Melcrum‘s Social Media Forum started off with a bang here in London with an excellent presentation on social media by IBM’s Philippe Borremans (my co-conspsirator in the China Blogging Tour).
Why is IBM using blogs, wikis and RSS, he asked? Because the company really believes in “the wisdom of crowds” — not because blogging is “cool” or because IBM is a tech company.
From one of his slides: “Innovation is not possible without collaboration.”
The audience of 80-plus internal communications executives listened raptly as he described IBM’s recent video contest.
IBM video contest: ‘Innovation That Matters’ in 60 seconds or less
Employees were invited to explain in 60 seconds or less IBM’s new branding slogan: “Innovation That Matters.” Within a month, 520 videos were created and uploaded from employees in 29 countries. Thus far the videos (filmed in people’s gardens or other informal settings) have been forwarded 4,842 times and 3,212 comments have been left on them.
Pretty amazing stats for an internal corporate communications initiative. Luckily, we get a peak at IBM’s employee creativity via six IBM contest videos uploaded to YouTube. Above is one entry, “Talking is easy.”
Useful Links
IBM’s Corporate Blogging Guidelines
More coverage of the Social Media Forum on Melcrum’s blog
Screenshot of IBM internal blog (courtesy of Philippe; note: this is from March 2005)