Most of you know that I am working on setting up the Nokia social media communications site (uh, a blog for now), to be called Nokia Conversations.
One thing that we want to stress is not product features and service stats, but stories – stories about how things come into being at Nokia, stories about things Nokia is doing beyond products and services, and stories about people from the ‘Nokia neighbourhood’.
An example of a kind of story we would write about (I am actually not sure if my editorial team will actually be writing something on this) is about these two guys who drove a ‘banger’, a banged up old Mercedes, from Plymouth, England to Banjul, Gambia. It was a fund drive for the Macmillan Cancer Support.
Nokia donated a Sat Nav 330 and a Nokia 6110 Navigator to help these guys wend their way down to Gambia.
Link: The Cambs Times – Tough ‘banger’ miles for Macmillan smiles
A DETECTIVE and his brother-in-law from March will embark on the challenge of a lifetime when they travel 4,000 miles unsupported from Plymouth to Banjul. And to make the task even more daunting they will be doing the whole thing in a ‘banger’. The duo, Det Sgt Sean Gladwell, from the serious and organised crime department, and his brother-in-law Tim Cox, who is the director of ROI Distribution Ltd, a software distribution company of Norwood Road industrial estate, March, have been trying for three years to take part in the ‘Banger to Banjul’ challenge to raise money for charity.
One more thing: As soon as I posted this, I got another email telling me about another Nokia-sponsored navigation challenge that is related to fund-raising, this time James Cracknell’s Cross-continent Challenge. Must be a British thing.
Don’t know if they have any Nokia sponsorship (yet), but here are a couple of other Brits who will be (for charity) driving 10,000 miles from Scotland to Beijing in buggies (maybe via Helsinki):
http://www.paisleypeking.co.uk/
You mentioned “editorial teams” – does this mean there will be a dedicated team of editors for writing the content? It could also be interesting if the stories are written by actual nokia people – like in the case of Kia Buzz (http://www.web20asia.com/153)
When I moved to Finland last summer and visited Nokia House for the first time a few employees from Multimedia (now Devices) gave me a Nokia N95, told me the code name and the story around it and how it related to the country.
It is a shame I can’t share that information with others, I never understood why code names can’t get out after a product is released, but I’m just giving an example of something I found interesting.
Engineering stories are a staple to keeping the base of die hard fans. This post on Lenovo’s blog that talks about how the fan blades inside the new T and X series notebooks were created to mimic the shape of an owl’s wings to reduce sound is astounding. I’m very proud to be a ThinkPad owner because I know the company stands for outstanding engineering first, simple and functional exterior second.
http://lenovoblogs.com/insidethebox/?p=81
As Stefan says, there are some amazing stories in the company and we really want to get them out.
The editorial team will ensure that we have a steady flow of interesting things. Nonetheless, in addition to the stories we write, we will be receiving stories from other groups at Nokia.
And, yes, we are looking to get the stories out there as unadulterated as possible, which means that we do want to get the product managers, the line workers, the designers, all speaking in their own voice.
We have some blogging going on internally and are on the look-out for folks who can contribute to the public site.
We will also be asking non-Nokians to contribute at various levels. So, it’s not just coming from us (indeed, the story in this post is from non-Nokians).
We’re not writing them all, but getting that flywheel of conversations going by our own stuff, stuff from others in the company, and also going outside the company.
One more thing: And we are not the only place for the conversation to happen. We will be producing other things as well for people to point to, take, or remix. Indeed, the more out there, the better I feel.