Now Serving Cuber #16 … Cuber #16 …

As the new Marketing Communications Specialist at Roundedcube, one of my roles is to launch the company full fledged into the land of Social Media. Engage in online conversations that are happening in our industry. Translation: learn the unique attributes of our company and our industry and get right to work!

I like to think I am well versed in Social Media. I tweet, network on Facebook and LinkedIn, use Yelp as I immerse myself into my new city of St. Louis (I recently moved here from New England. And don’t worry, I wasn’t a Patriots fan.), post photos and videos on multimedia sites for my friends and family to see, blog about my adventures, and so forth. But all those things I do online, I do about me. You see, I know myself pretty darn well and am able converse about my life and what I choose to do fairly intelligently.

Now I just need to apply those skills to market Roundedcube. Wonderful! I am genuinely thrilled about this new opportunity. But some funny things tend to happen during the discovery period of a new job. Think about it for a minute. Starting a new job is exhilarating and fresh: you are trying to absorb as much information as possible and you want to make an immediate contribution but then you realize you made a right turn when you should have made a left turn and now you are so lost that you feel like the town idiot (I actually did and felt the same thing during my move from New England to St. Louis).

Many companies have their own language. Don’t believe me? Think back to the first day of your current job … were your fellow co-workers using acronyms you couldn’t quite figure out? I needed to learn my new work language and needed to learn it quickly. I raised my hand on my second (and third) days and asked for clarification on acronyms that were being used throughout staff meetings. Ah, yes, those make sense now (some were industry specific but most were our clients names condensed for easier reference). Is there a secret handshake I should know about too? Because I really want to be part of the team.

After some extensive research about how Roundedcube’s web strategy, design and development is in fact different from other end-to-end agencies, I was ready to dive right in to my new role. But hang on a second. Where should I start? Should I Tweet about the beautiful Cardinal I saw outside from the office window? Or should I keep my tweets to strict business matters only? Todd Defren, of SHIFT Communications, touches on this very conundrum with his article “The ‘Problem’ with Authencity: You’re Still Being Watched.”

I decided to go the first route. I’ve seen (and follow) some people and organizations who choose the latter; they only tweet about business related or industry information. And that is their decision. There is no right or wrong philosophy here. No one is forcing me to follow them, I choose to do so because I think the information they provide is valuable. Personally, I want to be as open and honest as possible in my tweets so I will tweet about the bird and the ping pong tournament in the office . Isn’t that first line in the Social Media Oath? And by the way, I think there needs to be a standard Social Media Oath that goes a little something like this:
- Honesty is always the best policy.
- Spam is absolutely unacceptable.
- Be yourself. Don’t use language that you don’t usually use. If you’re a walking thesaurus and use $1 words all the time, then continue to do so. However, if you use $0.25 words, then continue to do that too.
- Be respectful. Everyone has an opinion. And there will be disagreements. Be tactful and remain poised.
- Respond promptly.
- Always cite your resources and references.
- Add value to the discussion.

Two weeks in and I am immersing myself not only in the Cuber life, but into the St. Louis marketing and social media community as well. I attended the Social Media Club of St. Louis’ First Anniversary celebration at Mosaic last night and am very excited for Social Fresh St. Louis on Monday.

I am diving head first into the pool. And in case you are curious, I don’t need floaties … yet.

*EDIT October 28, 2010. We have moved our blog to http://blog.roundedcube.com and you can now comment on this specific post at http://www.roundedcube.com/WhatsNew/Blog/now-serving-cuber-16-cuber-16

Read My Sitecore Blog

This is not much as a plea but really just a cross-blog advertisement. As an avid fan and technologist of Sitecore, I've been wanting to write my own blog regarding Sitecore. I started early last year but then didn't have much time. So, I just recently picked it up, and I already have a couple written just in the past 2 days. I intend to keep up with it from now on. So, check my blog at: http://rc-sitecore.blogspot.com and give me some feedback.

Where's the bathroom?

How many of you have ever wandered into the back of a strange, new restaurant or brew house, stood in front of those doors with crossed legs and said to yourself, “I have no idea which one’s for me.” Not knowing for sure but with time not on your side you take your shot – enter – then find out you’ve made the wrong choice.

This is a bit how I felt walking into Roundedcube on February 1st. Not knowing who was who, what was what or even where the bathroom was located I wondered if I had made the right decision. Was leaving my last job the right thing to do? Fortunately, now almost three weeks into this, I’ve got a pretty good feeling about the whole thing. I’m starting to get the hang of it around here and even know how to make it to work without using my GPS.

When I decided to make the move to St. Louis (originally hailing from the Cornhuskers state) I knew there was going to be some uncertainty, discomfort and change. In fact a friend of mine told me that the reason you feel like the stupidest person at your new job is likely because you are the stupidest person at your new job. For a good couple days that was undoubtedly the case and now I’m regretting the name calling he endured.

In my previous position it was my responsibility to invent the vocabulary, the definitions, the processes, and the templates. Now, even though I’m in the exact same business, a lot of those things have changed. Development…implementation; scope of work…statement of work; tomato…tomato. The map is still the same, we’re all heading in the same direction but the legend is just a little different.

The more I thought about these differences the more I was reminded of Patrick Lencioni’s book, “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable.” One of my main take-aways from the book was that constructive conflict is a good and necessary thing. If used and managed correctly it keeps us from trudging down the road of “artificial harmony” because, in the end, the real magic, the stuff that separates good from great, really comes from our differences not our similarities.

Now, to be totally fair some things didn’t really change at all. Prior to coming to Roundedcube I spent the last 10 years in the IT/Web world so this definitely wasn’t my first rodeo. That being said here are a few things that made me feel right at home:

• By 10:00 AM more than half the staff is hopped up on coffee, Mountain Dew or some other high glucose or caffeine rich substance
• An almost diabolical sense of competition whether that be in web strategy or ping-pong
• One-half out of their mind in search of an iPad – the other half snickering at the first half because they’ve yet to receive their much anticipated, gold embossed invitation to the “Cult of Mac”
• 50% in favor of the waterfall method, 50% in favor of agile and 0% of customers who really care as long as their projects get done on time and under budget
• Four words…scope creep, change request!
• But most importantly; an amazingly talented group of people that spend their days pouring their creativity into strategy, work items, code and comps then leaving the office to make time with their family, playing music or cheating death on a high speed crotch-rocket

In the end, figuring out that my definition of the word “creative” was different than Roundedcube’s really didn’t amount to a hill of beans. What is most impressive and important is that no matter what words we were using we were still talking about the right process, the right projects and making sure we’re delivering the right solution to each and every one of our clients.

As the new Manager of Client Engagements for Roundedcube I’m really looking forward to meeting with all of you…that is existing and future clients, vendors and partners. My long-time philosophy for every project is that we should be able to (A) decrease costs or (B) increase revenue. If we can’t do either then we’re not doing our job but if we can do both then you’ll want to work with us again in the future. Please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help your business. You can e-mail me at shane.freeman@roundedcube.com or give me a call at (866) 692-2823 x 102. I look forward to hearing from you!

*EDIT October 28, 2010. We have moved our blog to http://blog.roundedcube.com and you can now comment on this specific post at http://www.roundedcube.com//WhatsNew/Blog/wheres-the-bathroom