This is a bit different from what I usually post; please bear with me.
I used to work for Nuance Communications, while I was there one of my colleague’s employees went on long-term disability. He has MS (multiple sclerosis). He’s been blogging and I interact with him once in a while via Facebook.
Unfortunately, his disease had progressed so much that he had to stop updating his blog last March. But, earlier this week a new blog post appeared. He was trying to use Vista’s speech recognition with the headset he received for Father’s Day. In his post, he mentioned that he had lost his version of Dragon NaturallySpeaking (made by Nuance).
Now, I don’t know how good the speech recognition in Vista is but I did get a chance to try Dragon NaturallySpeaking while working at Nuance and I know that it is excellent. So, I thought, what can I do to help him out?
Using my Social Network
I decided to log onto Facebook and send a message to some Nuance managers that I have as friends on the network. Before the advent of FaceBook and LinkedIn, these are people with whom I would have lost contact. But now we exchange news occasionally via these communication channels.
So I sent the message Monday, evening hoping that one of them would be in a position to help.
When I got up at 5 AM this morning, I made my coffee and logged on. I already had two responses and one was from someone in Marketing in the Boston area. He simply said, “sure, I can send him one, just get me his address.”
Now, our former colleague didn’t know about any of this. So I contacted him (again via Facebook) and he gave me a call. He was so surprised and happy. In his blog, he had not complained, he simply mentioned in passing that he had lost his original copy.
He didn’t really think that anyone was actually reading his blog and never thought anyone would care enough to do anything. He was ecstatic and I have to admit that I teared up hearing the emotion and happiness in his voice. It isn’t the software, he felt that he was heard and not alone in his world.
I got back to my friend in marketing, gave him the address and it’s been shipped already!
The Power of Social Media
We spend so much time discussing how social media can be used for business… But, in the end, we’re all human and it always feels good to help someone any way we can.
Using my social network, I was able to help someone who is isolated and alone and it feels good.
Cheers
Eric
