Lee Davies

A common theme for questions at recent conferences I have spoken at has been the dichotomy between personal and professional identities.  Is it best to keep the two separate or have we reached the point where the blurring of boundaries that takes place so readily within social networks makes this impractical or impossible?  If you read around the subject you will find that opinion is mixed.  For some the frequent need to share information between personal and professional spaces makes the maintenance of two distinct identities difficult or a hindrance.  For others their personal and professional lives are so far apart and so very different that never the two shall meet.

There is, of course, no right answer.  I believe it is also far more complicated than a simple dichotomy.  At best it is a trichotomy but in all probability is multichotomous: determined by the type and nature of the spaces I use and the way I view my professional self.  I’ll try and explain and for the purpose of simplicity I’ll stick to the trichotomous concept of online identity. (more…)

I wrote the following piece for the Chartered Institute of Plumbing and Heating Engineering.  It appeared on the discussion forum and attracted some considered responses, but plumbers (or certainly those who are members of CIPHE) are not renown for participation in online networks.  I thought I would repeat it here because I suspect a lot of the sentiments will resonate with other professional bodies and membership organisations.  Please feel free to comment here, tweet this post or continue the discussion on Facebook.

“We may see ourselves as unique and special, but CIPHE is not the only professional body representing a vocational occupation.

It is interesting to reflect back on the very reason professional bodies exist.  It certainly isn’t for the ‘benefits’ of membership that seem to be a priority for members now.  Professional bodies exist because professionals feel the need to be united through their shared sense of identity – this identity usually includes a shared set of beliefs or values in the profession itself (‘standards’ in the modern age), a desire for professional esteem or status (post-nominals, or ‘letters after my name’) and the opportunity to influence. (more…)

It is often overlooked, but the ‘icon’ can be the most powerful element of organisational participation in social media.  Think about it.  Most organisational logos are designed for the big, bad world of reality.  They leap out from posters, shop fronts, 52” television screens, etc.  But when we create that Facebook profile they are shrunk to a size approximately 5cm square.  Then there is the thumbnail, an image taken from the profile picture that is effectively the organisations online brand in every post or comment made.  Facebook automatically shrinks and crops profile pictures to create the thumbnail 1.25cm square.

Yup, that’s right.  Your online brand identity needs to be clearly defined in an area 1.25cm X 1.25cm (that’s just 50 pixels high and wide).

So the top tip for organisational engagement in social media is design a logo specifically for use with sites such as Facebook, You Tube, Twitter, etc that works when viewed in the micro world of tweets, status updates and comments.

Sticking with Facebook, the optimum profile picture size is 5cm X 5cm (200 pixels high and wide).  Facebook specifications recommend that profile pictures should be 5cm (200px) wide, while height can vary as needed.  What is less documented is how the thumbnail that Facebook uses across the system is generated from this picture.  Facebook automatically crops profile pictures when generating a thumbnail, losing all of the information around the edge.  There are no hard and fast rules for what works well.  I have played around with a number of test images and recommend a border or image free area on corporate profile pictures of 0.375cm (15px).  In other words, when you create a corporate or organisational image for use as a profile picture, make it 170px square centred within a 200px square canvass.  Oh, and don’t forget Facebook rounds the corners of thumbnail images.

For example:

(you can see this in action here)

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Congratulations to the brilliant team at Pebble Learning for picking up the 2010 IMS Global Learning Impact Award … not just any award, Pebble only went and made Platinum.  Couldn’t happen to a nicer bunch or, indeed, a better personal learning space.

Want to see Pebble’s winning submission … it’s here.

Want to find out more about the IMS awards … look here.

With Sue Crowley and Sue Colquhoun discussing how professional bodies  need to engage with their members and how technology can enable this to happen.

Podcast here

Last week I gave a presentation to the Memnet conference about the way membership and professional bodies need to embrace the opportunities presented by social networking sites and web 2.0 technologies if they are to retain one of the key benefits of membership: professional networking.

Between drafting the presentation and delivering it (a couple of weeks) I took my eye off the ball, or should I say balls.  Actually, keeping abreast of the position of the social media balls is alike watching an exhibition snooker match between Ronnie O’Sullivan and Alex Higgins: blink and you will miss a few.

What has happened?  What seismic event the size of a large Icelandic ash cloud has rocked the world of online networking?  Ning have only gone and declared that they will move to a subscription only model for providing its communities.  Not for individual users, but for those who use the Ning environment to create communities, its ‘Network Creators’.  That’s you and me, if we use or were planning to use Ning within our membership social media strategy.

And that’s just not fair, is it?  I mean, the whole point of social media is that it is free to the user, isn’t it? (more…)

Memnet Conference – 28th  April 2010

This is an abridged summary of a presentation I gave to the annual Memnet conference at the Liberal Club in London on the 28th April 2010.  Abridged in that I tend to make things up as I go along, so this is my best recollection of what I said.  The focus of the presentation was the potential for membership and professional bodies to harness social media and web 2.0 technologies to add value to the membership experience.  The underlying message was the opportunity offered by social media and, if not embraced, the counter threat it presents in terms of the reasons why people join membership bodies.

Download the presentation from SlideShare

Hello

My name is Lee Davies.  I’m not going to introduce myself any further than that, for reasons which will become apparent as we go along, but I will introduce my colleague James Geldart.  James and I have worked together on a number of technology-based projects within the world of ‘membership’ and he is here today to interrupt me when I get things wrong and answer all the techie questions you are bound to have, questions that will fall well outside of my expertise. (more…)