An Insightful Conversation with Heike Philp

of LANCELOT School GmbH

An Insightful Conversation with Heike Philp of LANCELOT School GmbH


I wanted to share with all of you a copy of my unedited online correspondence with my distinguished colleague, Ms. Heike Philp, Managing Director of LANCELOT School GmbH in Berlin, Germany regarding the need to empower social network members.   

Hi Pierre,

It has been a pleasure to meet you. A great pleasure indeed!

You are working hard to help group leaders leverage their work in
establishing social networks and in educating them how to monetize on
it. In this respect we share a similar spirit of wanting to assist
others to make a career on the net.

Education still seems to cost, rather than earn and we are trying to
reverse this trend by earning through education.

The concept of earning by means of establishing pipelines is not new,
Pablo and Bruno (Burk Hedges) have laid out this principle clearly
before.

The concept of ‘guestimating’ the value of the network by increasing
the amount of money that one lead is valued at by edifying people and
promoting their products and services is also not really new*.

What is new I believe is the idea to establish these networks like
pipelines so as to get ready to channel the attention of the industry
away from sponsoring sports events to sponsoring educational events.
Correct me if I am wrong, please.

Would you not say that this could be a common goal as we are both
working at building our networks?

I will provide a presentation on this concept and record it so that
you can circulate this to your friends if you find it appropriate.

Again, great to meet you.

rgds Heike

Hello Heike,

The pleasure is mine and the feeling is mutual.

My ultimate goal is to educate social network creators and group leaders on how to provide real value  or powerful added-value to their members instead of focusing strictly on the sale of a product or service or on increasing the membership size of their networks for advertising purposes.

This real value or powerful added-value is: Education on how to leverage the power of the social network to their individual and/or collective benefit via virtual organization management.

In the process of providing this "real value or powerful added-value" to their members, a better monetization mechanism becomes the by-product instead of the main goal of that effort and the "true value" of that "network" exponentially increases.

For example, if you had to choose between joining a U.S. Special Forces team of 500 well-trained and well-armed soldiers versus a team of 2000 cowboys with guns, which one would you choose?

Better yet, if you were competing for attention, lucrative assignments, and endorsements for one of these 2 teams, which one of them would you rather be representing?

My point is that, just as having a PC is essential for anyone to participate in the modern world, regardless of occupation, field, or industry, so is virtual organization management essential for anyone who is part of a social network. Why? Because in addition to whatever product or service that they are currently receiving from their participation in a social network, it also teaches them how to leverage the power of the social network to their individual and/or collective benefit.

I am a firm believer in the adage that the more we care about the welfare of others, the more they care about us and vice-versa. When I was a young soldier in the United States Air Force, I was taught that it wasn't simply enough to do what was expected of me in order to receive a commendation medal and that the medal was reserved to those who had performed service that was exemplary and "above and beyond" the call of duty.

Regardless of what type of service that a social network owner, creator, or group owner is expected to provide and is providing, providing their members with access to knowledge on how to leverage the power of the social network to their individual and/or collective benefit is indeed the equivalent of performing service that is "above and beyond" the call of duty. Although the by-product of that approach has significant monetization upside potential for the social network owner, creator, group owner, I believe that the focus should be placed on performing the service itself, thereby insuring an exponential increase in the true value of the network.

Therefore, our potential partner is any and every single group owner or social network owner or creator who wishes to "exponentially increase the [true value] of their network" in order to better compete for attention from both internal and external stakeholders.

In that sense, we share a common goal and there is common ground between our two entities. I look forward to sharing with our members any presentation that you have that helps drive home that message.

Again, congratulations on your outstanding achievements in the field of online language learning. I believe that fluency in more than one language is an imperative for anyone who wishes to adapt and thrive in the new virtual organization era and I look forward to assist you in your efforts.

Talk to you soon.

Warmest regards,

Pierre

 

About Author:  Prof. Pierre Coupet is the Founder, CEO & Doctor of Virtual Organization Management at Virtual Organization Management Institute; the founder of the modern virtual organization management discipline pioneered since 1997; and also the host of the daily and weekly events "How To Virtual Organize Your Social Network" and  Content Monetization Strategy for Social Networks. "  To contact the author, send message via skype id: VOMIChairman or send email directly to chairman@virtualorganizationinstitute.com


About Heike Philp:   Heike Philp is Managing Director of LANCELOT School GmbH, an accredited teacher training center for language teaching in real-time via the internet by means of virtual classroom technology and virtual worlds. With over 20 years in education and with Germany’s first live online language school, Philp co-initiated two European funded projects and worked with 35 European partners, including 17 universities, to develop accredited and certified teacher training courses. These EU Projects are LANCELOT (LANguage learning with CErtified Live Online Teachers,  www.lancelot.at) and AVALON (Access to Virtual and Action Learning live Online,  www.avalonlearning.eu .)   She runs her own online conference, the Virtual Round Table conference, at https://virtual-round-table.ning.com.


Copyright 2010. Pierre Coupet, Virtual Organization Management Institute.    Cannot be reproduced in whole or in part without permission. All rights are reserved.