From General Colin Powell last week in San Francisco: The boundaries that separated the world’s countries from one another are not there anymore due to the information revolution.

Former General and Secretary of State Colin Powell gave a inspiring speech in front of 8 thousand last Thursday at the salesforce.com Dreamforce Conference. I wish I had had time to send in the blog a little sooner, but I was working at the conference and didn’t have a moment to spare. I feel so behind the times – no internet on my cell phone. (gasp!) But even though this comes four whole days after his speech, an inexcusable eon  in internet time, it is always relevant to those of us interested in social networking. In fact, I feel a little corny calling the speech “inspirational” until seeing the comments on the General’s Facebook page from others at the conference. “Inspirational” it is.

Here are the social networking topic highlights of General Powell’s speech:

• He said he “loves watching technology change,” especially with the large leaps since his leaving Secretary of State office in 2005.
• He  commented on the way it has contributed to changes globally, calling it the “information revolution.”
• His personal interest in social networking began with Tweeting, with some help from his grandson.
• Then came Facebook. He tells that his grandson really talked him into it. General Powell’s first reaction was “no!” But once his grandson told him that a Facebook page had already been set up, and that there were already 17,000 fans…well, says the General, maybe Facebook wouldn’t be so bad.…
• Quote: “Once we link all social media together, we start to see how it can change the world.”

My takeaway from the speech that applies to all of us:

Folks, the formal General and Secretary of State Colin Powell

a) Took the time to learn social networking, and
b) Sees the incredible power that social networking has for making change globally.

Seems to me we can learn it and use it to make changes, too.

Monday, November 23rd, 2009, 7:45 am   |   Social Media  |  RSS feed |  Respond  |  Trackback