What is a Prezume? It's a presentation of yourself (resume) in a visual and interactive format using the popular zooming presentation editor Prezi.com.

A Prezume is not meant to replace your textual CV (Curriculum Vitae), but rather augment it when you are engaging potential clients or employers in social media. In fact, Prezi allows you to express yourself in a much richer form, adding photos, videos, animations and even QR codes. That's right, you never know how a recruiter might contact you.

To prove that you can combine all the above in a nice presentation, I created a Prezume of myself. Let me know what you think!

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Just few hours ago Google announced some new updates to Google Plus including Apps integration, What's Hot, a Creative photo Kit and ... G+ Ripples. 
Ripples is a cool visualization tool that shows how your posts have been shared.

But is there value in using Ripples in a business context? My answer is: YES!

With G+ integrated with Apps, it's easy to imagine how efficiencies can be accomplished within secure circles, and here is a plausible scenario: John is an internal technical trainer and he focuses on making sure that new readiness material is being disseminated to his audience (technical people). So he uses G+ to post some How-To videos and articles.
However, using Ripples he discovers that his content is being shared also among the sales field, that fall outside of his target audience. And he also finds out (thanks to Ripple) that one of the Services Dept. execs shared that content to her org too (another circle). Yet, another audience that wasn't specifically in his charter.

By visually exposing this kind of information, John is equipped with new knowledge and insights that his tutorials may actually be relevant to more than just the technical audience. This means that his colleague in charge of sales training can re-use some of this material, saving time and money to the company. And by quickly analyzing the comments, he gets some valuable feedback on how to improve his future tutorials.

How would you use Ripples and G+ for business?

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How can you capture the attention of your employees when you've an important message to deliver? If your plan is to go for depth vs. breadth, you might want to consider a Social Media massage. 

At Microsoft, we experimented a new way to inform employees while giving them an opportunity to relax. During lunch time, we setup a massage area in the company cafeteria. Employees enjoyed the free treat while they were listening to a 5 minute promo podcast produced to inform and relax. 

This campaign generated quite a bit of internal word of mouth and accomplished its goal while 'delivering happiness'. Would you like a Social Media massage too?

(Audio podcasts produced by the great folks at Bigg Studios).

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With the arrival of my new iPhone 4S this weekend, I felt compelled to offer my personal tribute to Steve Jobs in a creative way that he'd have probably appreciated it. 

Using my three household iPhones, I stitched together Steve's portrait using an MIT web app called Junkyard Jumbotron. Then I used Penultimate on my iPad 2 for the handwritten caption.

Thanks Steve for continuing inspiring my creativity.

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Smartphones are a joy for multimedia communicators, because they are able to capture and share important moments using not just static images but also motion pictures.

A recent research by Vid.ly shows that more than 60% of mobile video on the internet is being watched on Apple devices (see chart below).

As a happy owner of an iPhone 4, I decided to experiment the entire workflow of creating, editing, publishing a mobile video that was more sophisticated than just a simple point and shoot episode.
Given this is Halloween time, I visited a corn maze with my family and, with a little storytelling, I shot several different scenes. Then I used an app called Splice to edit them together.

It took me about an hour to assemble the final file, but I was pleasantly surprised by the robustness of Splice and its feature richness. Enjoy the video and let me know what you think.

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(I first contributed this article as a guest post to Simply-Communicate.com)

There is a lot to like about Google’s new social networking platform called Google Plus (or simply Google+). Given my keen interest in everything related to video, enterprise and social, I’m going to focus this article on what I believe is a great feature of Google+ called Hangouts.

Hangouts is group video application that allows up to 10 people to have a face-to-face virtual meeting. One of the key differences that sets it apart from its competition is that Google offers this service for free.

But how can businesses take advantage of Hangouts?

When Google first released its Plus platform in late June 2011, Hangouts looked mostly like another nice consumer tool. In fact, in a recent blog post titled “Is Google+ Hangouts ready for the social enterprise?”, I wrote that the new tool wasn’t sophisticated enough to be utilized in any compelling business scenario. Rather, organizations want to conduct remote presentations, do screen recordings of important virtual meetings, easily schedule events and share documents with coworkers.

Thanks to Google’s fast product cycles, after just three months from the launch of Google Plus, the company has announced a major update to Hangouts that addresses several of its original shortcomings.

Let’s analyze the new features from the perspective of business utilization.

Screen/desktop sharing
Initiating a Hangout is simple: go to your Google+ Stream and click on the orange button that says Start a Hangout. Then invite people or entire circles to join you and wait for somebody to show up.

Before the update, it was very difficult to conduct a normal webinar in Hangouts, especially if you wanted to present any sort of visuals with a decent chance to be readable by your remote participants. Now, if you have a PowerPoint, Prezi or just want to demo an application running in a separate window, you can do it by using the screen sharing feature.

In my experiments, I noticed a certain lag of the video feed as the service struggled to create the best resolution that could reproduce the presenter’s screen. But overall, I consider it a fairly good experience.

Jeris Miller, communications co-chair at TEDxRainier, has been successfully using Hangouts to engage with event speakers and prepare them for their final presentations.

“Google+ is G+nius,” Miller says. “I think many are lacking imagination in just how powerful this platform can be!”

Meanwhile, the staff at simply-communicate have also dabbled with Google Hangouts to conduct their weekly editorial meetings. If their experiences continue to go this well – namely the superior audio and video quality, the visually pleasing screen alignment of each of the participants, and the ability to simultaneously watch YouTube videos - I’m told simply’s Skype meetings will soon be a thing of the past.

Scalability of Hangouts has also been addressed in Google’s new update. While the limit of 10 active engaged participants still exists, Google has announced a feature called Hangouts On Air, which allows a meeting to be broadcasted live to those who were not able to secure any of the lucky 10 spots.

Document sharing/collaboration
The integration of Google Docs with Hangouts makes it easy for attendees to share documents, edit them simultaneously and sketch ideas while they are still running a video group chat.

“Sometimes it’s much more efficient to finalize your deliverables when you’re online with your coworkers,” explains Drew Keller, Principal at StoryGuide.Net and Business Video Storyteller. “It’s fascinating watching two people editing the same document in real time while they can also talk and see each other.”

Mobile Hangouts
Google+ comes to mobile phones in a form of an app (available for Android and iPhone only for now). Hangouts mobile support is limited to joining existing events, rather than initiating new ones from your device. Still, I find it very convenient to be able to have a video conversation with a group of people without touching my laptop.

Oscar Mager, a Social Recruiting specialist from The Netherlands, believes that Hangouts have a huge potential for recruiting.

“Hangouts are great for interviewing candidates, involving multiple team members in a virtual meeting and contacting potential candidates directly while in the Hangout, Mager explains. “Now the mobile app makes this process even easier.”

What’s next on our wish list?

There are a couple more desirable features that would further help Hangouts make inroads in business. The first one is a simplified way to schedule meetings and the second is the possibility to record a session. I can see both features eventually making their appearance as they can naturally integrate with Google Calendar and YouTube.

None of them are show stoppers, so rather than focus on what's still missing, it’s time to have fun and do some serious Hanging out while enjoying the creative opportunities that this social gem has to offer.

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This weekend I learned about a newly released iPad app called MadPad, which allows you to capture images and sounds from your everyday life and organize them into a fun video soundboard.

Inspired by a creative clip by YouTube celebrity MysteryGuitarMan, I decided to use the app to capture short soundbites from 12 social media thought leaders and remix them to see what would come out of it. What do you think?

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Much has been written already about Google’s new social platform called Google Plus, to the point that social media consultant Chris Brogan has already announced a book about using Google+ for Business. 

Given my passion for experimenting anything video and social media, I was curious to find out if the new video chat feature called Google+ Hangouts was a potential candidate for a corporate environment. So I partnered with Jeris Miller, Communications Co-Chair at TEDxRainier, to run a few experiments and push the tool beyond what it was originally conceived for.

There is a lot to like about Hangouts: it’s free, it allows up to 10 people to have a face-to-face virtual meeting including chat, and even watching a YouTube video together. But what about business users?

Some of the basic requirements for effective webinars are easy scheduling, presentation / desktop sharing and ability to record your session, all features that are currently missing in Hangouts. But let’s see if there are some workarounds:

Scheduling
Jeris has been using a site called http://gphangouts.com to schedule her TEDxRainier speaker communications with good success. This third party site allows the listing of your hangout in a public directory and offers some integration with Google Calendar. I personally find the process very manual and not particularly intuitive, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Presentation / Desktop sharing
While seeing your audience is a nice consumer feature, businesses prefer to have conversations over slides. In fact, popular video conference tools like GoToMeeting, WebEx and Live Meeting do a great job in offering a high quality picture of your presentation / demo. Because Hangouts doesn’t offer this opportunity, we looked for alternative ideas, including using an application called ManyCam to switch the video source from our webcam to the desktop or using a document camera to project handwritten notes from an iPad. 

Needless to say, none of these solutions are viable, mainly because the quality of the projected image is fairly poor. A much better way to share a presentation is to invite your viewers to watch your slide deck using the new PowerPoint 2010 Broadcast feature, or if you use Prezi, to leverage Prezi Meeting to control your show remotely. Either way, the experience is not integrated in Hangouts as the presentation sharing happens in a separate window. 

Recording a session
Hangouts happen in real time, but sometimes you want to save the conversation for on demand viewing. This feature is not supported yet, and you have to resort to separate screencasting software like Camtasia to record your session. Users not familiar with this kind of tool may find the process not particularly user friendly.

What’s our conclusion? In its first iteration, Google+ Hangouts is definitely a consumer play. It’s a fairly intuitive tool that is fun to use and will compete directly with Skype Group video calling, especially because of its unbeatable price (free).

As per its social enterprise ambitions, we’ll have to wait until Google addresses the above limitations and add a few more integration points, especially with their remarkable Google Docs suite and mobile devices.

Hangouts' future is very bright and I certainly look forward to further experiments with Enterprise Social Video.

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Rather than using a ‘traditional’ service like Google Maps, you decide to try an AR app like Layar (available for iPhone, Android and Symbian phones). With Layar, you just input the term ‘Italian restaurant’, then point your phone towards various directions and you’ll see floating labels on top of your actual street view with the distance and direction of the closest restaurants.

But, is there a spot for AR in employee communications? I think there is, thanks to an iPhone app called PixLive.

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Not long ago, Prezi.com featured my presentation on Enterprise Social Video on their homepage as an example of effective use of their tool to communicate a business message. Aside from the positive case study described in the presentation, I adopted a curious technique that the Prezi staff really liked, that is the blending of a strong final Call To Action with the presentation background.

In just a few weeks, my Prezi collected more than 160K views and a lot of requests to explain how I made the special font background effect. I decided to create a brief  screencast tutorial so you can try that yourself. Special thanks to Shel Holtz for connecting me with the Prezi team and enjoy this short video.

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At the Streaming Media East 2011 event held in NYC in May, I had the pleasure to moderate a panel about enterprise social video. I feel very passionate on this topic as it brings together Web 2.0 technologies, social media, mobile and video in a new way. Most importantly, employees adopting this new way to engage and communicate with each other can greatly benefit from both productivity and personal stand points.

Representatives from Microsoft, IBM, Wells Fargo and DotSub joined me on stage to discuss best practices and challenges in encouraging and leveraging employee generated social video content. Here is the video of the session and a link to the summary article.

P.S. On a related topic, this whitepaper on the ROI of creating a YouTube in the Enterprise

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In my opinion, public speaking is a unique experience in many ways. Every time I have to get in front of an audience, I'm going through a variety of emotions ranging from excitement for sharing my stories, nervousness about the outcome and anxiety for potential pitfalls. While I haven't mastered yet the magic formula to fully control my feelings, I've been observing what has been working well for me to manage the stress of public speaking.

• Preparation: This is the most effective step for me. I do rehearse my presentation both the night before and the morning of my speech. 
• Sleep: It's hard to give 100% of yourself on stage if you get up already tired. I learned this lesson the hard way.
• Being myself: I love people and I don't like formalities. When I address an audience, I just try to think of myself having an informal conversation with them

With social media and online video being such hot topics, I feel very fortunate to have been able to travel this first part of the year and share new ideas and experiences in a variety of venues. As I browse the photos from these events, I can only recall the good memories of the people I met and places I visited, and that's a great motivator to overcome the fear of my next speaking engagement. 

• Streaming Media East 2011, NYC (Moderating a panel on Enterprise Social Media)
• Microsoft Sweden and Belgium (Delivering an Online video storytelling workshop with master Drew Keller)
• Michigan State University, Lansing MI - Social Media Executive Summit 2011
• Ragan Social Media Content Summit 2011, Nasdaq Marketsite, NYC
• Writers UA conference 2011, Long Beach CA
• 2011 Social Media for PR and Corporate Communications, Las Vegas NV

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As a consultant, I find that my favorite projects are those that involve a good dose of creativity, people interaction and leading edge technologies. A stellar team in Microsoft called Services Broadcast Network (SBN) wanted to experiment a new way to engage with employees during lunch time to increase awareness about some of their internal services. 

We created a custom Microsoft Tag blended with the SBN logo and hired a vendor to print it on chocolate. Using the free Microsoft Tag reader installed on their smartphones, employees could scan the tag and watch a promo video about SBN.

What did we learn? The idea sparked a lot of curiosity and definitely had a positive novelty factor. On the flip side, not every user had the Tag reader installed on their phone, which prompted them to prioritize between downloading the app or just get their dessert and move on :-)

Here is a short video about the experiment shot on the fly in a Microsoft cafeteria.

And if you are a fan of the Microsoft Tag, you'll probably also like the following short clip.

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If you are interested in the topic of using online video to engage employees, Ragan's web site features an article about Microsoft's UGC (User Generated Content) initiative as well as a short video interview. Here are the links to both sources:

• Microsoft’s video-sharing site connects employees, boosts collaboration
• How to use video to engage employees

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How do you know that it's time to start working on your digital footprint?

The test is fairly easy: just Google your name! Are the search results telling a good story of who you really are? Are you satisfied by how your personal brand is represented by what search engines have been able to find about you?

I strongly believe that personal branding is something that everybody should care about. In economies that change so rapidly, having a strong online footprint may help a recruiter choose you over somebody else, get the attention of a potential investor, attract better talent if you plan to hire somebody for your business or simply, let a customer find you.

During my career at Microsoft, I've made an effort to always stay engaged with the external world even if my role was predominantly internal facing. And this strategy has paid off well when I decided to quit my employee job and become a consultant in the enterprise social video space.

Most recently, I created a framework to explain how to leverage Social Media to build a personal brand. I captured the process in a mind map and it turned out that several of my clients found it quite useful. Therefore, I thought to share it with the rest of the world. Please let know what you think.

Download the Social Media Framework for Personal Branding from Mindjet Maps for That! or from BiggerPlate Mind Map Library

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As more corporations finally embrace social media as a way to facilitate customer engagements, the notion of taking social media inside the firewall (also known as Enterprise 2.0) is getting more attention. Employees after all are consumers, and they may well benefit from tools that resemble the likes of Facebook, YouTube and Wikipedia to improve their productivity at work. 

The benefits of adopting Enterprise 2.0 are being realized every day by organizations that embrace this new work style, including reduced travel costs, improved access to shared expertise, faster time to market for products / services and higher employee satisfaction.

In my former role at Microsoft, I had the privilege and opportunity to launch and manage the company's internal "employee YouTube" (called Academy Mobile) and witness first hand the power of Enterprise 2.0 come to life. This initiative literally shaped the way many employees approached their jobs. But how?

The answer is in Daniel Pink's book Drive. Daniel's research explains how information workers need more than just a 'carrot and stick' approach to get motivated. High performance employees are seeking autonomy, mastery and purpose in their profession, what Daniel defines as Motivation 3.0.

Because Enterprise 2.0 paves the way for information workers to better share their expertise, increase their impact, enhance their reputation while ultimately contributing to the company bottomline, there is a direct correlation between Enterprise 2.0 and Motivation 3.0.

In my presentation I visually narrate the story of a Microsoft employee, Michael Gannotti, who exemplifies how he successfully leveraged the power of social media and online video to connect with customers, co-workers and shape his career pursuing Motivation 3.0.

What's your experience with Enterprise 2.0?

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I decided to create a mind map about Paolo 3.0 (that's what I called my next career phase) and articulated four key branches:

• Who am I (e.g. what I like doing, what I don't, my values, etc.)
• Pros / Cons of setting up my own business
• Pros / Cons of joining another corporation
• Wild ideas (e.g. taking a sabbatical to explore something completely new)

I'm really glad I went through this exercise: I can find excitement in all the available options and this is because the way I am. But one thing it's very clear to me: I'll keep working very hard to pursue opportunities that not only make me grow, but also make me feel good and I'm passionate about. And that's exactly what I'm doing right now.

If you wish, you can view and download my mind map on MindJet's Maps for That! or from BiggerPlate's mind map library.

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When in 2007 we launched Microsoft's internal video platform called Academy Mobile, little we knew about the ROI of setting up an organizational video portal that would host thousands of employee generated audio / video podcasts. Our focus was on adoption, internal evangelism and making sure that content would regularly flow on our platform to keep users engaged, happy and productive.

Three years later, Academy Mobile is an established reality at Microsoft, hosting more than 19K videos and 800+ new uploads per month. 

Given the high interest by other organizations in our journey of creating our "internal YouTube", Microsoft has written a detailed whitepaper about the ROI of such initiative. I'm not going to spoil the reading, but I'll just say that the conclusions are quite positive and if you are seriously interested in this topic, you should spend the time to study this document.

ROI of Building a Company-wide, Video Podcasting Portal Using Microsoft® SharePoint® 2010 
(PDF - 1MB)

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Last week I had the pleasure to deliver with my colleague Drew Keller a full day workshop titled 'Online Video done right'. The workshop was part of a larger event organized by Ragan Communications focused on Employee Communications, PR and Social Media.

Drew and I covered a wide array of topics, from shooting techniques to best practices about lighting, audio, storyboarding, publishing and social media. Our goal was to equip all participants with new, relevant and practical skills that could be immediately applied to their jobs. And based on the feedback we've received so far, we did accomplish our mission with success.

Is your company looking to train employees on effective ways to create and publish online video? If so, I'll be happy to exchange some ideas with you. In the meantime, feel free to check out the workshop description on page 2 of the program below.

Ragan Communications Social Media Summit 2010 Microsoft Program

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I'm excited about next week. I'm going to attend one of my favorite gatherings of the year, the Online Video Platform Summit 2010 (a featured event at Streaming Media West). If your organization is seriously looking into adopting online video in any capacity, this is the show for you.

I'll be moderating a panel about content production, aggregation and curation with four wonderful panelists and I'll have a chance to ask them any question, even some that may spark controversy.

If you were in the audience, what would you like to learn about these subjects?

Please feel free to suggest your questions as a comment below and I'll consider them for the panel. Thanks!

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