Technology

Rewriting your job description?

/ Angelo Fernando / Leave a comment

The new media will rewrite your job description before your boss does. That’s the reality of many professions, particularly those connected to or dependent on information industries –and which aren’t?

Change is hard, and threatening. Digital culture is fraught with problems as I noted in my assessment of The Cult of the Amateur, but that does not mean we ought to fear or reject it.

Jeff Jarvis, a professor in journalism makes an interesting point (Fighting the future) about naive and dangerous thinking within J-schools right now, about the kind of experimentation newsrooms in print and electronic media need to indulge in to participate in the era of democratized content.

Most jobs today require collaboration and sharing, but digital culture is making us do it in newer ways. Almost every meeting I sit in includes a discussion about setting up a wiki. Photo sharing isn’t just for amateurs or for building albums to share with grandma. Many of the Pros are on to this. I found this picture (on the left) covering the recent California fires. It’s from a collection of images by Alex Miroshnichenko, a freelance photographer based in Southern California, who’s made them available on Flickr. In case you cannot recognize it, it’s a melted stop sign.

Speaking of sharing, Christopher Sessums director of the office of distance education at the University of Florida is someone who blogs on EduSpaces, a social networking site around education. His job description goes as: “Coordinating resources for faculty & administrators to produce online degree programs & courses.” But he refers to himself by two words: “change agent.” His thinking is indeed all about adapting to change, writing on topics such as the future of knowledge portals – how library web sites need to be a cross between Wikipedia and Amazon.

“Imagine a space where librarians upload mp3s, pictures (png, jpg), text (links to texts, outside sources/links), movies (mpg, mov, wmv). Associated with each file “pile” is a place for users/librarians to add comments, additional links, photos, user feedback/conversation.”

More like chief disruptor.

What does your job title say about you? Seat warmer or change agent?

Combative use of social media in Writer’s Strike

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Just like anything else in the mass- and narrow media world, the Writers’ strike has some interesting ripple effects . The Golden Globes was canceled, NBC has to refund up to $15 million in advertising, and has got creative with promos, while affiliated industries and their supporting artists –hair dressers, limo drivers, party organizers etc are losing out too.

Of course, everything’s connected to everything else –nothing new if you’re dabbling in social media. BBC is now reporting that YouTube and other video sites are seeing a lift in. viewership.

Which brings me to United Hollywood, the blog for the Writers Guild of America. They have a YouTube site where they chronicle everything they are fighting about, most of which is about being paid for content distributed online.

It gets better. One video, featuring the exec producer of Private Practice announces that WGA is ‘hosting’ an annual short film contest -basically soliciting user generated content (think of the irony here!) on themes such as –are you ready for this?– “why sharing is nice,” “show the moguls why the internet has value..” “why animation writing is writing,” etc. Videos need to be a maximum length of 4 minutes, could be from any genre (even mockumentary!) and needs to end with the line “We’re all on the same page.” The contest ends Feb 20th.

So far there are 92 videos, including this one addressing Rupert Murdock and his “holy grail” quote. Brilliant!

Technologies I’ll be watching

/ Angelo Fernando / 2 Comments

What’s a “cross browser?” Heard of Wikiversity? How would you operate a virtual office?

For my technology coverage this year I plan to pay some attention to Microsoft Silverlight, or what they refer as to the next generation media experience using a cross browser. Wikiversity, by the folks who gave us Wikimedia bears watching for anyone involved in education and knowledge management.

The virtual office is coming of age. Zoho offers online-offline virtual office features that make Google docs (something I have used a lot) look quite tame. Zohomail has multi language support, apart from calendaring, groupspace etc.

Cult of the Amateur. Annoying book, good read

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

I am finishing Andrew Keen’s book, The Cult of the Amateur, that strikes me as the modern day equivalent of Vance Packard’s Hidden Persuaders.

Keen is the kind of person who would have dismissed Abraham Zapruder‘s 26 minutes of film as unreliable and amateurish, just because he was an accidental “citizen journalist” long before the term was coined.

He is very passionate, maybe angry, about what he sees in the old media vs new media. Some of what he observes is accurate. Meaning, much of what he says is hyperbolic, flawed. The book seems to be about the digital economy, about the downside of internet as an economic and communication platform (you know, the usual suspects: click fraud, Google bombing, anonymous Youtube videos defaming politicians etc) than about ‘amateur’ content showing up through new channels.

I am working on a review, because this is one book anyone interested in the progress of the digital economy must take in, albeit with a grain of salt.

But nevertheless, a good read, and proof (I hope) that I don’t simply read and consume information that merely conforms to my preferences –something Keen thinks the internet forces us to do.

Things that made us go “huh?” in 2007

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Oh, what a year it was. Between freedom of information faux pas, a fake press conference, and a shiny new new object from Apple, we obsessed about these stories:

The amazing role that social media played in letting the world know about the violent reaction to the peaceful protests in Burma, in September

Larry Craig, Republican senator for Iowa, accused of soliciting sex in an airport bathroom, pleads guilty, but then attempts to deny charges.

Southwest Airlines gets a passenger to change his T-shirt because of it has a slogan that could be considered rude. It also gets another passenger to get off a plane for wearing a too-revealing mini skirt. Southwest later apologized and called launched mini skirt fares.

Lisa Novak, the astronaut who drove across the country in a diaper, is arrested.

Strumpette, the PR blogger who postured about PR, resigns, and re-emerges.

FEMA holds a fake news conference after the California fires, using employees posing as journalists.

Apple fans camp outside electronics stores to be the first to buy the $600 iPhone.

Soon after this, Apple warns iPhone customers it would cripple it should they try hacking it.

Wal-mart is investigated on charges that an employee could have been spying on text messages and phone conversations between a New York Times reporter and a PR employees.

Jeff Jarvis begins to say nice things about Dell.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg apologizes for Beacon, a feature that would have shared users’ personal information with others without their opting in.

Sheriff Joe Arpaio arrests the owners of a newspaper, The New Times, for refusing to submit information about the dates and times and other information about visitors to its web site. The case was later dropped.

Comcast responds to the “Comcast Must Die” angst started by Advertising Age columnist (and NPR’s On the Media co-host) Bob Garfield, saying “real world developments” such as becoming the largest cable provider makes it difficult to keep promises.

John McCain responds to a New Hampshire high school student’s question about his age with “thanks for the question, you little jerk!”

A blog calling itself Fake Steve Jobs, is tracked down to senior editor of Forbes, Daniel Lyons.

British rock band Radiohead releases its album In Rainbows online, for free, with a prompt to downloaders to pay what they want.

Earlier in the year, Prince gave away a 10-track album, Planet Earth, free through the ‘old media’ a.k.a. newspapers, The Mail on Sunday.

The protest by Londoners over the ‘ugly’ 2012 Olympic logo. The wisdom of the crowds was ignored. The logo remained unchanged.

Barry Bonds if pleads “not guilty.” Don Imus is fired by CBS, and returns to radio via an ABC affiliate.

 

10 things we obsessed about in 2007

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Here’s what I will remember about 2007 from the perspective of marketing, social media and communications. We obsessed about these stories in PR, marketing and social media.

1. Facebook made us rethink what social networking could do for one-to-one communications.

2. Network neutrality became a debate that not just the geeks and telcos were interested in.

3. Short codes gained popularity as the new URLs, as text messaging took off. Sadly, it took the shootings at Virginia tech for universities to realize the value of this kind of messaging.

4. Mashups became more entertaining than the original. Think: the “1984″ spoof ‘commercial‘ about Hillary Clinton, viewed over 3 million times.

5. It was the year micro-blogging (with Twitter and Jaiku) got taken seriously,

6. This was the year email spam (in the form of “co-worker spam” and “PR spam”) hit a tipping point, forcing communicators to take a good hard look at databases, and how to try to target better. Not convinced? See the rumpus Wired editor, Chris Anderson’s “sorry people you’re blocked” post did.

7. A new, intriguing search engine called Mahalo (made possible by humans, not just algorithms!), the future of Wikipedia, and whether “amateurish” knowledge is helping or hurting us.

8. The toy for grown ups: the iPhone, what else?

9. Beacon, Facebook’s daring experiment with something called “social ads.”

10. Obama-mania, both here and abroad.

(cross posted from ValleyPRblog)

Quotes from the week ending 16 Dec, 2007

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“We’re still filling the tank … check back soon.”

Message on the new Christian social networking site LifeInTheFishbowl that will open shortly.

“Chanel No 5”

The perfume that Nicole Kidman says she is promoting. Kidman was paid damages by the Daily Telegraph in London whom she accused of falsely claiming that she preferred White Jasmine and Mint by Joe Malone.

“Most people don’t care about privacy, not at all.”

Seth Godin, on the trade off between relevance and privacy that Ask.com faces with its new ‘eraser’ service.

“Dvorak is a controversial, opinionated and immensely influential technology writer, based in the US but read around the world thanks to the same internet that he dismisses as unsuitable for those living in poverty.

Bill Thompson hitting back at John Dvorak who criticized the hundred-dollar laptop, as a little green computer on the “information super ad-way.”

“The uneasiness is usually due to their perception that — in much the same way you hire a cleaning service and a couple of hours later, presto! you see the results immediately — you hire a PR professional and a week later, presto! you’re in the major headlines.”

ValleyPRBlogger Linda VandreVerde on why PR communicators need to communicate.

“Glaceability”

The concept of adding ‘glanceable nuggets of visual information’ through digital radio, so as to enhance what’s delivered via radio station. BBC Radio is experimenting with it.

“Take heart; Norman Mailer wrote all of his novels by hand.”

Amazon.com‘s executive customer relations person, Autumn Walker, responding to a customer who wrote a letter to Jeff Bezos complaining about not winning a bargain laptop (during the “Amazon Customers Vote” promotion) and being unable to write his epic novel.

XO: The laptop powered by Wikinomics

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

Nicholas Negroponte‘s concept of a low cost computer has been pooh poohed by many big corporations that it is a crippled machine, and a $100 machine was unrealistic. But he has proven them wrong.

The little green “XO,” described by as “a flexible, ultra-low-cost, power-efficient, responsive, and durable machine,” developed in collaboration with MIT Media Lab, is a reality. It’s Linux-based, and has programming, a search engibe, chat program, word processing, rudimentary blogging capability, and connect to the Net via a mesh network.

Most interesting is the ‘social sharing’ concept built in to the applications. Children (or their teachers) could “reshape, reinvent, and reapply their software, hardware, and content.” It’s Wikinomics in action! No wonder its critics are scared.

Gifting an XO: I though this idea of getting it into the hands of more children was brilliant. Called the “Give one, get one” program, you could buy a $100 laptop for yourself and they will donate one to a child in a developing country. Hundred bucks for two laptops! No wonder its critics are agitated.

Press kit not a sales kit in social media world

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Great post today by Charlotte Risch, a co-editor of ValleyPRBlog.

How many times have you called up a company for details about a product or service, to be told something like “we don’t have a press kit, but I could send you a PDF of something we took to a trade show…”

If only the Social Media NewsRoom had a lot more takers.

GM’s newsroom looks like a blog, with Flickr, Delicious, and YouTube links.

The image on the left of a 2007 concept car, the Beat, is being pulled off the Flickr site that has some 152 images.

What better way to provide the media with photos, instead of taking months to create and maintain a separate photo archive.

PodCamp Arizona – as good as any paid event

/ Angelo Fernando / 1 Comment

brent_2.jpgKick yourself if you didn’t attend Podcamp Ariona.

As Podamps go, it was an experiment in self organization -taken to an amazing level. The venue –at the University of Advancing Technology— couldn’t have been better picked with classrooms bristling with technology, rather than a sterile hotel ambiance.

The presenters were people many paid events would kill to have on their roster. There was free music, food, and best of all a sense of energy that firmly planted Arizona on the Podcast map. There have been 23 Podcamps across the country before this. One attendee commented that he had attended a few more Podcamps and this by far was the best organized. Kudos to Brent and Michelle Spore for pulling this off.

Many takeaways from this one for me.

1. First, that knowledge is not always to be found in formal education packaging. Nor need it be “monetized” the traditional way. This was an event that was managed by a wiki, if that tells you something about bottom-up organizational power.

3. Third, those who have the best stories have the worst collateral. I say this in a good way, since I’ve seen to many slick PPT presentations, too many brochures in my marketing life that scream marketing, not substance. I attended a session by Marc and Nicole Spagnuolo on “starting from scratch.” Their logo looks like it was designed by a high school student with a Sharpie in the back seat of a car. Really, from scratch! Nicole was happy to admit that they use free survey software, low-cost service providers, print black&white stickers rather than expensive business cards, and barely know how to write a press release. But they are hugely successful!

4. Fourth, podcasters are not afraid to make mistakes, to start over, to admit they got it wrong. Zero egos.

And that’s apart from the lessons of podcasting, and connecting to audiences via a blog, a microphone, a camera…