Author: Angelo Fernando

Stunning visualization of red and blue states

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A colleague sent me this link from an NPR Science Friday story. It’s a story based on the voting pattern as seen through cartograms -maps that have been ‘density equalized’ by Michael Gastner and Mark Newman at the University of Michigan.

Being in the business of scientific visualization at the Decision Theater it’s fascinating to see science take a crack at politics, and why the red-state, blue-state concept trivializes the voting pattern.

The TV news networks, of course love the red-blue metaphor. We saw CNN‘s use of the ‘magic wall’ which was a recent creation by a company called Perceptive Pixel (it  sold similar walls to ABC and Fox).  MSNBC set up a 3D studio for some similar visual treats. CNN even played with teleporting, having the anchor interview a hologram, pushing visualization up several notches.

But NPR’s story is a great way to do a visual post-mortem of how the country voted. While holograms are just eye-candy, cartograms give a better picture of what happened. Gastner, by the way, lets you use his cartogram code, here, where there are more maps of the voting pattern. Talk about seeing things diffferently!

Small groups in larger network

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What do you think of this statement?

“We’re a small-group animal, trying to live in large groups….”

A statement from Paul and Anne Ehrlich (quoted by Andrew Revkin) who writes about the challenges for 6 billion of us.

Planet earth, the largest social network, is more connected than we realize: we super poke each other in strange ways, and hear each others status updates whether we log on or not! What we do in our cave or cubicle often instantly influences or inspires someone else.

I was particularly interested in that comment of our small group vs big group idea. Are we a small group fighting for survival in a big group, or are we a big group breaking out into small groups in order to sustain ourselves? Geo-politically we have the EC, NAFTA, ASEAN etc.

There are plenty of examples in communications and networking why this might be the case. I am losing count of how many small groups I am part of. And that’s not counting the Facebook groups I grudgingly join, and most often turn down. Print folk, PR buddies, marketing practitioners, alumni groups, book clubs, listeners of common podcasts … our niches cut through the traditional demographic sectors every day.

The 140-character pitch and getting creative with Twitter

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The over-used acronym KISS, could very well stand for Keep in short, stupid!

It’s probably more relevant today than it was a couple of years ago, where we are battling channel fatigue and attention deficit all at once.

So I was really interested in this post by a friend, Nathan Wagner, who just started his blog, Relevant Chews, about the need to hone down your elevator pitch to Twitter-length. Great food for thought.

On a similar note, I came across the Twinterview format (an interview using Twitter, if you have not guessed) also innovative, not just because of the way it uses the collaborative micro-blogging platform for the back and forth, but for the need to condense the Q and A into relevant chewable bites, if I may borrow from Wagner. I have to say I am guilty of sometimes framing a question that sounds more like a statement. (I am working on it.)

The reality is that the people we interview have a lot to say, so Twitter may seem a bit too condensed. But this might be one way to respect a person’s time, and get the interview when the he/she is on the move, undistracted, and ready to ‘talk.’ As we see in Jason Baer‘s twinterview with Scott Monty of Ford, both manage to squeeze in details, and url’s to make the exchange great.

Telling a story, by removing its subject

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The world’s biggest photography competition on sustainability, by Swiss bank Pictet et Cie, awarded the first prize to a photographer from Canada, Benoit Aquin. The winning entry had no “water” in it.

Take a look at the other entries, too.

As a photographer, I am always intrigued in how we could tell a story, by reducing the “subject” to a form of minimalism. It’s too easy to describe your trip to Rome with pictures of the Colosseum, or a birthday party with the kid-blowing-candles shot.

What could we learn from Obama -the brand?

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John McCain was the original, durable brand as far as the media was concerned. What was on the wrapper was nothing compared to what was inside.

If we deconstruct his campaign we would see how, as I had mentioned even before the results, his team badly managed the brand, the positioning, the distribution, the user experience.

But Brand Obama is something else entirely. It was all about connections. Well managed, for sure. Strategic as good as it gets. Someone commenting on the Fast Company cover story in March this year said “the Obama brand is a short lived one, I would not want to put on any product I was marketing”.

Another response from one Tim Leberecht was very telling:

“The Obama brand is all software and only a little hardware, and it comes with an open SDK (software developer kit) — a dynamic, modular platform that both individual campaigners and institutional networks can plug into.”

A brand that individual networks can plug into. Now that’s what all brands must aspire to be.

It’s almost like describing the iPhone. Not just for being a shiny object but for being something people could connect to, customize, create their own apps (T-shirts, signs, even graffiti!).

Compare the image on the left to this response from a French Minister, Rama Yade:

“This is the fall of the Berlin Wall times ten … On this morning, we all want to be American, so we can take a bite of this dream unfolding before our eyes.”

The brand undoubtably infected them.

Quotes for the week ending 8 November, 2008

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“Thank you for painting your barns, canvassing by horseback, and volunteering alongside your Llama for Obama.”

Message of thanks on the BarackObama.com blog

“We should be careful of these zero-sum games where the new media drives out the old.”

Andrew Hayward, former president of CBS News, in The New York Times, commenting on political campaigns in the web 2.0 world.

“If I actually had a set of tear ducts, I’d probably cry.”

Angela Navtividad, at AdRants.com, reporting on the jubilation among Manhattanites on Barack Obama’s victory on Tuesday.

“The long nightmare is OVER!”

Comments by an avatar (!) going by the name Jordanna Beaumont, in Obama’s unofficial Second Life Headquarters.

“It’s marketing, not news … a bad idea executed with pompous pancake-faced flourishes and meaningless ta-da’s.”

Jim Veihdeffer, commenting at ValleyPRBlog on a post about the way a local TV news station did a story on LinkedIn.

“The public relations practitioner in me has to wonder why clients – even celebs – smugly throw their communications team under the bus when they aren’t happy with a decision made by management?”

Blog post at Phoenix PR agency, HMAPR, on ABC firing Brooke Smith in Grey’s Anatomy, and co-star Patrick Dempsey’s comments about the decision.

“He deserved better from his supporters. I was embarrassed when I heard the booing.”

Dan Wool, co-blogger at ValleyPRBlog, commenting on the response John McCain got during his concession speech, from an invitation-only audience of his “base” in Phoenix.

“I’m really glad it’s over.”

Raja Petra, a 58-year old blogger and editor of a site in Malaysia who was released after two months.

“insisting on a 20th century world behind the walls of the State Department while the watching a 21st century world develop outside the walls is not a sustainable posture…”

Sean McCormack, Assistant Secretary of State, on launching Briefing 2.0 on YouTube.

When an employee blogs…

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My article on Groundswell is now out in Communication World, the IABC magazine. It’s based on an interview I did with Josh Bernoff, the co-author of Groundswell. For my friends and readers who are not IABC members, here’s a downloadable PDF.

It deals with what to do to engage, not punish, the bottom-up movement. How to tap into the energy of employees and customers. Many people are still figuring out this stuff. What do I know? I am still learning on the job, but there’s no shortage of learning moments.

Some months back, we had the “Janet” incident with Exxon-Mobil. Last week there was the Virgin Atlantic Facebook incident. If you’re interested, there’s some excellent commentary about this in For Immediate Release, (show # 394)  the podcast by Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson.

Being an e-Community Organizer pays off

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Lots of Groundswell talk surfacing again, especially since the community/grass roots/Net Roots strategy of the Obama campaign has shown to have paid off handsomely.

As Jeremiah Owyang shows us, the social networking prowess of the Obama campaign dwarfs anything done by the McCain group. Just the MySpace and FaceBook (im)balance is stunning 4:1!

Ignore the groundswell at your own peril, I guess.

The moral of the story: Never make fun of a community organizer.

Water metaphor sheds light on financial crisis

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More metaphors to add to the scary metaphor list.

When someone says they got soaked, or hosed, or “took a bath” we know exactly what they mean. So I was really impressed/amused to see the numbers guys come up with an even better way of describing the financial crisis.

Warren Buffet: “Unfortunately, the economy, it’s a little like a bathtub .. You can’t have cold water in the front and hot water in the back.” (quoted in The Wall Street Journal last month)

Ben Bernanke: “Well, there’s a hole in our boat. We need to fix it and then we need to figure out how to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”

No wonder so many mortgages are”underwater.”

Hot, Flat and … intolerant (and why it’s going to change)

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Yesterday we had a book discussion on Thomas Friedman‘s Hot, Flat and Crowded.  There was a good cross section of people, and I truly enjoyed the student perspective on the key things Friedman diagnoses as the problems in the US (isolationism, infrastructure and nation building) we need to fix.

What timing! This was first of 4 sessions here at the Decision Theater, a place where we look at alternative  scenarios and sustainable futures.

The dominant metaphor in the book is the US consulate in Istanbul that was built so secure, it’s a place where “birds don’t fly.”

Having covered the technology space for awhile, this isolationist metaphor seems at odds with what’s going on in the US with regard to collaboration and connectivity. We build open source platforms for business, gaming, virtual worlds and education. We invented wikis and blogs and send the opposite message outside our borders. Obviously we are not singing from the same song sheet, –as this T-shirt at a rally reflects. (Guess who’s rally that might be?)

As we saw last night, hot, flat and intolerant is a losing proposition.