Our weekly challenge comes from Mark Oehlert, Customer Success Director at Social Text/PeopleFluent

Quote: “Imagine that the ‘grapevine’ is not a poisonous plant to be cutoff at the roots, but a natural source of vitality to be cultivated and nourished…these conversations are as much a core business process as marketing, distribution, or product development.” -Juanita Brown, MIT Organizational Learning Center and Society of Organizational Learning

Challenge: Find ways this week to nourish conversations and view them as core part of your business.

Mark is an anthropologist, historian, speaker, author, and a technologist. He has worked at the Pentagon, as a consultant for Fortune 500 companies and as a federal employee. Now he works for Socialtext (part of the Peoplefluent family), helping companies be successful using social collaboration tools. I’m fascinated with the intersection of technology and culture. I tweet incessantly and take a lot of pictures with my iPhone. Hi. You can follow him here http://about.me/markoehlert