If you want to learn about social media, you landed in the right time period!

Social media learning events coming up:

March 24th: Marie Workshops in Auckland

An intimate workshop for people new to social media. You’ll learn how to tweet, blog, Facebook and YouTube. Register here.

March 31st: Social Media 101 at The University of Auckland Short Courses

Get the 30,000 foot view of social media as it pertains to business – specifically your business. Register here.

April 7-9: Connect Now, Sydney, Australia

Featuring social media thought leaders from around the world and MC’ed by Simon Young, Connect Now is a major event for the Asia Pacific region. Together we’re exploring the future not just of marketing but of business. Register here and let us know you’ll be there!

Auckland Social Media Club – every month

Hear from others who are regularly using social media at the Auckland Social Media Club meetups, on the second Tuesday of each month. Keep in touch by becoming a fan on the Facebook page.

Find out what else is on and happening on the #sy social media consultancy events page.

Work needs more play – and not just because it makes people feel good. Play can make a person – and a company – more resilient, more creative and more innovative.

The Red Rubber Ball at Work does a great job of saying why play is important – from the points of view of many different people in business, from product designers to salespeople to Seth Godin.

For more information on play and its role in the growth cycle (from chaos to competence), see chapter one of the Jolt Challenge, an excellent book I’ve just finished. A review is coming your way soon!

Meantime, enjoy this review and I’d love to hear what you think!

Recently I’ve been guest posting at NZ’s arts hub The Big Idea about … what else … social media.

Read about how intention is shifting to social media, but not budget – and why I think that’s happening.

Find out how to get a job in social media.

And check out my contentious post about the Save Radio NZ Campaign. Deliberately provocative? Just to get a response? You decide.

I met Luke Grange in Melbourne last year at the Marketing Now Conference. He let me know about an exciting project connecting social media and the skills of emotional intelligence.

Find out more about the project, and the e-book Luke has co-written.

I love speeches – well, great ones at least. And Great Speeches for Better Speaking takes you on the inside of some of America’s best speeches: JFK’s inaugural address, Ronald Reagan’s state of the nation address following the Challenger disaster, and other lesser-known but equally powerful examples.

In this review I explore (among other things) the connection between oratory and social media – particularly the ability to persuade. It touches on issues covered by Clay Shirky in Here Comes Everybody – the idea that whether we like it or not, everyone has the ability to influence, whether they’re right or wrong.

The answer? An informed public. It’s going to be a better world if we all understand how persuasion works – whether it’s through a speech, or through a blog.

The author of Great Speeches also runs a website called AmericanRhetoric.com, which is a remarkable education resource.

In this review I also look back at another oratory-related review, Say it Like Obama. Who knows, maybe January 2011 will bring yet another book review about speech-making.

Also worth watching/listening: JFK, MLK and Winston Churchill run through autotune. Sounds like a joke, but I found it surprisingly touching!