Charlene Li has the gift of understanding social technologies and developing insights about how people interact online. For SXSW Interactive 2010, she talked about “Open Leadership.” Her presentation started on how people have embraced a new culture of sharing and how the web has made this frictionless. While the new culture has changed our relationships, organizations continue to work in the same way that they have in the past. Charlene thinks that social is “hard” for companies because they are unwilling to give up control. Their inability or desire to have conversations is but one example of this. Still, “real relationships require you to give up control.”

Charline defined “Open Leaderhip” as “having confidence and humility to give up the need to be in control.” If companies are not really in control, then Charlene’s concept of “open leadership” makes sense. She continues by adding that while companies need to give up control, they need to “be in command.” Watch the series of videos below (I apologize that there are so many!) to learn more about the elements of openness, the engagement pyramid, a new customer lifetime value calculation, failure, and the competitive advantage that comes from being social plus open.

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In case you don’t have a computer, you’re older than 83, or you have been sleeping non-stop… here’s a video of Twitter’s CEO Evan Williams announcing “At anywhere” or @anywhere as part of his keynote at this year’s SXSW Interactive.

On the most recent “The Social Nerdia Show!” I had a conversation with  Angela Natividad and Bill Green, the podcasters behind AdVerve.

Angela’s Twitter profile tells us that she is “VP-Marketing, hypios. Ad scribe, Culture Buzz. Hostess, AdVerve. And yes, still the wholesale purveyor of The Sass™.” Bill Green blogs at MTLB (Make the Logo Bigger), a personal favorite, and  has worked with lots of great brands. You might also know them from their work with AdRants and their appearances on The BeanCast.

Listen to the entire conversation with A &B on the Flash player below. Please subscribe to us on iTunes, stream from mobiles on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming LIVE shows on blogtalkradio.

Angela and Bill told me that they started AdVerve because they wanted to take ad podcasting in a new direction, to a place where every topic is welcome. “Every topic is about advertising. Advertising surrounds everything, all of the nuances from our culture,” Angela told me. Bill added that they wanted to have a “conversational (podcast) and see where things go, the way ad agencies are, the way creatives actually talk about situations.”

While the show is quite open-ended, both of them emphasized the importance of honesty and respect. “We’re careful about what we talk about on the show. We’re honest but respectful of anything that is confidential,” Bill explained. He told me a story that reflects just how much some advertisers and marketers are still not sure what do do with bloggers and podcasters: “There was an incident on the BeanCast where one of the guests on the show was fired, even though he didn’t say anything incendiary.. It was just a very nervous employer.”

Angela and Bill met through AdRants, a blog and email newsletter that provides “marketing and advertising news with attitude,” published by Steve Hall. “I knew Angela had a style that could transform into a different form,” Bill explained. Today, AdVerve already has 15 shows and its first episode was downloaded over 2,400 times. Regarding the future of the show, Angela told me that they “do see an opportunity for AdVerve to expand.” (more…)

It’s CES time again, and this year, Samsung is going all out with several firsts, a lot of ICES Innovation awards (23 actually!), and a commitment to creating the future of home entertainment.
              
Home entertainment continues to get increasingly exciting with slimmer and cooler televisions and blu-ray players, but the basic experience of watching a movie from your couch hasn’t changed much in many years. Not to worry, in 2010, the 3D experience will make its way from theaters to your homes.

While the first 3D film premiered back in 1922, the technology that is used today is much more advanced and has finally made in-roads to work with the content Hollywood is producing. With widely distributed and popular 3D movies and a lot of curiosity around the idea of in-home 3D viewing, Samsung will deliver a complete 3D home entertainment solution to bring a truly immersive and memorable experience to consumers.

Samsung is not a stranger to 3D; it actually introduced 3D DLPs beginning in 2007 and 3D flat-panel Plasma HDTVs in 2008. At this CES, Samsung in partnership with DreamWorks Animation and Technicolor, announced that it will soon offer a complete out-of-box 3D experience including 3D HDTVs (not just LCD and Plasma, but also LED!), a 3D blu-ray player, and an exclusive promotion that includes a first-time feature-length, 3D Blu-ray version of DreamWorks Animation’s 2009 release, “Monsters vs. Aliens,” created and produced by Technicolor. So, just for a second, imagine watching “Monsters vs. Aliens” in 1080p, at home with your whole family, in 3D, on a very cool looking LED HDTV. And then just imagine all the great content that will come out in the coming year, and you get the picture. Home entertainment. Transformed. (more…)

I’ve been thinking about the idea of crowdsourcing a lot this year. Last month, I wrote about giffgaff’s unique approach of crowdsourcing not just marketing and R&D, but also customer service. And, for the 33rd and last “The Social Nerdia Show!“ of 2009, I spoke with Robbie Hearn, the Chief of Member Experience at giffgaff to learn more about how this MVNO from the UK operates. Prior to joining company, Robbie was Head of Retention at Be Broadband, a O2/Telefonica subsiduary where he first realized just how powerful it was for a company to have a very engaged community.

Listen to the entire conversation with Robbie on the Flash player below. You can also subscribe to us on iTunes, stream from mobiles on Stitcher, and listen to upcoming shows LIVE on blogtalkradio.

giffgaff officially launched on Nov 23rd. “The project as a whole started to take form 9 months ago,” Robbie told me. “It’s gone from nothing to full launch in that period of time, which is very quick for a mobile company.” At first glance one might assume that giffgaff is just a regular MVNO, but giffgaff is truly changing the way a mobile company interacts with its customers.

I asked Robbie to explain what makes giffgaff so unique. ”We see a need and a gap in the market for a new model. We’re what we call people-powered,” he said. “In essence, we’re trying to really leverage all the great new trends and technologies around crowds; we want to engage our members more than any other mobile network in the UK.” Unlike other companies that try to control everything related to their brand, giffgaff lets its ‘members’ interact with the company and with each other online, and allowing them to be part of the company’s “marketing, R&D, and customer service; recruiting members and especially helping answer questions.”

Crowdsourcing Customer Service

Thanks to Wikipedia and companies like Doritos and Starbucks, we’ve all come to know about various forms of crowdsourcing, especially when it comes to marketing and R&D. But crowdsourcing customer service? Now that’s a new idea.

“Crowdsourcing customer service is almost like a misnomer. You don’t need a huge crowd, just a small group that’s absolutely motivated by helping other people; they are the super users,” Robbie told me. ”We don’t have a call center,” he added. “You go online, you type in whatever question you have, and the integrated search identifies an answer based on information giffgaff has submitted as well as information provided by users on the forum.”  (more…)

Elli Grace is a fashion brand that was launched in February of 2009 by designer duo Sojung “Sue” Yang and Lamarr Nanton. Earlier this month, I spoke with Lamarr, who has 19 years of experience in apparel design and development with companies like Giorgio Armani and JC Penney, at the first Elli Grace retail location in Plano, TX.

See the three videos below to learn more about Elli Grace, Lamarr’s personal story, and some of the geeky stuff they’re doing to differentiate themselves in the fashion world (including blogging and tweeting):

Lamarr shows how to use a mobile device to charge customers from virtually anywhere that has a cell signal or Wi-Fi, after the jump..

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