Corban & Blair - Blog

Recommended

This book was recommended to me by my friend Jill Ruchel. http://www.praxisfundraising.com.au/

So, what is the Stranger’s Long Neck?
If you manage or design a website or intranet, knowing the needs of your customers (employees) is essential for success. But every customer is a stranger to you – you don’t know them and you can’t see them – so how can you understand what they need? The Stranger’s Long Neck will help you to realise that your customers are intelligent strangers and that when they come to your website they have a small set (long neck) of top tasks they want to complete quickly and easily. This book gives you the methods for identifying and professionally managing these tasks. It helps you to understand and empathize with your customers, and to deliver what they want.

Packed with practical information and essential advice on web site management, including case studies from Microsoft, Tetra Pak and the NHS, the Stranger’s Long Neck will help you to maximize your organization’s performance online.

Gerry McGovern has been involved in managing websites since 1994. He is the author of several influential books, including Killer Web Content (A & C Black, 2006). He is a sought-after speaker at international conferences on Web management and has worked with many leading organizations, such as Microsoft, Cisco, and Tetra Pak.

Buy The Stranger’s Long Neck
Read the first chapter for free
Read the reviews

“Gerry’s customer-centric approach to website development has helped us re-shape and dramatically improve Cisco’s Partner Central by focusing on and addressing the needs of our global partner community.”
Luanne Tierney, Vice President, Worldwide Partner Marketing, Cisco

2011 A new year to find support and fresh ways to learn & grow.

“Mentoring has become one of the popular management tools of the decade.

While it has always existed informally in communities and organisations it has now achieved the formal status of professional development. It seems that everyone needs a mentor.

A mentoring relationship is one where a wiser and more experienced person assists another person to grow and learn.

The ideal mentor is a person who can be thought of as a tribal elder or trusted adviser. They can be particularly valuable in times of transition and can assist mentees to manage a new role or promotion, negotiate maternity/ paternity leave or new working arrangements.

A mentor can be the person who explains the software of senior corporate life to those aspiring to be a part of it.

In the modern workplace where change is a given and diversity an ideal, there is a need for people to have more one-on-one support.

Mentoring is a cost effective way of addressing these issues. “ McCarthy Mentoring.

Since 1998 McCarthy Mentoring has been providing independent mentors to people in leading companies across the Australian business, government and not-for-profit communities. Clients include major public corporations, not-for-profits; statutory authorities and individuals.

McCarthy Mentoring programs create formal one2one relationships between mentors and mentees. These are designed to enhance the mentees skills, knowledge and confidence, to clarify professional and personal goals, and expand professional networks. Mentors provide support and advice to mentees enabling them to develop strategies and apply their learning to the workplace.

For more information see the McCarthy website or the recent article in Vogue.

http://www.mccarthymentoring.com/profile.htm

vogue Australia Jan 2011

How do we learn these days? This is how our book club does it . . . it is hard to define what is learning and what is entertainment . One thing is certain it feels good, is stimulating and USEFUL.

From Jill Ruchel when she got back home to Melbourne.

“We had a great book club last night.

We discussed ‘The World Cafe’. Some of us hadn’t read it at all, none of us had read all of it, most of us had read parts or skimmed it. The interesting thing was the fundamental idea – how you can create conversations that involve and inspire many people using a cafe style model; sitting around small cafe tables, butchers paper at the ready, ready to listen effectively, take responsibility for the conversation, participate and contribute. For me the most useful chapter was that on questions and how to form questions that will open rather than close conversations (much more than just a simple ‘open questions’ model).

Gillian recounted using some of the methods at her work – asking each of her staff to come prepared with a 3-4 minute presentation on a specific area of social media. The result was extraordinary – people were inspired and energised. It changed the whole atmosphere of the place.

As usual the food was good and the company better. We evolved into looking at some of the online initiatives we have been taking, like Kate’s new Facebook page, Kate’s website in progress, (stemgifts.com.au) Gillian’s website, and Susie’s new website (yes Susie’s – we insisted that it was ready to launch and she didn’t have to wait any longer). That’s an achievement in a year! I was pleased to show a new website I am working on for a client, with a groovy little character who walks across the scene. Fun!

Susie and I had a great conversation about the information products she could create from her business, and Gillian and Kate pored over Kate’s new Facebook page, sharing tips and demonstrating new features.

We realised that there was much to be gained out of sharing what each other has learned. I can’t remember whether we finally decided on doing the book ‘Drive’ by Daniel Pink, or having our next session showing each other all our new online skills and achievements. 
A truly great evening. Hope you all can make the next one. Thanks again for the delicious dinner and the lovely venue’

* Frances was not there but this is her contribution “Just to add to the mix… here is an article on home pages – why they are not as important as we think they are”

http://www.cmswire.com/cms/web-engagement/web-design-the-decline-of-the-homepage-007269.php?awt_l=IYwNF&awt_m=1fFzFxJmB4n0sm

* Bobbi who could not attend either as she is putting the finishing touches to her new website. I have seen it – and it is fabulous.

www.mahlabmedia.com.au

Having intelligent inspiring friends is just great. Anyone else have friends like mine?

Has anyone further feedback, ideas or other places to learn and be inspired?

The Connectnow Conference held in Sydney 7-9th April was great. Paulette & I went from Corban & Blair. We found it informative thought provoking with broad implications across all the social media platforms we use and interact with.

Exceptionally interesting were Darren Rowse@problogger (Australian) and Gary Vaynerchuk@garyvee (American). They stood out (others we good also) for their ideas, tenacity, passion and generosity. Both are worth having a look at.

We took away things like- know what your purpose and goals are, LISTEN and know what is happening out there, learn from the success of others, be useful, build a community- extend your community onto further platforms, be personal, tell stories, be unique, leverage what you have, craft your content, be transparent, be consistent and prolific -just get out there learn, adapt and improve as you develop and achieve your goals. Authenticity matters if you want a “real” community, as does transparency and the equity you can build into your brand.

This was just a snippet of the conference offerings.

If you have suggestions of other conferences, blogs, books, people we should look into let us know. Like most other successful creative businesses we are learning and making it up as we go.

Any wisdom you have to share would great. Just put it in the comment box and we will respond

See Connectnow.net.au for information on the other speakers.