Talking Internal Communication...

Now we're talking

I've just added a fantastic little widget to this blog which means Talking Internal Communication can now actually talk.

Inspired by a cryptic comment left by Marc Wright when he recently reviewed the site for Melcrum's Communicator's Network ("I keep expecting it to talk"), I thought I should take action.

The Odiogo button on the left and the 'listen now' buttons linked to each post enable you to listen to, rather than read, the content. Better still, you can now subscribe to Talking IC as a podcast, via iTunes, Juice or a whole host of web readers. So you can take me with you wherever you go!

The voice is a little Stephen Hawking for my liking, but it does the job and, more importantly, it means you don't have to listen to my daft Brummie accent. Go on, have a listen...

Born again

Thanks to the team at LinkedIn my profile is now live once again.  Having deleted me from the system last week, they somehow managed to resurrect me this week. I am now a born again fan of LinkedIn. Thanks guys!

LinkedOut :-(

In the last few months I've become a big fan of LinkedIn, the social networking site for professionals.  I've used it to track down and 'connect' with a number of old work colleagues and friends and I've found it to be really effective. As a result I've been recommending it to people left, right and center.

After devoting considerable time and effort to the whole process - crafting my profile, searching for people and making contact - my network was beginning to take shape and was growing daily. So I jumped right in and set up a business subscription to enable me to make use of some of the more powerful features of LinkedIn (if you're going to do something, do it right, right?) Wrong.

After setting up my subscription I discovered I had two accounts - an old one I had set up a year ago when I first came across LinkedIn, which I had never populated or used, and a more recent one which I had invested all that time and effort in setting up.  The problem was that I had inadvertently linked my business subscription to the old account. Pretty pointless given that it said little more than which nursery school I went to back in the 70s (much as I'd love to catch up with my old toddler pals, that's not really what I had in mind).

So I got on to LinkedIn customer services and asked them to close the old account and transfer the subscription to the new old. Simple request I thought. Wrong again. Instead, they closed both my accounts and completely deleted me from the system!

So, to all those contacts I had made and all those people I was in the process of re-connecting with, I'm sorry. To all those visitors to this blog who want to find out a little more about me, I'm sorry - the button on the right no longer works. 

I asked for an explanation a few days ago, but I haven't had an answer yet. I'm not hopeful that they'll be able to 'resurrect' me, but you never know...

All in all not a great experience. Just goes to show that you can have the best tools in the world, but if you can't get the little things right they're about as useful as a one legged-man at an arse kicking contest.

Doing the Dojo

Two pals of mine, Liam FitzPatrick and Sue Dewhurst, have just launched a blog for graduates of the Black Belt training programme, which they run in association with Melcrum. The Black Belt Dojo is a collection of 'tales, thoughts, findings and ramblings' on internal communication. Liam and Sue are a thoughtful, passionate and well informed pair, so it's well worth checking out from time to time...