CXOTalk series by Vala Afshar and Michael Krigsman

The world of IT and Marketing is evolving faster than any other stream within our businesses. In the new social economy, we have to not only be up to date on the latest and the greatest but also strategically decide when, what and how to implement some of these changes to stay relevant in the marketplace.

Luckily, there is a weekly web show that is hosted by CMO of Enterasys, Vala Afshar and CEO of consulting and research firm Asuret, Michael Krigsman every Friday at 4pm EST on Google+ Hangouts. Vala and Michael host these sessions with high profile C-suite leaders to discuss the challenges faced by all of us in IT and Marketing in 2013.

I have been attending these sessions religiously for the past few weeks and I love the fact that these are authentic, real and non-scripted. Guests have included very high profile leaders such as Dion Hinchcliff, Kim Stevenson (CIO Intel), Ekaterina Waler, Guy Kawasaki and more.

This Friday, Vala and Michael will have Ben Haines, CIO at Pabst Brewing.

Click here to add to your calendar: https://plus.google.com/u/1/101981322245962603627/posts?hl=en. Do also make sure you follow and join the discussion on Twitter with #CXOTalk during the sessions.

Likes and Follows don’t mean a thing without action

As my good friend, Michael Brito, SVP Edelman, stated in an interaction yesterday, “So many people are open to “like”, “share” and “comment” for social issues and it makes sense. Things like this play on our emotions. But how many of us actually put our money where our mouths is and help change the world. Very few.”

UNICEF is currently running a brilliant Facebook campaign that focuses on the inaction that is often observed in the social media campaigns.

It delightfully pokes at the online media phenomenon, “Slacktivism”.

Slacktivism (sometimes slactivism or slackervism) is a portmanteau of the words slacker and activism. The word is usually considered a pejorative term that describes “feel-good” measures, in support of an issue or social cause, that have little or no practical effect other than to make the person doing it feel some amount of satisfaction. The acts tend to require minimal personal effort from the slacktivist. The underlying assumption being promoted by the term is that these low cost efforts substitute for more substantive actions rather than supplementing them. (Source: Wikipedia)

Malcom Gladwell, in his Oct 2010 New Yorker article, argued that it is not right to compare social media “revolutions” with actual activism that challenges the status quo ante. He argued that today’s social media campaigns can’t compare with activism that takes place on the ground.

You cannot not ‘like’ this one.