Originally from the East-German North, I studied publishing in Berlin and spent the first years after the German reunification travelling and fundraising for a new community centre in Cologne. From 1992, I got involved in running a BBS (bulletin board system – groups and emails before the World Wide Web took off), and by 1994 I felt ready to accept a job offer from the community publishing house running this BBS and settled down in Stockholm, Sweden, working as editor and typographer, and experimenting with using emerging technologies like ICQ and Voice over IP in continuing community building.
I started a family in 1998 and then went back to school in 1999 and, after completing language studies, went on to studying for an MBA in tourism management in a tourist town in Southern Sweden, which was not completed because of a job offer from a global IT giant, which made me move with my son to the UK. All this time, my passion for social technology started impacting my “real” life more and more – on arrival in the UK, I joined a local online community of ICQ users, and that kickstarted my social life straight away.
My professional life from here on was dominated by roles in multilingual customer support, sales and marketing, in companies like Compaq, HP, Symantec, and a number of small contractors to the IT industry. These roles were all using traditional technologies like phone and e-mail – several tried to introduce using IM for internal team communication, and others blocked employees from all possible channels.
By 2005, business social networking started to take off and for the first time, it was possible to meet customers and partners on ecademy, OpenBC (today’s Xing) or LinkedIn. The recruitment sector was one of the first to really feel the impact, so I won a small number of contracts assisting recruitment agencies finding German speakers, using mainly OpenBC to source candidates.
Another big passion in my life has always been music, and in 2006, I started reading news about a development which finally made me leave the UK for Nigeria, to work with the Performing Musicians Association in developing campaigns involving musicians in talking about issues – edutainment to develop responsible attitudes in the youth, and to raise awareness of cultural heritage. I stayed on until early in 2008 I returned to London to take care of urgent family issues.
I have stayed in touch with my musician friends in Nigeria by writing a blog about the developments there, and am now very much involved in developing a strategy for using the new Social technologies in making a difference in the life in people both locally and around the world. I have been invited as keynote speaker at the first Barcamp Nigeria and am working on being able to help not-for-profit entities in their implementation of Social Media strategies and skills.
Other passions include philosophy, knitting, dancing… I am a committed vegetarian, interested in cultural and spiritual sustainability. Another project I am involved with at the moment is starting a series of afrobeat dance workshops around London for their therapeutic and fun value.
I am writing writing a series of articles about my own social media timeline:
Before the internet – the BBS 1991
the Internet – chat rooms 1994
ICQ/ICQ voice chat 1996
IRC Chatrooms and the Palace 1999
Emergence of online communities – from global to local 2001
MSN Messenger takes over from ICQ 2003
Business networks 2004
Facebook 2006
The Twitter explosion 2008
My current favourite way of combining technology for optimum impact is:
Twitter for the direct, personal and yet public interaction and the opportunities for reaching out to new people
Facebook for the community feel in groups and the walls and discussion boards around a number of subjects
Blogs for extended background information and statistics
Msn messenger for direct chat with log facilities
The exact combination of these with other software, like Wikis, project management sites, skype, etc, depends on the objective and the particular culture of the organisation in question.
Anke is happy to advise organisations or individuals on the issues raised in this blog.
phone: 07595-845266
e-mail: anke_holst@hotmail.com
physical location: North London
Aisha said,
September 21, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Anke,
I’m sorry you don’t feel I have addressed your concerns.
The response to the event has been very very positive and this is the first time I have come across anything negative. We were overwhelmed by the response we had from speakers and could not accommodate everyone in the plenary, hence their being so many speakers on the panel debate at the end.
I agree with your comments about the email you were sent and this will be addressed. We have a limited number of tickets that we allocate FOC to delegates after which point we contact people directly to attend the event. I am happy to discuss the matter further with you and you can contact me via the email address above or via my direct line 0161 817 6675.
If you do decide to come to the event, I’d like to meet with you and maybe discuss a more favourable pricing structure for delegates. It’s unfortunate you missed out on the free bloggers spaces I was giving away, I think it would have been great to have you blogging about the event. It would still be great to have your input on the event but I will leave that up to you.
Despite the fact that the event has clearly upset you, I am pleased you have this blog as you have bought this issue to my attention.
Aisha