My Digital Brand

I recently came across an old copy of Fast Company with an article titled 'The Brand Called You' by Tom Peters. In brief he was saying that:

"A career is a portfolio of projects that teach you new skills, gain you new expertise, develop new capabilities, grow your colleague set, and constantly reinvent you as a brand. Big companies understand the importance of brands. Today, in the Age of the Individual, you have to be your own brand. When you're promoting brand You, everything you do -- and everything you choose not to do -- communicates the value and character of the brand. If you want to grow your brand, you've got to come to terms with power -- your own. It's influence power. It's reputational power. When you're thinking like brand You, you don't need org-chart authority to be a leader. The fact is you are a leader. You're leading You!"

That was in 1997 – it seems ever more relevant today and it got me thinking about 'My Digital Brand'.

Kim Cofino

I met Kim in January this year in Thailand. She is a teacher at the International School in Bangkok and a passionate champion of the web in education. She could not participate in the conference in Dunedin so I sent her a few questions around the Digital Me. She kindly made an MP3 recording of her thoughts.
Listen to Kim >>>

Interview with Natalie Robertson

Natalie talks about how she feels empowered by the ability to quickly connect with others who share similar interests.

MP3 File

Apple launches 'Me.com'

Yesterday Apple announced 'Me' - a system to synchronize your digital life through the cloud. manage your digital assets, your friends and your communications across devices and on both PC and Mac platforms. It is an extension of the .Mac offering and a competitor to Microsoft Live Mesh and similar backup and sync offerings. This is another example of the increasing battle of the big brands to 'own' the relationship with consumers in the cloud and remain part of the vale chain for 'The Digital Me'.

Watch the promo video here >>>

Interview with Mark Barlow on 'The Digital Me' and Social Networking

Last Friday, June 6th, I interviewed a colleague of mine at Telecom New Zealand, Mark Barlow. Mark works in the Technology Strategy Group. In this video he shares some interesting thoughts on what he thinks will be the next big thing for social networking - direct brain interface to the human network through the power of thought. He also talks about managing our digital brand.

First SaaS now PaaS - Platform as a Service

When Bill Gates was giving his final keynote speech at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas in January 08 he said: “ The second digital decade will be more focused on connecting people. It will be more focused on being user centric. Microsoft will deliver platforms that will let people build applications. Those applications will run not only on the PC, they’ll run up in the internet, or in the cloud, as we say, on the phone, in the car, in the TV” (tinyurl.com/5k303p).

A little later Live Mesh was released. Below is a promotion for this data synchronization idea. Google, Apple, Sun, Amazon and others are also fighting over this new turf war in the air – or rather, in the cloud. How will it play out? How will it enable the digital me?

Openness is the new black

'Marc's Voice' blog post from yesterday (June 3rd) offers an interesting perspective on the current land grab in the cloud, and the tensions between a desire for lock-in and a paradigm of openness (using Microsoft Live Mesh and Twitter as examples). Worth a read to get a sense of the new world order we are moving into as the cloud increasingly becomes the operating system and big companies such as Nokia, Vodafone, Facebook, Google, Apple and Microsoft fight over territory in what could quickly become wireless world war three.