For the last two years Michael has asked all his information technology students to keep a blog for assessment in each course that he teaches. He uses several other social media tools in his teaching, notably wikis, shared bookmarks and social networks, and is progressively integrating these tools into the new approach being referred to as Education 2.0. Michael has a particular interest in screencasting for student instruction and revision purposes. In a consultancy role he gives regular presentations to his university colleagues and local high school teachers on the use of cloud computing and social media tools in the education environment.

There is a growing proliferation of cloud computing applications for business and personal use such as Google Apps, the impressive Zoho suite and the coming Office Essentials from Microsoft – the online versions of part of the Office suite. In combination with social media tools for internal and customer communication these cloud computing applications can provide all-of-business support for small and medium sized businesses. Michael is currently developing training materials in this space and aims to begin offering consultancy and presentations in the near future.

As an aside in 1995 Michael and a PhD student happened to be the first people to use the word ‘weblog’ for an online meetings support system, one of the precursors to blogs that started to appear in 1997. Details appear in a blog entry.

LinkedIn and Skype: mjrees
Twitter and Facebook: mrees

I specialize in helping entrepreneurs who are already successful take their business to the next level and achieve that in a such a way that their friends and family arel still talking to them when they have achieved their business goals.

In my coaching I set a high value on attentive listening. My key aim, expressed in the terms I learned in the schools of Coachville, is to elicit the greatness my clients have in them.

With many years of speaking and presenting to small and large groups, I relish opportunities to work with like minded people internationally, across industry sectors and geographical and cultural barriers.

Twenty years in business. Established my own consulting, training and coaching business after a successful career in public service.

Currently a member of the Board of Governors of the International Association of Coaching – IAC.
Member of the interim Advisory Group for Social Media Club
Member of the Advisory Board of the International Blogging and New Media Association – IBNMA

Foundation Member, Creative Skills Training Council, Australia and Asia Pacific.

I’m based in the seaside town of Tweed Heads on Australia’s Gold Coast region. Thanks to Web 2.0 technology I can help people worldwide without having to leave my desk. But I do have a neat little netbook and love to travel!

There are more details about my experiences and achievements at my LinkedIn page.

I love the potential of social media to break down geographical, cultural and political barriers and its capacity to help smaller businesses play a larger game, globally, nationally, locally, as they choose. And I am passionate about how coaching can help achieve that.

With social media consultant colleagues around the globe I am well aware that not everyone in business, by a long shot, welcomes the use of social media.

In fact, I believe there is a major challenge for the many people in business, government, education and the not-for-profit sector who want to harness the power of social media -  a challenge of resistance by many people in their organizatons, some very powerful or influential.   I also believe that the concerns of those people who are resisting the onslaught of social media can be addressed systematically and effectively, though culturally sensitive, well-informed coaching, for the ultimate benefit of their particular enterprises and their own growth in understanding and competence, as individual professionals in an increasingly networked world.

The key, as far as I am concerned, is to be strategic. The ultimate justification for social media in the enterprise is that it advances the achievement of the goals of that enterprise.

On Twitter and Skype: deswalsh

On LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/deswalsh (Note: I have many boilerplate invitations to connect on LinkedIn growing musty with age, unanswered – I don’t have the heart to hit “I don’t know this person”)

Main blog: Des Walsh dot Com