I’ve been blogging for some time now here and at some other venues. One of them is ValleyPRBlog that Dan Wool co-founded with Len Gutman.
So I am really happy to have Dan join me as a co-presenter in the first of a series of webinars, starting next week.
Here’s a link to the video is you do not see it displayed above.
Really happy to announce a series of Web conferences that I will be starting next week for the U.S Embassy in Colombo, Sri Lanka.
This follows a digital video conference I conducted last year for the U.S.E, in association with the US State Department.
These six workshops –Webinars– are designed to be more interactive; the majority of participants will be at one location in Colombo. They were selected based on their application and response to a survey on the state of social media in Sri Lanka.
We are covering the usual suspects: Blogs, social networking, micro-blogging, video sharing and social search. The attendees are from diverse backgrounds: advertising, corporate communications, government, web-based businesses, management, universities, media and non-profits.
Presenters: To make these sessions more focused and relevant I have brought on board some top practitioners to co-present with me. They are:
Dan Wool, a corporate communications and PR consultant for APS, a large electric utility in Arizona. Dan co-founded one of the world’s top blogs on public relations, marketing and social media.
Steve England, Chief Technology Office of MobileSoft, an advocate of on-demand digital printing who advises large tech companies and international advertising agencies on interactive marketing.
Gary Campbell, a communications manager at Arizona State University, a former print journalist turned digital, who has led numerous university training sessions in social media.
I will also bring in a few ‘surprise’ guests who will pop-in with some real-world examples of how they are using a particular strategy in their communication!
“In the Future, we’ll all have 15 minutes of privacy.”
“No one is laughing in Arizona. Do your job and secure the border.”
“A lot of great stories are hidden within the public”
Manesh Nesaratnam, Malaysian film director of a movie, Your Grandfather’s Road, which is being crowd-sourced.
“That QR code on the left will even take your smartphone to my Twitter feed. And if you really liked this story, you can re-Tweet too.”
“A nastygram.”
“You gotta give him credit for his media manipulation skills.”
“We are heartened by news reports that J.S.Tissainayagam appears to have been pardoned…”
I’m sitting here with a cup of tea, and it gives me great satisfaction to link to this article on the company behind it.
Dilmah tea has been a long time favorite. Enjoy the story of the underdog who excels in this commodity business with dedication to not just branding, but the details that make up the tea experience.
I’ve seen a lot cause marketing campaigns, so perhaps my expectations are high for this one, particularly.
The presentation by Ogilvy Earth (yes they did set up a group with this name for sustainability-related clients) is eye opening,.
It hinges on the word ‘Hopenhagen‘ which initially struck me as yet another clever pun. But it’s been well thought out, to focus on this city less as a destination for activists and tree huggers, and more as a symbol, a buzz word, a starting point for conversations, individual and collective actions…
Two things going for it:
But while all this is impressive and works well in the digital world, I was hoping to see more real world events, local visibility, community calls to action. Passports and online petitions can go so far.
The city of Copenhagen itself has adopted the campaign. Why stop with that?
We get so focused on digital media, with its global reach, we often forget to communicate, through local channels, and our human networks. If people can change their Twitter background, they will be ready to change some aspects of their analog life as well, if only for a few weeks.
It’s not too late. If only Ogilvy Earth could get slightly more down to earth …
Hyperlinks may seem insignificant, but they can be subversive, helpful and enlightening.
At last evening’s video conference I suggested that one way of improving our communication is to embrace this ‘link economy.’ And since social media is the connective tissue, it keeps this economy humming.
It involves some loss of control, which makes it unsettling to some, but it also opens up plenty of new opportunities. I see these as falling into four groups:
Social Media lets us:
Two great Citizen Journalism sites:
One other interesting way to enlarge a story I omited to mention: The Lede from The New York Times. By the way, it happens to be a blog!
On the topic of Citizen Journalism and Civic Journalism:
The purpose of civic journalism is “not to inform the public, but to form the public.”
Pay attention to these:
Finally:
This morning I am participating in a web video conference for the US embassy in Sri Lanka on how to think about social media.
My working title for this is ”Think Outside the Blog,’ considering how blogs have become the center of gravity for so much of what we do –what we produce, consume, how we distribute, connect, and participate in the so-called link economy.
I therefore will be digging deeper, and framing it around Cocktail Conversations –how web 2.0 (which has infected our listening and speech faculties) lets us communicate in a very crowded room.
Why is the room crowded? First because everyone is gate crashing the party! It ‘s not just crowded, but noisy because everyone –and not just PR people, journalists and marketers– has a voice. Unfortunately everyone has arrived at the party with a megaphone, rather than an antenna. As such in social media (as in social life!) the best communicators are the best listeners.
But I will also be broaching the topic of whether content is still king. I hear this all the time, at new media hangouts, writing seminars etc. I don’t dispute that cointent is VERY important (the alternative is fluff) but we don’t give enough respect to context. It’s way too easy to come up with, and deliver content. Context takes more work.
Another way to think about this topic is to think about who really has a voice today? In the market economy, those who had the money to run ads and PR campaigns controlled the conversation. In the link economy there are new contenders to the throne.
As we come to the end of May, two things with huge implications have shown themselves.
THE FIRST was the Wall Street Journal’s faux pas, trying to force a set of rules on their journalists who’ve started adopting social media into their work flow. Just one of the rules, that ‘Business and pleasure should not be mixed on services like Twitter‘ sounds like it was written by someone who woke up yesterday. Or didn’t hear about the ‘95 Theses‘ published ten years ago. Not this one, but in this book!
THE SECOND was the launch of a company called Blink.lk. It’s a new media company in Sri Lanka, launched by a former journalist and longtime friend Tyron Devotta. (Full disclosure: I am partly involved in it, at least in sentiment.)
One of their first posts on the blog –that has fittingly preceded the main web site–was called “Mainstream No More.” It’s written by a staffer, a former reporter. She expresses the struggle this switch involves. Today, anyone in the storytelling business has to get under the hood of social media and see what makes it so compelling to the audience. Or as Jay Rosen aptly called them, “the people formerly known as the audience.”
Happy to learn, from the U.S. Embassy blog in Colombo, that the American Center is celebrating its 60th birthday.
In the eighties, the AC was a part of my growing up. I would ride my bike on Sunday afternoons and settle down in the Communications section of the library. This was where I would catch a week’s worth of pre-recorded ABC News with Peter Jennings. I am sure there are thousands of others to whom this was a portal into a variety of interests.
Happy Birthday, American Center! Read the American Center newsletter here.
So what would it have been like when the American Center opened in Colombo 60 years ago? 1949 was a curious year, with these landmark events:
“If you’re out in the middle of a field and someone sneezes, that’s one thing. If you’re in a closed aircraft or a closed container or closed car or closed classroom, it’s a different thing.”
“Biden takes train after warning family to beware of confined spaces…”
“The swine influenza outbreak makes Twitter more useful and somewhat useless, at the same time.”
“Apparently the rate of infection is not as widespread as we might have thought.”
“Yes. And NO NO NO. Recently we’ve all been guilty of cheap and dirty!”
“Social colonization is when every web experience will be social.”
Bottom line, Carnival should have been ready sooner with a statement and made it easily accessible on its web site. Surely it has a crisis communications plan?
Hoipolloireport 