Get SMART NW – Social Media Advanced Relationship Training

Just launched and we’re wicked excited!

Get SMART NW was created to solve a problem – a lot of talk about social media, but no actual learning solutions. This program combines hands on learning, worksheet and tips to support your learning process. It’s a big world out there, but you don’t have to face it alone.

We understand that social media is a big ol’ complex world that changes every day. Our nine progressive classes help you learn, enjoy and succeed in social media.

It’s a big online world out there. You don’t have to face it alone. Get SMART NW pairs you with classmates at the same level of social media understanding to create a learning community. Affordable, easy and tailored to your needs.

 

Get SMART today!

We’re very excited to partner with Scene Marketing Group in offering this comprehensive and intensive social media training course.

 

It Takes Two

It Takes Two

It takes two to tango is an idiomatic and well-worn expression in the United States. Often spoken when describing personal relationships, it is also used to describe peer or business relationships. As brands have jumped on the social web express, how many have signed contracts with or hired web community managers and assumed that these individuals or outsourced providers can take the ball and run with it, without support?

We’ve learned at Chalkboarder that some clients are a “bear” to fully collaborate with. It seems no matter how many times a week we seek raw content from these clients, it’s damn difficult to get collaboration. The reasons are varied, of course. Some clients are simply so busy managing day-to-day operations that social community management and content production is a big after-thought.

Other clients have assumed that, since they have a community manager, that’s all they need.

I’ve spoken with other social web managers who’ve experienced this as well. One, a mentor and friend, recently told me one of her clients cut short the relationship, stating that they were going to do it on their own. My friend described to me how the former client had, in her estimation, only used her minimally, despite repeated requests for raw content and collaboration.

If you’ve hired a web community manager, are you giving them all the tools and ingredients they need to do outstanding work for you? Take a look at this – don’t assume that just because you hired a manager that the social media show is a wrap. Hiring a web community manager without providing collaboration and raw content is a lot like a restaurant hiring a talented chef into a well equipped kitchen, but then not supplying food ingredients for them to work with.

If you truly desire to take advantage of the social web, you have to provide good quality raw content to your community manager. Better yet – flood them with good raw content. They’ll generate wildly distinctive and effective dialogues, build communities and drive sales if you do.

I’m curious how many other web community managers struggle with this?

Cadenced Company Run – All The Way

On July 13, 1987, I reported to boot camp at United States Army Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri. At 22, I was older than 95% of my fellow recruits, and with a few years of college, that meant squad leadership instantly.

Fort Leonard Wood, or more affectionately known as Fort Lost In The Woods, is very hot in late summer, averaging 100 or more degrees daily. Nine weeks of training, not sleeping, designed and intentional harrassment and running. We ran everywhere. In full gear. When we weren’t in standing sleep or front and leaning rest positions.

Two significant experiences from boot camp have marked the rest of my life. First, when the Drill Sergeant came into our bay and told us, just prior to our first General Officer inspection, that “every damned human puts their pants on the same f^#@ing way”. Since then, I’ve been able to talk to anyone, from the Certified Master Chef/VP Operations of Smith Meats, to the homeless elderly lady begging for a sleeping bag. It doesn’t matter who you are – we’ve got conversation to have.

The second experience was more profound. Running. Day in and day out. In formation. While singing at the top of your lungs. Pushing through mile after mile in the Missouri heat.

When I contemplated this post, I spent some time searching for an old cadence – “I’m a steamroller, baby”. I’ve been thinking a lot about the last three summers and how this summer feels different. The past three summers were difficult, partly from personal struggles with a 2007 divorce, but mostly from the lack of economy we all experienced. It seems that by mid-July for 2007 to 2009, everyone stopped working. Or at least stopped making decisions of significance.

I understand it. August is the time when you want to squeeze the lemonade drops of warmth of life, before it gets cold again. School for families is just around the corner. It’s a busy time of year, filled with fun and adventure and things to get done around home.

I believe though, that through these weeks, business leaders are contemplating. They’re processing in the back burner those significant decisions they know they need to execute come September.

Here at Chalkboarder, we’ve taken a different stride to round out the rest of summer. I have to give thanks to two individuals for this – Amanda Hite and Libby Tucker. Amanda is CEO of Talent Revolution – and her 30 Day Bucket List has impacted me at just the right moment. Libby is CEO of Beer2Buds – and a conversation with her this week, comparing entrepreneurs to lions, also struck the tenor of my thoughts perfectly.

Our stride this summer has lengthened. We’re in the power phase of the “company run” of our year in 2010. Instead of weathering the windless doldrums of late summer, we’re on a full force company run, replete with throaty voices singing cadence and a full leg stride knocking out the miles. Our objectives?

• Take full care of our existing relationships, nurturing them to our full ability.
• Seek as many opportunities for excellence as we can.
• Build as many new relationships as we can without focusing on selling ourselves.

We’re on the move. We’re shaking it. We’re sweating in the heat. And we’re singing all the way..

All the way..

How are you spending your summer?

Jeffrey J Kingman, former Sergeant USARNG-OR, now CEO/Founder of Chalkboarder

Nurturing Village

Cross posted on Kitchen Dances.

Zulu Tribal Dance

Lately I’ve been thinking quite a bit about Paul Barron’s Tribe concept. Paul spoke about this at People Report’s Summer Camp in Dallas this past June. Here’s a small recap of what he said:

“What will your tribe mean to your brand, to your industry and to your future. Learn why now is so important to build your tribe why others will try to do it before you.”

And here’s a quick video from Paul that outlines what “Tribe” meant to us there at #PRSCamp (the hashtag you can find our tribe on in Twitter).

I’ve been talking with Paul about One Tribe since late in 2009. I’d like to share the evolution of what One Tribe means to me – that it is all about nurturing villages.

Maalula Village

We, as humans, live in diverse villages. There’s the village of our family and friends, the village of our peers, the village of our customers/clients and the broader villages of our associations, churches, charitable organizations, towns, cities and regions.

My thoughts have centered on nurturing my villages. Taking time to care for and nurture my connections; giving what I am able of my resources to further the dreams, goals and objectives of villagers in my communities.

Village Interconnectedness

I figure by doing so, I’m strengthening and developing to greater sustainability and stability all of the people and organizations in my communities, in my world. By focusing on this, I’m helping to develop strong and healthy communities and relationships.

Further, by focusing on nurturing my villages, I bring people together, weaving deeper connections and relationships between my villages, creating community.

Flower of Life

This theory is not new in human experience. Theologists and spiritualists have talked about this for generations.

Nicaraguan Village

This.. focusing on my villages as my One Tribe, is responsibility.

As always, I’d love to hear your thoughts on this..  Jeff

Chalkboarder’s New Look..

We launched a new look to Chalkboarder yesterday, reformatting our main site (here) and re-launching another site Chalkboarder News.

Chalkboarder News is our company and client newswire service. We’re sharing everything we post for our clients (and for us) there as it happens. We’d love for you to check it out and if you wish to stay abreast of current developments, please subscribe or RSS feed.

We’re using our main site here to discuss relationship engineering, social media, the evolution of the social web, customer service, organizational sustainability, brand concept and development and my favorite topic – building and nurturing organizational villages.

Our relationship engineering team includes Bill Bridgmon (VP Sales), Matthew Vitorla (NE Reg Sales), Jennifer Collins (SE Reg Sales), Judith Smith (Editor) and myself. I anticipate you’ll see an noticeable uptick in activity here at Chalkboarder.

Jeffrey

A New Look

Yup… summer’s here – and with it, a whole new feel for Chalkboarder.

An Apology to the Dessert Professional Community

Open Letter of Apology

I have a personal and professional apology to make.

Yesterday I attended the open house grand opening of Water Avenue Coffee in Portland, Oregon. I have been witness to the process my friends Bruce and Matt Milletto and the Bellissimo Coffee InfoGroup/American Barista Coffee School have been through to birth a coffee roastery and roasting school with coffee bar for several months now.

While there, Brandon, their head roaster, knowing my background as a fine-dining executive chef, shared with me a cup of coffee truly fantastic. He had taken green Sumatran beans and stored them in old oak wine barrels for two weeks, then roasted them.

In blunt honesty, this cup of coffee is the best coffee I have ever tasted. I got really excited about it.

In my excitement, I sent out a tweet from several Twitter accounts; @jeffreyjkingman, @coffeefestshow, @chalkboarder and from my client Dessert Professional Magazine‘s account @dessertpro. My failure is this – I used the acronym “OM*G” in the message.

To all the followers of @dessertpro and to any other followers of the other accounts who are offended by the use of this acronym, I deeply and sincerely apologies. I most definitely did not mean to offend with my excitement. My passion as a culinarian and gourmand spilled over.

I appreciate that a couple of you following @dessertpro took the time to call the magazine’s office to complain. The energy expended in doing so I cannot repay, but it indicates that you care about Dessert Professional Magazine. To Matthew Stevens, Tish Boyle and the rest of the staff at Dessert Professional, my sincerest apologies for mis-representing your brand.

Please feel free to message me anytime about content that I distribute over any social network, from my accounts, Chalkboarder’s accounts or any of our clients accounts.

Most sincerely,

Jeffrey J Kingman
CEO, Chalkboarder

On The Road

I’m excited to get back on the road again. I love traveling, networking and working tradeshows (for some weird reason).

Monday I’m off to Minneapolis to work for Coffee Fest, handling all their social media from the event. I’m presenting an introductory social media workshop on Thursday’s Executive Summit and an advanced social media skills workshop early on Sunday morning. I’m excited to be at this show again, figuring I’ll see some people I recognize from Coffee Fest Meadowlands back in early March.

Next Monday, I travel to Dallas, from Minneapolis, to attend People Report’s Summer Camp Workforce Symposium, along with the top executives from major restaurant multi-unit corporations, such as Darden, TGIFs, Taco Bell and Dunkin Donuts. There are people attending this that I’ve had wonderful social media relationships for over half a year now, but never met. Now I get to meet them.

I’m available by email, cell phone or social media throughout the two weeks on the road.

Year Two: Chalkboarder’s Course

From the beginning, I’ve had a vision for Chalkboarder, to be an extremely creative, very personal and highly effective relational networking and social media services firm.

Comparatively, I see Chalkboarder as the “Orange County Choppers” of brand development agencies – creative, fun, selective, a little crazy and a little “bad”. We’ve been moving in that direction since the beginning.

As we begin year two, this vision has solidified. We’ve got great clients:
Coffee Fest
Dessert Professional Magazine
Rewarding Feedback
Oak Grove Coffeehouse
Jenee Halstead Music
Nicky USA

While we’re hospitality/gastronomic centric, our client diversity is wonderful. We’ve got proposals out to companies in even more diverse industries:
Event/Tradeshow/Conference Management
Premium Cattle Ranching
Chocolate
Manufacturing
Social Web Applications

We’ve expanded at our one year anniversary to establishing field sales representation in New York City and Los Angeles, something we’re deeply excited about. In year two I’m intent to put together a shop in Portland that has permanent staff capable of video/audio production, animation and effective brand content production for clients. I seek to expand our proprietary networks of contacts internationally, leveraging our ability to put brands together to clients and effectively engineering successful relationships for them.

To our existing and future clients – we’re definitely excited about being in community with you!

One Year And Growing

It was a year ago that Chalkboarder was created. My partner Judith and I spent eight weeks writing a business plan and meeting with Paul Speer of SCORE (a former CTO managing 5000 internationally in Web 3.0 development). Of course, not all has gone according to that plan and we’ve grown in unanticipated directions.

We’d like to take this moment to thank current and past clients:

Coffee Fest
Rewarding Feedback
Social Grub
Angela Tunner Brand
World Twang
Jenee Halstead
Dessert Professional Magazine
Oak Grove Coffeehouse

We’d also like to thank the following individuals for great conversations and dialogue over the past year:

Paul Barron, Carri Bugbee, Marsha Collier, Kerry Finstead, Matt Milletto, Zachary Cohen, Traca Savadago, Michael Atkinson, Amanda Hite, Joni Doolin, Jill McFarland, Brie Nadal, Kat Cole, Chris Brogan, Brian Solis, Eric Qualman, Chris Guillebeau, Ola Ayeni, Justin Levy, Ron Ruggles, Dan Schwabel, Amber Naslund, Sonya Schweitzer, Pia Proal, the crew at Evergreen DynamicsSo and so many, many others.

I personally would like to thank Judith Smith (VP/Co-Founder), Jennifer Kingman (Partner), Bill Bridgmon (Partner and VP Sales), David Rogers, Roger LeClerc, David Hiler, Cecilia Kingman-Miller and James Kingman. Your encouragement and support is greatly valued.

As part of our One Year Birthday, we’re very pleased to announce reaching a milestone. We’ve partnered with two outstanding individuals to empower deeper and more aggressive growth, based in Southern California and New York/New Jersey.

Southern California
We’re very excited to partner with Chef Sandra Mallut, an extremely accomplished professional pastry chef with deep connections world-wide, including Disney. Sandra will spearhead relational connections and socialmedia client development in California, Nevada and the Southwest, in addition to the dessert industry. Welcome aboard, Chef!

New York/New Jersey
We’re also very excited to partner with Matthew Vitrola, a double major honors student at Brown University, majoring in economics and linguistics, with a focus on new media and the social web and a professional interest in the hospitality industry. Matthew’s extrovert and analytic skills will be a valuable addition to Chalkboarder in pursuing new business in the Northeast. Welcome aboard, Matt!

We’re very appreciative of all the support, dialogue and encouragement we’ve received, especially from Social Media Club PDX here in Oregon. We’re excited to serve the community and our clients with greater knowledge and skill as we all move forward together.

Where’s the cake? Anyone want a slice? Ice cream too? The Vueve Clicquot is over at the bar 🙂

Jeffrey J Kingman
CEO/Founder