Is it for real or not?

Every time I discuss the interactive web with fellow communicators, one of the first questions on people’s mind is “how are we going to convince senior management of the importance of introducing social media”.

I had a great time last week talking to IABC Belgium about International Communications Strategy and the different case studies contained in the book.

My advice to Cheryl who asked me the famous question is to use the information and data available to make the business case for Web 2.0.

While in the West we are still desperately trying to measure the ROI of social media, China has been able to figure out a way to track online conversations and link them to purchase decisions.

According to CiC, the Chinese internet community supports the “most expansive and developed participation architecture in the world”.

The influence of user-generated content (blogs, discussions on bulletin boards, etc.) on the decisions of Chinese consumers has been estimated at 58% while it is less than 20% in the US. 

There are lessons to be learned for communicators.

For example, the same method could be used in internal communications to track employees’ interactions on online forums and assess their attitude towards different corporate initiatives.

I was watching the comedian Lee Evans over the weekend (I am a great fan and … we were born on the same day!).

He was saying how he always prepares tons of notes for his shows only to realise later that they don’t make sense.

I know how he feels…

No matter how often I give a presentation… the Germanic part of my upbringing  always forces me to spend hours at my desk rehearsing again and again…  

When I’ve had enough, I switch off and start thinking of my audience. I once heard that the secret of presenting is loving your audience.

I know it sounds corny…. But it works!

It’s not difficult to look forward to my audience this week.

On Thursday, I will be giving a presentation about International Communications Strategy for the Belgian chapter of IABC.

It was in Brussels that I joined IABC 12 years ago. I served on the local board for a long time. So I am really looking forward to seeing my former fellow board members Lyndon, Sam, Ilze and all the others.

I have started to discuss ICS’s main points on IABC Belgium’s Ning.

As usual, I was asked about the development of internet marketing in Asia. Part of my talk will be about the interactive web in China and how its communities are changing the relationship between people and brands.

You can read more about what Yang-May and I think of internet marketing at DMI online.

The strangest bit about writing a book is that you lose part of your soul…. It moves on and goes to live a separate life in the minds of your readers.

That’s how I felt on Wednesday night when Yang-May  and I launched International Communications Strategy at The University of Chicago Booth School of Business in the City of London.
Many years of work have gone into the book….. Many conversations in different parts of the world, many hours spent slipping into other people’s shoes trying to understand their ways of looking at the word and telling stories.  It was overwhelming to see it all coming together.

Yang-May and I were also overwhelmed by the number of friends and colleagues that attended our launch.
I would like to thank from the bottom of my heart Diane Morris (with us in the photo), the President of The International Alliance for Women, for all her support and for co-hosting the event. Many thanks also to Arnold Longboy and his team at Chicago Booth for hosting us at their superb venue. The event was catered by Café Spice Namaste. Many thanks to Cyrus, Pervin, Gina and their team for the wonderful food.

And of course thanks to Yang-May  for being who she is…. the best co-author in the world!

Mark Smith of Ipadio.com ran a live phoneblog of the launch. Click here  to listen to our presentation.

Photos: thanks to Nicola Stevens and Diane Morris

Deracinées. That’s what my co-author Yang-May and I were called in a recent review of our book.

The word has always intrigued me. But it was only recently, during a vacation in the mountains, that I was able to understand where my true roots lie.

It’s people that define them not geography.

On a gorgeous Saturday morning in August, I took a chairlift up the Dolomites to accompany my old friend Thomas and his friend Norbert on a mountain walk with a purpose.

For the past 20 years, Thomas and Norbert have been fighting greedy developers for the preservation of this unique section of the Alps. Recently, they used the internet to collect signatures from all over the world to prevent the construction of a sky resort in a particularly vulnerable part of these mountains.

Thomas and Norbert looked happy that morning. The Dolomites were about to be declared a United Nations World Heritage Site by UNESCO. The ceremony would take place in the Italian region of Friuli a week later.

While hiking up, I couldn’t stop observing Norbert. I remembered him vaguely from my days at Innsbruck University where the three of us studied. And I must admit, my recollection was more than vague due to what he calls “excessive partying”.

Norbert is a force of nature. His way of fighting for the environment feels strangely familiar. It is too similar to the nagging feeling I have had for years that if you believe in something, you have to stand up for it.

I guess this is the story of how I discovered one of my roots in someone I barely know and had not seen for years.

In case you were wondering…. Cross-cultural communication is to me what the Dolomites are to Norbert.

I will be thinking of him on Wednesday when Yang-May and I will present  International Communications Strategy in London.

I had my first Twinterview the other day.

Angelo Fernando of Hoi Polloi interviewed me and Yang-May on Twitter about the book.

What an interesting experience…. You feel suspended in cyberspace. You know there are people out there following you… but all you can see are your interviewer’s Tweets.

The fact that you have to limit your answers to 140 characters is a great discipline. It helps to organise your thoughts.

I have been converted…. I believe Twinterviews are great training for podcast and video interviews. Think of a 140-character answer first and then elaborate on that.

The toughest question, as ever, was about the reasons that lead me to write the book: “Was there a book inside your head?”

In order to answer that, you need to put your life in perspective.

Luckily, I am reading a book that has helped me to do just that.

If you began your career in journalism, you have to read Oracle Bones by Peter Hessler.

It’s a wonderful example of how journalism and writing helps you to understand complex realities and relate to people in cultures so different from your own.

It was a sentence in the book that brought it all home to me. Hessler describes his years in Beijing like a “floating life in a floating city”.

When I lived in Prague in the early 1990s, I often had the feeling of floating…. Oracle Bones made me realise that I wasn’t  lost… Prague was floating towards a new future and was taking me along. While doing this, it was also writing my future book in my head.

Never underestimate the power of floating…

My co-author Yang-May and I talked to podcasting guru Neville Hobson on Friday about the story behind our book.

I was asked how I came up with the original idea behind International Communications Strategy. To answer that, I had to dig quite deep into my memory.

It all happened when I was living in Prague 20 years ago. What they used to call the Golden City was such a great cultural centre before WWII thanks of the different ethnic groups represented there. The war and the madness that followed did away with all that.

I could never understand this terrible loss. When I left Prague in the mid 1990s, I embarked on a quest. I wanted to find a way that would help people from different cultural backgrounds to communicate and bond.

After that came my passion for understanding emerging economies and their communication models.

If you’d like to find out more about how Yang-May and I got to writ
e the book, you can listen to the podcast .

Thanks, Neville. And we hope we’ll get to meet your cat some day…

I’ve always believed that passions make people bond beyond cultural and ideological barriers.

The story I tell in our book  about my encounter with a Kazakh immigration officer only a few years after the end of the Cold War is an example.

Last weekend, I found another one.

I was reading an article  in The New York Times about the anniversary of Isaac Stern’s  trip to China.

The famous violinist toured the country in 1979 giving concerts. People travelled miles by train to see him perform. This happened at a crucial time. China was emerging from a long period of isolation from the rest of the world.

Stern  is credited not only with spreading the love for classical music but also with enabling cultural exchanges between the West and a country everybody had learned to fear.

You have to watch the video  about Stern teaching young Ho Hongying to play the violin. It contains one of the best lessons in cross-cultural communications I have ever come across.

Without knowing a word of Mandarin, Stern manages to tap into Hongying’s passion for music and, instantly, her performance improves.

What would be the equivalent of this in corporate communication?

My co-author Yang-May  and I look very happy in this picture.

Our book has been nominated for the Financial Times Goldman Sachs Awards!

I got the message the other week in San Francisco…first thing in the morning when I turned on my Blackberry. I was rushing …. I had to jump in the shower and almost forgot about it. But in the course of the day, the thought came back to my mind and began to sink in.

When Yang-May got the news, she remembered writing the book in her pyjamas early in the morning…

Awards and pyjamas are such a funny juxtaposition…

Yesterday, we gave a talk at the Institute of Directors together with Giles Colborne on Creating Value through Web 2.0 helped by panel chairman David Wootton.

Many of the questions we were asked dealt with the ROI of social media for small and medium-sized businesses. We used our blogs to provide examples for some of the answers.

I have been blogging on XCulture for over two years. It has been a fascinating journey. One that has taken me in many unexpected directions. The part I enjoyed most has been floating ideas for our book and observing the reactions of my readers.

Click here  to download our IOD presentation.

Yang-May and I have been working hard all week on the PR for our book which is coming out next month.

It’s already on the list of the Top Ten Social Media Books. We are thrilled!

And if you are a fan of one of us or both…. you can go to this site, scroll down to the bottom of the page and vote for International Communications Strategy. 

The official launch is set for early September and will be hosted in London by TIAW and The University of Chicago Booth School of Business. 

I am delighted that Emma Huang will be able to join us from Canada. Emma has been instrumental in helping me to understand the world of PR in China.

When I was growing up in Italy, I would always get excited at this time of the year.

Only one more month of nun school to go and…. spring near Lake Garda is so beautiful.

This year, for the first time since high school, I can’t sit still. It is as if  I had a whole series of graduation parties ahead of me and the prospect of  once again walking into the lake at night with my patent leather shoes on….

Our book is coming out on July 3rd.

Today, for the first time, I saw a picture of whole book and not just the cover.

Courtesy of Neville who got an advance finished copy for his interview with us on FIR.

I had tears in my eyes…. Such a strange feeling to see hours of your life condensed in a book now sitting on Neville’s desk.

This week, the book got on the list of 44 social media titles recommended by the Diva Marketing Blog.

Thanks to all of you who congratulated us on LinkedIn. And thanks to my 101-year-old grandma in Italy who got really excited about this. Who says that older people don’t get new media?