Project managers can't escape the buzz about social media, but is it really something they need to worry about? The answer is a resounding yes, according to the session "Why Should You Care About Social Media" led at congress on Sunday morning by PMI's New Media Council.
There was a lot of great information (and thankfully, some creativity and humor) packed into this hour-and-a-half session so I'll just run down some of the highlights.
First of all, they previewed a lot of good collaboration tools that you and your team can start using now:
Skype: Free calls over the internet
Vidyo: High-speed video conferencing
Vyew: Collaboration and web conferencing
Wrike: A web-based project management software good for those looking to reduce administration
Yammer: Microblogging for your organization
(For more information on these and other collaboration tools, read "Tools for Teams" on PMI.org.)
Chalyce Nollsch, PM Bistro, provided some great words of caution when entering the world of social media:
• New media never sleeps.
• Without business value, new media is just more noise.
• Suddenly, everyone is an expert.
• Not everyone wants to participate.
And Dave Garrett reminded us, "None of it matters if you don't get the right people to listen."
All of the new media council members can be found on Twitter, so be sure to look them up if you have more questions about the use of social media for project managers.
There was a lot of great information (and thankfully, some creativity and humor) packed into this hour-and-a-half session so I'll just run down some of the highlights.
First of all, they previewed a lot of good collaboration tools that you and your team can start using now:
Skype: Free calls over the internet
Vidyo: High-speed video conferencing
Vyew: Collaboration and web conferencing
Wrike: A web-based project management software good for those looking to reduce administration
Yammer: Microblogging for your organization
(For more information on these and other collaboration tools, read "Tools for Teams" on PMI.org.)
Chalyce Nollsch, PM Bistro, provided some great words of caution when entering the world of social media:
• New media never sleeps.
• Without business value, new media is just more noise.
• Suddenly, everyone is an expert.
• Not everyone wants to participate.
And Dave Garrett reminded us, "None of it matters if you don't get the right people to listen."
All of the new media council members can be found on Twitter, so be sure to look them up if you have more questions about the use of social media for project managers.
Dave,
Thanks for including Wrike in your presentation!
Kelley,
Thank you for the round-up!
Regards,
Andrew
Glad to have some agreement on this, at last.
Sorry mate, I don't want to sound picky, however, there is a big difference between collaboration tools and social media tools. Collaboration tools (used correctly) are performance enablers. Social media, to a large degree, is a time waster that is yet to mature into productive application.