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About

I’m Marc Danziger and I make problems go away.

Over the years, that’s meant a variety of things – from writing legislation to writing code to thinking up interesting things to build in software – to thinking about how we build software and why we’re too often not too good at it, and helping people solve those problems.

Now, I consult in three areas:

  • Helping organizations achieve improved effectiveness through organizational agility (the end result of things like lean product thinking and execution agility).
  • Helping organizations and projects in crisis.
  • Product and system ideation and definition. (A stuffy way of saying ‘thinking up and documenting creative technical solutions’)

I’ve worked with some organizations you may have heard of:

  • Bank of America
  • Dell
  • lynda.com
  • ILFC/AIG
  • NBCU
  • AMPAS (Oscars™)
  • Toyota
  • Florida Hospitals

As well as some startups:

  • CarsDirect.com (back when it was a startup)
  • ExposureManager.com
  • 17hats.com

I’ve got a few professional certifications:

  • Certified Scrum Master –
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Building A Social Media Plan

So let me work this out in public a bit.

I want to develop and execute a social media plan on the cheap – for Long Beach Opera, where I’m a board member.

So I thought it’d be interesting to track what I’m trying to do, what I do, and how it works.

LBO is a small avant garde opera company based near me in Long Beach – but it has established an international reputation through it’s imaginative work.

The company is run on the coffee budget of the neighboring Los Angeles Opera, and we’re looking to find ways to broaden the base of people in the region who are aware of us, engaged with us, and who we can start out as ticket buyers and move up the ladder of involvement and support.

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On Hiatus

Apologies to all for going dark.

I’m currently working with a client on an enterprise project, and they’re not excited about my blogging on related issues. Plus I have no time (shoemaker’s children problem). I’m working on that, and hope to be back online soon.

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Temper, Temper

I’m on the Board of the Long Beach Opera , and last week went to the premiere of Nixon In China (and did I mention that our final performance is on Sunday? You can buy tickets here…). For the first half of the first song, the guy sitting directly behind me was stage-whispering to his date. I turned to give him the imploring look, but he had his face buried in her ear, so I reached back and tapped his knee. He started, turned to me, and I gave him a finger to lips gesture. He cursed under his breath and told me to turn around or else.

Now I had a choice at this point. I could have argued with him or escalated further. Or, I could have let it go and accepted the fact that I’d gotten what I wanted –

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Social Warfare

In giving my SMB social media talks, the topic of deliberate bad behavior always comes up.

“What keeps me from going on Yelp and trashing my competitor down the street?” is a typical question. Or “What if my sister-in-law writes a really nice review for me?”

My response is that we’re kind of living in the wild, wild west and that until some social norms grow up and we get marshals to enforce them people need to be prepared.

I talk about Jeff Jarvis’ “Dell Hell” posts that triggered massive waves that hammered Dell…but I talk about Jeff as the pebble that unleashed the avalanche – not as a ‘community organizer’ mau-mauing the corporations.

I’ve talked with friends about “social DDoS” attacks, where a few thousand people could swarm a social site and in effect trash the community there –

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