From Bureaucrats to Bandwidth, a Behind the Scenes Look at the Making of a United Nations Social Media Strategy
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication
I’m headed to the Social Media Strategies Summit in London to present From Bureaucrats to Bandwidth, a Behind the Scenes Look at the Making of a United Nations Social Media Strategy with my lovely colleague Mohamed El Sioufi. By the time you’re reading this I’ll have just about touched down.
I’ll let you know how it goes. Please let me know if there’s anything particular you’d like to know.
Here’s the session description:
Lights, camera, action! There’s nothing if not drama with social media so take your seat & we’ll take you backstage. In this interactive, practical workshop we’ll set the stage by explaining the UN’s Global Housing Strategy (GHS 2025) & take you backstage where we’ll highlight key elements to consider before you start a social media strategy.
Then it’s lights (we’ll shine the spotlight on key elements to consider while your social media strategy is being designed), camera (key tools for social media research, outreach & training), action (how to put it all together for implementation).
We’ll tell you what’s worked & what hasn’t & give you the tools to create your own customized social media strategy. We’ll also let you know how you can become involved should you wish.
You’ll come away with:
- your backstage pass – 5 key elements to consider when beginning to design a social media strategy
- under the spotlight – 5 elements to use in building a social media strategy
- camera – a plethora of free, easy, practical tools for SEO, search, research, education & outreach
- action – a practical, step by step plan for how to put it all together & a resource kit to create your own customized social media strategy
Tags: social media, united nations
A creative kid’s take on a mouth – a cool perspective
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Creativity & innovation
My kid loves to draw. He’ll often pick up a pencil & sketch.
As a result I find all sorts of interesting drawings around the house. Like the one above. I love how he made a mouth out of nothing. Literally. He ripped the paper to make the figure’s mouth.
He’s got a knack for finding a new perspective, an alternate way of looking at things.
Finding new perspectives is a game changer. It helps see your way through otherwise unnavigable waters, turns swamps into swimming pools and tear drops to turtles.
How can you find a new perspective on an old issue?
~~TGIF- each Friday I rejig & re-post a blog entry from my www.life-lenses.com blog, which is about enhancing our perspective & worldview.~~
Tags: creativity, drawing, perspective
Training & development learning well October blog post round up
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication, Creativity & innovation, Training & development
If you didn’t catch all the posts this month simply peruse & click what’s below.
Here’s the Rock.Paper.Scissors’ monthly training & development round up for the month of October.
Learn well in the training & development learning well.
Dive deep into the learning well or take a small sip. Shower yourself in training & development or just get your big toe wet.
Refresh & refreshing.
As you wish.
Tags: Anthony Trollope, bumpf, change, chimpanzee, creativity, culture, doug cress, email, emmanuel jal, god, humour, life lenses, perspective, united nations, wazimbo
What’s odd about these oddfellows?
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication
I picked up this postcard from the same-named restaurant when I was out with some good pals in Seattle.
Do you think these fellows are odd? How do you think they’d view you? It’s all a matter of perspective. What’s one person’s trash is another’s treasure. What’s normal to you may be off the scale abnormal to me.
What a Carrot Life Lens™ sees as synchronous systems, makes a Mountain Life Lens™ feel a migraine coming on.
What a Go Life Lens™ sees as a wonderful opportunity to be spontaneous, is reckless to a Stop Life Lens™.
Where a Journey Life Lens™ sees a wonderfully organic path, a Destination Life Lens™ sees as a pointless, waste of time.
What a Heart Life Lens™ sees as intuitively obvious, a Head Life Lens™ misses completely.
~~TGIF- each Friday I rejig & re-post a blog entry from my www.life-lenses.com blog, which is about enhancing our perspective & worldview.~~
Tags: life lenses, perspective
3 lessons from a cheeky email – here’s the initial bumpf
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Creativity & innovation, Humor & comedy, Training & development
When I asked about information on the urban resilience index, I got this back from a UN colleague: ‘Here’s the initial bumpf.’
‘Huh? What’s a bumpf,’ I thought.
Here’s what he said when I asked…
Bumpf (bumf, or bumph): It’s an expressive and pithy word for all the dross that comes in the mail. It’s even more appropriate when you know where it comes from.
It was originally British English, possibly public school slang, at least according to Barrère and Leland’s Dictionary of Slang of 1889. From there it dispersed to other parts of the former British Empire, but it is less well known in the US, I believe.
Its source is usually taken to be the much older bum-fodder. The sense was the one that you give, of useless or tedious printed information or documents — material whose only conceivable use was to be torn up, hung up on a nail in the privy and used as toilet paper.
The full term was first recorded in the period of the Commonwealth in Britain, about 1650 — I remember seeing a political pamphlet of about that date which uses the word in its title. Its first recorded appearance is in 1651, in the first volume of Sir Thomas Urquhart’s translation of the works of Rabelais.
According to the Oxford English Dictionary, it was probably derived from the classical Latin anitergium, arse-wiper.
The slang abbreviation bumf originally had a literal sense of toilet paper, but quickly shifted its meaning back to the original. The usual spelling is bumf but bumph is not unknown.
My version is: Promo material usually devoid of argument (pro-or con).
From a training & development perspective, here’s what I took away:
1. too much paper gets the bum’s rush & ends up getting used in ways one didn’t intend
2. bumming around, humour’s a good thing
3. (appropriately) cheeky emails that raise curiousity levels, also make information more memorable
Tags: bumpf, email, humour, united nations
What’s your problem? Much ado about everything
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Diversity & culture
‘No man thinks there is much ado about nothing when the ado is about himself.’ Anthony Trollope (1815-82), Victorian novelist
And with that one short phrase we have an incisive look into the human condition.
When something is an issue for us, we believe it’s an issue for everyone.
When something’s not an issue for us, we have a hard time understanding what ‘they’ are getting so worked up about.
Imagine if we could intuit everyone’s ado. If we could get inside it and roll around in understanding.
Now that’s perspective.
~~TGIF- each Friday I rejig & re-post a blog entry from my www.life-lenses.com blog, which is about enhancing our perspective & worldview.~~
Tags: Anthony Trollope, perspective
If curiousity killed the cat, look what it (+ creativty) did to the chimp!
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Creativity & innovation
Being a professional trainer, I’m pretty particular when I go to see someone speak. At a recent WING night (Women’s International Networking Group), here in Nairobi, I had the delightful pleasure of hearing Doug Cress speak, the head of GRASP (the UN’s Great Apes Survival Partnership).
He was fantastic – informative, engaging & funny.
We share an astonishing 99.4% of our DNA with chimps (one of the four great apes). I’m not so sure we’re as creative though.
Imagine yourself in a chimp’s cage with a coveted peanut at the bottom of an (unbreakable) glass tube that’s too large to stick your hand down & is bolted down (so you can’t shake the peanut out). Using only your wits & what would typically be in a chimp’s cage, could you figure out how to get the peanut?
Check out the video below.
Creativity to the max. (I was so impressed with his talk & the chimps that I’m over the moon excited to have booked a trip to see them in a week!)
Hint: the chimps (many chimps figure out the trick) use one of the techniques in my creativity classes, which are called E.S.C.A.P.E., where the A stands for assumptions. What assumptions might you be making that is hindering your ability to get to the peanut?
Remember I talked about assumptions above? Figuring out what assumptions you’re making & busting them are a huge help when we’re trying to be more creative.
In the chimp’s case she broke the assumption that she had to be the force to move the peanut (e.g. breaking the tube, shaking it, sucking it up etc). Instead, she used the power of water.
Tags: chimpanzee, creativity, doug cress
We leak our Life Lenses™ – even with our computer bags
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Business & organizational development
My (Carrot Life Lens™) approach: gleefully I dove into finding new homes for my things, creating new systems, organizing and tucking away with utter satisfaction.
My partner’s (Mountain Life Lens™) approach: harumphing, he reluctantly transferred things over. It was a chore. Not fun. He wanted it done and over.
While the pictures above aren’t of our particular bags, they made me chuckle as the one above would appear to belong to a Carrot – notice how things are laid out in order, systematically. The items are arranged within an overall square shape. I’d guess the second one belongs to a Mountain – notice how things are laid out without any apparent order, with things at random angles.
Which one’s the best? Depends on your perspective. Each have their strengths on a good day and their downsides on a bad day.
~~TGIF- each Friday I rejig & re-post a blog entry from my www.life-lenses.com blog, which is about enhancing our perspective & worldview.~~
Tags: life lenses
Resources on culture, change & creativity, from an interview with Mozambican musician Wazimbo
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Change management & wellness, Diversity & culture
In this month’s Rock.Paper.Scissors’ newsletter I interview Mozambican treasure, the musician Wazimbo & get his thoughts on culture, change & creativity. (That’s him above.) In this second blog post, I’ve included some resources related to the themes in our interview, including creativity, change, advice & more.
Read the entire newsletter here or download a hard copy of the interview from my last blog post. Not already receiving our free monthly newsletters? Whatsamatter you? Sign up here.
Culture & Creativity Resources
- On culture (specifically organizational culture): check out the Culture Cartel, a Paper.li (an online newspaper that draws resources from Twitter). Now don’t have a heart attack on me, you don’t have no a thing about Twitter to read it.
- On power, advice & change: Candy Chang’s TED talk ‘Before I die I want to….’ which were the words she had painted on the side of an abandoned building in New Orleans & invited people to finish. ‘Be someone’s calvary’ & ‘hug a sloth’ were just two of the poignant answers.
- On creativity: Sunnie Brown’s TED talk called ‘Doodlers Unite’ gives our inner artist permission to come out. Studies show that sketching and doodling improve our comprehension — and our creative thinking. So why do we still feel embarrassed when we’re caught doodling in a meeting?
Creativity, Change & Advice Resources…
- On change: when change is afoot it pays to have someone watching your back, literally! A slightly different kind of monkey attack.
- On creativity: sometimes it takes another view entirely to sweep those creativity cobwebs out into the daylight. Check out this perspective bending fishing underwater video. You won’t be able to tell which end is up.
- On culture: check out some of these cross-cultural advertising gaffes. Coca Cola inadvertently called their product in Chinese ‘bite the wax tadpole,’ while Schweppes Tonic water got mistranslated in Italian to be Schweppes Toilet Water.
Tags: change, creativity, culture, wazimbo
Kids on god – talk about interesting perspective
Posted by Lee-Anne Ragan | Filed under Communication, Diversity & culture, Humor & comedy
Here’s to the illuminating effects on perspective that kids have. Naturally. Wholeheartedly.
On simple appreciation …
On socio-economic and access / inclusion issues …
On inter-cultural sensitivity …
On the challenges of love ….
On the importance of rest ….
On the need to be seen & acknowledged … 
On the importance of personal space …
On negotiation and boundaries …
Thanks to Rania for passing along these images.
~~TGIF- each Friday I rejig & re-post a blog entry from my www.life-lenses.com blog, which is about enhancing our perspective & worldview.~~
Tags: god, humour, perspective