Live from XMediaLab: Juliette Powell, 33 Million People in the Room

From the program: Juliette Powell is a media entrepreneur, a community catalyst and the author of 33 Million People in the Room : How to create, influence and Run a Successful Business with Social Networking, (January 2009, Financial Times Press). Drawing on first hand experience as a social media expert and co-founder of The Gathering Think Tank, an innovation forum that connects technology, media, entertainment, and business communities, Powell writes about the patterns and practices of successful business leaders who bank on social networking to win. Powell’s background includes a decade of experience in broadcast television as well as in interactive/new media content and formats, and a lifelong interest in people and community-building. With her deep knowledge of the people and technologies at the forefront of social media, Powell has gained a solid reputation for discovering the latest developments and distilling their social and business implications. Her consulting services have been employed by corporate, government and new media organizations, including Red Bull, Mozilla, Microsoft, Compaq, Trump International, the United Nations, the Department of Justice, Paltalk, Rocketboom and Nokia.

Never waste a good crisis!

Keeping in mind that this isn’t the easiest climate, she’s going to go through some ideas to help us through.

You are the Chief Scientist of your own life. Everything you do is an experiment and an experience. What she did was look at the patterns in her own life and in those of her clients. She started exploring social capital -- essentially the people that are around you, the people that care about you. Cultural capital: if you start adding value to the people in your life, they want to help you, so they talk about you, and all of a sudden you go beyond your networks and your extended networks and you start affecting the world at large.

So when she looks at Guy Laliberte or Richard Branson or Nelson Mandela, she sees that all of these people have social and cultural capital. So even though most of us will never meet them, we all want to help them. You probably know looking at your own life that oftentimes it’s easier to help other people with their own dreams than to focus on your own.

1. People matter. Even if you don’t have money, people matter, first and foremost. They’re the number one resource you have. When markets decline, invest in your relationships. There’s incredible talent out there that are probably looking for the next big idea – open up to them. Maybe they’ve been laid off from a big corporation with a little bit of money in the bank, so they can afford to spend a month or two working on something fabulous.

All of you entrepreneurs, you are the fuel for the global economic recovery. If you don’t have the financial resources, you probably still have the people.

2. Resources are cheap. Many people are using social networking and saying, “Oh yeah, that’s over.” But there are millions of others who realize the power of social networking, the power to connect with people who want to help you.

3. Appetite for risk. You have to be authentic. You have to be able to communicate not just when things are going well, but also when things are not going so well. She tells about when she spoke at TED, she tweeted about it proudly – minimal response. But just before she went on stage, she tweeted, “I’m so nervous, I don’t think I’m going to make it, I think I’m going to puke!” and she got hundreds of responses. But there’s risk there -- would anyone ask her to speak again if she admitted how nervous she was?

4. Follow the $$$$. She talks about Kickstarter.com in New York, which allows you to engage your participatory audience by uploading your core idea. And the better you are at expressing who you are and what you’re about, the more likely it is you’ll get funded. People only contribute from $0.25 to $25 – but that’s how the Obama campaign worked.

5. Disruptive technologies. She’s seen a lot of disruptive technologies here today, and she loves Kickstarter because they’re not taking a cut -- they’re teaching you to be self-sustaining. You can’t always be rah rah rah, sometimes you get kicked in the stomach, but when there are people around you who care they help you get back up.

a) Low barriers to entry (Facebook, Twitter)
b) Viral or network effects (LinkedIn)
c) built on the platform of the prebvious boom

6. Foresight. She doesn't think it’s about spending a lot of money. There are so many ways to aggregate great technology and great people. Just listening to all the great ideas being presented at XMediaLab, there’s a lot of overlap.

Beautiful.