Yesterday was my first day as Social Media Manager at Jetstar. Yes, that means I have a new job :)

For those of you who might not know, the Jetstar Group (usually just referred to as Jetstar) consists of four low-cost airlines:

• Jetstar Airways, based in Australia,
• Jetstar Asia Airways, based in Singapore,
• Jetstar Pacific Airlines, based in Vietnam, and
• Jetstar Japan, based in Japan.

Jetstar was launched in 2004 and, with its 79 aircraft and over 7,000 employees, currently flies to 56 destinations in 17 countries across the Asia-Pacific region.

My job is a Group role (i.e. it’s a corporate function that works across all four airlines) and is based at the Jetstar corporate headquarters in Melbourne, Australia.

Why did I change jobs?

For a number of reasons:

• I love the airlines/aviation industry and working for an airline is something I’ve been wanting to do for a long time.
• Jetstar is a great brand that is run by good people who provide a valuable service. It’s a brand I respect and is a brand whose values I share (i.e. providing good value for money, making smart use of technology, and making travel to popular destinations accessible to lots of people).
• I’m making a career path adjustment that sees me changing my focus from building and managing websites to helping companies and customers communicate better with each other using social media. And while this is a slight narrowing of focus (e.g. in my current role I won’t be looking after the Jetstar website) it is also an increase in overall responsibility (i.e. I get to work on more strategic corporate communications objectives).
• My new role is more challenging because the scale and scope of customer engagement is greater (e.g. it’s across the entire Asia-Pacific region as opposed to just within the state of Victoria) and the aviation industry is more exciting, more innovative, and moves much faster than the water industry.
• I have a greater opportunity for personal growth because I now get to employ my social media skills to their fullest. I had been wanting to increase my social media focus at Melbourne Water but, with all the other work I was doing there, this wasn’t something I was able to do.

I also get to work with one of my former managers who I really like and work really well with. And finally, as someone whose family is spread across multiple countries, the travel benefits of working for an airline are important to me personally.

What does the new job involve?

Broadly speaking, my overall objective is to improve the communication, engagement, and understanding between Jetstar and its customers. Specifically, I get to do this via social media. Though, practically speaking, this engagement will be integrated across multiple communication channels.

How exactly I go about doing all this is something I will share on this blog (and probably also on Twitter) over the coming weeks, months, and years so stay tuned.

Matt Symonds recently wrote a good article on the importance of diversity in MBA programs:

…business schools seek to encourage not only more women and ethnic minorities to do an MBA, but also those with more diverse backgrounds including media, military, not-for-profits and entrepreneurship

…

But is it important for business schools to also strive for professional diversity? Many academics, administrators and students would say so. In fact, it’s been argued that restricting the MBA course participants to a limited range of experience means that traditionally accepted patterns of thought go unchallenged. They argue that a wide-ranging group of students helps to put business decision-making into a wider perspective, and thereby reduce the risk of a herd mentality that leads to ill-informed decisions. Perhaps Wall Street should take note?

Diversity in the student body – particularly a good mix of international students – is one of the main reasons I applied to Melbourne Business School for my MBA; and I was certainly not disappointed. In my intake (the full-time MBA intake of  September 2006) we had about 65  students, only seven of which were from Australia (the rest were from about 35 countries) and a quarter of which were women (for MBA programs, this is better than most).

MBS also goes out of its way to acquire diversity through its various scholarship programs. In my case, I was awarded (what is now called) the Dean’s International Management Scholarship. Every year, that adds about three financially-limited international students to a mix of people who are fortunate enough to have other means to paying for their studies. I, for one, will be forever grateful to MBS for giving me that opportunity.

Melbourne Business School (MBS) have produced a video called ‘MBS By Numbers’ as a thank you to the alumni of MBS:

More on the Experience Melbourne blog.

I joined Melbourne Water as their Websites Manager just under a year ago and, since then, I’ve done a lot of fun and exciting web-related work there.

We recently hit a few important milestones so I thought I’d take this opportunity to do a quick roundup of what I’ve been up to.

Web & New Media Strategy

All the exciting work I’m doing has its foundations in the Web & New Media Strategy that was kicked off in early 2009 and involved a few months of research, analysis, and decision-making. The actual “strategy” ended up being a three-phase plan for building and enhancing the organization’s online presence over the next 2-3 years.

The first phase (basically, quick wins) took less than six months to do and involved plugging the holes in our existing online presence. This included numerous web tweaks, getting a better understanding of what worked or didn’t work on our site (via Google Analytics), and, generally, making better use of the website (e.g. more cross promotion on high traffic areas). We also bought a Google Mini search engine to remove one of site’s biggest pain points which was a crappy search engine.

The second phase (6-12 months) is finishing up now. This addressed a whole bunch of other web tweaks (like content rewrites and information architecture adjustments) and launched projects in five major areas:

• A complete site overhaul (redoing the site’s content, design, and information architecture and getting a new web content management system)
• More multimedia (specifically illustrations, photos, and videos)
• More and better online maps (the more useful and usable the better)
• More information provision via mobile phones (through SMS, mobile applications, and mobile web sites)
• Getting into social media (for information provision and stakeholder engagement)

The third phase (1-3 years) involves more complex projects that can’t be started till we have everything else in place (like a new organizational GIS and a web content management system). Phase three work includes the automation of customer-facing business activities, which means things like building online forms and applications, providing custom information via SMS, and so on.

What’s Exciting Now?

Right now, though, we’re nearing the end of the second phase and we’ve made great progress in all five of the areas mentioned above:

• We’ve kicked off a project to get a new web content management system and have started the website redesign and reorganization process.
• We’ve started to place photos on Flickr (including ‘Photos from the Field’ which are from Melbourne Water employees) and videos on YouTube (almost all of which were produced in-house).
• We’ve got some really basic maps on our site but have kicked off a project that will move all our old and clunky maps to a better platform over the next year or so. Meanwhile, we’ve developed an interactive map that explains in simple terms how Melbourne’s complicated water supply network works.
• We’ve launched an iPhone app (link to iTunes store) and will be launching a new mobile version of our website in the next few weeks.
• We’re quite active on Twitter and will get further into social media when appropriate.

All in all, we’re tracking quite well and the work we’re doing is lots of fun and really quite exciting.

Culture of Innovation & Effective Communication

What I love most of all, though, is how much on-board everyone at Melbourne Water is with these enhancements. This support and appreciation of innovation and effective communication starts right at the top, too. For example, it was our Board who originally suggested that we develop a simplified water supply network map for the website. They wanted a simple way of explaining a complex system and realized that the web would be a great place to do just that.

In my opinion, the foundation for this is laid in Melbourne Water’s Strategic Framework document which explicitly lists the support of “innovation, achievement, and good ideas” and the need to “understand, manage, and meet or exceed customer expectations” as success indicators for the organization. At Melbourne Water these aren’t just phrases on a company brochure but actual, practical goals that all of us aspire to every day. In fact, to give you an example of how this is implemented practically: Every project that’s proposed at Melbourne Water has to explain and justify which of these strategic goals it’s addressing before it’s allowed to start.

So the work that I’m doing there both matches the direction the world is moving in (i.e. information provision and customer engagement is moving online) and is brilliantly supported by the organization itself. That’s yet another reason why I love working there.

Michael Specht just completed a blog post series on ‘Social Media as Part of Background Checking’ during the recruitment process:

• Part 1 (Access to a unique view)
• Part 2 (Research into cultural fit)
• Part 3 (Legal issues)
• Part 4 (Bringing it all together)

I personally think that social media checks – or, at the very least, Google searches – are an essential part of recruitment. And I think that goes both ways:

• recruiters and companies learn all they can about candidates
• candidates learn all they can about recruiters and the companies they’re applying to

This is important because:

• both parties get to find out more about each other
• both parties get to assess cultural fit
• candidates get to show off their online portfolio and social media participation

While the last point is certainly vital for people working in Internet-related industries, it is also becoming increasingly relevant for people working in other industries (as more of their lives move online).

I’ve been at Melbourne Water for over six months but haven’t yet blogged about what I actually do there. So, thanks to the end-of-year holiday season that has given me the time to get back into blogging, here goes.

What Do I Do There?

My job title is ‘Websites Manager’ and that role sits in the External Affairs team which itself is part of the broader Communications & Community Relations group.

My tasks include:

• Managing all of Melbourne Water’s websites (i.e. the main site and various sub-sites)
• Developing and implementing a Web & New Media Strategy for organization (this includes getting the organization involved with social media)
• Helping knowledge specialists from across the business create and maintain their web content
• Proactively seeking content to place on the web (this includes content that site visitors want to see and content that we want site visitors to see)
• Liaising between our web solution provider and the rest of the business (including, sometimes our own internal IT department)
• Managing the Website Advisor (who focuses primarily on the online needs of the Waterways group)

More generally, my job involves three things:

• Tactical management: Managing web content and being the go-to guy for everything related to the web (and, increasingly, multimedia and social media).
• Strategic management: Finding out what our current online presence is, determining what we want that online presence to be over the coming years, and figuring out how we’re going to get there. This includes doing things like a complete site overhaul and pursuing new online models of stakeholder engagement (specifically, social media).
• People management: Overseeing work done by the Website Advisor and managing the web team’s relationship with the rest of the organization.

That’s a lot to do but I’m having an awesome time doing it. If it didn’t keep me so busy, I almost wouldn’t call it “work”.

What’s it Like to Work There?

It’s awesome. I love the people, I love the culture, and I love the commitment everyone has to their work, to Melbourne, and to the planet in general. It’s really great to work alongside people who are experts in their fields (many of them are geeks like me) and who love the work that they do.

I really appreciate the fact that the organization truly cares about, and cares for, its employees. And I love that we don’t have to leave our lives (and the rest of the world) at the doorstep when we step into the office.

I love the range of work that the organization does – everything from:

• sourcing and storing water,
• treating and providing water (to Melbourne’s private water retailers), and
• taking care of our rivers, creeks, wetlands, and (soon) coastline,
• to collecting, treating, and safely disposing of our sewerage.

Finally, I am impressed by the importance and emphasis the organization places on good communication and stakeholder engagement. Indeed, excellent stakeholder engagement is a core strategic objective for Melbourne Water. I am particularly empowered by this focus because so much of that communication and engagement is moving into the online space (including social media) and that’s specifically what I am responsible for (and really enjoy doing).

So, You Like it, Then?

Yes, very much so!

Melbourne Business School professor Joshua Gans has a funny post on his Core Economics blog about an attempted…er, criticism of his research.

What happened was that Gerard Henderson from The Sydney Institute decided to trawl through Gans’ blog in an attempt to cherry pick items that would question the credibility of Gans’ work.

Unfortunately for him, Henderson picked a humorous item in which Gans linked to a Randall Munroe blog post on ‘Urinal Protocol Vulnerability’. Munroe, for those of you who don’t know, is the author of the brilliant xkcd webcomic. For some inexplicable reason, Henderson believed this study to be (a) trivial and (b) carried out by Gans himself.

Henderson wrote in his Media Watch Dog article:

Here’s hoping that Mr Holmes and his Media Watch team will publish much more of Joshua Gans’ ground-breaking research in future editions of the program.  MWD is particularly impressed by his work on, er, male urinals.  Gans’ paper “Urinal protocol vulnerability” attempts to answer one of the key questions of our time. Namely:  “When a guy goes to the bathroom, which urinal does he pick?”  Good question, don’t you think?

Gans, in reply, suggests that maybe Henderson needs to brush up on his Internet researching skills:

Mr Henderson mis-attributes various amusing quotes written by Randal Monroe to me. He then invites Media Watch to take a closer look at “my research.” I’d invite them to take a closer look at Mr Henderson’s posts. How can someone purporting to watch the media not understand the point of hyperlinks? That said, his post doesn’t seem to contain any itself so this web-stuff might not be his thing.

I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Update: Check out Andrew Leigh’s exchange with Gerard Henderson on this topic.

The University of Melbourne has revamped its alumni magazine — called, appropriately enough, Melbourne University Magazine — and is now publishing it online as well.

I’ve only read a couple of articles (like Peter McPhee’s ‘Investigating the Melbourne Model‘) and have skimmed through a few others but, judging from what I’ve seen so far, it’s looking good.

A couple of weeks ago Scott Arbeitman wrote about the technology gap between the street and the enterprise. Carl Joseph replied to that with one of the most painful technology-related quotes I’ve heard (painful because of how true it is):

“Every day you get to use new technology and are exposed to new, exciting things…then you go to work.”

I’m not sure who actually said that, but if you work for a large corporation, then you’ll know what this feels like.

How do I Deal with Such Restrictions?

At my workplace, in order to keep up with the rest of the Internet world, I not only bring my own personal laptop to work I also bring with me my own personal wireless broadband Internet connection. And, despite the fact that my laptop is ancient and the broadband connection is painfully slow (relative to my workplace’s connection), I still get a better Internet experience on it than I do on my work computer.

Why? Because even though my laptop has half a gigabyte of RAM, a slow 30GB hard drive, no built-in wireless adapter (yes, it’s that old), and Windows XP, I get to run on it the latest versions of Flash, AIR, Silverlight, IE, Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Seesmic Desktop (along with numerous other applications) and I get to access whatever I want to on the Internet.

On my work computer, meanwhile, I am stuck with no AIR or Silverlight, IE6 as my only browser (I do have a version of Firefox on it but that doesn’t run Flash so it might as well not exist), and restrictions on which websites I can access. What makes this harder to live with is that my computer’s hardware is pretty good (it’s a docked laptop with a dual monitor setup) and my Internet connection speed is excellent.

It’s Not All Bad

I have to admit, though, that I am being somewhat unfair to my workplace. Aside from making us run IE6 and blocking parts of the web (including sites like Slideshare because it’s “personal storage”), they do let us access webmail, all the social networking sites (indeed, according to our IT department, Facebook is one of the five most popular sites at work), and most online media sites (like Flickr and YouTube). Compared to other large organizations – particularly government departments – in Australia, that’s pretty awesome.

In fact, they’ve gone a step further and have provided us (the Web Team) with a special media desktop (for converting and editing video) and a special Internet laptop (with all the latest software and applications installed on it). Bits of the Internet are still blocked on these PCs because you’re still going through their proxies, but that’s not such big a deal.

So What’s an Employee to Do?

One way for tech-savvy employees to get around these restrictions is to do what I’m doing: circumvent the IT department entirely by creating a parallel setup for yourself. With recent technology improvements like cheap netbooks, powerful smart phones, and readily available mobile broadband, this is easy and relatively inexpensive to do. I suspect a lot of Gen-Y will take this route.

The other option – the much harder one – is to get your IT department to get rid of these restrictions and, dare I say, modernize itself. Unfortunately, that’s not easy to do. Slate’s Farhad Manjoo makes a good case for it, though, in his recent article, ‘Unchain the Office Computers!’:

…workplace IT wardens are rarely amenable to rational argument. That’s because, in theory, their mission seems reasonable. Computers…can be dangerous things—they can breed viruses and other malware, they can consume enormous resources meant for other tasks, and they’re portals to great expanses of procrastination. So why not lock down workplace computers?

Here’s why: The restrictions infantilize workers—they foster resentment, reduce morale, lock people into inefficient routines, and, worst of all, they kill our incentives to work productively. In the information age, most companies’ success depends entirely on the creativity and drive of their workers. IT restrictions are corrosive to that creativity—they keep everyone under the thumb of people who have no idea which tools we need to do our jobs but who are charged with deciding anyway.

The Role of the IT Department

One of the most important parts of Manjoo’s argument, however, is this:

What’s worse, because they aren’t tasked with understanding how people in different parts of a company do their jobs, IT managers often can’t appreciate how profoundly certain tools can improve how we work.

This is often the root cause of the problem because most IT departments are divided into roughly three parts:

• IT Operations: the people who keep the systems running
• The Project Management Office (PMO): the people who oversee updates, upgrades, and all the organization’s IT projects
• IT Planning: the people who plan for the future

What is often missing is the fourth part:

• In-house IT Consulting: the people who liaise directly with different parts of the business and use the latest technologies to improve the way those people work

Without that fourth part, IT departments have a hard time keeping up with what people in the organization believe are the most effective and efficient ways of doing their work. They also don’t keep up with the latest technological solutions for various business problems.

Modernizing the IT Department

So, if employees want to take the route of modernizing the way the IT department looks at new tools and technologies, they need to start by modernizing the IT department itself. And, to do that, they have to look at IT as two different groups:

• IT as a service delivery department: the people who provide us with our computers and networks
• IT as a partner in business: the people who proactively help us do our job better

And if they’re lucky enough to get a CIO who thinks that way as well, things should start to change.

I haven’t been blogging much these last few months. That’s because three months ago my wife and I moved into an apartment that has no land line and only a satellite cable TV connection. (We didn’t think to ask about the former before moving in here because, really, when was the last time you heard of a house that didn’t have a land line connection?) What this means is that, till just recently, we didn’t have Internet access at home; certainly not cable and ADSL, but not even dialup!

What Happened Then?

It took Telstra (the only phone company that services this area) about six weeks (yes, six weeks) to give us a connection from the telephone exchange to our apartment building. However, we don’t have an outlet in the wall for a phone jack so we can’t actually use that line. Even worse, the electrician who came in to install that outlet couldn’t find where in the wall our telephone wire was so he wasn’t able to connect us. That was about a month ago and, since then, we’ve been waiting for our real estate agent to do something about this – specifically, getting the building plans from the owners and giving them to the electrician – but nothing’s happened yet.

I finally got sick of the situation so, a couple of weeks ago, I went and got us a mobile broadband connection from 3 (specifically, a USB wireless modem) and that’s what’s letting me access the Internet now. We then went a step further and bought a wireless router for the modem so now both my wife and I can access the Internet at the same time. It’s slow, but at least it works.

What about blogging from work, you ask? Unfortunately, work has been really busy (though incredibly enjoyable) so I haven’t had the mental energy to do any writing in the evenings (whether at work or offline from home). The only blog posts I have managed to finish are the ones I wrote on a weekend and published from the office the following work week.

So, Catching Up…

What all this is leading up to is the fact that I have lots of catching up to do. The way I’m going to do that is by giving you a bulleted list of all the stories I’ve wanted to talk about these last few months but haven’t been able to discuss. The stories range from basic, on-the-ground advice (and lists) to more high level discussions on a particular topic. They’re all good to read, though.

Jobs, Careers, & MBA

• You Suck, Interviewer [Ask a Manager]
• It’s here: the You-Suck-As-An-Interviewer Automatic Letter Generator [Ask a Manager]
• Interview Questions to Ask When Hiring a Manager [Ask a Manager]
• 4 Dumb Job Interview Questions (and 3 Possible Answers) [Clue Wagon]
• How to Make Sure You Don’t Take a Job That Sucks [Clue Wagon]
• Schmoozing 101: Tips for Shy Techies [Computerworld]
• How Newcomers Can Influence Established Groups [PsyBlog]
• Latest research reveals the business schools employers prefer to recruit from regionally strong business schools [AME Info]
• 100+ Career Blogs ALL Professionals MUST Read [Career Rocketeer]
• State of Australian Corporate Career Websites [Michael Specht]

Social Media

• The Manager’s Guide to Social Media [SmartCompany]
• Facebook privacy: a guide [Ars Technica]
• 10 Harsh Truths About Corporate Blogging [Smashing Magazine]
• The Big List of Big Brand Corporate Blogs [Debbie Weil]
• 73 Ways to Become a Better Writer [Copyblogger]
• 9 Ways People Respond to Your Content Online [Lateral Action]
• Writing a Social Media Comment [PR Communications]
• Twitter 101: A Special Guide [Twitter]
• 62 Ways to Use Twitter for Business [Web Worker Daily]
• Twitter Postings: Iterative Design [useit.com]
• The Importance of Social Media Audits [Web Strategy by Jeremiah Owyang]
• The Five Biggest Mistakes in Measuring Social Media [ClickZ]
• 360i Publishes Social Marketing Playbook [360i]
• 2 Million More Australians Go Social in 2009 [comScore]
• A new connection for Australians [Sensis]

Online Design, UI

• 8 Dimensions of Excellent Landing Pages [Search Engine Land]
• Building Respect for Usability Expertise [useit.com]

Online Marketing

• Do You Know Where Your Audience Is? [Search Engine Watch]
• A Checklist to Choose Which Internet Marketing Channel is Right for Your Business [seomoz.org]

General Life Advice

• How to Make Your Packed Lunch More Appealing [Lifehacker]