lot to get stuff done, whether it’s work, organising our chaotic weekends or just fecking about on the bus.

At home, I obtained an iPad 3 and the Apple TV for home. Will save the in-depth run down for a future post, but yeah, they’re all fantastic.

My wee chap and my wee girl (she’s a bit bigger now). Family is the whole point, team.

Source

@richirvine ‘following’ stats July – October 2012

When starting out on Twitter, I followed my mates who had blogs, then sportspeople, then local media and online types. I was as free and easy with the follow button as I am with peanut butter on toast. I’d go through other interesting people’s follow lists and follow away with what turned out to be reckless abandon.

Like (I suspect) many professional SM-folk, I followed many people out of professional obligation. Competitors, customers, industry types – which is all well and good, but for the odd occasion they spoke up about something that may become an issue for the employer, the trade off was often a whole lot of irrelevance.

Slowly things became more and more out of control – people you thought would be fun turned out to be too noisy, too whingy, over share-prone or self obsessed. I’m loathe to begrudge anyone a decent bit of self-obsession (hey, check out the domain name of this site!) but this was *my* Twitter – I wanted it to be awesome.

I think everyone owes it to themselves to make their Twitter great. Those pithy little updates and avatars are much more personal and important to me than, say, Facebook with its ever-shifting rules, ads and stuff a mysterious, unaccountable algorithm thinks (THINKS?) I’ll like.

And so, I started unfollowing. My inspiration was this article, Why I just unfollowed everyone on Twitter. Killer quote: “It’s exhilarating.” Unfollowing *everyone* seemed a little extreme (quite tempting though!) but like eating chips, once I started, I found it hard to stop.

Many of the accounts were pure newsfeed accounts I’d long since lost interest in and had been mentally skipping over anyway. Many people were the professional-obligation crowd* and others were friends of friends I’d followed because they were friends of friends, but it struck me I was getting mentally involved with people I didn’t actually know. Which, on paper, felt weird. Unfollow.

Google has a few tools for managing Twitter followers, but I found it easier to just go through my follow list in a web browser and start unfollowing manually. It didn’t take very long, I unfollowed a 2-300 people and I’m much happier. My Twitter feels leaner, sharper and has more meaningful updates, better signal to noise ratio, all that.

Like any time I dramatically cut back on RSS subscriptions (here’s another good article) or what have you, I don’t miss it. And because I’m a recidivist offender when it comes to welcoming feeds, accounts or noise into my life that will easily distract me, no doubt I’ll have to repeat the process over at some stage, but I’m (generally) OK with it.

Yes, I’m aware this post makes me sound like a dick, but I assure you that’s not the intention – I just want my Twitter to be a nice place, and make it about what works for me rather than trying to be everyone’s mate. Or something. One of the things I love most about Twitter is that you control completely what you see and can quickly change it if it’s not working for you. Don’t put up with noise, claim back your Twitter people! For you!

* This is a valuable search tab I have saved for making sure I don’t miss mentions of the employer, with the added bonus of seeing who says what about the employer when they think you’re not seeing it, by not using the handle.

I thoroughly enjoyed Dan Neely from the Wellington Regional Emergency Management Office – his points about responding fast, but accurately in a crisis resonated with me. It takes some maturity in an organisation to get on social media and say “we know there’s a crisis – we’re still finding out what’s happened, but we’ll let you know when we *do* have news.” It’s a reflection of today’s ‘always on’ society that Dan, like me, probably sits on his couch of an evening with a sneaking voice in the back of his mind saying ‘I wonder if something’s going wrong?’. Ahem.

Conference regulars Brown, Brislen and McDonald held an entertaining panel – there was refreshing honesty, and I enjoyed seeing panellists who didn’t completely agree on every point under discussion.

Alec Ross, Hillary Clinton’s Senior Advisor for Innovation was everywhere in his time in NZ, on the telly, radio,  giving interviews and mixing it up with the locals on Twitter – impressively, showing up in conversations he wasn’t even taking part in. He stepped on stage looking like he’d just popped in from the set of the West Wing – his Powerpoint with huge ‘Power’ and ‘$’ slides created a slightly OTT and surreal feeling. His content was heavy on the history but light on the war stories from the Obama campaign, which the crowd (well, me) had come to see, but still, I enjoyed seeing a guy on top of his game present. His killer lines (“it’s a bad time to be a control freak”) were delivered with relish and style. Things got slightly lively in the Q+A with a Wikileaks question and half hearted heckle, but Ross handled it like a pro, defining the terms on which he was going to address it, then addressing it and moving quickly on. He’ll probably run the world one day.

I missed the most part of day two, but pitched up late afternoon, just in time for Christopher Barger – like I tweeted, I found much of what he said affirming and common sense, and I thoroughly enjoyed his tough guy myth busting shtick. If you were a largeish corporate business who’d never attempted social media before (are there any left?), his preso would be an excellent place to start.

Richard MacManus and Emily Banks were the ‘future web journalism’ one-two to end the day. Richard, who I imagine gets asked by checkout operators and service station attendants what hot new web publishing platforms they should be checking out, talked us through this blog post mainly, neatly summarising the developments that are slowly creeping up on our monitors and mobiles. Banks talked us through how Mashable approaches the new journalism landscape, as well as some more nefarious approaches. Which were, um, really intriguing. I’ve ordered a copy. Interestingly, she chose the ‘Coldplay’ clip from opinion-dividing The Newsroom to illustrate the ‘first’ and ‘not wrong for long’ pressures modern news outlets face.

Overall, the conference had a great tone, loosely based around change through technology, as well as a broader, historic perspective. Presenters like Michael Jones and Tim Forseman offered much food for thought. Jennifer Duval Smith‘s panel and the quickfire speakers (yay!) gave a board range of local angles. Refreshingly, social media was part of the mix, but not the focus. Which is better, I reckon. We *may* be at the point where we move beyond ‘hey, the internet exists, isn’t it awesome?’ and talk about what we do with it next. Well done to all the organisers.

As usual, the number one highlight of the conference for me was catching up with folk I don’t get to talk to very often, and meeting folk I felt like I knew already from the Twitter and that. It was a great turn-out.

PS: Here’s the slides.