What do Second Life, HootSuite and Office 365 have in common? The first two are part of the social media survey in Dan Zarrella’s book. By survey, I mean an overview like an English major’s bane: a Norton Anthology of pain (select time period).

Thankfully, unlike the Norton Anthology’s Dan Zarrella’s book is light (literally) compared to the miserable used hardbacks. Another bonus? The guide is fun to read and not overly elementary for those who managed social bookmarking campaigns in 2011. This manual is better suited to the young entrepreneur rather than the casual user.

Photo Credit: Second Life SmartyGirlEve Flying Tank Avatar

Photo Credit: SGL Media Logo Designed by SmartyGirl Jacy Corral

I read this on the heels of a c-level cloud data security conference where Chief Information Officers discussed animatedly their current challenges with entreprise level goals and fragmented processes. In other words, it’s common for the Chief Technology Officer to balance between fostering collaboration and “light jailing” of content on employee’s devices to prevent trade secret data leaks.

When I studied journalism as an undergraduate, I also worked as a reader of technical papers for the computer science and engineering department. One of my top 3 English teachers? He also ran the Technology Hour radio program on campus. I mention this because journalism has helped me stay up to date with technology and social networking tools. In turn, this has brought me steady employment while an MBA student and marketing grad for public and private companies seeking marketing content through new media. This is not for every liberal arts major and I do not claim to speak for those who eschew mobile devices and streaming software. I’m analytical so I might not be the first to adopt disruptive technology but after investigation of its pros and cons, I’m usually on board when an app is in its beta iteration. Does this matter? Yes, because individuals and enterprises help shape a streaming product if they are willing to report errors and help IT debug and make user engagement better. However, this is not for everyone. Decide. Are you more excited when you buy something someone else developed or do you get a thrill of satisfaction when you code?

If you are more of a producer than a consumer, then this partnering-with-the-inventors consumer lifestyle is for you. Caveat? You decide your learning curve and tolerance for uncertainty. Example? I might be able to volunteer for documenting processes on a wiki for a robotics team at The Hacker Dojo but I don’t evaluate the hardware purchases. I leave that to the PhD assistants. Why? Layperson terminology is what I understand and my mode is marketing so that technical experts can reach their target layperson early adopter consumer.

3 Echoes from the most memorable participants at the Frost & Sullivan Mind Xchange last month?
Know the difference between business unit culture and company culture. Don’t be naive that protocol and workaround processes below the radar co-exist. For instance, maybe the official colloboration tool is Box for enterprise but some departments still use Dropbox for individuals. Unofficial, splintered solutions are hard for centralized IT to repair in an emergency response situation (i.e. data leak).

Resist rushing to pay for a disruptive app just because your rival does. Maybe his/her enterprise has a different schedule. In other words, maybe their IT to business innovation green light m.o. is less risky. Maybe their customers are more tolerant of being partners to correct mistakes after launch. In contrast, your project might be more established and you’ll lose reputation with your long-term followers if your experimental new feature has startup-symptom hiccups.

Hand-pick a committee of scouts. These are ambassadors between business units and management. What apps are being used by employees, interns, vendors and contractors to do the core of your business? Reward business units for transparent pilot experiments for small wins. Why? To encourage internal transparency so if data bleeds in a decentralized ap, then command central can stop the hemmoraging and the whole team isn’t bled dry. Personal Identifying Information is an example of sensitive data that rouges can use to remotely access your confidential content on all devices used by your internal staff. What else? So that your scouts don’t become mad with power? Lightly jail their authority too so that business units can do a peer vote on the most useful ambassador so that the climate is cooperative instead of adversarial. Example? Jean, voted by interns and 3rd party vendors to be the most knowledgeable and friendly about fixing the three most common problems for beginners using this new app.

Why the product review? This season I am testing out Second Life, HootSuite, and Office 365 to meet particular personal and professional goals.

What are my metrics? For Second Life, my experiment is to determine if I hear of music news as fast or faster than on Twitter. For example, you may have heard about a Second Life Lilly Allen concert and proposed payment by Bitcoin.

Another example? HootSuite might reduce the minutes per week managing editors’ curation of social media campaigns by 20%. Automation, multiple profile access through a single dashboard? Yes, interns and guest experts can borrow a profile to microblog for a set time period, representing the brand. Posts can be batched or manually scheduled to go live as a pre-set. Will adding streams to view fluctuations in new visitors help SGL be more timely in content topics?

Photo Credit: HootSuite Twitter Post Scheduling SGL SmartyFella Despite Mike Profile

Last illustration? Three companies (undiclosed) that I admire for their current CIO Technology Thought Leadership have switched over to Office 365 as their official enterprise solution. I heard their pros/cons and I wanted to see the challenges for myself as a smaller outfit as SGL. This way I can report through our blog tech journalists, how we handle and prevent data breaches. As Editor, I opted for the monthly subscription for OneDrive Office so that I use the cloud versions of Excel, Word, and PowerPoint Online from my Windows Phone. Why? So I can test out the glitches that are expected for data transmission for Office 2013 activation bundled for my PC from now through April 2014.

Google+ Hangout, Facebook chat and Facetime via Skpe, Google Drive and Dropbox were solutions used by our staff in 2013. Our staff are Mac users and Windows users with Android and iPhones. SmartyFellas and SmartyGirls, share your own experience across devices in the comments below.