Rafael Maranon's Blog

Yesterday we finalized a MIT course ESD.942 Social Media: Trust, Information Seeking & Systems Innovation in the Digital Age. During past 2 weeks Joseph Coughlin, Azamat Abdymomunov and myself have been teaching during 20 hours at MIT an introduction to social media in different domains (Healthcare, Finance, Organization Development and Collaboration) and using a specific framework (Influence, Check and Balance and Trust).

ESD.942 class

1. Local-Global symbiosis. If you’re big, act small. If you’re small act big.
2. Give-more-than-you-receive
3. Experiment! Learn-by-doing
4. Be-inclusive
5. Honesty (get naked?)
6. Architect/plan your social-media-strategy
7. Start with something you’re passionate about (have a PURPOSE)
8. Empathy. Show-that-you-care
9. Consistency, passion
10. Patience
11. Good enough is good enough.
12. Persuasion – find overlap of interests between you and your audience
13. Listen before speaking, learning before teaching
14. Humor
15. Past, Present, Future – analyze and feedback
16. Iterative-learning-process
17. Asking first
18. Content-technology balance
19. Accountability-to-oneself-and-others
20. Consistency and commitment

You can download the slides of the course on Course Material. Lecture’s videos will be posted soon.

Rafael Marañón giving a lecture on Organization Development using Social Media

Lessons in Social Media

This case of study about the management of seasonal labor migration in Southern Europe was prepared by Rafael Marañón-Abreu, Estrella Gualda Caballero and Ricardo Valerdi. The paper was submitted for the journal Technological Forecasting and Social Change in the special issue: Economic hard times: Impact on innovation and innovation potential. A draft of the paper can be downloaded from the MIT ESD Working Paper Series Download ESD-WP-2011-01 (.pdf) | Discuss ESD-WP-2011-01

During economic crises, governments establish policies that facilitate the creation of jobs, goods and services that make theireconomies more resilient. Often, this requires innovative social programs that match global migratory trends to local labor demand. The implementation of such programs requires a significant degree of innovation that requires models that can capture the complexity involved.

Basic model structure and feedback processes of the management of seasonal labor migration in Southern Europe

To explore this phenomenon, we provide a multi-disciplinary view of innovative social programs that shed light on the dynamic characteristics of the political, social, technological and economic aspects of circular migration. Our focus is a case study of the European Union-funded circular migration program to support the strawberry harvest in the province of Huelva in Spain. Covering the time period of 1999-2011, this paper provides a system dynamics model to represent the key elements that led to the success of circular migration from the standpoint of economic and social change. The model helps explain the key factors that make the program robust under recent economic crisis conditions.

Based on a qualitative analytical approach, the model demonstrates how adaptive policies can enable macroeconomic equilibrium in environments where circular migration can be implemented. We also show that circular migration is not an impediment to economic recovery, in fact, it helps stabilize the labor supply in times of high uncertainty.

Keywords: circular migration, social innovation, system dynamics, Southern Europe.

Download ESD-WP-2011-01 (.pdf)

[Video-presentation at SIMO Network 2010 from MIT]

Next week will take place in Madrid – Spain the VoIP2Day which is the annual meeting point of the World of Voice and Video over IP in the Iberian market. This event is organized by Avazada 7 and hosted at the SIMO Network – the Spain’s International ICT Services and Solutions Trade Fair, and largest technology fair in Southern Europe.

I have participated in previous years with the company I worked for, Mildmac Advanced Solutions, presenting different products within our VoIPfutura platform. VoIP2Day is the central yearly meeting where IP Telephony professionals get together to discuss and shape the future of Unified Communication bases in open standards such as Asterisk.

Source: VoIP2Day The largest IP Telephony event in Spain – VoIP2DAY was born in 2008 as a meeting point of the World of Voice and Video over IP in the Iberian market. Large fairs specialize in subject areas and within SIMO as the largest technology fair in Southern Europe, VoIP2DAY becomes the “must come” for all professionals in this sector, or for the technical departments responsible interested in the technological upgrading of their telephone and videoconferencing systems.

VoIP2Day @ SIMO Network - Open Source Asterisk

With just 2 years of existence, the event has established itself as an annual reference booster of the increasing local market and top at technological level worldwide. In other editions, 500 professional visitors participated per year, while in this year’s call this figure it is expected to be increased.

With the experience gained over the years as participants in fairs of VoIP in Europe and America, the organization has tried to pick the best of them and correct some of its shortcomings, with the following key elements for this forum:

• Fair exclusively for professionals in working days
• Free for attendees, previous registration required
• Three days long
• Exhibition Area for Manufacturers Distributors and Integrators,
• Conference Area

  • 2 days for technical, sales and business orientation and success cases
  • 1 day exclusively technical and of the community of development of communication systems based on Free Software

• Panel discussion of experts during the day of the Open Source community
• Theme day by day to focus the interest of visitors and exhibitors
• Recording of all speeches and subsequent web hosting
• Web survey of satisfaction after the show open to all visitors
• Coincidence in space and time in a completely integrated way with the organization of the SIMO NETWORKS fair.
• Best Product Award presented at the fair, chosen by judges selected by the organizers
• Best Speech award according to the audience (voters who have provided their phone number when registered, with real-time results)

2010 NEWS

• Best Success Case Award among all the cases we receive through the corresponding section and that meet the rules for participation
• Parallel Workshop of practical training in VoIP Security (event fee)
• Paralled meeting event of  3CX Channel  with the president of the company (by previos invitation of 3CX)

Exhibitors on VoIP2Day 2010 at SIMO Network

ESD.763 Operations & Supply Chain Management taught by Víctor Martínez de Albéniz, associate professor in IESE‘s Department of Production, Technology and Operations Management, was an interesting class this summer semester.

Zara has become one of the most popular places to buy with over a 1,000 outlets all over the world and the owner of Zara, Amancio Ortega, is certainly on the list of the richest people in Spain.

After spring semester where we had to prepare business cases mainly about US organizations, it was great that Víctor included on his course several spanish company cases. Famosa and Zara were the two big major example that Martinez de Albeniz used to illustrate us the importance of Lean manufacturing and distribution strategies worlwide.

I enjoyed also preparing a case about Aldi´s German food retail (a following up case that I recommend is How Mercadona Fixes Retail’s ‘Last 10 Yards’ Problem)

Entre los días 19 al 22 de septiembre han pasado por la sede de Naciones Unidas más de 74 jefes de estados de todo el mundo. Comenzando el lunes por la intervención de Kofi Annan, De Silva, Bush y Chirac, y terminando con intervenciones conmovedoras como la de Emile Lahoud, presidente de Libano. Otras sin embargo nos han entretenido bastante como la de Hugo Chávez, que además de su discurso atrevido en el que llamaba diablo y terrorista a Bush, pasando por proponer con cierta ironía el traspaso de la sede a Venezuela. Y sin embargo nos hizo divertir hasta el último momento con estas rueda de prensas más propias del escenario de un club de comedia que de la asamblea general de una institución internacional como es las Naciones Unidas. También le dio tiempo hasta improvisadas declaraciones a la prensa en mitad de calle, a las cuales pude asistir a pocos metros escuchándole decir barbaridades. La cuestión es que algunas de las cosas que dice son verdad, y pese a todas esa presencia propia de “showman”, hay cosas que a mas de un jefe de estado le gustaría decir y no se atreve… Hugo y su petróleo si que lo hace valientemente.

También tuvimos por aquí a Michael Douglas tocando la campana de la Paz junto al secretario general.

Esta semana que ha entrado es un poco mas relajada, ya se han dejado de ver por los pasillos y entrando en el edificio a presidentes como Romano Prodi, Alfredo Palacio, Uribe Vélez, José Sócrates. Sin embargo siguen acordonadas la primera avenida y las calles de la 42 a la 46 con un despliegue policial sorprendente.

Aqui tenis unos enlaces donde se encuentran recogidos los discursos y unas fotos tomadas durante mi programa en las Naciones Unidas donde tambien pude participar en conferencias sobre el informe anual del International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda.

Group Photograph of the United Nations Interns with the Secretary-General. In this photo: Kofi Annan, Rafael Marañón,Jochen Wirth, Juliane Diaz Degiovannini, Flavia Feola, Frederic Aymeric, Marie Spreckley, Frédéric Aymeric, Alessandro Flammini, Inbal Yanku, Craig Gilbert, Rafa Tamayo, Rafael Tamayo, Francesca Musiani, Catherine Wong, Kim Willis, Mar Go, Carlos Yescas, Anne-Kathrin Herrmann, Anita Montolalu, Anna Turus,Craig Brannagan, Christian Borggreen, Kevin Biehl, Hale Oner, Hale Oner, Sven Rosenhauer, Ajit Singh, Xiao L-Zhou, Therese Gemayel, Sarra Hedhli, Maria Kristjansdottir, Gudrun Sif Fridriksdottir, Marie Kappel, Elisabeth Hakansson,Erik Steinecker

GA, United Nations Headquarters, New York