So, am happy to provide an answer! We’ll be running it again starting on 4th September 2013 and it will again run for 8 weeks, and so will come to a close in early November. You can find out more and book a place here.

Here’s a reminder of the course content:

The course consists of eight lessons, which last for a week each. Total learner time per lesson is around an hour, which they can do in one chunk or spread throughout the week – it is entirely up to them.

Support is provided both to the group as a whole, with discussion and sharing of experience and knowledge encouraged; and privately through email or telephone discussion between the course facilitator and learners.

Each lesson will include some or all of the following elements:

• An introductory video introducing the topic and explaining some details
• Downloadable templates, resources, guides and case studies
• Links to further reading and case studies
• Interviews with practitioners
• Screencast demos of how to perform certain actions
• Learner discussion areas
• One to one private email or telephone support
• Additional content in response to queries and requests
• Assignments to practice learning

The eight lessons in this course are:

1. Introductions, objectives, how the course and the platform works
2. What is digital engagement and what defines success?
3. Strategies for successful digital engagement
   • Different approaches – organisational, team based, individual
   • Different focuses – external, internal, partnership based
   • Different objectives – informing, consulting, collaborating
4. Popular platforms and how they are best used
   • Twitter
   • Facebook
   • YouTube
   • LinkedIn
5. Emerging platforms – how might they be employed to best effect?
   • Instagram
   • Tumblr
   • Foursquare
   • Pinterest
6. Other tools and techniques
   • Web chats
   • Blogging
   • Commentable documents
   • Crowdsourcing
7. Skills and roles
   • Community management
   • Social reporting
   • Curator
   • Networker
8. Bringing it all together – a chance for reflective practice

There is an old marketing saying: We can’t put lipstick on a pig, the consumer will still know it’s a pig. Let me put it another way: If your company wants to run around saying that it is green, first act green. And in a era where social media is forcing transparency: Don’t piggy back ...

Author information

Torben Rick

Experienced senior executive, both at a strategic and operational level, with strong track record in developing, driving and managing business improvement and development, change management and turn-around. View full profile

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This is Water.

This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life [Kindle Edition] by David Foster Wallace, is one of my all time favorite pieces of writing.

When I first read it, I bought literally dozens of copies and gave them to people for birthdays and leaving gifts and because it seemed like they should read it. 

It was written as a speach. A very unusal commencement speach.

One that profoundly impacted me when I read it, and continues to every time I read it or hear it.

It's lovely to listen to DFW deliver it. His voice is mellifluous, with just enough American twang. 

I feel a sense of wonder at how clearly he thinks, and how clearly he thinks about thinking.

I feel slightly ashamed, and understood, and finally redeemed, slightly, when he says:

It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out.

and I resolve to try a little harder to remember that This is Water. 

I think of it, in some ways, as a reflection on an aspect of the fundamental attribution error, which is the tendency to overestimate the impact of choice, personality, agency and underestimate situational factors when interpreting the behaviour of others. 

So, for example, when someone is late to a meeting, it's the driver to assume that they are disrespectful or lazy or rude, rather than assume that something happened outside of their control. We tend to correct for this when considering our own lateness, because we know that the train was late. 

So I was delighted to see someone

[someone being The Glossary - also check out their lovely trailer for the Cory Doctorow novella The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow.]  

has turned it into a rather beautiful film. 

But it is an edited version, so do go and read the whole thing, or listen to DFW give it here. 

Deutsche Telekom plans to limit broadband speed after a monthly data volume limit has triggered a storm of social media protest on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube etc. The former monopoly that controls 60 percent of broadband Internet connections in the country, said that it would impose hard-and-fast download limits on all customers of its home Internet ...

Author information

Torben Rick

Experienced senior executive, both at a strategic and operational level, with strong track record in developing, driving and managing business improvement and development, change management and turn-around. View full profile

TwitterFacebookGoogle+LinkedIn

Why most change management initiatives fail? To many leaders still believe that ”we” need to change “them” is the way forward when it comes to change management. Expressions like “mindset change”, and “changing people’s mindsets” or “changing attitudes”, often indicates a tendency towards imposed or enforced change, and it implies strongly that the organisation believes that ...

Author information

Torben Rick

Experienced senior executive, both at a strategic and operational level, with strong track record in developing, driving and managing business improvement and development, change management and turn-around. View full profile

TwitterFacebookGoogle+LinkedIn

"My friends, family and acquaintances are all on Facebook, where they add up to a bustling community I enjoy being part of. More than any particular feature that Mark Zuckerberg and company have cooked up, it’s the people in my life that make Facebook, well, Facebook.

Over on Google+, I find some worthwhile material to peruse, but in far smaller quantities. The smattering of people I encounter hardly replicates my real-world social connections. The conversations are less warm, personal and interesting. As a social experience, it often feels perfunctory."

This post by Harry McCracken about the differences between Facebook and Google+ made me realise once again that the Internet is all about energy. Finding energy and sharing energy. Finding smart people whose conversations increase your energy and hopefully sharing your energy with others to help them do more, understand more, appreciate more, love more.

Life is too short for perfunctory exchanges. It is too short to spend time, and energy, where you think you should be spending it. Spend it where it makes you feel more alive.

Hello! 

After 5 lovely years in New York, I recently left the city and my job, sold my furniture and my stake in the agency we started, started an innovation practice, got engaged and went out on the road.

It felt like a good time for me to be flexible. 

This year I will mostly be speaking and consulting and teaching and writing and that. Looking to learn some new things and get nicer and hopefully smarter by travelling and letting it open my eyes. After five years habituation stops me seeing, even in cities as amazing as New York.

I've been doing some fun innovation projects for nice clients under my newly minted GeniusSteals banner, that took me to Brazil and Beijing earlier this year. 

I wrote the first chapter of the upcoming book Digital State, published by Kogan Page, due June 2013. 

Below are a few places I will be speaking in the next few weeks and months. We'll be traveling in between. I'm interested in exploring Asia a bit more after visiting China. I feel culturally ignorant of the region that contains more than half the world's population. 

[I'm also interested in speaking and meeting nice people over in SEAsia before or after the Sydney gig, so do drop me a line if there's something your putting on that you think I'd be a good fit for. Or if you fancy a beer.]

ADC Hamburg, Germany - May 16th and 17th 

I'm delivering the closing keynote on the first day, and then Rosie and I are speaking about collaboration on the 17th.

IAB Croatia Days of Communiction - May 18th

B&T MadWeek Innovation Day Museum of Contemporary Art, Sydney Australia July 15th 

Do come say hello if you will be at any of them and do shout if you'd like to grab a beer while we're on the road.

While walking the streets of Warsaw last week, learning of the four years of suffering it took before the Jews rose up against the Nazis, I realised that most people would have convinced themselves that things couldn't be as bad as they seemed; that if they just did what they were told and kept their heads down then they and their families would be safe. 

In Saudi Arabia earlier that same week, looking out on an audience in which the women were separated by the men with a screen, and for which the organisers had to have a special mixed audience licence, most people went along with the rules, covered their heads, sat separately from each other - despite many of them not sharing the fundamental beliefs of their rulers. 

Most people want to be safe, most people want to care for their loved ones, most people don't want to think too hard if it gets them into trouble. 

What would I have done in Nazi occupied Poland? What would I do if I had been born in Saudi Arabia?

Am I like most people?

Are you?

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