I first discovered Jeremiah Owyang when he interviewed my friend and colleague at Boxes and Arrows, Chris Baum about Information Architecture last year.

This brief video illustrates the points I made in my talk at Podcamp Ottawa last weekend. The tools that make up social media are a means to connect with other people to improve products and services.

Put a price tag on the opportunity to share ideas and learn from subject matter experts in your own industry.

Tell me what you would charge to speak with Cordell Ratzlaff from Cisco, formerly with Apple about his presentation, “Creating the next iPod”?

If you were in the field of User Experience, how many Euros would you pay to chat with the User Experience Managers at Google, Margaret Gould Stewart and Graham Jenkin?

How much money should be deposited in my account to hear brilliant presenters like Andrew Hinton; Lead IA at Vanguard discuss the issue of “context” in the Information Age?

If your vision for social media is only about money, you’ll miss out on countless opportunities to learn how to improve your own products and services; and by extension make more money!

Borrowing from the Mastercard commercials:

Round trip plane ticket to San Francisco: $800

Meals and Hotel accommodations: $1000

A chance to learn from industry icons from around the world: Priceless!

I first heard Dave Gray talk at the VizThink conference in January this year. To open the event, Dave taught the audience of 400 plus how to draw a stick figure proving that anyone, even those who aren’t artists or designers, can participate in the creative process.

What I found remarkable about VizThink, besides my first opportunity to talk with members of the team from Adaptive Path, was the chance to design with my hands and not on a computer.

I’m looking forward to future demonstrations Dave, and congratulations on all your success with XPLANE. Coming up in Frebruary in San Jose…VizThink 2009.

Scrolling through those I follow on Twitter, @ryancarson posted a link to this video about Google’s new SearchWiki tool.

Today we’re launching SearchWiki, a way for you to customize search by re-ranking, deleting, adding, and commenting on search results. With just a single click you can move the results you like to the top or add a new site. You can also write notes attached to a particular site and remove results that you don’t feel belong. These modifications will be shown to you every time you do the same search in the future. SearchWiki is available to signed-in Google users. We store your changes in your Google Account. If you are wondering if you are signed in, you can always check by noting if your username appears in the upper right-hand side of the page.

Yet another great example of how Google gets it! They understand the importance of listening to the people who use their products and services to build solutions that just work for everyone.

Adam Curry, one of the founders of Podcasting says, “There are no more secrets, only information you don’t yet have.” Although the Information age is presenting opportunities to share and create like never before, there are still billions of people on the planet who do not have access.

This video serves as a good reminder that although the web is making many famous, and in some cases infamous, we are only seeing the tip of the iceberg with respect to the global potential to innovate.

I studied the work of Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi when completing my degree in Psychology and incorporated his ideas into the adult learning section of a Microsoft Certified Training program I wrote and managed.

Mihaly developed the concept of Flow; the mental state of operation in which the person is fully immersed in what he or she is doing by a feeling of energized focus, full involvement, and success in the process of the activity.

Imagine what we could develop if all disciplines worked together in an effort to create an experience of flow for the people for whom we are designing!?

Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi teaches psychology and management at Claremont Graduate University, focusing on human strengths such as optimism, motivation and responsibility. He’s the director the the Quality of Life Research Center there. He has written numerous books and papers about the search for joy and fulfillment.

Creative Director Jennifer Kilian at Frog Design talks about Wayfinding, and the importance of form following emotion in the development of an intuitive user interface for the GPS Merian Scout Navigator.

At the O’Reilly Where 2.0 Conference in May 2008, frog Creative Director Jennifer Kilian spoke about the shifting focus of location-based services today – from the destination to the trip itself. Using frog’s creation of the Merian Scout Navigator as a jumping-off point, Jennifer explored the way that GPS technology can change travel, providing in-context information to free travelers from the restraints of a fixed to-do list.

In this show I had the great pleasure of chatting with Daniel Szuc from Apogee in Hong Kong, China.

I was introduced to Daniel at Adaptive Path’s party during UX Week, by Leah Buley and we were able to connect the other day to discuss the current and future state of User Experience in China.

Daniel just returned from User Friendly 2008 in Shenzhen, China. He shares insights and experiences from the event as well as workshops he has run in the past.

You can find photos from User Friendly 2008 on Flickr.

Daniel also shares an overview of the Usability Kit created with colleague and producer of the User Experience Podcast, Gerry Gaffney.

We refer to several articles throughout our conversation, all of which can be accessed below:

Selling UX By: Daniel Szuc, Paul J. Sherman, and John S. Rhodes

Walking Through Your Product Design with Stakeholders By: Daniel Szuc

Value By: Cindy Lu, Ph.D., CHFP

Design in China Takes a Great Leap Forward By: Liya Zheng

The Future of Usability: Industry Experts Look Into the Crystal Ball By: Kerry Bodine

Chinese Home Site Vists – Tips & Hints By: Josephine Wong

For the past few years, people have asked me to describe my business model. I tell them plainly, “Share everything!”.

In an era of greedy corporations hoarding hundreds of millions of dollars; scams and spam; building relationships with others via the sharing of knowledge and experiences, trumps all!

No one, except maybe you, cares about your title; where you sit on the corporate ladder; who follows you or not on Twitter; etc. You’d be amazed at the capacity of the people you work with when you leave your ego at the door, and set aside time time to learn from their experiences.

Give me a room full of junior people who are willing to openly share ideas over a “board of directors” who think they know everything because of their title or rank; and I guarantee you my team will innovate and out-perform “the board” every single time! (I say this from experiences leading junior teams with companies in every sector – private, public, and non-profit.)

Jason Fried from 37signals illustrates how we can learn from other professions, such as chefs, to build stronger teams and ultimately profit through sharing.