Creative visualizing of data

October 23, 2008October 23, 2008 / Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

We just had a group at the Decision Theater inquiring how our visualizations, which are being linked to data sets, could be used in a Creative way. Creative with the capital C, that is.

So I am thrilled to promote a cool new interface launched today yesterday at Arizona State University’s Global Institute of Sustainability.

It’s called the Campus Metabolism project. Specifically, a web-based tool (a richer experience than Dashboard) for displaying real-time energy use in several buildings across the Tempe campus.

For anyone managing gobs of data and has a hard time getting it to mean something, this is cutting edge. What’s most interesting is that the Campus Metabolism concept was created as a student project – A bottom-up process, if you will. Also, this is the kind of data that makes people feel a real connection to how we relate to the network, the grid, the eco-system. It was initiated with the purpose of looking at “the hidden connection between the impact of the actions in our daily lives and the natural world.”

Sidebar: The folks behind it:
Campus Metabolism brings out the collaborative force behind the work going at at the Global Institute of Sustainability. This one nvolved: ASU Facilities Management, The National Center of Excellence on SMART Innovations, University Student Initiatives, Barrett Honors College, University Architects Office, College of Design, Ira A. Fulton School of Engineering, Psychology, the student chapter of Engineers Without Borders, and APS Energy Services.

McCain-Palin campaign needs more mavericks on the bus

October 23, 2008October 23, 2008 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Now that the attack ads, Governor Palin’s SNL appearance, and the unconvincing “socialist” line using surrogate Joe-the-Plumber have not moved the needle, the campaign is calling for McCain Marshalls and McCain Mavericks to be deployed. The “campaign deployment program” is a last minute attempt to stop the downward slide in the polls.

From a messaging point of view, the Palin-McCain campaign (oops!) is completely off kilter, and I bet there’s a huge tussle between the campaign staff as to whether to be consistent or scatter shot. I bet Rick Davis wants to unleash the real McCain, but having let Palin walk in and change the tone of the campaign (+ the search results if you check YouTube etc), John McCain is less and less what his brand stood for.

There is a considerable amount if chatter about “letting McCain be McCain” but either Davis’ media monitoring widget isn’t working, or they they have too many cooks in the kitchen. As one disgruntled Republican put it, “The “Straight Talk Express” was derailed in September.” Meaning the maverick was muzzled.

No wonder they’re scouting for some new voices.

Are your “Message-force multipliers” working for you?

October 21, 2008 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

A ‘message-force multiplier’ is a fancy way of describing a person who is highly influential, especially within the media. They have been employed by the Department of Defense, which has practically embedded these influentials to get a certain narrative across.

It is shocking to think that this happens in the normal course of the news media, but it isn’t. Like product placement, the branding tactic to get favorable impressions through a medium, this happens all the time.

Let’s sidestep the political and ethical implications of this for a moment and see what we could learn from this. Who are your message-force multipliers? Could they be already ’embedded’ and ready that all we need to do is empower them, without having to resort to cloak-and-dagger tactics?

Networked audience. At the university where I work, students, not Communicators, are the real voices. They are highly networked in both analog and digital realms. Their channels (dorm room discussions, text messaging, study groups etc) carry our brand personality further and faster than any advertisement or press release; they ‘multiply’ the impact of the message.

Motivated audience. Not everyone who’s connected and networked is highly motivated. Walmart has a group of Mommy Bloggers who are passionate about the brand. These ElevenMoms, have their own ‘beats’ as it were –frugal living, product reviews etc. One is “a suburban subversive, plotting to reinvent the way we stay-at-home-moms think about keeping up with the Joneses.” Customers who ‘plot’ on your behalf? That’s worth a lot.

Peer-to-Peer. Dell’s Digital Nomads group (see my comments earlier) is an amazing place where the brand is very low profile, and the members basically help each other. It’s not just a web site. Members reach out to each other via a Facebook group, LinkedIn, Twitter, and a YouTube channel.

Quotes for the week ending 18 October, 2008

October 18, 2008October 19, 2008 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

“But let me tell you one thing straight away — I’m envious of plumbers.”

John Brown, of Georgetown University, in his Public Diplomacy and PR blog.

“social capitalists”

What NBC calls the target audience for its local ‘TV web destinations’ as reported by Mike Walsh, at Online Media Daily

“a mortadella sandwich”

Fabio Betti Salgado, an IABC member and blogger from Sao Paolo, quoting Brazil’s presidentLuis Inácio Lula da Silva on his definition of the financial crisis.

“If you look at it holistically, marketing is social media. It’s a two way exchange – value exchange.”

Mike Kujawski on the TwistImage podcast.

“Our little brains were never in a position to handle that much infomation.”

Fabrice Florin, or News Trust, quoted in a New York Times article on rumor in the digital age.

“This is a Google cache link, because the picture of the disgusting T-shirt…”

Article on misogyny aimed at Sarah Palin frm an Obama-Biden campaign web site.

“Oh wait. This is advertising. Reality is irrelevant. All that matters is cool art direction and great photography.”

AdRants, commenting on a inane Pepsi ad that involves a lifeguard and a woman on the beach.

“Copyright law is a mess …Complain to Dub-ya who signed another bill this week on copyright law.”

Steve Jones, commenting on Larry Lessig’s blog post about McCain-Palin campaign complaining to YouTube about meritless copyright claims that have a chilling effect on free speech.

“You don’t ask a cosmetic surgeon how many hours it will take. You don’t really care about the cost. It’s an abstraction, but your face is not …As a writer, you’re a sort of surgeon yourself-a word surgeon.”

Art Spikol, at Writers Digest, on Flat Fees vs Hourly Rates.

“The idea of online cannibalizing print is not just wrong, it’s the opposite”

John Ridding, CEO of Financial Times, whose newsstand sales rose 30 percent in the US, and 20 percent in Europe.

“True enough, it is a special rule. But isn’t it appropriate?”

Lawrence Lessig, on the McCain-Palin campaign asking YouTube to give special consideration to video take-down complaints. Critics believe the politicians should stick by the free-market model!

“Bacteria, caffeine, the pain reliever acetaminophen, fertilizer, solvents, plastic-making chemicals and the radioactive element strontium.”

Ingredients found in brand-name bottled water, which, it turns out to show is no more pure than tap water!

Scary metaphors and the financial crisis

October 14, 2008October 14, 2008 / Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Phillip Massey, an information-technology worker in Dublin put it well, saying that “when America sneezes, the whole world catches a cold.” The not-so veiled reference to the pandemic flu waiting to wipe us out, makes the H5N1 virus look wimpy, by comparison.

It made me wonder how soon we will run out of metaphors. The following images have been evoked, ad nauseam, to describe what the financial system had become or is going through:

Weapon of mass destruction
Serial killer
Tsunami
Shockwaves
Earthquake
Meltdown
Dominoes
Bust
Implosion
Orgy
Casino

Radio beats video in explaining financial crisis

October 13, 2008 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

Want to see the financial crisis deconstructed by a different breed of pundits than those we are subject to on TV?

A Harvard University panel discussion is available as a video feed at the Harvard site. It’s all about this “slow motion train wreck.”

But if you really want feel the heartbeat of the crisis (and not have someone fling around terms like “leverage” and “swaps” without some explanation) then I highly recommend listening to Ira Glass on This American Life, esp his second big take on the financial meltdown.

Part One, “The Giant Pool of Money,” was scary enough. This was before the Feds decided to invest in bank stocks, and the G8 finance ministers meeting last week.

Part Two, “Another frightening show about the economy,” was true to its title.

This is radio at its best. Glass does much more than capture and edit together the sound bytes of experts. He gives you a sense of the fear and contradictory thoughts running through people in the eye of the storm.

At one point, he asks one John Zuker whom we consumers should be upset with. There’s dead air and Glass says “that’s a long pause, John?” Zuker, apologizes but Glass lets him take his time; you know he’s left the pause in there to give us listeners an idea of how complicated the problem is, how scary it is when so-called experts don’t have pat answers to what ails our financial system. The layman’s explanation of credit default swaps, and something called ‘netting‘ make you wonder where our leaders were when these modern weapons of mass destruction were created.

Compared to similar analytical takes on CNN or Fox, the urgent pace and mesmerizing whirl of distracting graphics, split-screens, fast cuts, crawlers and props, radio beats TV to a punch in getting to the granular level of a crisis.

Even this well-done time-line by the New York Times, fails to get the bigger sweep of history. It begins in 2001, but misses a big one: the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999.

In times like this, TV has become the Circus Maximus providing entertainment for the lazy. Radio delivers the story, the backstory and the analysis. Great work, Ira!

Video diaries to be used in Afghanistan

October 10, 2008October 10, 2008 / Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

With so much ‘video’ coming from terrorists who know only too well the media would give them airtime, it always made me wonder if there was not third way to counter this.

The first way would be to ignore them or prohibit their rebroadcast, which would be impossible considering the ability to self-broadcast, anyway.

The second way was the pathetic approach taken by the government, post 9-11, which was essentially a PR and advertising approach, creating happy-people video vignettes. Called Shared Values, and headed by much-respected ad veteran Charlotte Beers, the $11 million campaign was a failure, and an embarrassment. The videos were not inherently bad, but they came from the wrong source: The State Department! (Under the banner of an organization called the “”Council of American Muslims for Understanding.”)

Trying to solve “they hate us” with a Madison Avenue push tactic, that pretended to be a grassroots organization? Anyone could have seen why this was so wrong.

Enter the user-generated concept, from the government. Make that the British government. It’s a plan that has not yet been approved, but it involves getting NGO’s to hand out mobile phones to ordinary people in Afghanistan to create video diaries. The idea is to “deny the Taliban of a monopoly on this space” –meaning to counter hate-ridden, user-generated propaganda videos with other stories from the country. Given that this borders on citizen journalism, it has a better chance in the credibility department. Let’s just hope they don’t put an ad agency head in charge of this social media program!

Sidebar: This approach is not new. It borrows from similar experiments such as The Border film project, using disposable cameras given to people –migrants and Minutemen– on both sides of the fence in the US and Mexico.

I will be keeping tabs on this project, for sure.

Hoipolloireport

Angelo Fernando's blog since 2004

Communications

Creative visualizing of data

McCain-Palin campaign needs more mavericks on the bus

Scary metaphors and the financial crisis

Radio beats video in explaining financial crisis