Mar 24th, 2009 |
What is Ada Lovelace Day? It is an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology, named in honor of one of the first computer programmers. A few months ago, Web 2.0 Expo Europe speaker, social software consultant, and inspiration in her own right Suw Charman-Anderson published the following on PledgeBank.com:
“I will publish a blog post on Tuesday 24th March about a woman in technology whom I admire but only if1,000 other people will do the same.”
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In participation and appreciation to all the wonderful ladies in technology, here is my interview with @redsoda aka Henriette Weber who lives mostly in Copenhagen but can be found always online. We met at the Reboot10 Conference in Copenhagen where we had a really interesting conversation on Web 2.0, community, social media, and the shifting landscape of new media we live in today. I found Henriette to be a really interesting community person and I’ve been trying to collect their insights for this blog … I’m happy to have a chance to share some of her thoughts and projects with you today.
When people ask you at an event, “What do you do?” – how do you typically respond?
It depends on the situation I’m in and who’s around. When people ask me what I do, I normally say that I “help companies use their online presence as a marketing tool”. But it’s so much more me to say that I help companies not to look like asses online.
Why are you interested in Web 2.0?
I have been interested in Web 2.0 for quite a while now. I love to see things transform, and being in IT suddenly got a lot more exciting. In all of my employments I have only worked with large IT companies (started out at apple computers as 19 years old) and startups. Web 2.0 made the web creative and fun. I think the internet these days is the most creative place in the world, and I love every minute of it =)
What do you think Web 2.0 means?
Well I can tell you what web 2.0 means to me. It means that people get closer together. No matter what relation you want to enhance, web 2.0 can help you build it. No matter what project you want to undertake, web 2.0 is the wind under your wings. Also I think that Web 2.0 is misunderstood in some ways. Basically some companies and consultants are sure that if they put stuff on the internet it will spread on it’s own. It does happen, but not a lot. You need really excellent content to have it spread like wildfire on it’s own. So it becomes a strategic question. I have recently written an ebook about “why every company should be a rockband” – which helps you deal with the internal things in a company that basically makes the company ready for web 2.0 – I call it rockbandism – it’s pretty cool.
What projects are you working on these days?
These days I am doing a lot of speaking at conferences and I am getting back into consulting and strategizing the web. The last half year I have been working on getting a book together called “return on involvement – how companies can use the internet to create business unusual” – it’s still not done yet – but almost there. When I went through the final rewrite I had evolved a bit so I had two more chapters to give. They are going to a part of the book – so hang in there, I’m almost done.
Why did you start rockbandism?
I started the whole rockbandism thing because it makes sense to me. Coming from a girl like me, it doesn’t really say anything new, that you haven’t heard before, but it gives people a tool to manage how to make your company better, authentic, trustworthy and remarkable. I mean, all the young dudes like Seth Godin and Hugh Macleod have been covering this for ages. But people get giggly when you ask them what rockband they see their company as – and what rockband they really want their company to be. It makes sense when you highlight examples of companies doing really good and reaching out and touch faith (or the internet or whatever). So rockbandism is something that companies should implement, especially because if they don’t, I think they won’t be around for much longing. we have a huge global crisis these days that is both ecological, financial and about food, and I really think that this crisis will make us smarter. Our systems doesn’t scale. it’s time to think something new, better, because as consumers we have more choices. We don’t need to choose bad stuff anymore. For real, I think that these better alternatives are going to transform the world. In 5 years time you can’t drive a hummer down the street without being yelled at. We are realizing that we have a joined cause here – which is to save our asses (basically).
The great thing is that we have all the best tools in the world to do this, but as long as it is kept in the dark we don’t know about these tools. I think it’s extremely hard to be a lobbyist for something not worth fighting for anymore, because you can’t hide stuff. It needs to be open these days, otherwise we will find a better alternative. I read the other day that Exxon had made a thinktank and had conferences questioning the truth of climate change. I’m so over oil. Seriously sometimes I think that if the world ran out of oil, it would be a disaster, and it would chaos, but it would make us think differently and more creative, and humanity would come back brighter. I think we always will.
You need to check out rockbandism because the current organisational and leadership structure of the world hasn’t changed since the industrial revolution. This turned into a rant. I hope it was as good for you as it was for me.
