Leveraging Technology

Regardless of how you feel about applications like Facebook (and the fact that a 24 year old drives the most traffic on the planet...insanely jealous or awestruck), LinkedIn, Twitter etc. these are now global brands and applications with far reaching implications beyond networking and marketing businesses. They are shaping the way people interact socially and they are here to stay regardless of ones personal opinion (obviously harder for someone like me...read old to adopt). Which begets the point that if you are not up to speed on how to leverage them...you will quickly become a relic. Its not just having a profile but knowing how best to use them to maximize the benefit to you. Similarly, part of the challenge and fun is even knowing what resources are available to you. Thus the importance of the maven...



I recently read Macolm Gladwell's The Tipping Point (I highly recommend) and he quite eloquently articulated the power of social epidemics and the players that cause these epidemics to tip i.e. salespeople, mavens and connectors. The phenomenon of social media through the use of Facebook, Linkedin and Twitter has turned your average individual into a potential connector. Salespeople...to me...either have the requisite personality, skills and abilities to be effect persuaders or they learn (with a great deal of effort), but the maven...the maven is a special breed. Maven's have content knowledge and expertise to a depth that others can only longingly aspire to. Increasingly technology mavens especially those who can translate techno-speak into laymen's terms are becoming more and more important because of their ability to help you navigate the waters of identifying useful websites, online tools and applications will be invaluable for networking, job searching etc.. I highly recommend your checking out http://www.socialtimes.com/ and http://www.allfacebook.com/. Nick O'Neill the founder of these sites is a former Kogod student. He is one of my mavens and he is a goldmine in his space. He is one of the two major bloggers detailing the growing pains and best ways to use Facebook especially for business and because of that fact he has a direct line to the higher ups at Facebook. Don't be turned off by the fact that some of the content is technology heavy....there are nuggets on these sites...even for technophobes...like me.