Holtz Communications + Technology

Back in the late 1980s I worked in the communications practice at a global HR consulting firm. One of my clients was the design group of an auto manufacturer. For one reason or another, the employees of the design group had participated in a retirement plan separate from the rest of the company, but were now being folded into the…

Most of IBM’s “jams” are internal affairs, opportunities for employees to get together virtually and generate ideas to address specific aspects of business like sales and managing. There have been external jams, like one a couple years back addressing urban development.

The upcoming Innovation Jam 2008, though, is pretty ambitious. IBM has invited a number of companies to participate in the online brainstorming…

The next time management asks workers at its Benecia, California, facility to lend a helping hand, the answer is likely to be something along the lines of, “Sure, hyappy to help, just as soon as the Stanley Cup Playoffs are held in hell.”

Who would be willing to offer discretionary effort at management’s request after several workers were fired for allegedly doing just that? This…

There has been no shortage lately of commentary about where social media responsibility will reside in organizations. The broad categories of opinion shake out like this:

• Social media will wind up being PR’s (or Communications’ or Public Affairs’) responsibility.
• Social media will be the responsibility of those who champion it
• Social media responsibility will fall to project teams and others who have a need to use it
• Social…

ExxonMobil’s experience in the Twittersphere should serve as a wake-up call for organizations dragging their feet when it comes to paying attention to the social media space. It took only three days from the first time a tweet appeared from a Twitter account called ExxonMobilCorp to capture the attention of mainstream media and investment analysts.

This interest in ExxonMobil’s participation in the…

Google’s new encyclopedia venture, Knol, resolves some of the key issues afflicting Wikipedia. Anonymity is not allowed, for instance, so every article is attributable to an author based on his or her Google account. This means Knol can house several articles on the same topic. Anybody can suggest changes to a document, but it’s up to the author whether to incorporate those…