Steven Noble, Forrester Research: Interview

One of the best things to happen last year for research on social media in my part of the world – i.e. Australasia and more broadly the Asia-Pacific – was the Forrester Research appointment of Steven Noble as a Senior Analyst. As well as being a very clear and disciplined thinker, Steve is a blogger – both as one of the worldwide group of bloggers, authoring his Elbow Grease blog at his former place of employ, Hill & Knowlton, and on a personal level where he blogged and blogs about his neighbourhood in Sydney’s once seriously tough and now rather more upmarket inner western suburb of Chippendale.

In this short interview at the end of the day’s formal phase at Enterprise 2.0 Executive Forum Steve opens by commenting that he thinks he is talking to HAL (so now my Flip camera has a new name).

In more serious vein he observes that a must-view item from the day’s proceedings is the slide deck from the presentation, Creating Business Value from Emerging Technologies, by David Backley, General Manager Applications Development and Maintenance at Westpac, one of Australia’s “Big Four” banks – the presentation was titled .

Steve says social media will “continue to boom across Asia”, but for different reasons in different markets, mentioning specifically India, Australia and China.

Some Web 2.0 related points Steve makes on China:

• rapid urbanisation of the population
• more people online in China than in the US (not new information, but worth the reminder)
• 40% of online adults in metropolitan China are content creators, publishing regularly
• marketers are responding to that!

Des Walsh

Business coach and digital entrepreneur. With coach training from Coachville.com and its Graduate School of Coaching, and a founding member of the International Association of Coaching, Des has been coaching business owners and entrepreneurs for the past 20 years. Over the same period he has also been actively engaged in promoting the business opportunities of the digital economy. He is a certified Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) coach, and a certified specialist in social media strategy and affiliate marketing.