Simon Young

It’s been exciting to be part of the Social Media MBA book project – and the book is out now.

I’ve given some of my thoughts on what businesses should do in 2012 on the Sky Technology blog in the UK.

An excerpt:

“Companies that have been in the social media game for a while need to bring social media in from the fringes. Not just social media, but the culture of open engagement that goes with it. Engagement is for the whole organisation, not just public relations or marketing.

…

“Company-wide culture change doesn’t happen overnight. The first step comes when different departments learn to look at things through a different lens. How to do that is explained in my chapter, ‘The Power of Integration’.”

Read more

2010 was a pretty full-on year, but it didn’t stop me doing some writing. Feel free to have a read through my published creative output of 2010 if you like.

Idealog Magazine:

Mini’s Big Step – about innovation in the vehicle sales space

“Speed Thinking” book review

“A Brief History of the Future” book review

“Betting the Bank” – me and Jake Pearce scenario planning for the future of banking

Marketing Magazine:

My latest social media column

The Big Idea:

All my posts last year, from how media makes money to theatre to mandarin lessons.

Quoted in the NZ Herald:

Facebook users now in majority

OMG, that’s so last year

Ok, so this blog could probably use more frequent updating!

Having said that, let’s do a lightning round of what I’ve been up to in 2010:

• We’ve launched Marie Workshops, which have been really helpful in getting people up to speed with social media
• I’ve written a couple of articles for Idealog and Marketing Mag which need to go up here, as well as my social media column in marketing mag every issue.
• I MC’ed and presented a workshop at Connect Now in April. That was a mind-blowing experience, especially meeting some of the world’s top thinkers on the future of business. Read some of the feedback from the conference here.
• We delivered workshops and seminars with Conferenz and University of Auckland Short Courses. More to come in 2011!
• We’re off to China! Next week Marie and I will be presenting a social media workshop in Shanghai. It will be the first of many trips to China, and I’m learning mandarin. As part of the learning experience, I’ve signed up on a whole bunch of Chinese social media sites. So if you speak (or read) Chinese, I’d love to connect with you. Find all my links here.

There are some other really, really exciting pieces of news to announce soon. In the meantime, I’m glad to have a “latest post” on this site that’s actually “latest”!

I’m very pleased to announce the launch of #sy social media consultancy last week just north of Auckland.

#sy takes over the business consultancy side of iJump, which will remain as a hub and resource for New Zealand’s marketing, communications and social media communities.

Why the change? While iJump was an attractive and interesting brand, we kept getting confused feedback from people, and the question “how do you make money?”

We believe #sy sets out clearly how we make money for ourselves and our clients – through workshops, public speaking, and tailored consulting services to organisations.

iJump, meanwhile, has gained a reputation (and some great Google juice) as a trusted resource about social media, specifically in New Zealand. We’ll be continuing that conversation, turning the iJump website into a shared resource to grow our collective wisdom about the future of business.

Whether it’s as a client of #sy, or a reader/participant in iJump, I look forward to working with you!

(Thanks to the amazing James Hancox for his photography and strategic thinking around our launch event. You can see his whole set of event photos here)

This first announcement is a week out of date, but better late than never, eh! I spoke in Melbourne at the amazing Marketing Now Conference, which was about far more than marketing. Here’s my roundup and presentation, plus links to much, much more.

And secondly, this Friday I’m speaking at Search Engine Bootcamp – which has half of the entire conference dedicated to social media. Yay! Info here.

In a nutshell…

• Co-writing an article with Jake Pearce on the future of banking (or even of money itself!), especially as it pertains to Generation C.
• Developing the brand philosophy of iJump with help from 7degree. Incredibly challenging, yet also incredibly valuable.
• Reading We Think, by Charles Leadbeater, which in turn is introducing me to a lot of other books (many available free online) such as Yochai Benkler’s The Wealth of Networks and Erich von Hippel’s Democratising Innovation.
• Ruminating on the concepts of value, agility, relationships and experience.
• And I went for a wee swing in Taihape! (I tell you what, a near-death experience is good for you every once in a while!)

Happy New Year! I hope the holiday season was a good one for you, and that you spent it with people you love. I did.

Now it’s Monday the 12th, the day when I told several people I’d be back at work. My body’s back at work, but I don’t know about the rest of me!

Of course, I’m passionate about what I do, so my thoughts are never far from business and online and people and society etc… but I really appreciate how holidays give you the time to think big, without having to react to everything so fast.

Just in case you’re still on holiday, and you’ve got some time to read, here’s what I’ve been writing in the latter half of 2008:

In Idealog I wrote about a brilliant up-and-coming business, YMedia. It’s not the first time I’ve come across this talented duo, and I’m sure it’s not the last!

I’ve reviewed the book Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns in Idealog Magazine and also on iJumpTV.

I also reviewed The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation in Idealog and on iJumpTV.

And quite a bit earlier in the year, July in fact, I wrote (in Idealog again) about how businesses can gain insight in order to innovate. Much of the inspiration for that article came from Nathan Baird, founder of The Hive. Not surprisingly, I also interviewed him on iJumpTV. Hmmm… I see a theme here.

I also wrote a couple of articles for Startup Magazine, one about targeting a niche market (with a couple of examples) and a column simply introducing social media, which was republished in the NZ Herald.

There’s more to come this year. At the moment I’m doing most of my writing day-to-day on MadYoungThing, followed by some more polished pieces for the iJump blog. Enjoy!

And as always, this isn’t a monologue. I want to hear what you think!

Image via Wikipedia

How you doing? Things are going pretty busy for me as the sun starts shining more consistently here in New Zealand. Not always “paid” busy, but “building” busy.

Last week was a mammoth week of internet-related events, including two great events on the same day, one with Robert Lauterborn (marketing professor and author) and another with Lawrence Lessig (intellectual property law expert). I wrote up both events in one post, because there was a huge overlap in the kind of things they were saying.

SimonYoungWriters continues to plug along, although we haven’t updated the blog (sorry!). It’s on my todo list, but so are many other things!

We also have some company in the office! A while back we mentioned we were looking to share our office space, and had someone walk in off the street. In her first week, Charlotte (who’s also a writer/editor) has kept Marie and I on our toes, away from arguments and random dancing, and generally been a great influence on us!

That’s it for now, but for more regular rantings, check out MadYoungThing. I’m blogging there almost daily now.

Image by MediaStorm via Flickr

Jake and I got together before his world trip last month, and talked about Generation C, Generation I, and I think we even mention Generation Z.

What’s up with all these generations? And why do some Wikipedia editors not see Generation C as being significant enough to warrant its own page?

Perhaps most importantly, what’s the difference between Gen C and all these other generations? You might find out in this podcast…

Standard Podcast [ 12:19 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (957)

In the Simon space this week:

• a trip to Napier on Monday to help AdPlus explore social media
• my zoology evolved a bit – my beavers turned into bees, after some helpful reflection from a Twitter follower.
• we finally put an ad out to share our central Auckland office space.

And coming up soon:

• the return of iJumpTV after a couple of weeks hiatus. New format, new name, same great quality content.
• two pieces in the October/November issue of Startup magazine: how to build your business with communities, and a column answering the question: what is social media!!? (You can also find the answer here)
• A book review in the next Idealog on the fascinating book Disrupting Class, all about the power of disruptive innovation in the education system.
• I’ve agreed to do a piece on interactive marketing for the December issue of Marketing Magazine. I’ll be focusing on the convergence of different disciplines like marketing, communications and customer service within organisations. It’s easy to say “it’s all about the customer” but how do you reorganise your company to make it real?