The Geek Whisperers

Welcome back to another episode of the Geek Whisperers! While we were live at VMworld 2015, we jumped on the vBrownBag stage and discussing localized community with the vBrisket guys. You may recognize their handy work around the Pittsburgh area and for throwing a great event at VMworld 2015. They also have…Read All Show NotesLocalized Community on vBrownBag with vBrisket at VMworld 2015: Ep 95

Tyler Hannan, Director of Technical Marketing at Basho, digests what in the world a Technical Marketing Engineer (TME) does. His journey goes from database administration to technical orator and he has a great view of the many parts of the Enterprise IT world. I  (Matt) have the pleasure of working with…Read All Show NotesWe Need to Speak Differently – Technical Marketing with Tyler Hannan Ep 94

This week we talk with the mind behind #CloudMinds: Amy Hermes, program director of this IBM program. #CloudMinds is a program that brings together cloud thought leaders, both online and offline, to do that smart thing when smart people talk to each other. In this episode, we talk about What…Read All Show NotesBringing people together is Not Marketing with Amy Hermes – Ep 93

Your Geek Whisperers podcast with podcasters who like to whisper about careers. Mr. Greg Knieriemen is our first thrice guest and walks us through the career path memory lane as we think about Technical Evangelism, moving roles, living in Cleveland and speaking in tech. Amy and Greg are together at Cisco Live…Read All Show NotesTechnology Evangelist as Utility Infielder with Greg Knieriemen – Ep 92

This week we had channels and platforms on the mind. No guests, just the three Geek Whisperers talking social media channels and platforms. Are private channels replacing public ones? Do podcasts replace blogs? Does Slack replace Twitter? Listen on. Are private channels replacing public ones? Sometimes, you can’t say what…Read All Show NotesNew and Old Communication Platforms in 2015 – Ep 91

Your faithful Whisperers join you for a deeper dive into our organizational design, reviewing both how it lives today and what it could look like in the future. The first most quotable moment came from John when he said: Other key thoughts that came up: Where should Social Media sit in the org - one place or many? We all run on an evolved hub & spoke design, with differing opinions Trust relationships are our world of social engagement Customer Service is a common thread of social media's evolution John schools us on "Quotidian Marketing"   The second most quotable moment came from John when he said: "The more open you can be, the more powerful social can be as a buying tool."   Lastly, we learned that my (Matt's) Siamese cat is not a respectful guest... and you'll hear her boisterous opinion here and there. Here's a great picture of the beast.  

This week the podcast is all about podcasting as we have The Cloudcast's Brian Gracely and Aaron Delp join the Geek Whisperers to tell us how, after 90-odd episodes covering cloud and everything-as-a-service, they've created a well-oiled podcast production machine. Along they way, they've gotten recognized at conferences, had a fan club that lasted at least three weeks, and made zero dollars. And they're happy with that. Ironically, although "don't edit the audio" was one of the top tips from Aaron and Brian, we chattered on way too long this week and this was one of our most highly-edited episodes yet.  We cut it down to 47 minutes, but we hope you stick through it all! A few podcasts we mentioned in this episode: The Cloudcast (and the Cloudcast.net YouTube channel) Speaking in Tech VMware Community Roundtable (show notes) vChat Digital Nibbles and Intel Chip Chat TWiT 5by5 Great documents from the Cloudcast team that add insight into their process. Recording-Editing-Publishing-Publicizing-TheCloudcast The Cloudcast workflow and how the guys can get a podcast published in 30 minutes after hitting the "stop recording" button. TheCloudcast-Show-Notes-Example A great example of how a loose script and a few topic areas lead a smooth show. And finally Aaron's Social Media Hierarchy. I'm not sure if this is a hierarchy of effort, reward, or the number of people doing it, but I think I agree at least with the effort part: See you next week!

Our intrepid Geek Whisperers are back in action this week sharing stories of "Things I'll Never Do Again." What projects have been so unexpectedly challenging that our social media practitioners have sworn them off, like that one time as a 10-year-old I ate so much caramel corn that I couldn't eat it for years? Tune in this week to find out! Note: this podcast was recorded in April, before this year's EMC World and Cisco Live events. Informal postmortem debriefs indicate that both Matt & Amy successfully navigated the dangerous shoals of over-scheduling and over-programming their respective events. What will you never do again? At the end of the podcast, we ask what kinds of things you would never do again. Share them with the hashtag #iwillnever and join us for a round of head-shaking and temple-rubbing as we talk about past failures and future plans. Blog: geek-whisperers.com Twitter: @geek_whisperers Facebook: GeekWhisperers Google+: The Geek Whisperers Community IT people do not bite, although sometimes they get cranky. Keep Whispering!  

This week is a rare behind-the-scenes conversation of three big names in the brand advocacy / social influencer space: Citrix Technology Professional, VMware vExpert and EMC Elect. Our guest, Perrine Crampton, joins your regular Whisperers on a journey behind the scenes. A Disclaimer: This week the team is talking about their jobs. This perspective is from our own experience, but is certainly in relation to our employment and shows preference to those employers. Some of the topics we tackle are: Organic vs forced amplification Clear objectives for membership Where these programs fit into org charts   Here's a little about each program: Citrix CTP High touch (under 50 members) No employees or customers, invite only Long-time users (20-30) VMware vExpert Higher scale (around 600 members) Includes customers, partners and internal Four key elements: Award program Messaging army Enablement program Feedback mechanism   EMC Elect Medium touch program in its first year (75 members) Customer, Partner, internal Centered on launch and event amplification internally, reward and recognition externally   What's the one conclusion we all agree upon? It's not the vendor influencing the Influencer, but the Influencer influencing the vendor to be better.   WHISPER BACK: What are your thoughts on influencer programs as a practitioner or as a member?

Your hosts of John, Amy and Matt come together for the first time in person since the podcast began! While live from EMC World 2013, we dig into a few hot topics: What's it take to be a Geek Whisperer To mandate or not to mandate social media usage Activity at events Hashtag strategies   Some of the topics that arose include the EMC World experience, in particular the EMC Elect space where we recorded.  Here's a great shot of it:   Now to the most important part of the story: if anyone can convince Amy that they started a "viral hashtag" for work, she'll buy you 3 months of the bacon club.  

While we're all social media users, no one quite uses it like this week's guest. Rakesh Bharania has the unique need to use social in kevlar as part of the Cisco Tactical Operations  [TacOps] team. He walks the usual team of Geek Whisperers through what it's like to be in real-world disasters and the power of social used wisely. Points we hit: Silence in crisis isn't an option  Focusing on extremes can teach us about our day-to-day Create protocols before you need them We are the mall cops of social media The TacOp team's Social Media Engagement Protocol Here are some shots of Amy's experience with Rakesh and the TacOps team: We make mention of the Vatican project that EMC has done, which you can watch here.  We also love the XKCD comic that shows how social media conversation ripples faster than earthquakes.   As Rakesh put it: "Any one person on Twitter saying 'OMG Quake;' that's not really information. But if 5,000 people in Los Angeles within a few seconds say 'OMG Quake;' that's a signal - that's a tripwire for us."   As a slight addition, we had to ask more about Rakesh's journey into this space, which you can listen to as a bonus here. Geek Whisperers - Episode 9 - Continued

This week our intrepid Geek Whisperers tackled their favorite floating dinner party, professional community, and time sink -- Twitter. Our special guest was Sunshine Mugrabi, @sunshinemug,  a social media consultant and recovering journalist and PR person. More specifically, we wanted to answer the question we get asked a lot: How Do You Get Started On Twitter?  Listen to the podcast to get the full story: tl;dr Twitter is like a dinner party, so use your polite conversation-entering skills. Twitter is also like being on stage. It's normal to be nervous and feel like you're being judged if people don't laugh at your jokes or retweet your links. Sometimes having a work mission (i.e., something in common to talk about) makes it more comfortable. Techniques like mirroring you often do naturally; but even if you do it consciously, you'll put yourself more at ease along with the person you're talking with. Figure out why you want to be on Twitter. That reason shouldn't include number of followers, because That Way Lies Madness. You have to be willing to give more than get back. You have to stick with it. Links How to become famous for $68 without ever existing - Quartz Dale Carnegie Quotes - He was the original social media guru, and I mean that in a good way And finally, @CommsNinja in leg warmers: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-09PJQ14qmM

Your regular Geek Whisperers crew dive back into the depths between corporate and personal brands.   We work at answering some hard hitting questions: Which is more important? Where should you put your energy? What's the risk of someone with a big personal brand? Bonus Question: Is John Troyer unemployable? We make quite a bit of reference to our talk with Chuck Hollis where we began this debate, so give that post another look for the larger context.

We tackle Google+ this week on the Geek Whisperers podcast. So far for many people Google+ seems a lot like sex in high school. You hear stories about other people doing it, but you have a dearth of personal experience. And I'm not sure if this is like sex in high school or not, but it also both seems a little boring and filled with funny gifs. To hear directly from the Fonzie of the Google+ diner, we invited Mark Traphagen on the show. Mark is a Google+ early adopter and works as the Director of Digital Outreach at Virante, an agency in North Carolina. He reportedly also gave Amy some of his bacon once, which makes him one of the good guys. We start out by talking Google+ and SEO, but it turns out that Google+ is actually full of overlapping communities of people, just like Twitter and Facebook, and if you find the right tribe, you can really settle down comfortably around their camp fire. A few of the links we talked about: Mark Traphagen on Google+ Social Media Marketing Is Not a Big Money Maker Build Your Authority, Not Your Author Rank by AJ Kohn The Geek Whisperers community on Google+ - Join us over in our community! If you're already a Google+ pro, come over and introduce us to your friends. [John would like to point out that his "atomic balls" quote comes from this 2005 Boing Boing article: Open Source Yoga advocates fight "Atom Bomb Balls" Bikram. Upon review, he did misquote Bikram Choudhury, founder of Bikram Yoga, and in fact finds the original text a bit more combative than his actual intent. The actual quote is "Because I have balls like atom bombs, two of them, 100 megatons each. Nobody f***s with me." John was not referring to the nature of his own balls, atomic or otherwise. Instead, he was metaphorically asserting that content from a big brand like VMware usually is displayed prominently in Google searches.] As a final word, we'd like to report that some time after this podcast was recorded, one of the Geek Whisperers was heard to say, "I'm using Google+ and I'm not hating it."

This week we tried to talk about metrics but ended up talking about listening programs as well, which are indeed related but not the same thing at all. Since the Geek Whisperers gang is focused more on fostering human interaction than counting points, we brought in the smart and capable Kari D'Elia (@karidelia) to walk us through when and what to measure, and how to connect your business objectives with what you're measuring. Best quote of the night goes as usual to Amy when asked "Do you have a favorite metric?" "I do. I really like to, number 1, ignore metrics as much as possible." Despite our bad attitude, we share with you some of our experiences with metrics, what and when to measure, and when to call it a day on a project. We don't really go into the tools we use because, well, we don't appear to be that kind of useful podcast, but among others we use: bit.ly, Sysomos, The Marketing Cloud Formerly Known as Radian 6, TweetReach, and Topsy.