Geek Squad Founder and Chief Inspector Robert Stephens interviewed Gary Koelling and me to hear the origins of BlueShirt Nation as well as the obstacles that we've encountered since the site went live in 2006.
We also went into a pretty deep conversation about  the dynamics of innovation in a large corporation.

In June, I was part of a panel hosted by Charlene Li.  I represented Best Buy. Other companies included Oracle, Avenue A, and Serena Software. 

We were there to talk about how social tech is changing the way business is done. 

Paul Krill from Computer World put together a nice recap of the major points.  Read it here.

I'm not a lawyer.  I'm a guy who works in Social Technology at Best Buy.  In the last 2 years, I've become more educated on Wage and Hour laws in the US.  Laws that were written in the 30's to protect hourly employees from abuse.  I'm for those laws- protection is good- abuse is bad.

Below is a presentation I gave this week in Boston at Intranet Week.  Some of the content is similar to what we've talked about before.  But something hit me about 2 weeks ago after I read a blog in Read Write Web.  It talked about how companies using White Label networks are struggling.  The reasons they stated for the failures were largely based on technology.  I feel they missed a big consideration- the need to understand

I wanted to post a story about an experiment we tried this year- we called it the Crucible.  It was a way to work differently, to get focused, to work faster.  It turned out to be a brutal ordeal with both some good and bad effects on the team.

Our team has been practicing agile the best we can.  I say practicing because its hard work, and its hard to get it right.   We're about a year into it, and we're getting better- some weeks are better than others and after a year, I think we're hitting a good stride.

This week we started a new test on BlueShirt Nation.  After a lot of conversations among and with the employees on the site, we decided to create an area where some of our key vendors/partners can join  employee conversations.

This was a tricky one- it was made clear from the beginning that the community didn't want vendor partners involved in the main conversation.  Essentially, its our place, not something for outsiders:)

Kind of pumped- Gary Koelling and I were invited to speak at the Business Innovation Factory in Providence, RI on October 15th and 16th.  Kind of a cool venue- just story telling- nothing formal.  We get to join others like Clay Shirky, Tony Hsieh  (Zappos), Jason Fried (37 Signals), and a slew of others. 

Here's a link to the event if you're looking for more info.

Below is a presentation I gave at the Social Media Summit in June.  Gary Koelling was supposed to join me but was sick.  The presentation below talks more about our process than past presentations.  This process is something that evolved over the last 2 years and has been the result of dozens of projects- BSN included.

What is BlueShirt Nation? BSN?
BlueShirt Nation is a robust community of people with a common interest, they all work for Best Buy. They share knowledge and best practices. Frustrations, aspirations and jokes.

Below is a link to an article by Katharine Grayson on BlueShirt Nation.  Of all the interviews and podcasts we've done, I have to say that I think Katherine did one of the best jobs of accurately capturing and telling the story.

Article Here