Communications

Heavy lifting needed for today’s Comms jobs

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Ever seen those job openings with meaningless phrases, and things that have carried over from the eighties? You probably see them so often you just don’t notice.

  • Out-of-the box thinker
  • Some heavy lifting is required
  • Strong interpersonal skills
  • The ability to work in a consensus-oriented environment
  • Be able to work collaboratively in a high pressure, high visibility, and fast paced environment.

Do they still offer positions to folks with weak interpersonal skills? Inside-the-box thinkers? Those who only operate in a slow-paced office?

This one, for a Marketing and PR position coming via Ragan Communications, had a line that looked like those ‘other duties as required’ might mean stacking those unwanted brochures on tall shelves in the warehouse.

“A valid driver’s license and the ability to left up to 70 pounds also required.”

Heavy lifting required, I guess.

Quotes for the week ending 27 June, 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“Michael Jackson is dead” seems like a very insensitive opening line. Should this be changed?”

Wikipedia editors debating the news of Michael Jackson’s death. News of his passing broke on Wikipedia long before it did on CNN or BBC.

“My thoughts are with his family at this time. But the instant Twitter put out in my name last night was not me.”

British foreign secretary, David Miliband, commenting about a fake tweets in his name that said “Never has one soared so high and yet dived so low. RIP Michael.” The Foreign Office has categorically stated that Miliband does not have a Twitter account. The Foreign Office, however, does. Huge difference.

“Way to go Foreign Office, using this tragic loss to promote your own Twitter account!”

Guardian, commenting on the denial made on the foreign secretary’s blog. To which one commenter had this to say:

“Could you maybe do something better with your day such as run the country competently instead of worrying about Michael Jackson?”

S. Miller, a visitor to Miliband’s blog

“The bottom line is that it was a serious misjudgement. They have used a political and human situation that many people are concerned about, to market their products and services, and that is not right.”

Alex Burmaster, communications director Nielsen Online, commenting on Habitat, a furniture store in England, that used unrelated Twitter hashtags to promote itself.

“If you shine the light on other people in social media, eventually that light will shine on you.”

Jason Baer, on things he has learned since he started his blog one year ago.

“Learning is messy, but digital text changes things. Students will edit more, link more, seek more sources, be reflective”

Presentation by David Truss, on how the role of the teacher has changed in a 2.0 world.

Bad week for blogger & radio hosts, mixed week for txt & tweets

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Talk about mixed signals!

I came across two SMS stories that left me feeling that we are still getting our minds and lives around the potential of one-to-one communication and what social media has delivered.

Quotes for the week ending 20 June 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“Students sell their internet access to their neighbors and they also do the same in public offices …”

A BBC report on blogging in China, Vietnam and Cuba, and how Cubans find creative workarounds to poor internet access.

“I wouldn’t know a twitter from a tweeter but apparently it is very important”

Ann Curry, quoting HClinton re: #iranelection

“”In California we vote on everything including whether we have to keep voting on everything.”

Joel Stein, TIME magazine

“We do a whole lot of tweeting during the Chapter 11 … we’re their ears.”

Chris Barger, Dir. of Communications for GM, in The LA Times

“Why hang out with celebrities when I can spend time with people who make me one?”

President Obama making fun at teh Broadcasters’ annual dinner.

Let’s rediscover the art of storytelling

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

I was chatting with a friend on Facebook who celebrated his mother’s 87th birthday, and how it’s not too late to listen to the wonderful stories our parents have to tell –if only we listen.

I always regret not recording some of his stories, especially when I spent the last few weeks with my dad. He had a fine art of storytelling. We use to call them ‘long stories’ and ‘yarns’ because he always threw in a bit of drama and lots of narrative detours to keep us riveted. He taught English and history, so he seemed to have the right ingredients of storytelling.

Today I always carry my digital recorder with me, because there are those unexpected moments that just present themselves, and you just want to capture it.


So this project, called the Interview Project from filmmaker David Lynch is something I just love. It is the fine art of letting people tell their own stories, on camera. Listen to this one, for instance, recorded last Saturday, June 13 in Moab Utah.

It reminds me of the StoryCorps project, begun in 2003.

To get back to my friend –and ex journalist — the point I made is that we are so busy telling our stories, posting nuggets of information about our lives, our accomplishments, our backyard barbecue … that we sometimes forget to listen.

I only wish the stories on Interview Project are not so short. They look tightly edited, and you end up feeling that a lot more of, say, Gordon’s story ended up on the cutting floor. Maybe there is a longer version, maybe the stories is part of a larger project. I checked if I could interview the folks behind it, to get the story behind the story.

Stay tuned!

Twitter and the politics of Iran

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Follow up to my previous post on Iran.

People have devised two ways for people caught in the middle of the crisis to anonymously post to Twitter.

In related news -related to the perceived power of Twitter over censorship — the State Department apparently asked the folks at Twitter to postpone a scheduled maintenance shutdown. According to this AP report the request was made “to keep information flowing from inside Iran amid the growing crisis over its disputed election.”

Oddly enough, as this is is being posted, Twitter is down for maintenance! On the Twitter blog, they had this to say:

“our network partners at NTT America recognize the role Twitter is currently playing as an important communication tool in Iran. Tonight’s planned maintenance has been rescheduled to tomorrow between 2-3p PST (1:30a in Iran).”

As Andrew Sullivan observed in the Atlantic, The revolution will be Twittered.

Can you really block my voice?

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Q: What  might Tehran and Southwest Airlines have in common?

(No, it’s not another ‘peanuts’ joke.)

A: An intolerance with passengers text-chatting online.

Dan York, a tech strategist, author and blogger discovered to his dismay that while Southwest had begun a WiFi Zone on board some of its flights, (and is big on, and well known for using Twitter,) it cut out Skype chat.

But blocking speech at 30,000 feet is the least of our worries in a world that is increasingly intolerant of dissenting voices. It took on a new dimension in Iran this week, in the aftermath of the highly contested elections.  The Associated Press reports that the government has stepped up its Internet filtering and Iranians are unable to send text messages from their phones. The Guardian had this to say:

“Mobile phone text messages were jammed, and news and social networking websites – including the Guardian, the BBC and Facebook – as well as pro-Mousavi websites were blocked or difficult to access.”

But can a government really ‘block’ people’s voices in this age of leaky media. While Twitter  is being blocked in Iran, some tweets that get through publish the addresses of proxy servers that can be accessed undetected.

Someone uploaded —to Flickr! — this screen capture (left) of tweets found using the hash tag #iranelection.

And then the opposition candidate MirHossein Mousavi has been tweeting, as we know.

Despite all this other forms of technology –including jamming –are being used to circumvent the government clampdown.

Even Arab satellite TV news station Al-Arabiya was shut down.

I don’t think we will see an end to governments trying to curb dissent using intimidation and technology, but these events are unwittingly providing those who favor democratic processes good examples of how best to adapt to the next clampdown, the next autocrat, the next crisis.

Quotes for the week ending June 13, 2009

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“Authentic communication is the new requirement, a paradigm shift has already happened, and most companies and communicators haven’t made the shift.”

Barbara Gibson, in her last post (The Last Hurrah) as outgoing IABC chair.

“that onerous system of checks and rewrites and hand wringing where legions of non-writers add their personal stamp to a piece of communication … to the point of unreadability.”

Steve Crescenzo, citing one of the two biggest obstacles to effective internal comms. The other is an overzealous IT Team.

“Twitter Tees brings community-powered t-shirt design to Twitter.

Threadless, which launched a way for Twitter users to vote on 4 T shirts with tweets that include “in space, no one can hear you tweeet” and “140 is the new 420”

“He’s the most … trollish person I’ve ever worked with!”

Leo Laporte, after cutting off Tech Crunch’s Mike Arrington, who suggested that Laporte had received a free Palm Pre.

“Did I really want to tell the world that I was out of town? Because the card in my camera automatically added location data to my photos, anyone who cared to look at my Flickr page could see my computers, my spendy bicycle, and my large flatscreen TV all pinpointed on an online photo map.”

Israel Hyman of Arizona, who claims his house may have been robbed because of his Twitter updates.

“We got the cure for Search Overload Syndrome.”

Microsoft Bing copy, on Facebook

“Every three years, the world completely changes, which makes strategic planning difficult. But while you can’t predict a future, you can prepare yourself for multiple futures.”

Mike Curran, the unofficial jobs guru of Silicon Calley, who is retiring after 23 years as director of NOVA

“we forgot the relationship part of public relations”

Lee Hopkins (@leehopkins) tweeting at the #IABC09 conference in San Francisco this week

“Although the pandemic appears to have moderate severity in comparatively well-off countries, it is prudent to anticipate a bleaker picture…”

Dr Margaret Chan, Dir Gen of World Health Organization, on raising the global pandemic level to Level 6

“a high-stakes poker game”

Former U.N. Ambassador Bill Richardson, on North Korea sentencing of two US journalists, Laura Ling and Euna Lee

Full-on social media coverage for IABC World Conference

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

While I had to skip attending this year’s IABC World Conference that kicked off yesterday, it may be the year that best defines how how communication had turned a corner, with so many ways of covering an event.

Check this list of staff covering the event via Twitter.

Just a cursory search of the usual tools and you’ll find many ways to follow people and presentations, back-channel chatter, and some background to the events. Here are a few. I will update this as the conference proceeds.

Twitter, Of course. The Hash tag is IABC09.  Goes without saying that almost everyone member at the conference is tweeting.

AudioBoo. The podcasting app for iPhone users. Already people like Donna Papacosta and Bryan Person have uploaded content.

For Immediate Release podcast. Show #455 from the conference flow.

Twitpic: Bryan Person, Shel Holtz, and others capturing the conference photos

Flickr: images from Linda Johannesson and others

YouTube. Again the IABC09 tag brings up new content all the time. (Must watch: Hilarious ‘Grumpy Old Men’ series.)

PROOF POINTS:

  1. Real-time coverage: Within minutes of Best Buy’s Brian Dunn receiving the 2009 Excel Award, I was listening to a snippet of his speech, uploaded to AudioBoo, by Neville Hobson.
  2. Member participation. Linda Johanneson, traveled to San Fran on a scholarship. Instead of providing a conference report when she returns, she’s documenting it at a blog (Outathagate) as it happens!
  3. Podcasts from Bryan Person recorded in his iPhone: DailyBoo

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Untangling social media’s Knots, Twine, Flakes and Waves

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Is this the year of excessive networking?

  • I came across yet another interesting way to pull together a social network from a thread of tweets. It’s called TweetKnot.
  • Hard to not think of Twine, and what it stands for, huh?
  • I had just signed up with PageFlakes, which has been around but I have to admit is a pretty good aggregator of many other tools such as Facebook, Twitter, email etc.
  • And this week was awash with news of Google Wave.

Oh, my!

Are we getting to the point where we may need an aggregator for our aggregation tools?

Got a minute? What are the criteria you use for trying out a new communication tool?  Take a quick survey here.

I will report results of the survey here in a week. Thanks.