The culture of the social media-savvy company is the opposite of the culture of bureaucracy. Bureaucratic companies lose agility, ability to make immediate decisions, become wedded to old customs and routines, and sometime…lose the ability to innovate. (Think: US car companies. GM, anyone?)

Organizations become more bureaucratic as they become more complex, expand geographically, and need more accountability and reporting. A culture of openness throughout the company is often replaced with a culture of secrets and fear. Processes become cemented. Many approvals are necessary to create any new ideas. New ideas are easily dismissed as unnecessary or too risky. For a great example of this, read about “The Incompetence of American Airlines and Fate of Mr. X.” It’s not limited to for-profit institutions, either. I’ve had nonprofit clients with processes just as unwieldy as those described above.

And how do organizations like that implement social media? They “silo” social media to the hands of the very few, do not take risks, do not personalize engagement, are afraid of critique, shut down employee social media initiatives, and cannot add new social media platforms without many layers of approval. Yikes.

Here is a radical idea: It’s not that the company is excessively bureaucratic. It’s that the company won’t change.

If your company is scared of change, scared of transparency, scared of critique, and unwilling to change, its efforts will, in fact, fail. This type of company’s social media efforts will be compressed into the least interesting, least engaging tactics possible. Without ever producing any return on investment. (But you are probably not reading my blog. Maybe your employees are…)

The social media savvy company is agile, creative, willing to take risks, transparent (or at least transparent in its use of social media), interested in customer feedback, eager to listen, and can make rapid decisions when necessary. This sounds a lot like a young company’s culture. doesn’t it? It doesn’t have to be.

I don’t think that only young companies, or hierarchically flat companies, can effectively use social media. Zappos is the common example held up of the large company that embraces social media. Their company culture is young, open, interested in change, and very customer-oriented. Best Buy, the largest US retailer of electronics, beautifully embraced social media in 2009 and is really successful at it. The American Red Cross integrated social media to help them meet their programmatic goals and mission.

You work at one of these institutions. You want to help your company change. The key is a change in corporate culture, along with some shifts in bureaucracy. How?

A few suggestions:

• Start with education.  Offer training to the entire staff about what social media is, why it works, how it can help the company better fulfill its mission.
• Create a social media team that represents many different departments. Make sure it includes real decision-makers on the team.
• Insist that everyone in the company receive reports summarizing online mentions, the social media team’s major activities and goalposts, and its upcoming activities.
• Periodically, hold company-wide trainings about social media.
• Ask that employees be allowed to participate individually. Start small, with members of the core team. Expand.
• Secure a six-month commitment. Nothing long-term – but long-term enough to show that it isn’t scary, or the end of the company. It’s also enough time to show quantifiable results.

What are your suggestions? Have you faced these issues at your organization?

I don’t usually blog about my professional self, but blogging at 8:30 pm on December 31, 2009 will do that do you. Inspired by Joe Waters’s post about his 2010 professional goals, I decided to take a moment and fill you in on where I’m heading in the next year. If imitation is the highest form of flattery, I thank Joe for a great idea.

Blog Ideas

I began this blog on December 15, 2008 with a post about the basic principles of Community Organizing, and their application to social media. Over the past year, I’ve published 80 blog posts, and I’m pleased to say that I have readers and subscribers now, too! I thank you, and hope to continue to provide you with engaging, relevant, and stimulating content throughout 2010.

My goal for this blog was always for it to be a meeting place, and a conversation starter around the convergence of social media, nonprofits, and technology.  I have a background in nonprofit management, business consulting, and community organizing – a combination which means that I like to think out of the box. My favorite posts to write have been those “out of the box” ideas such as Front Yard and Back Yard Conversations, Where is the Open Source Conversation, Why Uncensored Blogging is the Future of Corporate Communications, and The Nonprofit Idea Portal: Your Website.  I’ve also loved the guest blogging and interviews – they freshen the blog and expand my world. I’ll be on the lookout for more guest posts and interviews that delve into how organizations are using social media. In 2010, I’m committing to blogging twice a week – it keeps me on the lookout and keeps the content fresh. Twice weekly means one short and one long blog post. I’m wordy and like to delve into the meat of an idea – it’s the “girl who dreamed of being a Ph.D.” in me. I know readers also like short and to the point.

Time for Research

I’ve increasingly realized that I just don’t have the time that I need to play with the newest tools and platforms. If I’m to be a social media resource and strategist, I have to intimately know the tools that I’m recommending for a client.  In 2010, I’m committing to spending a half-day a week trying out new social media resources. What I’d really love is a group of folks who would like to do this with me. This would be the modern learning circle. We could each try out new tools and platforms, or the latest iteration of an old platform, and exchange notes. If you are committed to social media for nonprofit organizations and want to join my learning circle, do let me know! The more the merrier!

Mixing in the New

In 2009, I spent a my online time divided between blogging, Twitter, Linkedin and some time on Facebook. In 2010, I’ll add another. I’d like to spend time on a geo-based platform, but I haven’t found one geared to my town (Jerusalem). I really want to play Foursquare, in particular. While these platforms still are debating the potential of coming to my town, I’ll be looking to try out a few other things. What type of platform do you suggest? I’m leaning towards getting involved in wikis or podcasting – these are great tools for clients and I want to be as familiar with them as possible.

And a few professional goals

Lastly, a few professional goals:

I’d like to speak more at conferences. I love presenting, so please keep me in mind for any upcoming conferences or speaking events. Would you like to collaborate on a presentation with me? I love collaboration.

I’ll be adding a page on this website about my professional services.

I’d like to work with more international clients. I’m based in Israel, and Europe is just a short trip from here.

I’d like to meet more of you. I’m committed to attending SXSW Interactive (Austin) in March 2010, and NTC (Atlanta) in April 2010. I’d like to attend one other conference in the fall of 2010. Why? Because I thrive when listening and learning from others. I also want to form stronger ties with people that I’ve only corresponded with online. And I love to learn. If you’ll be at any of these conferences, do let me know. I’d love to meet!

Should Dunbar’s number inform the way organizations act online?

As explained by Wikipedia, “Dunbar’s number is a theoretical cognitive limit to the number of people with whom one can maintain stable social relationships. These are relationships in which an individual knows who each person is, and how each person relates to every other person.” Within online social networks, Dunbar’s number is seen as the upper limit of the number of people with whom one will converse regularly and meaningfully – this could be daily, weekly, or more often. Taken very simply, it means that I can maintain real, meaningful, online relationships with a finite number of people. For me, that number is far less than 150 – it hovers around 75. For others, it can be as high as 290.

On a social network, a corporate entity or organization can create a profile and “act” as an individual. (There are exceptions, such as Linkedin.) The reach of the internet allows a freedom of interaction with customers that is difficult to create offline. Organizations have a duel purpose online: business objectives and creating loyal relationships. These can be in conflict. However, common wisdom holds that the engaged stakeholder will also act on behalf of the organization (volunteer/donate/take action).

Many nonprofits do a great job of creating personal relationships online with their fans, while others provide a fertile environment to allow their fans create relationships with each other online. In light of Dunbar’s limited number of meaningful relationships, which is the preferred approach to an organizational online presence?

Two noteworthy contributions:

In his book Trust Agents, Chris Brogan argues against mechanizing your online presence and instead giving back with personal gestures in order to create “cafe shaped experiences.”

Whitney Hoffman wrote an insightful post about Dunbar’s number that mentions two relevant points: it is hard to classify the degree of  friendship online, and the more connected a site becomes the less intimate the relationship becomes. Given that organizations want a large online following – and we want all of those fans to work for our organization enthusiastically (or at least give/act/volunteer/contribute) – the challenge seems to be scaling intimately.

So here are my questions for you:

• If organizational fans can only create a finite number of real relationships online, according to Dunbar’s number, does this change how we would approach creating an organizational presence on a social network?

• Can a fan have a stable, meaningful relationship with an organization?

• Do you want to be the organization that creates a community of fans and/or the organization that has a meaningful/personal relationship with its fans?

• Should it be an organizational goal to create a corporate presence that becomes part of someone’s inner circle of relationships – within the sacred 150 Dunbar’s number?

• How can an organization scale up its number of followers while still trying to be within each fan’s “inner Dunbar number?”

I look forward to your input and thoughts!

Image by p_champie

Last week I gave an “introduction to social media” presentation to the Board of Directors of a multinational nonprofit organization.  This was the normal “what is social media” overview, a review and overview of the popular platforms (Facebook, Twitter, You Tube, blogs, etc.) and summary of how to get started in social media.  By the time I was 10 minutes into the presentation, I had heard three objections to using social media, and these objections kept coming at me throughout the entire time I presented. It has been a long time since I was in a room of people scared of social media. I’m going to take this opportunity to address their objections one at a time. At the end of this blog post, please tell me if you think I’ve satisfactorily addressed the concerns, and how you might add to these responses.

1. It’s not safe! What about the BU Craigslist killer? (someone REALLY asked this question in the presentation)

The”BU Craigslist killer” was actually Philip Markoff, a Boston University medical student who looked for massage ads on Craigslist and then attacked the women giving massages. In essence, how is this any different than if Mr. Markoff had responded to a newspaper print ad?  Did social media promote the massage ads? NO. Craigslist is not social media, but an online classified advertising site. In this instance, for massages. Is one of your nonprofit’s core services providing massages in hotel rooms? If yes, then you might have to worry. But if your core mission is about helping save the whales, or feed the homeless, or provide rehab services to veterans, then you really don’t need to worry.

When I asked my Twitter followers for their responses to this question, my personal favorite was from Teresa Boze, who wrote: “I’d tell them most household accidents happen in the bathroom… watch out for the toilet bowl monster.”

On a more serious note, if your organization promotes conversation on sites geared to teens, then you do have a responsibility to ensure that the conversation includes safeguards against teen predators. Just as in real life, if you bring teenagers together, there should always be a responsible adult present.

2. What if our biggest rival pretends to be us online?

Sheena T. Abraham responded (via Twitter) to this objection with “that’s why you have to build your own online credibility as much as you can, build trust with the online audience.” This is one great answer to the question! If an organization builds its own relationship online with its stakeholders, then this is what will likely happen when a rival impersonates the organization:

• the real organization’s stakeholders will notice and alert the real organization of the problem
• the phony organization will not have the ability to create a phony online profile because the real organization has already claimed its online profiles at KnowEm. The truth is that “it’s almost impossible to get your brand name or username back once it’s been taken” on a social media site, unlike buying back a website domain name, according to the KnowEm blog.

Secondly, listening for mentions of your organization online will alert you to this phenomenon, and your organization can quickly address the issue of the “phony brand name.” I cover this topic further in depth below.

Go get your social media online profile and begin to engage!

3. Social media means a lot of work and we don’t have the staff time to do that.

I hear that. I’ve worked at nonprofit organizations with two staff people, with 20, and everything in-between. No matter how many staff people your organization employs, they will always be overtaxed, overworked, with no time to do social media. This will never change. It is the nature of not-for-profit organizations. A good social media strategy takes into account how social media will help your organization better fulfill its mission (engage with stakeholders) and create real benefits to the organization  (listen to members, engage with stakeholders, vet new program ideas, measure responses, etc.) With that in mind, how do you not have the time? Amy Sample Ward writes on Twitter that “organizations want a person or department to “own” the task/responsibility instead of seeing it as a tool to aid all departments’ work.”

Carie Lewis from the Humane Society of the US (she’s their Brand Ambassador) holds a 9-minute staff meeting every day to inform each and every one of the HSUS employees about “what’s going on that day – PR, what people are talking about on Twitter, etc.”

Wendy Harman, of the American Red Cross, writes that “We distribute a daily social media update email that contains a sampling of most relevant mentions.” Everyone must be involved. No more silos.

If social media activities let your organization to grow, soar, and be more efficient, then determine your staff time and resources and create a social media strategy that will accommodate organizational limitations.

4. There is no place in our organization for social media.

Organizations are used to placing departments in silos. The organizing department…organizes the community. The fundraising department… raises money. The research department…researches. Where is the “social media department?” The organizations that implement social media most effectively include everyone in social media, whether it is merely apprising them of the latest activities or including them in the strategy sessions. Social media is the entire organization’s “new website”…its composite brand identity. Every department must be involved in some way.

Amy Sample Ward again writes (via Twitter) to those that argue “there is no ‘home’ for social media in any of the organization’s departments, obviously I would argue there is home in ALL of the departments for it.”

5. People will attack us online with negative critique.

I have news for you: if you are worried about this, then they are already attacking you online. If your organization is worried about negative critique, then the best thing that you can do is to be where your critics are…online. The dissatisfied clients/customers of your nonprofit organization will find a way to critique your organization no matter what – via Twitter, blog posts, commenting on forums and discussion boards, and many other places. The very best action your nonprofit organization can do is create a social media presence, listen for any and all organizational mentions online, and develop an online presence. By developing a loyal brand following online, your organization is positioned to respond quickly to all negative remarks, and leverage the loyalty of your followers to pass along your online responses. For more detailed suggestions on how to engage in proactive reputation management, see a prior post on this subject.

The final thought comes from Danielle Lanyard via Twitter: “nonprofits were built on an old corporate model where nonprofits are defined by differences from competition vs. a collaborative model which is social media.” Social media leverages the collaborative experience, knowledge and information of everyone online to fulfill the organization’s goals. The knowledge gained, productive collaborations, extended organizational reach, and increased stakeholder (and donor!) engagement should far outweigh fears about using social media.

Thanks for reading! Do you have other suggestions for overcoming objections to social media? Have you heard these objections before? Are there other objections that you want to add, and how you have addressed them? I welcome your participation in this conversation!

Please also visit Amy Sample Ward’s blog,  who continues this conversation by inviting her readers to contribute their own Comeback Lines to Social Media Objectors.

I’m live blogging the “Donate Now. Or Later. Or Whenever” session at the NTEN 2009 Conference.

The presenter is Madeline Stanionis from Watershed Company. I placed this artsy image of sangria because Madeline offered FREE CUPS OF SANGRIA to every person sitting in the session. So, I’m actually live blogging with sangria. Who knows – maybe I’ll blog better this time? You be the judge!

Big mistakes:

-we don’t ask because “we’re so nice”

-we only associate with people similar to ourselves. We forget that most people don’t care about what we care about.

What’s working now?

IT IS NOT ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY!

IT’S ABOUT THE PEOPLE! We need to reach PEOPLE on the other side of our email lists.

YOU are usually NOT THEM. Don’t make that mistake. We are almost never…them.

So, be yourself. Use “I” statements like “I feel, I think, I hope, I dream, I fear…” That makes us human. When you write an email you could add a note about how it makes you feel!

Let your PASSION show. Stop sending boring tweets all the time- people connect to passion.

So…. “Say The Thing That Must Be Said.”

Example: Planned Parenthood Action Center sent out a note about Sarah Palin when Sarah Palin was the VP nominee.
They created a campaign around The Thing That Must Be Said called, “You are NOT our Candidate.” The eletters talked about why she was not “our” candidate.

Example 2: Planned Parenthood created a “Let’s Talk About Sex” campaign. So they sent an open letter to the President to “Talk About Sex.”

Example 3: another group set up a special website just to thank Obama for passing a law.

Next: Go to the fish

Example: a friend on Facebook raised almost $2000 for her birthday through the Birthday Cause.

Example2: www.morebirthdays.com. You can make the American Cancer Society the sponsor for your birthday cause. Can do it through Facebook.

Creative Campaigns Examples

PETA renamed fish “sea kittens” and a Save the Sea Kitten campaigns.

AlterNet – Didn’t have money to publish books. Asked people to donate $10 and name will be listed as a publisher of their book.

People don’t stop giving, but just in smaller amounts, so make gifts meaningful.

The Nation- creative campaign to build a list. They gave away an all-expense paid “day at the Nation” magazine to the person who told the most friends about The Nation.

Raffle off meaningful memorabilia that would be meaningful to your stakeholders.

Humane Society of the US- vote for best pet but had to pay $5 to vote 5 times. People understood why.

Stop with the Silos.

We let ourselves get into these “silos” where departments don’t talk to each other: We need to diversity.

We can learn from each other and other departments’ work.

Or integrate marketing efforts by combining different types of mediums – text plus email, or email plus phone calls, etc.

Special Guest and Case Study: Ceciie Surasky from Jewish Voice for Peace. They energized and changed their organization through one campaign.

JVP is a national grassroots organization to end Israel’s “occupation” and promote a US foreign policy of coexistance. They exist purely at the pleasure of individual donations across the country. It’s a “donor-activist” model. Six months ago – had a 22,000 person supporter list. Couldn’t figure out how to grow it.  Needed to change the org. Only had 4 staff  people.

Created the Shmenista Campaign.
Shmenista means 12th-grader in Hebrew.  12th-graders were writing letters saying that they didn’t want to serve in the army because of Israel’s policies in the territories and be “conscientious objectors.” The young girls writing these letters were being put in jail. These girls wrote letters and put out an open call to help them. The JVP decided to take up this call: young people being brave.
Easy and cheap to create this campaign. Created an online petition campaign – www. December18th.org, using a WordPress template for the online petition and Israeli supporters created a video for the campaign free of charge. (December 18th was a planned peace/resister protest in Israel.) The online petition was sent to Israeli ministers in government.

(Play video during conference – black and white, very emotional. Anyone can view it on the December18th website.)

What were the other assets?  Ed Asner and Howard Zinn sit on their Advisory Board. Published guest blog post by Ed Asner. It was then picked up by the Huffington Post.   Then JVP was covered and placed in magazines around the world. Why?

The media is still covering this issue and crediting JVP. Now JVP has organized a speaking tour with Code Pink using the five young people featured in the video. All from the website, emails and the video. To date over 100,000 people have viewed the video. Most of it viral. Collected over 55,000 letters for the campaign.

What has changed?
It has made JVP rethink campaigns and how they are created, and the way the organization has cut down its “silos”. Have since created new campaigns, and the media now covers them without publishing press releases. Fundraising impact: over 3X what we have expected in prior years. Brought in a lot of new donors.

Lessons learned by Jewish Voice for Peace

• Jewish Voice for Peace has moved away from a policy- and data-focused approach. They need their hard-core activists (and they need that data and policy language) so they can’t ignore that aspect. But, by moving away from that approach, they have actually inspired the hard-core activists. Speak the truth, passionately, from the heart, and that inspires. With these campaigns – no one asked for data.

• Needed an external consultant to kick them into gear. (They hired Watershed Company to give them ideas and kick them into gear.) Don’t ask permission to move forward. Just move forward.

• We had all the resources that we needed in-house. We had the stories, passion and know-how. It’s not about technology, but about the people.

My Takeaways:

Rethink the way that the organization is structured to include all staff in developing creative campaigns.

Speak honestly and passionately about your cause and campaign. Include media- very powerful medium.

A good media-worthy story is very viral.

Say The Thing That Must Be Said.

image by roadsidepictures

There is no such thing as a local business anymore. Nor a local organization.

Consider the local mini mart, the most local of all types of stores. In general, people won’t walk more than 10 minutes or 1/2 mile to their local food mart. Why does the mini mart owner need to interact with his customers via social media? If people want something, they’ll just go there. It’s a fair question, easily answered by another:

What is Local?

I respond: Local is a Mindset. So is Social.

Local is You Talking. Social is Engagement and Conversation.

The local mini mart owner/manager is thinking old-school: bricks and mortar, customers searching for twinkies, chips and coffee, and lottery players seeking millions.Re-think your mindset out of Local and into Social about the same customer.

This time, the customer is sitting at home, wishing she had a pint of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Does the local mini mart have it? Send an email or a Tweet. Can she swing by in her car, illegally park on the sidewalk (hey, they do it all the time in my neighborhood) and get out in 2 minutes? You betcha – IF – she could submit her order via Twitter with an approximate purchase time, and could be sure it would be ready when she arrives. What if she told her friends via Facebook that she was heading down to the local mini-mart for ice cream? She could take orders from them if they were also coming over to her house later. The Facebook update is free publicity for the online or email ordering feature at the local market. That is Social. Not Local.

A great example of a local shop using a Social mindset is Houston’s CoffeeGroundz, which created a Twitter account (@coffeegroundz) and unexpectedly realized that they could do a brisk business with Twitter takeout orders. You can read the whole story, in detail on Pistachio Consulting’s blog, here. CoffeeGroundz is a great example of Social, not Local.

Consider the PTO, the local Parent-Teacher Organization of the local elementary school, the most local of local organizations.  A tired parent receives a note about his child, or an email from his child’s school, about the meeting. He goes. The typical meeting consists of parents talking about why the school isn’t doing something or that it should do something better. The PTO wants new ideas, wants to use them, and hopes to involve parents in school improvements. Maybe you attended, maybe not. Either way, you get an email update about what happened. Are you engaged? Are you ready to act? Nope, you’re happy eating mint chocolate chip ice cream and can’t be bothered. The PTO is too Local.

Now consider the Social PTO. The Social PTO is all about making it easier for  you to engage, act and motivate others to create real changes in the school.

You receive the next PTO meeting invitation via one or more of these methods:  email, a group text message on your mobile phone, a Facebook Event invitation, and/or a listing on the PTO’s chat group (such as a Yahoo or Google group). You are asked to contribute ideas to the agenda ahead of time via an online site. You are asked to invite others to the meeting through the Facebook share application, and you proudly display the meeting as a Facebook Event on your profile.  If you can’t go, you can follow the meeting either via live web video, updates on the group site, a #hashtag on Twitter, or real time Facebook group updates. You are able to text your questions to the the vice-chair during the meeting with an assurance that they will be addressed. The meetings are more efficient with the use of pre-sent questions and agenda submissions. The PTO has created easy, potentially viral methods to further engage and recruit people and their ideas. You are engaged and ready to act. The PTO is Social, not Local.

Next time you are about to go to your neighborhood meeting, send a Tweet on Twitter asking if anyone wants anything from the local mini mart. I’ll take some mint choco chip ice cream, please.

It’s all Social now.

I had coffee today with a friend of mine who spoke to me about his early work experiences. As a young lawyer, he was mentored by one a law partner who told him that “sometimes it doesn’t matter who takes credit for the work.” In today’s society, we want to be recognized for our hard work. However, in the new age of social media, it’s about working together to find solutions, and giving credit where credit is due.

It struck me that organizing is the same, and there are lessons for social network engagement as well. As an organizer, you should “never get in the photo, never speak for the group, and never take credit.” Why is this? Because a professional, outside organizer is NOT a member of the group being organized. He/she is the facilitator, coach, guide and supporter. The real work is done by leaders and members of the group. When one of the community groups I worked with won an important victory against the City’s garbage services, I was contacted by a member of the press. I told her that I would only speak as an anonymous background source, and gave her names of group members to contact for direct quotations. I was not in the news photo shot, nor mentioned in the paper. Naturally, my egotistical self wanted to say “hey– I supported them! I knocked on doors to recruit members! I advised the campaign!” The reality is that if I had taken credit, it wouldn’t have been the truth. The real members did the hard work. They put their names, reputation and energy out to the world. They also were the backbone of the organization.  If I had taken credit, that would have usurped the role of the organization’s leaders, minimalized their hard work and discredited the organization.

What does this have to do with social networking? Two things. First, as I’ve mentioned before, true engagement means dynamic, respectful conversation. If members of your online community forum discuss better ways to implement your program, and you make those implementation changes, then give them the credit. They thought of it. If I receive blog comments on this post that convince me that I’m absolutely wrong about this credo, then I’ll acknowledge this publicly. If I were to revise this post based on changes suggested by my readers without giving credit, then I’d actually be stealing ideas and ultimately diminishing my credibility with you, my readers.  A great example of dropping one’s ego at the keyboard is within the stream of comments generated by this blog post of Jeremiah Owyang. After Owyang posted about Gartner’s Generation Virtual research, there were 33 comments. Throughout the comment stream, he acknowledged valuable contributors to the discussion, and later revised his blog post based on comments received.

Secondly, the more people contributing, the better your organization will be. The idea of “the wisdom of crowds” by James Suroweicki argues that the aggregate wisdom of the crowds most often results in answers more accurate than one single person can create. The more people share ideas and contribute, the stronger and better defined the idea will become. The idea of wikis works just this way, and a great example is NTEN’s We Are Media Project . This project creates curricula for non-profits around social media. It includes some of the most interesting thinkers on social media and noon-profit today, and they are all contributing their “proprietary” ideas to create free information. My best estimate is that about 25 people are active on this wiki and about 50 more participate. And they’re GIVING IT AWAY. Why? Because they know that openness in collaboration can result in a much better product, or ideas, than any individual would create on his/her own. Google docs and other shareware are great tools to facilitate sharing ideas in document creation, and wikis do the same online. Openness during collaboration, and the interest in collaboration are two ways of checking your ego at the keyboard because others are doing the hard work as well. The rewards can be mind-boggling. Just think “wikipedia.” Another great link is Beth Kanter’s post about “working wikily” here.

Invite the public in, listen, and learn. Drop your ego at the keyboard. You’re in for a great ride.

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