Why Storytelling? James Knowles’ Thoughts
Posted on 25. Apr, 2011 by admin in Community, Hotel
(from a 2009 document)
Why?
For the love of it.
For the fun of telling a whopper of a tale.
For looking at things in a different way.
For surprising and astounding.
To understand better things before us.
To speculate.
To think.
To enliven and enrich.
Because telling stories is good for you and good for me.
Think of Treasure Island and Huck Finn and Harry Potter.
To play with our minds and yours.
Because you/we are curious, adventuresome people who love a good tale.
To delight yourself and your audience.
To play around with ideas.
To laugh.
To cajole.
To amuse.
To take a bite out of the pie of life.
From Hackers to Brand Evangelist; Tormod Askildsen tells a story about LEGO
Posted on 02. Feb, 2010 by AdamWallace in Community, Hotel
When I (Adam Wallace) was recently in Amsterdam representing the Roger Smith Hotel at Enterprise Social 2.0 I had the pleasure to meet Tormod Askildsen and hear his great story of how they created an extremely loyal community of fans, by during around a situation that initially seemed very negative for the company.
Tormod Askildsen is the Senior Director for Community Development at LEGO. He tells a story of how LEGO’s software got hacked in the 1990′s and the way that this threatened the company. Eventually they started to realize that they could leverage this excitement and new use of their tools that their fans were doing. They made a big turn around and ended up engaging their fans and creating a whole vibrant scene and community of LEGO enthusiasts.
Dreams of Being a Butler: A Success Story of 2009, Yamiel Diaz
Posted on 30. Dec, 2009 by AdamWallace in Community, Hotel, Lily's Restaurant
Yamiel Diaz, Floor Manager at Lily’s Restaurant at the Roger Smith Hotel tells a story about his year and the family of the Roger Smith. Yamiel has become a crucial player in the team here at the hotel and anyone who knows him knows that has energy and enthusiasm is relentless, inspiring and certainly contagious. He is probably the friendliest person you will ever meet and is eager to please whoever he is dealing with at all times. Yamiel has been a pleasure to have on the team and is certainly a success story of 2009. Looking forward to all that is to come in 2010!
ROGER SMITH: Story Telling
Posted on 16. Dec, 2009 by AdamWallace in Community, Hotel
PART 1 Emotions
“How do we get people to care about our ideas? We make them feel something.”
- Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Chip Heath & Dan Heath
PART 2 “Its all about the people.”
The characters make the story interesting. Last week we met with a collection of Chinese Television Executive to talk about the Real Time Media, Live broadcasting online and the effect of Social Media on an industry. With a language barrier we broke ground when we had each of our guests introduce themselves directly into the camera. With the share cameras on the market like the flip or the Kodak Zi8 it is an interesting moment when you realize that you can turn the camera on yourself.
“The stories told here show how individuals, sometimes by design, but often by accident can change the course of history.”
— 10 Days That Unexpectedly Changed America. Steven M. Gillon
PART 3 To Summarize
“Here is our checklist for creating a successful idea. A Simple, Unexpected, Concrete, Credentialed, Emotional, Story.”
- Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. Chip Heath & Dan Heath
We are interested in the art of story telling as a way to engage with people. With people as our subject we build relationships surrounding the stories that are told. We look to listen, engage and share your stories. So please engage us with your story and become part of our culture. If you like it, Share it, and be sure to make a comment.
Thanks for watching.
John Knowles
My Favorite Story Of 2009 Is:
Posted on 12. Dec, 2009 by BrianSimpson in Community, Hotel
Adam J. Wallace, a.k.a. @AdWal, a.k.a. great co-worker & friend. I am even writing this post from his account because he would never give himself credit so I will. It was just over one year ago that I was introduced to The Roger Smith Hotel and its cast of characters. Adam, a fellow New England’r, was running Lilys at the time and transitioning into managing all of the online strategies. Together we started a twitter account and launched a new blog called rogersmithlife.com. ( Roger Smith had a current blog rogersmithnews.com which was managed by Adam and John Knowles of Pancity). The year has been filled with baby steps, by baby steps I do not mean slow wobbly and cautious. I mean the stage of walking where the baby whacks its head on things and teeters dangerously close to the top edge of the stairs. Although we had the support of ownership we still had to prove that this ‘social media’ thing was worth while and convince the rest of the hotel we were not just ‘playing’ on Facebook.
I could not have picked a better person to work with. Adam’s belief in his work, people and the culture of Roger Smith Hotel is unrivaled. In the past year we have made so many new friends together, played some great rounds of golf
Bethpage - The Blue Course
traveled and presented at conferences, disagreed about plenty, agreed about more and are now starting to write a book together… brilliant.
I wanted to use this platform to thank Adam and to give him credit for a year well done! All the hours, the time away from his lovely GF ( thank you C.) and tireless amounts of time working with me (not that easy) have all paid off.
Thank you Adam !
Happy Holidays to you all and a HUGE THANK YOU for a year of amazing support !
Cheers,
Bsimi
Mobile Phones Companies and Social Media in the UK
Posted on 11. Dec, 2009 by AdamWallace in Community
In this series of films I am exploring the story of mobile taking over the UK mobile communication companies. What I found is that everyone of them advertises that their phones allow for use of social media sites and everyone that I talked to said that the sites a vastly popular on mobile, but not one of them was willing to do an interview with me to publish on YouTube and a blog at tell a positive story about them. Every one of them said I had to talk to their press office and would not let me publish video from their store online. I was shocked at how vastly they are promoting the use of the sites, but would lot let someone tell a positive story about them.
At the Roger Smith Hotel we have seen great success from others telling the story about our hotel. Wether someone has an audience of 100 or 1,000,000, their voice online is relevant to the company and when you have many sharing your story it scales to huge numbers. I am surprised to see how popular social connection on mobile phones is, but that none of the mobile companies are leveraging these tools for exposure.
Cross Country With Ford Fiesta Agent #51
Posted on 25. Nov, 2009 by BrianSimpson in Community
While most of America is busy eating turkey, watching football and enjoying family ~ I, @Bsimi ( @RSHotel ), will be the co-pilot, on a cross country journey in Ford Motor Companies first world car, the Fiesta, as part of the #Fiestamovement . Jill Hanner, A.K.A. Agent#51, and I will be driving to the Los Angeles Auto Show on a Southern route across the good ole’ U.S.of A. Although the main goal is getting Jill’s car to LA, our secondary hope is to meet and interview as many unique characters as we can along the way ! Here at The Roger Smith Hotel we pride ourselves in hospitality, making friends and sharing stories. What better way to get new stories, make new friends and share ourselves than to actually go on the road with one of YouTubes most respected personalities, XgobobeanX (Jill)?!
We will be starting our trip on Thanksgiving day and traveling from NYC > Alexandria > Charlotte > New Orleans > Dallas > Santa Fe > LA ! Please look for our updates on Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, YouTube… #RSHFiesta
Brian’s info:
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Tumblr
RSLife – Blog
RS Twitter
Please travel along with us and have a safe and happy holiday !
Roger Smith Hotel Social Media Re-mix
Posted on 14. Oct, 2009 by AdamWallace in Community, Hotel
In a conversation with John Knowles @RShotel, president of the organization James Knowles asks, “So how do we reach out?”. John: “You let other people do it for you.” James: “How does that work?”
The concept crowd sourcing content becomes a great way to allow for others to share your virtues. The idea of others taking your brand into their own hands might seem scary but when the public personalities embrace your identity the reach of your message spreads farther than you can anticipate.
The understanding and embracing of others to tell the story of your identity creates new levels of branding opportunity. The most important thing to understand is that our satisfaction is in you. The exciting moment of social media and the social internet is when an online engagement translates into a face to face interaction.
It is important to thank our friends both old and new for making the Roger Smith Hotel the place for everything Social Media. Thanks for being part of the Roger Smith Culture.
Follow us.
http://rogersmithlife.com/
http://twitter.com/RShotel
Please Share, Comment, Respond and Engage!
Thanks
John Knowles
