South Buh-Bye

Dancing with Anne Marsen from Girl Walk // All Day after the SXSW Premiere

So long South By!  Another great festival has come & gone and, for me, it was bookended with some really great film events: First, the opening night premiere & dance party for GirlTalk's Girl Walk // All Day. Then I wrapped up the fest with perhaps a SXSW world record: 15 hours in 1 day at the Alamo Drafthouse (South Lamar) watching movies! Lemme know if you got that beat!

In between losing myself in films, were the invaluable panels.  A major sentiment I noted this year across various panels was the idea that for digital/social media campaigns to be successful they must be fully integrated into a business & marketing plan, rather than existing in its own digital silo. This approach was encouraged from both large & small media companies: "Digital media should be a company wide effort, not just the effort of 1 or 2 people" was the advice from Bravo's panel, Top Chef: How Transmedia is Changing TV. And reps from small media start-ups concurred, "Content creators need to be marketers & marketers need to be content creators. There is a behavioral shift & this is perhaps what slows down change." (Screw the Big Screen, We Have the Web!) 

This latter comment on what slows down the embrace of change was discussed further by this panel as a cultural issue: "Technological problems are a reflection of the culture." This sentiment was echoed by another panel I attended, Meaningful Use & Beyond: Health Software, Etc.  Presenter, Fred Trotter, claims that issues in the relationship between IT and healthcare are not technical - that the appropriate technology already exists - but rather that changes are slow because of political reasons.  Now political isn't just a Democrat vs. Republican thing - but rather, perhaps more significantly, its the smaller scale politics and bureaucracy which exist in the everyday workplace. During my 15 hour movie binge at the Alamo I grabbed a quick lunch with a friend who told me about his thoughts and efforts at his job to implement social media to already existing platforms.  His ideas are all solid & there are case studies to back up why they would add value to his organization... the only thing that remains is navigating the layers of bureaucracy & creating buy-in from others across his organization.
  
Articulating my friend's challenges, Marc Schiller lamented that, "digital typically gets siloed... & its essentially at the kid's table", (Empowering Filmmakers, Marketing/Distribution Keys). "Digital is not its own thing [however], rather its about the amplification of content". As an MBA student, who has spent more hours than she cares to remember on statistics, I agree with Schiller's assertion that analytics are critical to sharply defining your plan, measuring success & identifying weaknesses. Bottom line from Schiller, "More data allows for more insight into the most profitable revenue streams".  

My big take-away from this year's SXSW is "Integration = Success". While technology is moving rapidly, what slows down progress more than anything is perhaps culture & entrenched ways of doing things. As we approach graduation & I spend more and more time consulting and applying what I've been learning in the dMBA program, I'm finding myself navigating people and organizations who are sometimes shell-shocked by new media. In working with many of them I find myself labeled "the digital person". But as these panels have reminded me, & as the dMBA program has trained me - the value in digital technology is not in digital itself, but in its seamless integration across an organization or venture.

Most of the above panel links will take you to recordings of the discussions... or for something completely different (& fun!), check-out "Sh*t Panelist Say" from Flow Nonfiction below.

Teamwork

As we approach the end of the first quarter, work on final projects is in full swing. For both Information Systems (IS) and Managing the Organization this means collaborating with a team of 3 others to conduct research, write and give a presentation.

For the IS project I volunteered to put together the Power Point presentation. As our team continues to collaborate to fine tune it I am reminded of how critical effective communication is - particularly late at night when we aren't face to face. That can be tricky, but because we've built a solid team foundation its actually going quite smoothly.

As the one putting together the presentation, I find I'm utilizing skills associated with media production. Specifically, like video editing, I'm taking the various pieces from my colleagues and synthesizing them into one coherent and compelling whole. I'm having fun now - but I'm really looking forward to putting these enhanced skills to use on a production!

Course in Human Relations & Organizational Behavior Re-Framing My Thoughts on Storytelling

I’ve been on Winter Break for a few weeks now – it’s been glorious to sleep in, relax w/ family & friends and most of all, NO DEADLINES to worry about!

So steeped in relaxation since my last final (Accounting – aggggghhhh!), that it came as something of a surprise when, over happy hour with a girlfriend recently, I found myself with “business-school speak” quite naturally dripping off my tongue. My friend, Stephanie, recently started a new job where she manages the Programs department for a national non-profit. It had been a while since I had seen Steph (since just before the semester started to be exact – no surprise there), and, given my natural curiosity about people, I gave into my usual habit and ended up “interviewing” her about her new position.

A part of Steph’s role requires her to manage volunteers once they’ve been recruited and trained. One challenge for her is retention, and as I continued to interview her I learned that most of the turnover seems to be tied to volunteers who come in with unrealistic expectations.

As a media producer, my first thought was, of course, “Let’s make a training video to address this issue!” So we brainstormed on ways to frame a video that would help manage the expectation of a potential volunteer. But then our conversation went even deeper – and for this I give credit to the Human Relations & Organizational Behavior (HR/OB) class I took this past semester.

First, thinking from the Organizational Behavior perspective, I asked her questions that allowed us to identify a breakdown in communication between her department (Programs) and Marketing (who is responsible for recruiting volunteers). Then, by looking at the issue from an Human Resources perspective, I suggested that the video, through the means of telling a compelling story, needs to address the HR topics of on-boarding, organizational culture & cultural fit and training & development.

Suddenly I stopped myself – poor thing – it was a Saturday night and in my excitement, there I was grilling her about work. But she told me to fugggedaboutit – turns out she was super excited to think about these daily work issues from a fresh perspective.

Who knows what will happen with this idea (perhaps it could be my capstone project in my final semester), but regardless, Steph was very excited with how I was able to break down the issues and supply practical business solutions to an ongoing issue. And I am SUPER excited, that after just one HR/OB class (more to come in the Spring), that I was able to enrich my story-telling capabilities and include these additional facets of traditional business principles.