Rob Cottingham

Category: Social Signal

  • Cartoon-blogging at NTC 2012

    It was another great Nonprofit Technology Conference, my second in San Francisco… and my second cartoon-blogging outing for my friends at NTEN.

    This time around, the good folks at Rally – a social fundraising platform, and the folks behind a very cool workspace – sponsored the graphic recording effort.

    Which meant there were not one but two pens flying during various keynotes and breakout sessions. My colleague was the amazing Kate Rutter, who manages to combine detail, structure and composition in ways that amaze me. You can see the results of our work here.

    I’m pulling together the last of my cartoon-blog images, and I’ll post them here soon. But in the meantime, here are the cartoons I drew from the floor of the conference. They include my notes from the session on social media policy, led by Idealware’s Andrea Berry and Darim’s Lisa Colton and centered around their free social media policy workbook.

  • Cartoon-blogging at NTC 2012

    Session notes from Dr. Changelove at #12NTCIt was another great Nonprofit Technology Conference, my second in San Francisco… and my second cartoon-blogging outing for my friends at NTEN.

    This time around, the good folks at Rally – a social fundraising platform, and the folks behind a very cool workspace – sponsored the graphic recording effort.

    Which meant there were not one but two pens flying during various keynotes and breakout sessions. My colleague was the amazing Kate Rutter, who manages to combine detail, structure and composition in ways that amaze me. You can see the results of our work here.

    I’m pulling together the last of my cartoon-blog images, and I’ll post them here soon. But in the meantime, here are the cartoons I drew from the floor of the conference. They include my notes from the session on social media policy, led by Idealware’s Andrea Berry and Darim’s Lisa Colton and centered around their free social media policy workbook.

  • Cartoon-blogging at NTC 2012

    Session notes from Dr. Changelove at #12NTCIt was another great Nonprofit Technology Conference, my second in San Francisco… and my second cartoon-blogging outing for my friends at NTEN.

    This time around, the good folks at Rally – a social fundraising platform, and the folks behind a very cool workspace – sponsored the graphic recording effort.

    Which meant there were not one but two pens flying during various keynotes and breakout sessions. My colleague was the amazing Kate Rutter, who manages to combine detail, structure and composition in ways that amaze me. You can see the results of our work here.

    I’m pulling together the last of my cartoon-blog images, and I’ll post them here soon. But in the meantime, here are the cartoons I drew from the floor of the conference. They include my notes from the session on social media policy, led by Idealware’s Andrea Berry and Darim’s Lisa Colton and centered around their free social media policy workbook.

  • Social Speech Podcast, Episode 3: Maggie Fox

    This episode: Social Media Group founder and CEO Maggie Fox

    Only a few years ago, business – especially non-tech Fortune 500 business – was pretty skeptical about social media. One of the first people to break through that barrier was Maggie Fox, CEO of Social Media group. And she did it by creating solid strategies rooted in tangible business goals, breaking ground with companies like Ford.

    Our conversation looks at everything from handling the backchannel to how you can stand out as a smallfrog presented in a big pond conference. And here are some links relating to our discussion:

    Also from the podcast: I’m heading to San Francisco for NTEN‘s Nonprofit Technology Conference next week. And I’ll be speaking at Ignite NTC on the social speech. I’d love to see you there!

     

     

  • Social Speech Podcast, Episode 3: Maggie Fox

    This episode: Social Media Group founder and CEO Maggie Fox

    Only a few years ago, business – especially non-tech Fortune 500 business – was pretty skeptical about social media. One of the first people to break through that barrier was Maggie Fox, CEO of Social Media group. And she did it by creating solid strategies rooted in tangible business goals, breaking ground with companies like Ford.

    Our conversation looks at everything from handling the backchannel to how you can stand out as a smallfrog presented in a big pond conference. And here are some links relating to our discussion:

    Also from the podcast: I’m heading to San Francisco for NTEN‘s Nonprofit Technology Conference next week. And I’ll be speaking at Ignite NTC on the social speech. I’d love to see you there!

     

     

  • Social Speech Podcast, Episode 2: with Tod Maffin

    If you were to assemble a herd of top-notch researchers, and tell them “Find me someone who embodies public speaking, social media and podcasting,” chances are fights would break out as several of them vied to be the first to get to Tod Maffin‘s door.

    One day he’ll be speaking to large corporations about digital marketing; the next, to a hometown social media conference about podcasting. His “Taking Crazy Back” keynote takes an unflinching look at his own struggle with depression and addiction as a powerful way of bringing conversations about mental health into the full light of day.

    Tod Maffin photo

    In this conversation, you’ll hear Tod’s insights on using social networks to get a sense of a room weeks before he sets foot in it; how meeting planners want more value from an engagement, and how you can offer it; why a projected backchannel is as bad a distraction as a troupe of dancing chimpanzees; and why digital dazzle can’t top a good, compelling story.

    A few links that came up:

  • Social Speech Podcast, Episode 2: Tod Maffin

    If you were to assemble a herd of top-notch researchers, and tell them “Find me someone who embodies public speaking, social media and podcasting,” chances are fights would break out as several of them vied to be the first to get to Tod Maffin‘s door.

    One day he’ll be speaking to large corporations about digital marketing; the next, to a hometown social media conference about podcasting. His “Taking Crazy Back” keynote takes an unflinching look at his own struggle with depression and addiction as a powerful way of bringing conversations about mental health into the full light of day.

    Tod Maffin photo

    In this conversation, you’ll hear Tod’s insights on using social networks to get a sense of a room weeks before he sets foot in it; how meeting planners want more value from an engagement, and how you can offer it; why a projected backchannel is as bad a distraction as a troupe of dancing chimpanzees; and why digital dazzle can’t top a good, compelling story.

    A few links that came up:

  • Why you should help users recover gracefully from their mistakes

    We all like to talk about how organizations can recover from their own customer service failures: the gadget that won’t connect, the handle that snaps off, the delivery that never arrives.

    But how about when the customer screws up? How easy do you make it for them to recover lost information, correct a mistake or get out of a dead end?

    Put it this way: if the web is like an episode of The Simpsons, is your site more like helpful, compassionate Lisa, or Nelson “Haw, haw” Muntz?

    After a pretty Nelsonish user experience, here’s what I included this in a customer feedback survey from Rogers Communications.

    Their kind Twitter customer service rep, @rogers_kate, helped me resolve an issue where I was trying to update my expired credit card info for my iPad data plan. The interface wouldn’t accept my email and password, and offered to send my my forgotten password. It turned out the problem was I was using the wrong email address – but I didn’t find that out before wasting a lot of time troubleshooting.

    Every person I dealt with was great. But the interface for handling billing info on an iPad is awful.

    Telling someone who’s just entered the wrong email address for their account that you’ve sent them a password reset email, when you actually haven’t, leads to lots of digging through inboxes, checking spam filters and troubleshooting. If instead the form had said “Incorrect email address – please try again”, I’d have saved myself hours – literally – of frustration.

    So kudos to your customer service team. And a tsk-tsk-tsk to whoever set up that billing workflow.

    I should have added a little wrist-slap for yours truly; the original error was mine. I just had no way of knowing I’d made it. And customers logging in with the wrong email address, when many of us are running around with three or more, is commonplace these days.

    From forms like that iPad billing registration that mislead the customer, to email authentication error screens that tell you you’ve entered the wrong username or password but won’t tell you which one , helping your customers emerge gracefully from their own mishaps will make you some friends.

    And save @rogers_kate from yet another tweet of distress.

     

  • Why you should help users recover gracefully from their mistakes

    We all like to talk about how organizations can recover from their own customer service failures: the gadget that won’t connect, the handle that snaps off, the delivery that never arrives.

    But how about when the customer screws up? How easy do you make it for them to recover lost information, correct a mistake or get out of a dead end?

    Put it this way: if the web is like an episode of The Simpsons, is your site more like helpful, compassionate Lisa, or Nelson “Haw, haw” Muntz?

    After a pretty Nelsonish user experience, here’s what I included this in a customer feedback survey from Rogers Communications.

    Their kind Twitter customer service rep, @rogers_kate, helped me resolve an issue where I was trying to update my expired credit card info for my iPad data plan. The interface wouldn’t accept my email and password, and offered to send my my forgotten password. It turned out the problem was I was using the wrong email address – but I didn’t find that out before wasting a lot of time troubleshooting.

    Every person I dealt with was great. But the interface for handling billing info on an iPad is awful.

    Telling someone who’s just entered the wrong email address for their account that you’ve sent them a password reset email, when you actually haven’t, leads to lots of digging through inboxes, checking spam filters and troubleshooting. If instead the form had said “Incorrect email address – please try again”, I’d have saved myself hours – literally – of frustration.

    So kudos to your customer service team. And a tsk-tsk-tsk to whoever set up that billing workflow.

    I should have added a little wrist-slap for yours truly; the original error was mine. I just had no way of knowing I’d made it. And customers logging in with the wrong email address, when many of us are running around with three or more, is commonplace these days.

    From forms like that iPad billing registration that mislead the customer, to email authentication error screens that tell you you’ve entered the wrong username or password but won’t tell you which one , helping your customers emerge gracefully from their own mishaps will make you some friends.

    And save @rogers_kate from yet another tweet of distress.

     

  • Why you should help users recover gracefully from their mistakes

    We all like to talk about how organizations can recover from their own customer service failures: the gadget that won’t connect, the handle that snaps off, the delivery that never arrives.

    But how about when the customer screws up? How easy do you make it for them to recover lost information, correct a mistake or get out of a dead end?

    Put it this way: if the web is like an episode of The Simpsons, is your site more like helpful, compassionate Lisa, or Nelson “Haw, haw” Muntz?

    After a pretty Nelsonish user experience, here’s what I included this in a customer feedback survey from Rogers Communications.

    Their kind Twitter customer service rep, @rogers_kate, helped me resolve an issue where I was trying to update my expired credit card info for my iPad data plan. The interface wouldn’t accept my email and password, and offered to send my my forgotten password. It turned out the problem was I was using the wrong email address – but I didn’t find that out before wasting a lot of time troubleshooting.

    Every person I dealt with was great. But the interface for handling billing info on an iPad is awful.

    Telling someone who’s just entered the wrong email address for their account that you’ve sent them a password reset email, when you actually haven’t, leads to lots of digging through inboxes, checking spam filters and troubleshooting. If instead the form had said “Incorrect email address – please try again”, I’d have saved myself hours – literally – of frustration.

    So kudos to your customer service team. And a tsk-tsk-tsk to whoever set up that billing workflow.

    I should have added a little wrist-slap for yours truly; the original error was mine. I just had no way of knowing I’d made it. And customers logging in with the wrong email address, when many of us are running around with three or more, is commonplace these days.

    From forms like that iPad billing registration that mislead the customer, to email authentication error screens that tell you you’ve entered the wrong username or password but won’t tell you which one , helping your customers emerge gracefully from their own mishaps will make you some friends.

    And save @rogers_kate from yet another tweet of distress.

     

  • Social Speech Podcast, Episode 1: Nancy White

    The social web has gone a long way toward changing what it means to be in the audience at a speech – making an audience member less a passive spectator listening to a monologue, and more an active participant in a conversation among peers.

    And nobody does that quite like Nancy White – except she doesn’t just rely on digital technology. She’s one of the best group facilitators in the business, working all over the world with everyone from small community groups to Fortune 500 companies. You can see her approach at work in the March of Dimes’ Share Your Story site, which several years on is still one of the examples we cite the most often of how online community can make a real different in people’s lives.

    So who better to kick off Episode 1 of the Social Speech podcast?

    Nancy White

    A few links:

    Photo by kk+
    Graphic: A quick sketch I did of Nancy at Northern Voice a few years ago

  • Social Speech Podcast, Episode 1: Nancy White

    The social web has gone a long way toward changing what it means to be in the audience at a speech – making an audience member less a passive spectator listening to a monologue, and more an active participant in a conversation among peers.

    And nobody does that quite like Nancy White – except she doesn’t just rely on digital technology. She’s one of the best group facilitators in the business, working all over the world with everyone from small community groups to Fortune 500 companies. You can see her approach at work in the March of Dimes’ Share Your Story site, which several years on is still one of the examples we cite the most often of how online community can make a real different in people’s lives.

    So who better to kick off Episode 1 of the Social Speech podcast?

    A few links: