In May 2011, I had the opportunity to speak at Reiten & Co‘s Strategic Meeting in beautiful Oslo, Norway. I spoke with Senior Level Managers and CEOs from Reiten’s group of portfolio companies about some of the challenges and opportunities facing today’s digital organizations.

In spite of the over-abundance of “social media experts” there seems to be very few people talking about the more operation-oriented perspective of what it means to be using these tools internally. One of the things I focus on is the evolution of digital as a marketing tool to a full strategic function within an organization.

This requires a shift in both macro processes (strategic planning, recruiting and retention, flex time policies) and micro processes (content plans, job descriptions, metric development). Senior management needs to be aware of the changes they will need to make in these areas and how it will alter the cultures of their organizations.

From an HR perspective there have been a slew of new positions created to address this new need. For example, take a look at these newly created positions that have recently been filled in the past two years:

Oxfam (2009) – Head of Digital Communications

The World Economic Forum (2010)- Head of Content & Digital

Bauer Media (2010) – Head of Digital Sales

Nestle (2011) – Global Digital Chief

All of these positions show that management is finally catching up to the slew of junior/mid-level positions (brand evangelist, social media manager, digital community manager) that were created during the last five years to work on the more tactical side of digital. I’m happy to see this area being taken seriously by c-suite executives.

I’ll write about this in a bit more detail in a few weeks since I’ll be exploring it more fully for my work on ArchiTechs. I also had the amazing opportunity to take a few days and explore the rest of Norway by car with Jesse, and I’ll be detailing our adventures in a separate post, so stay tuned!

I’ve gotten a lot of questions about what I’m up to at work these days so I thought I’d share this little update about some of the things I’m working on at the moment. At the Forum we like to say that we “wear a lot of hats,” which is a polite way of saying our job descriptions are too complicated to be captured within one role.

World Economic Forum’s Annual Meeting 2011:

Davos was absolutely amazing this year. The team put on an incredible program for our Tech Pioneers, and one of my sessions was an intimate and interactive sit down with Bill Gates. Hearing Mr. Gates talk about his experiences as an entrepreneur and some of the challenges he faced was one of my career highlights. His sense of humor really took me by surprise, he had the room in stitches several times! (Unfortunately it was an off-the-record session so I can’t repeat any of his jokes here, lol.)

I did an extensive debrief over at the TP Blog including videos of the TPs answering all sorts of questions for our YouTube Channel and an interview done for Facebook Live with Randi Zuckerberg.

Tech Pioneers 2012

We’re in full hunting mode for the next class of Tech Pioneers. Since, I’m responsible for the Web & IT category, I’ve spent the last few weeks after Davos scouring the internet for new candidates and encouraging people to nominate companies they think would make good additions to our community. The deadline for submission is in a few days and then our Selection Committee begins the arduous task of picking 30 companies out of the hundreds submitted. We’ll reveal the list in September!

I’ll be doing monthly interviews with some of our Selection Committee members on the TP blog in the next few weeks, as well as interviews with the Partner companies who support our wonderful program.

Regional Meetings:

Right now, we have two upcoming regional events at the Forum. Our Latin America meeting takes place at the end of April in Rio, followed by our Africa meeting in early May that’s being held in Cape Town. We’re still figuring out the details of the Tech Pioneers’ involvement so I’ll update more once I have a better idea of the program.

We’re currently meeting with our regional team colleagues and trying to sort everything out. It’s fascinating to see an event like this take shape and to know that you had a small part in designing that agenda. I also get an enormous satisfaction from seeing our Tech Pioneers wow attendees with their cutting edge technologies and ideas.

Innovation Report:

I’m thrilled (!!) to be leading the Tech Pioneer Innovation Report this year. I’m currently finalizing the outline and structure and can’t wait to get started. I’ll be covering trends within the IT, Bio Tech and Clean Tech industries as well as conducting case studies with our community of entrepreneurs. I’m hoping to make the report something unique and fun to read. Having worked on syndicated research reports in the past, it feels amazing to have the chance to lead the vision creation for a knowledge product and then to build it from the ground up.

I should have an outline by April and then a first draft by June. The report will be finished in August and launched in September 2011 at our Annual Meeting of New Champions in Dalian, China.

SPRING!!

Whew! There are a ton of other really exiting initiatives I’m building internally, but none are at the stage where I can publicly share them yet.  This was more of an overview, and the next updates will dive into specifics of some of things I’ve mentioned here.

In the mean time, I am desperately looking forward to the day when it gets hot enough that I can fully enjoy our office’s large sunny patio. I plan to set up a table and work there all day.

As always, come and say hi on the Tech Pioneer blog and follow me on our official @techpioneer twitter account.

- Foush

My last stop before heading home was the Microsoft Executive Health Summit and Social Media Round Table. I did two presentations and felt exhausted afterward! I’m only covering each talk briefly since they were each 45 minutes and would require a much longer blog post.

The Digital Organization:

The first presentation was about the new “digital organization”. We all know that it is important for companies to use these tools to connect with customers, but what are the actual processes, strategies, and policies that need to be adopted internally so that an organization can remain agile and competitive?

I spoke about how digital has become an overarching strategic function instead of just a marketing department add-on. For example, organizations like Oxfam and Target added Heads of Digital positions in only 2010. Other positions are being created to help adapt to this new environment. Both DELL and Kodak have Chief Listening Officers, dedicated to listening to all chatter and make sure feedback is delivered to the appropriate internal team.

The E-Health Patient:

For the second presentation, I spoke about the impact of technology on the healthcare sector. From online communities like dailystrength to Google Health, patients are becoming more involved in managing their own wellness. Vitals.com allows people to rate about their doctor, scoring everything from bedside manner to time spent waiting for an appointment.

One of the most interesting areas for Healthcare has been the development of mobile applications. Applications can help Doctors diagnose patients and brush up on their x-ray skills. Patients can use apps to identify medication, track drug interaction and record their daily caloric intake.

There was a demonstration showing how the Microsoft Kinect can be used as a medical teaching tool. You could use your hands to rotate and interact with a 3-d model of a human heart on the screen! It was so fascinating to consider the possibility of how this technology could potentially help us live longer and healthier lives.

All in all, it was a great crowd and I was happy to be in Toronto for a few days to see my family. I’m headed to work in Geneva for a few days and then back home to Paris. Jesse has been in Egypt filming for the last week or so and I’m really looking forward to spending some time with him!

After spending a few days in Vancouver and Richmond, BC, I traveled to Saskatoon to discuss the role of digital tools in election readiness with the Saskatchewan Party. My presentation also focused on the research I have been doing about the future of politics and technology.

The All Encompassing Power of Tech

While I think that tracking the use of technology during elections is interesting, my real fascination is in watching how these tools are changing government on a broader scale. We are just starting to see the impact of digital tools on everything from international relations to legislative agendas. I spoke about some of the emerging security threats such as cyber-terrorism including the most recent hacking of the Voice of America website by Iranian hackers.

It was important for me to illustrate how all-encompassing the impact of technology is going to be on the way we live. There was a bit of resistance to the idea of that these tools could be useful to election readiness, but as always I stressed the importance of strategy. It’s not about using tools, it’s about using the RIGHT tools in the RIGHT way.

“Don’t be that guy.”

One of my favorite parts of being a speaker is having the chance to open someone’s mind to the possibility of a killer digital strategy. In my pre-talk research I noticed that while Premier Wall had 700 people following him, he wasn’t following anyone back. Twitter is a tool for dialogue not broadcast, I explained, and it’s important for people to feel like you’re listening as well as speaking. Especially for a politician. I then compared not following anyone on Twitter to going to a cocktail party where you yelled loudly over everyone.

Here are the results of that conversation via twitter. It started with a CBC reporter who was at the convention tweeted:

A few days later….

Next stop: Toronto! I’m speaking to the good folks at Microsoft about technology and business.