dcinput daily for Tue 13th March, 2007
BBC News: “Entertainment giant Viacom Media says it will sue web search engine Google and its video-sharing website YouTube for $1bn”. Hmm, betting against Google is kind of like betting against the Internet: in the end they always win, even if at first it might seem like you did.
What do evangelists do?
At the last London MiniBar event I met quite a diverse group of people, saw some interesting presentations and had a beer or two. One of the people I met was Roo Reynolds who is a Metaverse Evangelist for IBM. It turns out that IBM have a pretty large portfolio with Linden Labs, owning something like 12 Islands in the online virtual world of Second Life. Roo explained that they have started to use Second Life to host meetings where real life IBM employees are geographically spread out worldwide. The dress code is strictly “no jeans, no wings”.
As well as wondering what work would be like if it were more like a video game, I’ve also been wondering what it is that this new breed of evangelists, you know the ones that work for companies, actually do. Whatever it is, with companies like Microsoft, Google, Amazon and IBM all boasting many evangelists on their books, you can bet they are doing something useful. Somehow the term has migrated into everyday business speak, it’s just I must have missed it happen.
One of the definitions of an ‘evangelist’ at dictionary.com is “A missionary preacher sent forth to prepare the way for a resident pastor; an itinerant missionary preacher”. Putting the religious bit to one side, I quite like the ‘preparing the way’ part, kind of like you’d be out there in unchartered territory, meeting new people with new ideas and viewpoints, figuring out how you could help them.
What do you think modern evangelists do? Let me know in the comments.
Technology Evangelist: “People who have one simple goal: Better Living Through Technology”.
Robert Scobble on evangelists: “Another reason for an evangelist never to tell a lie. Credibility. Who will listen to an evangelist who tells you something that you already know isn’t true.”
Guy Kawasaki on the Art of Evangelism.
The art of telling stories
More and more I’m realising how important it is to be able to tell stories. There’s something very fundamental about storytelling, it’s the tool us humans use both to learn and understand new concepts. Interestingly in the real world, in everyday life, storytelling is not one directional. A good storyteller is very aware of the audience, how they are reacting, constantly looking for new ways to engage them, to guide their thoughts.
Much like a stand up comedian, a storyteller must be able to ad-lib, to create things of the cuff, to see new parallels and to pluck relevant things from their story archive. A bad storyteller has it all planned out in advance. The problem is that it’s impossible to see in advance how to engage the audience, how they will react. If there is one skill you should practice it is the art of storytelling, it is a sign of experience.
Incidentally, I imagine that good evangelists are good storytellers.
March 14th, 2007 at 9:42 am
I should point out the “no jeans, no wings” dresscode was only for the event we ran in which our CEO presented from within Second Life, and is not the usual big blue dress code. In fact, I know several IBMers who do wear wings (and/or jeans) much of the time in their second lives.
In answer to your question about what evangelists do, I find myself enthusiastic and communicative about virtual worlds, hence my current role. For me, technical evangelism is about helping people understand what’s happening as well as helping them consider how they might benefit. Your point about engaging with the audience is spot on. That’s always the aim: how can I share this idea with this person in a way that’s not just compelling but relevant?
I split my time almost equally between internal and external focus. It’s important to me that other IBMers get this stuff (and delightful that so many already do). At the same time, presenting to business partners, clients, conferences, press etc is a natural abd important part of the role too.
March 15th, 2007 at 1:07 pm
I find this time split between internal and external focus very interesting. It’s almost like you are the real life interface between the inside and outside of the company.
The act of evangelising must happen in all areas of business and I imagine that metaverses could potentially be a very interesting tool for this.
Evangelism seems to lie somewhere in between sales, marketing and business development.
I very much appreciated your comment.