The questions were recorded using hand held video cameras, cell phones and web cams in the living rooms, kitchens and home offices of our country. People wore t-shirts, sweaters and house coats. Some might not have been wearing pants. That’s the nature of social media. People can do it anywhere with any dress code.

While the format was loose and we got to see the PM reach for his glass of water between each answer (and he even looked relaxed a good part of the time) I believe Stephen Harper would have fit better in the living rooms, kitchens and home offices of our country if he was wearing jeans and a t-shirt for his video response. He missed an opportunity to be the ghost in the machine — the element that gives social media its charm.

This was an interesting digital step for the PMO; some say a novelty. I believe Canadians will be more impressed if it becomes the norm.

On March 8, Ann Adams posted a photo of her bald head on Sanofi-Aventis’ Facebook page [update: per Dave Jones' comment this is not an official S-A group] with the text “Good morning Sanofi, I had your drug Taxotere and as you can see from my photo this is what my scalp looks like 4 years later. Do you have any comment to make?” Of course, the post drew public attention to the matter of permanent hair loss resulting from Taxotere, but not nearly as much attention as the heavy-handed move by Sanofi-Aventis.

Rather than acknowledge the post, Sanofi-Aventis the group administrator blocked Ms. Adams from their Facebook account [update: again this is not an official S-A FB group. The group admin owes a great deal of care to managing a site for a brand he/she does not own. Also interesting is that Sanofi-Aventis hasn't complained about the use of their logo on the site which is particularly suspicious given the current situation.]

Ooops!!!

Closing your eyes doesn’t make the problem go away. More importantly, slamming the door on someone with even passing knowledge of social media and a personal story everyone can get behind is a heavy-handed and misguided move these days.

It didn’t take long for the same photo to start popping up in other relevant Facebook groups and gain traction in other social media sites including Twitter. Sanofi-Aventis now finds itself with two very public PR nightmares: the possible long-term side effects of their product and a very public move which suggests a disinterest in people.

It’s amazing the corporate world has learned very little from time-proven case studies like Tylenol and Maple Leaf Foods. These are classic stories of companies emerging with an even better public image resulting from their crisis management, communication and people-first values. Instead, Sanofi-Aventis took its lead from Tiger Woods and Toyota.

Certain industries may be bound by specific regulations on what can and cannot be said to the public under specific circumstances and no doubt the legal department wants to play a front-and-centre role in these kinds of situations (you needn’t look further than the language used by companies in crisis communication). However, I can’t help but think a personally-inflected reply might have made this situation a positive one for the company and industry.

Striking the balance between regulatory restrictions, legal advice and the public interest is a difficult one for many companies that are joining the new age of democratized media reactively rather than proactively — particularly since there’s a very fine line between responses that are too quick for the company and too slow for the public. Companies are learning the hard way that you can’t use new channels for pushing out traditional messages; companies derive value for themselves by delivering value for the masses.

Publicly acknowledging Ms. Adams’ situation and pain may have led to people praising Sanofi-Aventis for listening and being responsive. Journalists and Facebook followers might now be giving props to the company for putting people first and the story would be about caring and real communication rather than Big Pharma dismissing the people that paid dearly — financially and physically — for its drugs. I believe Sanofi-Aventis missed a perfect opportunity to have positioned itself as the daring champion of the industry.

This is where things will get interesting.

Response is pretty good for an online initiative that gave the public less than a week. According to the Your Interview with Prime Minister Harper webpage, the initiative attracted “170,001 votes on 1,797 questions from 5,128 people.” It’s an ambiguous stat which I’m guessing means just more than five thousand people both submitted and voted on the the questions. So, when the media give the initiative extra attention for the PMO’s use of social media, you can also expect the digital naysayers to point out this campaign attracted participation from 0.0015% of the Canadian population. It’s worth noting that the Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament Facebook group attracted more than twice that number in its first week.

Noticeably absent from the site is the ability for participants and visitors to categorize (or keyword tag) the questions (e.g. natural resources, child care, finance, general…) or sort them based on vote count. That means it’s not as easy to find RuthLBarth’s question on falling crime rates and a US-style for-profit prison industry, nor is it easy to determine if the vote count makes it more likely to get selected than George Jodin’s question about wasting money on the non-issue of global warming.

H.D. Munroe asks “How will we know that you are answering “top-voted” questions from this site, instead of picking the questions you want to answer? (The site doesn’t show vote tallies, so users can’t audit your choices independently.)“‘

Even if Francais McKellan’s and Dan Grice’s questions about legalizing cannabis don’t get answered, they are far and away two of the most voted-on questions. In fact, marijuana and medicinal marijuana appear in multiple and highly voted-on questions and Canadian cannabis advocate Marc Emery, who faces extradition to the U.S., is the subject of at least one question. Will the PMO tackle this issue on YouTube? Which issues did they expect to come up?

So, over to you Prime Minster Harper. What are you going to do with this opportunity?

For instance, I didn’t analyze the number of Twitter messages generated by each party during the assessment period. A quick check of the numbers based on my research identified that among the active Twittering MPs, the Liberals rank first for the number of Twitter messages generated (6,289), the Conservatives follow (5,209), the NDP third (4,086) and the Bloc are last (408).

The average number of Tweets generated by the actively Twittering MPs puts the Conservatives first (274), the Liberals hot on their heels (273) followed by the NDP (255) and the Bloc (102). These averages may have changed over the last few weeks, particularly since Liberal MP Denis Coderre has been absolutely on fire, publishing 1,177 Tweets between the close of the initial research (Feb. 19) and this morning (Mar. 9). The next most active Twittering MPs since the publishing of the report trail by an order of magnitude — Conservatives Patrick Brown (86) and James Moore (76). Among James Moore’s Tweets this month is the announcement that U2 lead singer Bono would like to speak with him about copyright.

Since the report was published on February 25, all of the identified dormant Twitter accounts remain dormant and NDP MP Dennis Bevington is the only MP to have opened a new account (March 3) though he hasn’t published any updates.

If I can get them in the same room for about 30 minutes, I’d like to audio record a round table discussion with James Moore, Denis Coderre and Libby Davies about Twitter as a communication tool, their approach to digital communication and engagement, and the role of digital in politics and democratic participation.

I had a particularly interesting conversation last night with some colleagues during a two hour (plus) road trip. One colleague shared that based on her experience as a campaign manager and her intention to continue to act as one, she would not allow her candidate to use Twitter, Facebook or other digital channels to engage with the public. Her core argument is that the candidate can’t afford to — that too many mistakes are made in the digital world that can ruin a campaign.

I believe that as the communication ecosystem evolves and traditional media channels have become more marginalized, digital has become a more integrated component of successful communication (including traditional media which is reinventing themselves through digital). Note that I said digital is part of the ecosystem. That means digital needs to be an integral part of the strategy rather than a tactical adjunct to it.

There are many reason why politicians need to do what Mitch Joel calls “be the media”.

• traditional media can’t or won’t always cover a candidate
• politicians can’t control how traditional media will present them
• politicians don’t need digital channels to create difficult situations (like here and here)

And the payoff…

• increasingly, people are getting their information online — specifically from Google (and other search engines)

An effective communication strategy embraces owned media, social media and earned media in a way that makes it possible for people to find the valuable information they need when they need it to make informed decisions. A politician doesn’t need Twitter or Facebook as part of their strategy, but those services and others will most definitely help them by helping the public.

As part of their decision process, voters are increasingly likely to:

• search for candidates by their riding name and affiliation
• search for information about their candidates by name
• read websites and blogs by and about the candidate and party
• skim through comments on various relevant news and blog articles
• read or skim the discussion in forums and social networking sites
• seek out and watch videos (and skim any comments on them)
• follow candidate microblogging activity

Basically, these tools shouldn’t be viewed by campaigns as intelligence gathering tools on the movements of their opponents. If your opponents are using the internet to feed the public and you’re not, you’re opponents will always remain one step ahead of you.

Don’t get me wrong, nothing will replace face time with the public through door-to-door canvassing, town hall meetings, public debates, community events, etc… Digital isn’t going to suddenly change the political landscape in the next election. However, social media is going to play an increasingly important role in how voters decide how they vote. In fact, digital played a very visible and unexpected role in the 2008 federal election when a Facebook group was credited for helping elect Edmonton Strathcona NDP candidate Linda Duncan by a small margin through vote swapping agreements based on trust between Canadian voters. Elections Canada ruled that the vote swapping agreements were legal because there was no exchange of money.

Politics has traditionally depended on a command-and-control communication environment and has remained so through the evolution of the internet to date. Talking points and messaging will always be a part of politics no matter which communication channels are used. Social media is poised to adapt this approach through authentic and personable relationships that people are becoming accustomed to — a kind of humanizing of politicians in the digital public eye.

Social media’s ability to help amplify individual voices and pitch-up the conversation on issues of importance changes the assertion about social media from “politicians can’t afford to” to “can politicians afford not to?”

Signal quality and the use of Twitter

Twitter is no more a channel for the mundane than social gatherings, speeches, town hall meetings, the telephone (and ultimately the cell phone), print and broadcast media, faxes, email and websites — and noone’s complaining about MP use of those technologies. It’s likely the use of those technologies was contentious when MPs first started adopting them just as it’s likely we’d be mocking our politicians for not using them now.

However, the effectiveness of the channel doesn’t determine the quality of the signal (the content/messages being posted); the quality of the signal determines the effectiveness of the channel. What Twitter offers is an easy-to-use ubiquitous technology through which politicians can share information (official and human) AND engage with the public at large. Social media is the only media which offers this opportunity to both politicians and the public at zero cost.

MPs don’t occupy themselves sending unnecessary emails, making unnecessary phone calls and conducting unnecessary meetings. I think it’s fair to say they won’t put their political work on hold to engage in a live Twitter chat. However, Twitter offers a great opportunity for MPs to conduct forums and opinion polls on matters of public interest.

Communicating in 140 characters

Twitter does not replace other forms of communication which are better suited to more thoughtful and lengthy discussion. I can’t imagine Twitter being used to filibuster a committee meeting. It’s yet another way to share information, particularly information that has some immediacy to it.

What Twitter offers is yet another way for MPs to remain connected with the public. MPs can’t attend town halls in Halifax when they need to be in Ottawa. Besides, there are strong arguments to be made about fiscal responsibility by teleconnecting. Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff’s recent Facebook public forum was a great example of using technology to engage with the public at large. It would be interesting to see if more politicians do that kind of thing more often.

Follower quality (voting constituents, non-supporters and the public at large)

One commenter (J. K. Galbraith) asked some great questions.

• How many of the people who are following the MP’s or leaders of the party are actually in their constituencies and can actually vote for them?
• How many of their followers are new supporters versus people who were already supporting them?

Politicians generally represent two groups of people: their immediate constituents, and their constituencies of interest. So, someone in Calgary might want to follow Jason Kenney as their elected representative in addition to the MPs who are responsible for debating their professional interests (e.g. Natural Resources Minister Christian Paradis, NDP critic Pat Martin and Liberal critics David McGuinty and Geoff Regan).

It’s interesting to note that Neilsen statistics report Twitter usage is highest among 35-49 year olds — perhaps the most important demographic for most politicians. Other social networks are also skewing older. Facebook’s fastest growing age groups are 35-54 and 55+ according to an iStrategy report. This means that the people politicians most want to reach are beginning to adopt and gather on social networks.

Real-time meaningful information

In a comment that suggested Twitter’s biggest naysayers have no first-hand knowledge of the service, Kristin shared a great example of how Twitter helps B. C. commuters get to work on time.

Translink, the company that manages public transit in the BC lower mainland, has a Twitter account. Translink will tweet about traffic delays or accidents that are causing buses to be rerouted. From this, I know in the mornings whether I need to leave early to catch my bus to avoid being late, or to take a different route altogether. Useful and very efficient.

Twitter as an official government channel

One commenter expressed frustration about being blocked from specific MPs’ Twitter accounts (blocking allows an account holder to selectively block other Twitter accounts from following them, sending a reply message and mentioning their Twitter account ID in a Tweet). There are ways around this, of course. For example, one does not need to be logged in to Twitter to follow messages from a specific user. Tweets are public and can be searched.

Regardless, Twitter is NOT an official government communication channel. The accounts are free (no cost to taxpayers) and held by individuals, not offices. Nor is Twitter identified in any Parliamentary act. As much as a digital geek as I am, I would never expect, nor want, Twitter to be explicitly identified as an official channel. Technology moves too quickly. Legislation needs to be agnostic if it’s to remain relevant as the digital economy grows.

I have some thoughts on what I call the digitization of democratic participation and the political process which I’ll share in another post. As I identified in my white paper, Twitter represents the “long head” of that curve.

Some of my colleagues were surprised to learn that I’ve discouraged organizations from using a SMR as part of their communication plan. So, I connected with Dave Hicks, Director of Sales for Canadian News Wire (one of a handful of popular Canadian companies that exist to help distribute MRs to the media) to talk about their relatively young SMR service. Just talking to Dave helped me realize what it is about SMRs that caused me to stay away from them — it’s not the communication vehicle itself, it’s the execution of the campaign on it. I’ve avoided using this channel because it’s being misused in a way that I feel devalues it.

Many organizations are using SMRs in a way that makes their message unappealing for both the mainstream media and social media audiences. Which means organizations that religiously look at ROI on all of their communication campaigns are putting out more I with no way of recognizing any R.

It seems to me there are some basic misunderstandings about SMRs so I thought I’d share five harsh thoughts for organizations thinking of using SMRs as part of their communication plan.

1) Social media audiences are NOT traditional audiences

Social media audiences don’t care how pleased an organization is about itself, its products or  events, or how the announcement affects the organization. If your announcement has no value or relevance to the social media audience, your SMR will have no value to your organization. And don’t forget that media organizations are looking for your wire copy, not your SMR.

2) Think engaging content NOT message delivery

The popularity of social media has grown out of the desire of people to engage with others. Tools have been created to facilitate participation and content redistribution. Messages intended for consuming-audiences and content intended for participating-audiences are very different and require different approaches and (in many cases) different creative. This also means changing the voice that engages the audience.

3) More value, less branding

In one particular SMR Dave and I looked at, the organization front loaded a 110-second video with 17 seconds of visual branding. That means from the moment the video began it seemingly took forever before the organization even started talking to its audience. In all, branding accounted for 20% of the video. Put another way, the organization stole 20% of its audience’s time. If it weren’t for the fact that Dave and I were evaluating the video, I would have given up before the 10 second mark.

4) A SMR doesn’t put your organization in the centre of social media

Organizations that haven’t embraced social media as part of their ongoing engagement with the public do not magically become social media organizations through their SMR. In fact, a SMR should augment a larger social media effort, not act in its place. At the very least, the SMR should be integrated with the campaign, not just be another channel for it. If the public doesn’t know about or can’t find your SMR, it serves as nothing more than an isolated outpost on the Internet.

5) Invest people NOT only money

One thing in common among all SMRs Dave and I looked at was the absence of the organization that released it. While this ties into number 4, what I’m really referring to here is the participation of the organization. Standing up a SMR and merely monitoring what’s being said without becoming active in the dialog makes the conversation about you, not with you. People can talk about you anywhere. If you’re going to invite the public to a gathering place, be a good host and participate. Assigning the right people to engage with others and respond to their comments, compliments and concerns, and act as a connector between the organization and its public is where organizations will recognize the value of their SMR.

Photo: Devin Castle Outpost posted to Flickr by xlibber.

That’s a fun way of summarizing the findings in my white paper, House of Tweets: Twitter and the House of Commons, a research project I undertook as part of my work in digital public affairs at Fleishman-Hillard.

The report examines the make up of the House of Commons based on active use of Twitter by MPs, which MPs are applying their innate network building skills to social networks and what our federal politicians can do to become more engaged with their constituents.

You can read more and download a copy of the report at PoliticalView.ca.

The fascinating thing is that the traditional and digital media camps seem to be talking about a similar struggle using different language, from different stages of maturity.

Relevance

Traditional media is struggling to maintain relevance while the world around it is swirling with information, insight and one of the most important trifectas of being able to report news when it matters: location, location, location. More is being demanded of journalists with diminishing systems of support to deliver what the public wants when the public wants it. I’ve met columnists that are expected to cover the stories of interest as well as shoot and publish video on the web and write a blog post that augments and drives traffic to — not competes with — their column.

Digital media is struggling to establish relevance while the world around it watches the signal-to-noise ratio of the flood of information with a critical and suspicious eye. There are no gatekeepers and with that no quality control which both helps and hinders the trustworthiness of the information for everyone except those that are in the community. There is no specific requirement for balanced reporting except the fear of reprisal.

Here’s a fantastic opportunity for traditional and digital folks to get together and learn from each other. The traditional folks can get some guidance on the tools, culture and multidiscipline approach and the digital folks can get some guidance on sources, responsible communication and picking the relevant parts of a story. While this is important at the ground level, it’s equally important for editors, publishers and management to get in on the discussion though I expect they’re generally dismissive/suspicious of the amateur or too absorbed in financial strains and broken business models to take the time out for this kind of discussion. Of course, I might be completely wrong and they completely open to the idea.

Seems like it might be time to bring these two folks to the table. I have some thoughts on how I’d like to help make this happen. If you’re interested, drop me a line.

I wonder if the issue is that third-party tools including desktop and mobile apps are making it more attractive to use third-party tools with Twitter (also noted in the article) in the same way that website visits decrease when people subscribe to a blog using RSS technology. Basically, they’re visiting you and enjoying your property from across the street.

Frankly, I’ve never understood why people get so excited about the growth and plateau curves of social media tools. It’s well known that social media sites tend to be transient in nature.

Like Rick Astley, who never had any fans and yet still sells CDs and plays to large audiences, sites like MySpace maintain a loyal following and represent solid platforms for people to engage. Facebook will have its day. So to will Twitter, and foursquare and Yelp and others we don’t know about, yet.

Social media tools don’t die; they become application interfaces.

The NoProrogue monitoring dashboard

It was a slow start… crowds were small, there was an attempt to lead a series of long and complicated chants, one of the speakers yelled at rather than spoke to crowd and a Nortel employee opened her speech with “I’m a Nortel employee so I know something about the Internet.” From my desk at home (where I was also working on an RFP), I wasn’t convinced that Ottawa’s contribution to the cross-Canada rallies against proroguing Parliament was going to help make the Facebook group-initiated day of protest remarkable.

Ottawa, indeed Canada, is just too stiff when it comes to rallies. It’s tough getting people out for any side of any cause and in the rallying mood once they’re there (especially when most of the city was enjoying the first great day of skating on the Canal). You need something to stir the crowd up. In the case of yesterday’s rally in Ottawa, there were too many inexperienced opening acts.

Then Trevor Strong of The Arrogant Worms took the stage. ”If I’m at a rally, something’s gone horribly wrong,” he said. Suddenly the gathering of an estimated 4,000 people (RCMP figures) became a rally that chanted Trevor into an encore after his song The Proroguer. Name a rally in Ottawa that encored one of its presenters.

THE BEGINNING OF THE CURVE

However, the real story isn’t the two-hour rally with student speakers, celebrity singers and party leaders. The story is that a national day of protest organized on Facebook managed to get in excess of 27,000 people rallying in cities across the country and even in major cities in the U.S. and U.K. All of the politicians and critics that thought an online gathering was cute now find themselves having to acknowledge that digital advocacy and engagement is on track to help shape our country’s government — with or without their participation.

And that’s not all. Digital tools played a significant communication role during the event. Protesters used the #noprorogue tag in Twitter, incorporated live blogging technology (which also aggregated all tagged Twitter posts), uploaded photos to Flickr and videos to YouTube, and video of the Ottawa event was live streamed to the Internet. Canadians are making this an important issue and the media has had to be a part of that or be left behind by democratized media. That certainly made it easy for observers like me.

MISSING VOICE

One aspect of the prorogued Parliament that isn’t getting much attention is the pro-proroguing opinion. Maybe one hundred prorogue supporters have been working the comments section of CBC.ca reports on the rallies, dismissing the participation rates at the rallies as being pathetic and representing less than one have of one per cent of Canada’s population.

If the measure of the popular opinion is numbers in Facebook groups and real world rallies, there is apparently no support for proroguing Parliament. [Note: a group calling itself Canadians Against 'Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament' has appeared on Facebook today. It has 47 members at the time of this post.]

IT TAKES ONE PERSON TO START SOMETHING

That’s the thing about Canada: drumming up participation and coordinated efforts for any side of any issue is incredibly difficult. Canadians, whether content or angry, just aren’t bred to rock the boat. Which makes Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament an incredible success. The Facebook group managed to convert roughly 13% of the digital participation in to a coordinated real world rally that spanned the country and the world — all because of one person, Christopher White, a student in Calgary.

Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament can now take comfort in the fact that their detractors made significant miscalculations and have a busy week ahead of them.

Mr. Ignatieff responded to 31 questions and comments during the one hour session. Not bad when you consider the amount of time it takes to receive, read, select, publish and respond to each.

I was surprised and pleased to see that the questions dealt with a wide range of issues including voting systems, poll results, legalization of marijuana, the role of youth in Canadian politics, the Alberta tar sands and (of course) prorogation. Mr. Ignatieff even gave props to the government for its handling of the Haitian earthquake.

I expected the town hall would have revolved around the Facebook group Canadians Against Proroguing Parliament (CAPP) and the rallies that group has been instrumental in organizing for this Saturday — particularly since the hour started with two questions on the subject. The fact that it didn’t either speaks to the broad spectrum of questions asked by Canadians or the careful moderation of the town hall by Mr. Ignatieff’s staff.

By the way, CAPP has 209,403 members as of the writing of this post.

It would be interesting to find out how many people registered for and actually attended the town hall, how many questions were submitted and on what topics, and which questions Mr. Ignatieff and his staff avoided — aside from the one question they accepted didn’t really answer (see the question time stamped 3:47).

An online town hall may not seem like much. I believe this represents a significant step forward by a politician to reach Canadians where they’re already gathering. Digital also represents opportunities for politicians to demonstrate fiscal responsibility by staying connected while saving travel and event costs — and maintaing some sanity in the politicians’ lives. It’s also something that can come together in pretty short order.

Coupled with his recent tour of universities, yesterday’s digital event shows that Mr. Ignatieff is committed to get young voters involved and out to the polls in greater numbers. He’ll likley pick up a few online political nomads along the way.

You can read the transcript of Mr. Ignatieff’s town hall on the Liberal Party’s website.

Photo from the online transcript.

Issue #5: despite what you think, you’re not competing with technology

I’ve always been a fan of radio and the variety of programming it offered. When I was 13 I would wake up to the CHEZ 106 morning show. During breakfast I would listen to CBC (since it was on in the kitchen). After school I would turn on CHEZ, again. And, I would often set my alarm to listen to The Zero Hour at midnight, also on CHEZ. When I got my Sony WM-4, I listened to the radio even more. Even though I had my own cassette tapes to listen to — which I did — radio had something to offer.

Of course I also helped to raise the average daily television consumption statistics and have gone in and out of phases of being a newspaper junkie.

So, what changed when I got my first iRiver — the one with the built-in radio — and then an iPod and ultimately an iPhone? Why was it so easy for me to give up cable (beyond the fact that my wife-to-be didn’t have it and didn’t want it)? Why am I watching specific content online?

I don’t believe media organizations are competing with technology. Technology is just another delivery channel. About the only thing that portable media technology offers that the media organizations cannot through traditional delivery channels is time-shifting. The rest of the playing field is level.

I believe that the competition is with personality. Great personality breeds strong relationships.

I’ve done several informal surveys of people I know and the consensus is that radio lost its personality. As an added bonus, radio reduced playlists, over-specialized and over-homogenized their formats and programming. Portable media players allow consumers to program their own personality and expand the playlist from a limited 200 songs to a seemingly unlimited number of songs.

Ottawa’s CHEZ 106 is a great study. It’s billed as a classic rock station. If you judged classic rock by CHEZ’s playlist, you’d swear that genre begins and ends with about 250 records. In fact, I enjoy telling the story of being in my car and turning off CHEZ in the middle of Hotel California and six months later, back in my car, turned CHEZ back on in almost the exact same spot of that song.

It’s not just about the songs, either. I couldn’t find my own rhythm with the new style of on-air hosting. That applied with a number of local rock and pop radio stations. Even CBC had a few shows I left behind because I couldn’t connect with the style of the time. I’ve recently discovered new approaches and even new talent on some of those shows and have become a committed listener, again. The content hasn’t changed — the personality of the show, not just the host, has changed.

Television’s personality has also evolved. It’s a long tail coming out of the reality and pseudo-reality crazy, neither of which I really bought into. Talking with people about the reality craze is like talking about Rick Astley during the height of his fame — nobody admitted to listening to him, but his records were selling like crazy and he was playing a lot of sold out concerts. But I really didn’t listen to him.

The print publications that remain strong are the ones that have a strong macro-personality (the publication itself), or have outstanding micro-personalities (specific journalists or columnists).

In all variety of media, advancements in technology provide additional ways to reach audiences. If your personality is strong, people will continue to seek you out whether through traditional channels, through media streams online, on subscription-based content, podcasts or as programming on sites such as HULU. Each of those distribution methods offer new (possibly challenging) ways of revenue generation. How successful you are is based entirely on your personality and the relationships that personality breeds.

Suggestion: Focus on creating strong personality-based content and think more creatively about how to use technology to distribute that personality.

The trick was to call each other, collect.  The phone company had an automated attendant which prompted the “Collect Caller” to say their name after the tone.  The system allowed maybe 3-5 seconds of recording time, during which we could blurt out a brief communication.  The system would then tell the caller to wait while it sought to get the charges accepted.  When the call was answered, the automated attendant would kick in and say “You have a collect call from…” and it would play the recorded message.

This back-and-forth exchange sometimes went of for an hour or more.  As annoying as it may have been, it was the only free mode of quasi-real-time long distance communication at the time — several years before the Internet.

Publishing giant, Random House joined Twitter on April 11, 2008.  Their bio claims that they are the “World’s Largest English Trade Publisher”.  They haven’t issued a single Twitter update (that’s right, ZERO updates) to their awaiting audience of 577 followers (amazingly large given they’ve done nothing), and they aren’t following anyone.  That, despite a healthy number of references to Random House in Twitter.  Sadly, Random House would look a lot better if they hadn’t opened the account at all.

Little Brown Books may not be as big as Random House, but they have a vibrant community and conversation on the go.  Their follower:following ratio is almost even (2640:2655) and they’ve issued 865 updates since they joined Twitter on July 28, 2008.  Unfortunately, and perhaps due to their Twitter success, they’ve been unable to keep up with the conversation and following a recent call for input on their upcoming newsletter, failed to acknowledge a number of responses.

Social networking is an amazingly inexpensive communications tool and a fantastic way to reach out to your audience.  However, it is a commitment which carries with it a public declaration.  As marketing and communications becomes more rooted in the digital world, companies will be judged by their actions and inactions using, among other things, tools like Twitter.

Neil Gaiman has become a rock star not just because of his books, not just because of his movies, not just because he’s become an icon of science fiction culture, not just because he won the Newbery Award for The Graveyard Book two days ago. Neil is a rock star because he embraced social media long before most of us and he’s good at it. In fact, he’s changing an industry with it.

I had the privilege of speaking with Neil about some of the cool things he’s doing to connect with his fans and promote his books. Besides the fascinating writing on his amazingly popular blog (it’s actually more of an online journal since he doesn’t allow comments), Neil keeps his legions of fans up to date on Twitter. Yesterday afternoon he had 13,478 followers. At the time of this post he has 15,888 followers. According to Neil, he’s been gaining about 1,000 new Twitter followers each day for the last week.

It gets more amazing. Neil convinced his publishers to post videos of him reading The Graveyard Book online — for free. If watching him read the book doesn’t appeal to you, you can browse the book online.

Neil Gaiman is helping to redefine the publishing industry on the terms of the social web. Because they’re listening to him, Harper Collins is on the cutting edge.

You can hear my interview with Neil on the Just One More Book!! children’s book podcast. I’m hoping that we’ll have a chance to interview Neil, again, to discuss the overall impact of these initiatives.

Photo from Neil Gaiman’s Twitter feed.

Let’s examine the tools and what they do.

Levelator is a free tool created to simplify the process of increasing audio levels for recordings that captured very little signal (the foreground audio you want to hear such as a person speaking or a musical instrument).  It was created by the The Conversations Network (TCN) to make life easier for the average podcaster by eliminating the need to learn how to produce audio.  TCN recognized that most people who get into amateur podcasting don’t have an interest in understanding compressors, limiters and normalizers — much less do they have the time to learn how to use them.  They just want to publish their podcast.

Simplicity is the key to the Levelator.  A user drags a file to the application and it decides the best way to increase the audio levels.  The problem is that when Levelator amplifies an audio signal, it also amplifies audio noise, some of which may not be obvious in the source recording.  So, if you have a refrigerator running in the room in which you delivered a masterful monologue, the listener is likely to hear as much from your fridge as they will from you.

For the average podcaster, that’s fine and I respect that.  Someone who bills for their audio production services should be delivering value to their client by using the right tools for the job.  This is not about someone “whose eyes have never stung from the sweet sweat of a hard day’s work” (thank you Michael Bluth), this is about being honest and realistic about the work you do and the necessary tools to do it.  Sometimes, audio level problems can be improved by tweaking the EQ; perhaps some compression or limiting could be applied.  Using a paint roller to do quarter-inch detail work is the wrong approach.  Levelator takes away the guess-work and the flexibility and the results can demonstrate that.

As the name suggests, SoundSoap is for cleaning up your audio.  It’s been designed to help reduce (maybe even remove) unwanted noise (such as hums, hisses, rumbles…), clicks and crackles from a recording.  SoundSoap has also been designed for simplicity.  The user plays a section of audio that has the noise print with no signal (e.g. the ambient noise of the room when noone is speaking) and SoundSoap determines how to best reduce that noise from the recording, even when someone begins to speak.  Then, presto, you get a better signal-to-noise ratio in your audio.

I use SoundSoap on occassion and find that in many circustances it does a fantastic job — though I often find myself dialing back the amount of noise reduction and threshold it auto-selects for me, and tweaking some other settings.

So, consider a situation where you have a recording noisey enough to merit SoundSoap and quiet enough to need something like Levelator.  Imagine what Levelator will do to the recording, including constantly fluctuating the ratios of signal and noise.  Think about which order these two tools could be applied and the effects of either order.  While both strive to increase signal over noise, these tools are not necessarily complementary and anyone who produces audio for money should not put that much trust in automation.

When I think about the monetization discussions that have been taking place on the Canadian Podcast Buffet over the last few weeks, this stands out as another example of someone who asked the question “how can I make money from podcasting?” without asking themselves if they have something unique to offer and the capability to deliver it.

From my small home office in Ottawa, I felt as though I was truly a part of two major events in world history: the inauguration of the most charismatic, inspiring and deserving man as the President of the United States, and the creation of an environment that harnesses collective energy to build a collaborative and interactive news experience.  Both take an inclusive approach to building a new world.  It’s hard to say which of these have done more to define Barak Obama as a leader of the world, not just President of the United States.

In his speech, Barak Obama delivered a powerful message “to the leaders of the world”.  He said “you will be judged by what you build, not by what you destroy”.  It’s a message that applies to everyone, really; world leaders, world citizens, corporations, etc… And true to that message, the team of CNN, Facebook, Cisco and Microsoft built something new.  They used technology to propel the feeling of community in the news world. I felt as American as I’m ever going to be.  I also felt Canadian, Spanish, French, Afghan, etc… I really felt like a citizen of the world, all from my seat.

That small collection of technology companies won’t need to advertise to me any longer.  They were guests of my house, yesterday, as I was a guest of theirs.  They didn’t pontificate to me from my television screen, they invited me to participate — in text and video — with my computer.  I became addicted to that level of engagement very quickly.

Many people will argue that television news died, yesterday.  I argue that television news was redefined.  Besides, not everyone has a computer with a decent Internet connection.

It was a “Pow! Right Between the Eyes” moment if there ever was one.

Since many are free and easy to use, social media tools make it easy to create new gathering places.  Many communities have taken advantage of this and have established strong and active communities on specific areas of interest.  I belong to several of these.  More significantly, I find it easy to abandon some of these communities because, at some point, they all go through the same misguided effort to reach as many people as they can and in the process, spread themselves too thin.

“Nobody goes there anymore; it’s too fractured.”

The communities typically started by a group of established bloggers and/or podcasters deciding to create a common gathering place to discuss, socialize and even coordinate.  It usually started with a closed forum of some sort, perhaps a Yahoo! group or Google group.  Then Facebook came along and some eager member of the community would create a Facebook group.  Everyone joined the new site meaning they now had two places to go.  The community began to slowly fracture as those that preferred the new and exciting tool (Facebook) exiled from the forum.  When Ning came along, someone created a group in that site.  Again, each member of the community created a profile in Ning and tested it out.  And, again, a small number of people that preferred Ning established permanent residence there.  Then came Community Portal pages, Facebook Fan Pages, Wikis, Twitter, Jaiku, Plaxo, Plurk, etc…

At their core, all of the tools serve a common purpose and boast common functionality. So, why do we spread ourselves out so thin? Why do successful bloggers and podcasters re-establish their community gathering places all over?

Social media enthusiasts live in a bizarre paradox in which they must appeal to as many people as possible and still work to centralize the digital relationships and conversation so that any single person can manage to stay on top of the discussion. Fracturing the community means a lot of cross-posting between sites, lost conversations and chasing rathing than engaging.

Many companies that want to adopt social media internally or externally struggle with the same issue.  They want the shiny new toys, they want to look like their agile and that they embrace the technology so they adopt every tool imaginable.  The result is that noone knows where to go so noone goes anywhere.

UPDATE (this part somehow didn’t make it to the post): I’m a member of a community that is going through this struggle right now.  Among my concerns is that while this exploration into new sites may exciting and open new possibilities, it sends a very fractured message to the members of the community.  On one hand, shaking things up can reinvigorate things, but it can also be the beginning of a weakening of the foundation.

To date I’ve been happy with the plugins I use, which include:

• Enhanced WP-ContactForm
• FriendsRoll
• PodPress
• Sociable
• Subscribe to Comments
• Viper’s Video Quicktags

I’ve been thinking about adding a captcha plugin to my one of my sites.  John Wiseman suggested wp-ReCAPTCHA, though I wasn’t convinced that he’s crazy about the idea of adding captcha functionality.

Rob Blatt insisted that Meet your Commenters is a must have.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t work with WP2.7, yet.

Which WP plugins are your favourites, must-haves and stay-away-froms?

It’s been easy to worry about the plugin.  Some time has past since the last update (code or even news of plans), and, more obviously, the disappearance of the support forums following a SPAM attack.

I spoke with PodPress creator Dan Kuykendall, yesterday.  Dan has been busy with work and his new dual-role as both a techie and CEO and hasn’t been able to attend to PodPress on a day-to-day basis.  He did say that he’s working on a new release and expects to put some time into the coding during the holidays later this month.

So, if you’re a PodPress user, hang in there!

Partly to bring attention to his post, partly to show that older content maintains relevance over time and partly to prove that short posts can also get trackbacks, I’m posting about his post on my blog.

Don’t be too quick to dismiss this post on the grounds that it relates to the children’s book industry.  While the children’s book industry is not typically viewed as a beacon of things to come, there is a lot that can be learned from how the publishing houses have come to depend on a web of communities.

I had suspected that the trend of influence was shifting towards people  (typically enthusiasts, not industry rollers) who have been successful in building strong online communities around literacy and children’s books.  New web sites and social networks are appearing regularly and they, too, show signs of strength.  Meanwhile, review space in newspapers is drying up which means fewer professional reviewers.  Publicity and promotion is changing fast and the publishing companies are finding it difficult to keep up.

It’s an industry with a broken economic model — not helped by the proliferation of big box stores that focus on staples and front books for a significant fee.  Independent book stores have become largely marginalized by their warehouse-like cousins, surviving predominantly on their ability to actually know the product they’re selling and catering to niches.  And before you start writing your protest songs, we also need to recognize that the big box stores have actually helped increase book sales (even if the margins have shrunk like crazy).

Publishing companies, publicists and agents have been gradually migrating to the social web.  It may be too little too late.  That is, many of them (if not the industry as a whole) are discovering that they have to throw themselves at the mercy of the communities and micro-celebrities of the (dare I use the term) Kidlitosphere.

By the way, the Kidlitosphere is the name adopted by a community of bloggers and podcasters that focuses on children’s and young adult books.  It includes children’s book enthusiasts (some parents, some not), librarians, educators, authors, illustrators and more.

THE SOCIAL WEB

Let’s be clear about something, the social web isn’t about a static webpage and an online bookstore.  I know that’s obvious to many people and companies.  I also know that there are many people and companies that don’t get that.  They also don’t understand that the web is more about real relationships and community than it is about technology.

TECHNOLOGY

During the Kidlit08 conference in Portland, Oregon this past weekend (more posts about the conference), one author announced that her editor told her to setup a MySpace page.  As the story goes, neither the editor nor the author knew why or how, or what should make up the page, just that it was a good idea.  So, the author went about setting up a MySpace page for herself, a page that the publishing company deems as necessary though will likely not include any mention of in any published book (I admit this may have changed: last year I learned that some publishing companies refuse to include links to authors’ or illustrators’ personal sites in their published books; that is, sites the publisher has no control over).

The editor didn’t make a communications, public relations, publicity or promotion decision.  The editor made a technology decision.  Technology is merely a channel and its application must be learned and understood.

Eventually, the author received a couple of contacts as a result of her MySpace page.  If something sticks around long enough, people are bound to find out about it.  Having a place for people to go to is all well and fine, but you also need to go to them.  Hence, Social Web.

COMMUNITY

As it turns out, the primary (perhaps exclusive) reason the Kidlitosphere needs the publishing companies is because they produce books.  Full stop.

I not only use all the brains that I have, but all that I can borrow.
–Woodrow Wilson

Meanwhile, the bloggers and podcasters are doing more than just publishing meaningful book reviews that aren’t limited by word count, airtime or day of the week; they’re conducting insightful interviews with newcomers and celebrity book creators and they’ve organized the Cybils, an annual book award broken down into several categories that has earned a great deal of respect from the industry.  The nominations for the third annual Cybil Awards begin this fall.

The innovative ways of promoting literacy and great children’s books don’t stop there.  One section of the Kidlitosphere has organized itself for something called Blog Tours in which an author is selected to be featured on group of blog sites in a coordinated effort that ensures unique interviews on different subject areas.  One author at this year’s conference noted that the Kidlitosphere’s book tours are better organized, more insightful and more fun than the half-hearted efforts by her publishing house (which suffered from, among other things, the same interview conducted on several sites selected by the publisher).

All that and the Kidlitosphere has its own conference!

One author that I spoke with at the conference told me that the publishing industry is in peril and the Kidlitosphere on the cutting edge.  He explained that publishing houses don’t have the knowledge, money or people it takes to make things work online for a commercial interest.  Perhaps most significant is that authors and illustrators have more direct and more affordable (potentially free) access to the kind of publicity publishing houses can’t offer.

As airtime in major print publications and broadcast media dries up, the importance of the Kidlitosphere with its passion, coordination and innovation has been amplified.  The community of communities has done it right.

RELATIONSHIPS

You may have noticed that what I’m describing is something that began because of the passion of many people and has inadvertantly become an incredibly important public relations and marketing network for the children’s book industry.  It wasn’t organized that way.  Not intentionally, anyway.  It became that.  It became that because of the relationships that were formed within the community and the dedication of the individuals.

If you’ve always done it that way, it’s probably wrong.
–Charles Kettering

I suspect this is a difficult shift for the publishing industry.  Post-secondary marketing an PR programs haven’t taught social networking in a global space and the industry has a time honoured process for promoting its books through traditional channels.  Never before have they had to put their trust in people outside of the industry or rely so heavily on their own authors and illustrators to promote their books.

Some of the Kidlitospherians will share stories of pushy publicists that approach them to tell them how the industry works and how the Kidlitosphere will do a review or interview for the publishing company.  Some authors will regularly inquire when the book they sent a few months earlier will be reviewed.

On the other hand, I know of one Kidlitter that lists the Boston Red Sox as one of her interests and received a handwritten note attached to a book from one publicist — “Go Sox, Go!”.

The Kidlitters do things their own way, the way they know how; with passion and authenticity and the innovative use of community and technology.  That’s why the Kidlitosphere has become a community of power.

Connie and Eden jumped off the ropes swinging by releasing a great two-part discussion with Jay Moonah.  How they limited him to just two episodes is beyond me, and I mean that positively — because Jay has a million insightful ideas, he’s energetic and most importantly, speaks eloquently — not because there’s a running joke that Jay talks a lot.

There was a fleeting moment during which Connie and Eden recognized that some people refer to web services and their verbifed names such as Twitter, Facebook, Ning, MySpace, etc… as community.

Consider that web communication services are tools just like a telephone; they’re widgets that enable people to connect.  And like widgets, their appeal cycle is far less permanent than their purpose cycle.  That is, if a new tool emerges with a fresh look, improved interface and simpler API, people will flock, en-masse, to the new tool.  The constant migration of the community from one tool to the next, and the effort to re-establish itself in a new location is more like changing your bank account to start fresh than flying south to avoid the cold of winter (although, now that I’ve written that I realize there are strong parallels with both).

If the tool really was the community, we would no longer have any connection or way to connect with others in that community when the tool collapsed.

Be sure to follow the discussion over at Community Divas.

This podcast features excerpts of Rob’s presentation as well as comments from some of the participants of the event — including Bryan Person, founder of the Social Media Breakfast phenomenon.

The guest speaker was Adrian Salamunovic of DNA11.com, a company that creates custom art based on their client’s DNA — fingerprints, lip-prints, DNA samples, etc… (“From life comes art“). That means that each piece or art they create is unique to the individual who orders it.

Adrian’s talk traced DNA11’s creative yet simplistic approach to marketing and promotion that harnessed the power of social media to make inroads into mainstream media including Wired and Playboy — something he referred to as turning a spark into an inferno. In his talk he gave examples of how the fire can burn with both positive and negative results.

Simon Chen asked that I do a podcast of the event and I couldn’t resist. I thought I’d do something a bit different this time and dovetailed voices of the community with excerpts of Adrian’s speech.

For good measure, I threw in Stevie Z’s promo for Podcasters Across Borders at the end of the show. Don’t forget to register!

If you get an email from PAGII, ignore it.  It was likely sent without the knowledge of your friend.

In fact, Dr. Ladner led an amazing session in which she explored the meaning of reputation, attributes of reputation and the impacts and contexts of brand conversations that could be reputation impacting.

Despite the response of McNeil and the amazing brand-recovery case study that is the Tylenol cyanide poisoning incident of the 80’s, the company still took six days to respond. Can you imagine a six-day response time today? How would a six-day delay convert in a twenty-year span?

To setup the discussion, Dr. Ladner presented the three elements of the Looking Glass Self:

• We imagine how we appears to others
• We imagine how others judge that appearance
• We react to that imagined judgment

Consider that reputations cannot be managed. To help understand why, Dr. Ladner outlined the three key attributes of the Online Self:

• Hidden (online sources lack contextual cues)
• Digital (easily broken down, re-arranged, mashed-up and rearranged)
• Proliferating and Permanent-ish

What’s most interesting is where brand discussions are taking place and how that context affects the brand reputation and the opportunity of individuals and corporations to participate in that discussion (Forester Research and Statistics Canada):

• 48% of North Americans participate in social computing
• 30% of Americans have posted online ratings
• The average Canadian spent 35% more minutes talking on the phone in 2003 than in 1997

Dr. Ladner walked through a number of online tools and services that allow individuals and companies to monitor reputation.  There are several classes of tools available:

• Social Media analytics (Technorati, Google Trends, ePinions, etc…)
• Social Media observation tools (Neilsen Buzz Metrics, Cymfony)
• Social Media Response Tools (Umbria, TruCast)

Using examples that involved these tools, we learned of a number of studies in which included brand reputation of breakfast cereal based on health and nostalgic references, and brand reputation based on online attitudes on sustainability.  The examples were incredibly interesting and I would have been grateful for an extra hour to explore these examples in more depth.

Before leading a more interactive discussion, Dr. Ladner proposed some reputation monitoring best practices:

• Systematic (develop standard metrics, stick to them)
• Regular (measure at consistent intervals)
• Governed (assign accountability for metrics, create a task force)

We were all encouraged to use Google Labs to do our own research on reputation conversations, offering that we research Dell and Best Buy together over a period of time and look for when the Dell announcement on selling their computers at Best Buy.

We were able to wrap up with a more lighthearted discussion on the doppelganger effect.  I guess there are some advantages to having a one-of-a-kind name.

Note: this session will be available in slideshare.

StumbleUpon’s origins are in Calgary which makes it one of many Canadian web 2.0 success stories; stories that include Flickr and Club Penguin, both of which got their start in Vancouver. At the time of the purchase, StumbleUpon was looking for more venture capital to augment their $1.5-million in working capital.

According to Garrett, StumbleUpon is a tool that best serves visual content and websites. People can share their findings such as a site that a group of us found through StumbleUpon this morning that shows a collection of bad album covers.

eBay allows StumbledUpon to function as a startup within a large organization. This affords Garrett and the team the autonomy to self-direct their development in the best interest of the tool that they built and the spirit in which it has been embraced. It’s refreshing to hear stories about big companies buying startups and letting the founders continue with their vision.

Given my recent experiences with the Ottawa Web Weekend — which was largely about the coming together and collaboration of thirty-six strangers — I find it particularly interesting that Garrett felt he waited too long build the team out.  That’s significant when you consider the size of the eBay purchase.  His focus now is how to build the team, spread the knowledge and try to build the business to be strong in the same was as Facebook.

Garrett suggested that he’d like to explore social advertising which would target ads to individuals based on recommendations by their StumbleUpon friends. This presents a more obvious fit with eBay.

The session was dry and skewed, heavily, to venture capital and corporate purchase. The key takeaway from that discussion is that the money is in the United States.

The first ‘keynote’ featured a discussion between Mesh organizer Stuart MacDonald and Lane Merrifield, Executive Vice President Walt Disney Internet Group, Co-founder and General Manager Club Penguin. Club Penguin is an online virtual world for children which boasts twelve million users and more than seven-hundred thousand paid subscribers. Where the free service is sustained by advertisements, the subscription service offers an ad-free environment.

There are many critics that claim Club Penguin indoctrinates children into the consumer culture. Lane defends the world by pointing out the lessons that can be learned about currency and the need to save money in order to buy what you want. Lane is quite up front that Club Penguin is not specifically an education experience nor is it meant to be. It’s a place for children to play online.

Safety is a high profile concern of Club Penguin. Personal information is blocked and there is a team of moderators that monitor and sanitize the environment of unacceptable content. Apparently ‘lollipop’ is on the chopping block at the moment. They measure their success by ‘reportable incidents’ and have never had an incident in which a child’s safety was at risk.

A lot of thought has gone into marketing the environment. Lane talked about the struggle that Club Penguin has gone through to describe itself. He rejects the idea that it’s a social network since they block all personal information. I wonder if a social network is defined simply by the presence or exchange of personal information. They ended up deciding to call the online world a virtual playground and established a mantra that drives their marketing decisions “if it doesn’t matter to an eight-year-old, it doesn’t matter”. The result is that they don’t participate in many conferences (Mesh being an exception).

The Disney part of the Club Penguin story is particularly interesting. Lane gave the impression that the purchase was not necessarily an objective and he spent time with John Lassiter to gauge how Disney treats their employees and holdings. More significantly, Disney has given Lane and the Club Penguin team the freedom to decide how their virtual playground will unfold without imposing Disney characters on it. Disney offered characters like Mickey Mouse and Buzz Lightyear if they were wanted. Club Penguin operates without those easy grabs.

Club Penguin is about the personal experience. Personal emails from the community are answered, personally, by real people on the team. That means that when they get a fractured email from a child asking a technical question and describing their character and that their character’s pet says ‘hi’, someone will reply with an answer to the question and will respond to the mention of the character and send regards back to the pet.

This was the first session today in which the presenters asked each participant to introduce themselves and their work — which speaks to either the size of the crowd or the type of presenters they are.

When the Metrolinx (the greater Toronto Transportation Authority) posted an RFP for the redesign of its website, Robert Ouelette put the challenge to the Toronto blogging community: “what should the Metrolinx website look like?“. This led to the creation of Toronto TransitCamp, an event modeled after BarCamp to bring together the most passionate 1% citizens to engage with the Metrolinx and each other with the vision that the Transit Camp would not be a complaints department but a solutions playground.

The key drivers behind TransitCamp are that the current public consultation process is broken, the best ideas do not come from within anyone organization and Black Swan ideas always come from unexpected and unplanned places.

Here’s the best part — Metrolinx was invited and they came. In fact, a representative was in attendance of this session!

Metronauts was formed; a group of individuals engaged in a process that is still in its early stages. That is, they are still in phase one of a three-phase process. As such, final results were not available for this case study.

Metronauts identified three methods of gathering insights:

• Explicit: specific ideas and solutions offered by informed and engaged citizens

• Tacit: insights derived from observing the interactions and conversations of informed, engaged and enabled

• Latent: needs that are not known until they are seen for the first time

The BarCamp model was adapted for the purpose of achieving specific results. This includes an evolution to the law of two feet which permits those who are not getting anything out of a particular session to leave the session, to explicitly telling participants that if they are not getting anything out of a session that they are obliged to leave and find another session which will allow them to contribute.

Part of the process has been gathering tags that help participants to identify words that describe their TTC experience and associate elements that play into the importance of their TTC experience.

Metronauts has managed to create a safe third-space for all participants in the process. The means that the Transit Camp experience has been incredibly positive and productive and is leading to human-centered solutions that will benefit the service providers and consumers — crowdsourcing and collaboration at its best.

One of the greatest challenges is the control of communications from the government; public servants are not permitted to engage in the online dialog on behalf of the government. This can marginalize the commitment and transparency of the government in the eyes of the community. Success depends on the appointment of a community evangelist that can speak freely, with authority and without the continuous and per-engagement clearance of the legal department. Any organization that is committed to progress and remarkability needs to have its own RichardAtDell.

Note: this presentation will be on slideshare tagged mesh08.

• Dina Kaplan (blip.tv): original episodic content on the web and matching of content with revenue opportunities

• Andre Gaulin (CTV): tasked with bringing online social media craziness to television for CTV

• Guinevere Orvis (CBC): mobile and online strategy production; putting behind the scenes video added value content that doesn’t appear on television online

This panel featured a classic display of the perceived personality stereotypes.

Dina represented the excited and passionate, over-caffinated envangelist of a grassroots community whose passion to create great content is increasingly obscured by the ambition to convert user-generated content into independent wealth. Dina’s near message-track focus was on maximizing revenue opportunities by packing as much advertising into any available corner of a video clip. She also really liked every question (‘That’s a great question”, “It’s a really interesting question”…).

In contrast, Andre explained in his calm demeanor how CTV is working with various production companies to bring terrestrial content to the web and web content to our televisions. When posed with the challenge of explaining why some US content is not available in Canada, he spoke at a high level explaining that rights and licensing is an extremely complicated legal are which involves different production houses with different requirements and licensing restrictions.

Guinevere summed up the session’s unique qualities  by eloquently pointing out that the three panelists represent three different approaches that won’t likely converge into a single model, ever. Where CTV is pursuing unique ways of cross-pollinating content from various media, CBC is on the cutting edge of exploiting new technologies to inspire custom content creation and distribution. Among their innovative initiatives (for a public broadcaster) is the distribution of Canada’s Next Great Prime Minister using Bittorrent.

Say what you will about the dinosaurs of broadcast media, their primary interest remains the creation and distribution of quality content using innovative and accessible technologies.  They understand the competitive nature of content creation and consumption. Meanwhile, the grassroots are giddy about the idea making a buck. (note: Dave Fleet suggests that a buck might be more than they will actually make)

In today’s keynote at the Mesh conference, Mr. Geist provided a steady stream of relevant examples of sites, videos and blog posts that have been instrumental in spreading important messages and rallying people for issues in the public interest. There were also examples of the use of Twitter to rally for intervention of citizens in matters that involve local authorities, and mashups of technologies such as the use of Google Maps to geo-locate violent activities.

What makes digital advocacy effective:

1. organizing power (Here Comes Everybody)
2. online AND offline
3. mainstream media (what gets reported gets blogged, what gets blogged gets reported)
4. educate
5. bring to action
6. speed
7. new digital tools (thanks Dave Fleet)
8. localized
9. government 2.0
10. general purpose sites

In the conversation that followed, Michael defended the idea that a large online gathering (e.g. 40,000 people in the Fair Copyright for Canada Facebook group) is not necessarily representative of the interested population of subject matter experts and concerned citizens. Michael pointed out that any large gathering is representative of a larger group of people made up of different levels of understanding and experience. The groups are necessary to effect change.

The issues that Canadian citizens are up against are politics, not policy. Michael used the example of Canadian copyright reforms to demonstrates that, where once policy people informed and supported politicians in creating policies that would satisfy a majority of Canadians, politicians are now directing the policy people on what the policy should be and how it should be crafted based on external influences such as US government pressure. The missing ingredient seems to be public consultation, particularly with key stakeholders including the artists affected by the law.

Laws including the DMCA are based on projections of where the technology and society will go. This approach has hindered, not helped, advancements of technology and the arts. It has also created divides and distrust of governments and the key beneficiaries (such as record companies not artists or consumers, movie companies…) of the laws.

After a long and opinionated discussion about the political establishment, someone asked about the danger of online advocacy being co-opted by consumer rights instead of human rights. Michael agreed that duplicating the impact of the Fair Copyright for Canada would be difficult in any situation though there are great examples of digital advocacy. The impact is really up to the people the initiate and participate in various campaigns.

It’s hard to get people engaged. However, getting them connected in a social media community that targets a specific cause, that’s a start. There is a formula that politicians use along the lines of every single letter represents 1000 other citizens. The more people that become involved, the better chance we have as individuals to become groups that can effect change.

Michael O’Connor Clarke moderated a discussion on measuring social media with panelists Katie Paine, President of KD Paine and Partners and author of Measuring Public Relationships, Marshall Sponder, Chair of the Web Analytics Association`s Community and Social Media committee, and Marcel Lebrun, President of Radian6.

Most of the discussion centered around the need for metrics and how they should be presented to clients or management as well as some of the elements that can be measured.  Ms. Paine’s direct approach which includes the ‘Suckiness Factor’ boldly displayed on charts and graphs was by far the most interesting and entertaining.  I had hoped for more discussion on methods for collecting metrics and specific case studies on the collection, presentation and influence of metrics in decision making by clients.

The panelists’ parting thoughts on social media and metrics ensured that the evening wrapped up on a high note.

• Katie Paine: ‘measure how much social media traffic you get’
• Marshall Sponder: ‘listen about you’
• Marcel Lebrun: ‘listen about the marketplace’

I’m off to the Mesh Conference.  I hope to have the opportunity to blog during the day.

Compare those experiences to the one I had for the last three days at Ottawa Web Weekend. Thirty-six people of varied backgrounds, interests and experiences gathered and established themselves as part of a cohesive group with a common vision. Once we agreed on that vision — which, admittedly, had the potential to go very badly (thankfully, it was a very positive experience) — sub-groups were created and worked to complete individual component pieces of the goal.

Here is a model that dismisses the speaker-audience relationship and turns the whole event into a symbiotic learning experience. The project forces everyone to function in a team and (more importantly) to be part of a cooperative unit — it’s a very subtle yet important distinction. It’s community building at its best.

The strongest part of the experience is creating, debating and refining ideas with others. I worked with veterans and newcomers and learned as much from each.

My experiences were not limited to working with members of the marketing and business teams. I had regular dealings with the design team and some interaction with the developers. I made up for missed opportunities to work with others by taking time to speak with and even interview (for some podcasts) them during the occasional break.

There is a significant payoff: if successful, the project doesn’t end at the scheduled time. The group that, as we discovered last evening, realizes their goal will likely continue working together to further themselves and their project. That means that the real-life connections have longevity and additional meaning. The Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn connections reflect a real collaboration, friendship and (perhaps) a business affiliation.

After twenty-eight hours of working together in close quarters, the development and design teams demonstrated their achievements, and marketing, legal and business presented summaries of their plans. Then, something amazing happened. Everyone announced their intention to continue with the project and dates for our next meeting were kicked around.

When I think about the various conferences and events I have attended in the last few years, I realize that the Ottawa Web Weekend was by far the most educational, most innovative, most community-fostering and the one that will continue to deliver to and be delivered by everyone involved.

Note: more posts and podcasts — including the product announcement — to come.

• Chamika Chulaka Ailapperuma
• Rob Caza

Music: Bigfoot from Elegant Chaos by Robert Farrell

That’s no surprise really.  Today’s discussions have been very focussed and energized, and there’s been long stretches of quiet time as everyone focused on their keyboards and screens, writing code, legal agreements, business plans, marketing strategies and web content.

Companies should take note.  There is something incredible about this kind of initiative.  I see a lot of potential for companies that would invest the necessary funds to have a weekend getaway for employees (perhaps even sponsoring this kind of event) to innovate and develop in an democratic, collaborative and supportive environment.

Now… back to my work!

Music: Bigfoot from Elegant Chaos by Robert Farrell

I took a few minutes to speak with Bruce Nolan — who has taken on the role of Development Coordinator — about the status of development efforts and his approach to coordinating the team.

Music: Bigfoot from Elegant Chaos by Robert Farrell

My favourite part of this tour is when we walk into what Ian refers to as ‘the smallest office’ which sounds like a massive cavern in this audio recording.

Music: Bigfoot from Elegant Chaos by Robert Farrell

• Danish Khan
• John Jardine
• Cory Taylor
• Will Harding
• Matt Tate
• Sam Bitar
• Steve Lecompte
• Marc-André Plouffe

Music: Bigfoot from Elegant Chaos by Robert Farrell

• Kim von Arx
• Chamika Ailapperuma
• Arvind Ramaswamy
• Patrick Hankinson
• Jamie Ostler
• Frank Epton
• Mark Stephenson
• Natasha D’Souza
• Eric Lucier

Music: Bigfoot from Elegant Chaos by Robert Farrell

Let’s get a few things out of the way.  I haven’t seen the Facebook profile in question, nor am I an expert in Canadian Law.  Clearly, the student overstepped some serious bounds.  After all, criminal charges don’t run out of your tap like water.  There has to be some significant evidence to merit charges.

In preparing for an interview I did with Calgary’s AM770 CHQR this evening, I initially considered the following to be my key points:

• most (if not all) of what ends up on the web is indexed and cached for all to enjoy in perpetuity
• Facebook is famous for its overcomplicated process to remove profile data and related links

I was wrong.

There is a moral, ethical and legal component to this issue.  And while parents bear a significant amount of the responsibility to educate their children on the use and abuse of the Internet, schools need to take a leadership role on access and education.

ACCESS

If the media is to be believed, schools have been increasing the amount of computer technology and Internet access available in the classroom over the last few years.  In some cases, schools limit what students are able to access.  That is to say, students can only access specific websites for specific purposes.  Content can be regulated specifically (by website name) or dynamically (by filtering by embedded content).  In other cases, schools explicitly allow access without control and then implicitly block access when sites or content become a problem.  In other words, they set the ball rolling and then wash their hands of the problem.  They take a “not in my house” approach after they’ve already made allowances “in their house”.

Having said that, most of what’s happening in Facebook is likely not happening on school computers during school hours.  A growing number of children have unlimited, high speed Internet access in their homes.  This leads me to my next point.

EDUCATION

I am confident that there is very little if any education on moral, ethical and legal concerns when using the Internet.  While “we” may be putting a lot of energy into helping children identify some of the more tangible threats (stalking, sexual harassment, hate crimes, etc…), I don’t believe much is being done to help students understand Acceptable Use and Terms of Use agreements on sites like Facebook.  A majority of people, students and adults alike, flock to the sites that are popular and blindly select any checkbox that is required of them in order to gain access to the site.  I would argue that many school administrations don’t understand the Facebook Terms of Use.  And yet, at least some schools have at one time allowed students to access these sites from school networks.

When I was in elementary school, library orientation was used to help us understand how to find information, how information was stored and related, how to synthesize the information and how to behave in the library.  Elmer the Safety Elephant taught us seven safety rules including how to cross the road and who we could and couldn’t accept candy from.  Both were integrated into our elementary school education.

Today’s children face more complex problems — and more of them.  The problems are ethereal and obfuscated for corporate interests.  We need to make sure students understand the moral, ethical and legal reasons for conducting themselves with respect for others.  We’re not doing that.

The thirty-somethings that use the social web were raised in a true social ecosystem and (for the most part) have managed to port their social skills to the digital world in an effective and productive way.  The digital natives are being raised in a digital social ecosystem where real-life interaction, and the appreciation of real people is limited or completely absent.  It would seem it’s easier for them to not be affected by nefarious Internet-based activities.

What’s the solution to the problem?

I believe education and simplification are key to any solution.  Since schools have taken it upon themselves to direct their students to the Internet to conduct research, they need to do more than just tell students how to do a Google search and then filter the results for their assignment.  The schools need to educate students to understand the digital culture.  And, it’s time for the corporate world, particularly the legal departments, to shorten and simplify their user agreements.  It’s no longer appropriate to put the onus on your uninformed and/or confused users and wash your hands of any responsibility.

It was just a matter of time before hackers and spammers directed their efforts at Facebook. One can only hope that Facebook is taking good care of the personal data based on the settings we have selected within their ‘privacy settings’. Would there be any reason to doubt them?

The K7 reference is an acknowledgement that most podcasters use the free K7.net voice feedback service which provides a Seattle-based phone number and emails digital recordings of voice messages to the user of the service.

Sean’s blurb reads as follows:

A lot of podcasters use the free K7 voicemail service to receive voice comments. A drawback of the service is that like many free internet services, if you don’t use it for 30 days, you lose your K7 number. I also know that podcasters love to receive voice feedback, so I have a simple proposal:

I am declaring the 7th, 17th and 27th of each month as K7 days. On a K7 day take 7 minutes to leave voice feedback for some of your favorite podcasts.

I am all for this. By the way, the voice feedback number for MarkBlevis.com, JustOneMoreBook.com and ElectricSky.net is +1.206.350.6487.

Bob and I came to the realization that the key element in the discussion about privacy and an individual’s right to privacy in social media tools is the amount of complexity and confusion in the way the agreements are structured and what our real rights are. This is further complicated by the fact that privacy laws differ from country to country and while most countries have adopted strict privacy regulations in order to do business with the EU, the United States has managed to get by with a more relaxed set of rules called Safe Harbor.

From the Safe Harbor main webpage:

While the United States and the European Union share the goal of enhancing privacy protection for their citizens, the United States takes a different approach to privacy from that taken by the European Union.

This raises a lot of concerns when Canadian companies like Flickr move their data servers to the United States.

As we talked, I mentioned to Bob that what the world needs is a Privacy Commons — a simple and easy to understand deed to privacy which clearly communicates the privacy (or absence of privacy) controls built in to a service (I blogged about this in November). We fantasized about a simple Privacy Commons modeled after the Creative Commons that would elegantly and concisely allow service providers to designate privacy features in a deed-like interface, indicating elements like:

• do they collect personal identifying data
• is the data stored and transferred in a way that protects confidentiality
• is the data shared or sold
• does the company expect blanket consent to share/sell private information or do they require case-specific consent
• how long data is kept
• how data is destroyed

Some would argue that it would be hard to get companies to adopt this model. I suggest that companies that are committed to privacy would have no issues adopting a model which would make that immediately obvious to people.  At the very least, it will help people understand the privacy features of the site. In the same way that the Creative Commons took a while to stick and connect those with a common vision of making creative works available under specific implicit terms as well as send a message to licensing bodies, the Privacy Commons would take some time to prove that taking privacy seriously is good business.

Many cultural, political, business and media revolutions have taken place online over the last few years. A revolution for simplified privacy in an increasingly public world seems like a logical next step.

Two questions come to mind:

• Who would build a Privacy Commons?
• Does anyone else see a Privacy Commons as being beneficial?

My FriendsRoll block is back online.

The discussion was lively and informative and had a unique mix of social media participants (Profs de Beer, Kerr and Geist) and observers/researchers (Profs Bailey and Steeves). While there was a clear recognition of the role of social media tools such as Facebook, the discussion focussed largely on the impacts of these technological gathering places on culture and privacy, and their not-so-subtle use for corporate interests.

I found it particularly interesting when the panel explored the influence of culture on the need for social media tools and influence of social media tools on culture. Prof. de Beer introduced the room to John Fiske’s concept of Semiotic Democracy, “the delegation of the production of meanings and pleasures to viewers”.

The majority of the conversation focused on privacy concerns, the misrepresentation of information sharing controls as privacy controls and the use of aggregate information (not specific information) to generate consumer profiles. Prof. Bailey wondered if privacy is now passé. Indeed, social media tools are about publicity and micro-celebrity rather than privacy.

The session reinforced my realization that businesses that have stood up social media services (such as Facebook) are manufacturing a three-tiered privacy-crippled environment:

• crippling amounts of information that creates an environment in which privacy may be possible through obscurity
• crippling suite of options designed to perpetuate a false sense of privacy
• crippling terms of use agreements designed to protect the interests of companies through obscure language, excessive text and circular references beyond the patience and comprehension of most people

Excerpts of the Facing up to Facebook session are available in this week’s episode (#95) of the Canadian Podcast Buffet. The entire session will be released as a podcast through the University of Ottawa.

No matter how many different tools are made available, I know I can always find my social network at the home base of each of its individuals. In most cases that’s the blog site of each individual.

Last week, 76 design launched two new WordPress plugins designed to put the power of social networking back where it belongs… in the hands of the community. I particularly like the idea of their FriendsRoll plugin (which I have installed on my site ***). It allows members of my network to connect with me on my own site, and I on theirs. And because the plugin goes with my own site, there are no concerns about privacy. I will not share or sell the information that my network provides to me. I will not post targetted advertisements on my website based on aggregate marketing information collected during the process of establishing the technological friendship. Indeed, the 76 design plugins don’t even allow the collection of this information.

Facebook may be convenient, but it’s far from respectful. To that end, expect a post from me tonight or tomorrow on yesterday’s Facing up to Facebook session at the University of Ottawa.

When I was in college, we met in libraries and occasionally in peoples’ homes to cooperatively study and debate class work and support each other in our education. We weren’t cheating. If we were interested in cheating, it would have been reasonably easy (with care) since we would be doing so out of the sight of our professors. Students don’t go to libraries anymore (and I don’t blame them with the winter we’ve been having). They live their lives online. They communicate through instant messaging, SMS, Facebook and Twitter and countless other means of digital communication.

It seems to me that Universities need to recognize the new dynamic of interaction and account for it in their policies, and professors need to get over their fear (I recognize that this is not true of all professors) of changing times and develop strategies to embrace as well as monitor the digital conversations. At the same time, students must realize that it is much easier to engage in and detect academic misconduct. Digital study rooms must be used with care.

Facing up to Facebook
A discussion panel on social media and social networking

Please join the Law & Technology group as Professors Jane Bailey, Jeremy de Beer, Michael Geist, Ian Kerr, and Valerie Steeves discuss legal issues arising from Facebook and related social media technologies.

Date: Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Time: 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m.
Place: Fauteux Hall, room 351
Faculty of Law, University of Ottawa

Please RSVP to techlaw@uottawa.ca.
Join the Facing up to Facebook event page.

By the way, Michael Geist, Ian Kerr, Jeremy de Beer and Jane Bailey are all contributors to the book, In the Public Interest: The Future of Canadian Copyright Law, published September 2005 and available for purchase (CDN$50 for a printed copy) or as a Creative Commons, by-the-chapter, download.

If I had to guess, 80% of the room was there to learn about becoming a podcaster which is probably why so many stuck around in Studio A for the Zero to Podcasting workshop when the Podcamp sessions began. The room of about 40 people were engaged in the discussion, sharing their thoughts and asking the kinds of questions that podcast veterans forget about all to easily once they establish a rhythm in their recording and production.

Rob Lee and Katherine Matthews (purldiving.com) kicked off the day, leading campfire discussions on picking a topic for your podcast, planning your podcast and selecting technology. Among other things, Sage Tyrtle (Quirky Nomads) offered her experiences on scripting her entire show and explained why she has made a conscious decision to not publish her scripts online. Scarborough Dude showed off his coveted iRiver 795 and explained how he uses it with his ‘pencil mic’ to record DicksnJanes anywhere and anytime.

Following lunch, Bob Goyetche and I led a workshop during which we recorded, edited, mixed and produced a podcast called ‘Hiding in the Closet’. It was not the kind of show the average podcaster would ever produce since the entire room contributed recorded elements including group sound effects (cheers, laughs, scowls, etc…), audio comments and fictitious listener phone calls. One participant was selected as a host who recorded intros for the show and individual segments, and a show extro. Derek Miller’s Fakeout was selected as the theme music for the show and then the entire package was threaded together in front of the room as part of a demonstration of Audacity.

As the show was put together, we repeatedly reminded the room that most shows are recorded and published with very little editing which doesn’t afford much of an opportunity to showcase the amazing things that can be done, easily, with Audacity. In fact, several veteran Audacity users approached us after the workshop to announce that they never knew some of the features that Bob demonstrated with just a keystroke or click during the session — features that could have saved them days of time over the last few years.

Before the day was over, we created a new account on Libsyn, added relevant information about the podcast in the account, uploaded the show that was produced during the workshop, added ID3 tags, created a post, published it to the site and then subscribed to and downloaded the show using iTunes.

As the day wrapped up, the group discussed some of the ways to promote a podcast including directories such as iTunes and CanadaPodcasts.ca. Our brains were all pretty full by that point and we could tell that everyone in the room (ourselves included) needed to shut down for the day.

Zero to Podcasting continues at 10:00am today with the following agenda:

• Owning your online presence (30 min) — Campfire / Circle Discussion
• YourName.com (with GoDaddy) (30 min) — Workshop
• Your own WordPress site with a Libsyn back end (2 parts; 30 min each with break in between) — Workshop
• The Podpress plugin (2 parts; 30 min each with break in between) — Workshop
• Portable recording (30 min) — Campfire / Circle Discussion
• Next steps (2 parts; 30 min each with break in between) — Campfire / Circle Discussion

Because we’re social media enthusiasts from different countries, Holger and I spent a fair bit of time discussing cultures, values and tools.  Specifically, we talked about the community that revolves around a G4-like television program Holger is an editor for at giga.de.  It’s a technology show with an active online community that started as far back as 1998.  The program uses forums, online comments and feedback to help guide the show — even during live broadcasts.

To giga.de, the Internet is just another channel to distribute the program (they also use satellite and digital cable).  The power of the Internet as a channel for Giga isn’t so much the reach it offers, but the fact that it is a bi-directional channel.  That key differentiator may have played a significant role in the survival of the program during a series of business decisions, network purchases and broadcast license transfers over the last several years — events that saw the relocation of the show and its productions team between three cities.

I was intrigued by the premium service package offered by Giga.  For a small cost, they offer video-on-demand and a few other small features. The truth is, though, the premium service is not in high demand and therefore represents a tiny revenue stream.

Holger offered some insight on why programs like G4 and giga.de appeal to people so much.  He suggests that the absence of a teleprompter means that the hosts must be more genuine, energetic and engaged.  They need to be real, not contrived, and people relate to people.

Social networking in Germany is still finding its legs.  Some of the more popular sites include:

• xing.de (a professional social network like LinkedIn)
• studivz.net (like facebook)
• niimo.com (like Twitter)

One of the shows I listened to, Zee and Zed, stepped down in its prime with a show that included some interesting commentary about the podcast movement. Ross and Karen’s follow-up podcast, Dry Shave, made a much quieter exit this past summer.

Another show that took a pragmatic view of podcasting is the Ottawa Local Podcast. This evening I noticed that the feed for that show is gone so I called Arthur Masters to find out why he pulled the plug.

Notwithstanding work and life demands that led to the evaporation of his podcast production time, Arthur made some interesting comments about where podcasting is now. I’ll paraphrase. He suggested that podcasting is pervasive now. Back when the veterans got their start, radio was well into a creative and identity void, CBC wasn’t podcasting and the corporate world hadn’t figured this thing out. The podcasters were changing the way media was being used and perceived. Many people who like to be different find themselves being part of the ’same’ now.

To clarify… Arthur never suggested that he’s out because his show is now part of the mainstream. I’m just latching on to some specific comments he made.

During our drive from Boston to Ottawa in October, Bob Goyetche suggested that one reason why people have generally become complacent about podcasts is because there has been very little technological innovation in the space since iTunes v4.9 was launched in June 2005.

To me, podcasting is now in a state of maturity. The production tools have plateaued for the time being allowing, perhaps forcing, producers to focus on developing their content and delivery styles. Likewise, the tools for promotion and community development are fundamentally the same; they just exist in different places and have different names.

Some people have suggested that podcasting is dead. I disagree.

Like a rocket on course to use the gravity of a moon to slingshot it to a distant planet, podcasting is prime for its next explosive development cycle.

This is our opportunity to refine, and perhaps shake up, our shows and figure out what we want next. We can set the course for what the podcast channel will look and feel like.

What do you want?

Photo: jurvetson

Last night I was introduced to spokeo.com. For the time being I’ll call it a social media aggregator. It does the legwork for you by trolling the various social media sites for the activities of your community (based on email addresses) and organizes the information for you. Spokeo pulls activity from Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, MySpace, YouTube, LinkedIn, etc… You can add websites and blog URLs to the list and organize the information in groups, by user and even drag and drop user-related resources into your own structure.  It’s the flexibility and ease of organization that makes spokeo a unique and powerful tool in this space.

As with any digital tool, there are many opportunities for unscupulous use. For community-minded individuals that live in Web2.0, Spokeo is an invaluable tool.

If they could only build in trending…

I have joined the group and signed the associated petition because I can see how Facebook is bending a number of social rules and not championing a culture of security and privacy. This is not a concern for those who are cautious about the handling and sharing of their information but for those who haven’t been educated on how and when to trust the companies and people they deal with. And, for the record, Facebook has offered a boatload of reasons for people to not trust them.

Perhaps the biggest problem is the way in which companies (read: their lawyers) structure their Terms of Use, Usage Agreements and Privacy Policies. The agreements are often confusing even for well educated people and, more significantly, they’re unnecessarily long. By structuring their agreements in this manner, companies are purposefully taking advantage of their market. I would go so far as to say that they are ’setting up’ their market to take the fall.

Larry Lessig’s approach to contracts is a model that should be adopted by all legal departments – particularly those that are playing in the Web 2.0 playground. The Creative Commons license agreement takes a convoluted legal document and summarizes it in a simple and elegant deed that everyone can understand. Basically, Mr. Lessig has put the power of the law where it belongs — in the hands of the commons. By doing so, he has equipped them to self-regulate which is what people want in Web 2.0. [Hey Larry! Can you create the Privacy Commons???]

Facebook can argue that it offers a great deal of flexibility for its members to make changes to their privacy settings. This abundant flexibility is confusing and takes a fair bit of time to understand and tweak because there are many groupings of granular privacy settings — some settings may override others. Facebook needs to offer a simpler model with stronger default settings and have the additional flexibility available should people want the granular control.

Facebook is being presented with a beautiful opportunity to set the example for all Web 2.0 companies by establishing and managing a simplified and sustainable culture of trust for its community. The ball is in their court and whether they dribble, pass or go for the net will determine the future of Facebook and its peers.

BOOK RECOMMENDATION… The Privacy Payoff: How Successful Businesses Build Customer Trust written by Ann Cavoukian (Privacy Commissioner, Province of Ontario) and Tyler Hamilton.

The gathering places are popping up everywhere and the democratized are doing their best to keep up. It’s kind of like being invited to ten parties in the same night and trying to mingle at each one — sure you’ll meet a lot of people, and you may even go home with 189 business cards representing “my friends”, but you haven’t come to know anything more than 189 names (if you even remember any of them) and it’s more than likely you never will. Furthermore, you spent most of your night trying to get from place to place in a mad rush.

The time has come to achieve focus and pick your hang outs. I am going to start by focussing on three, my blog being one of them (I’m still considering the other two). That means that I can get value out of the tools – and the relationships I build using them – and I won’t burn out in the process.

Crowd About offers a simple way for your community to be more actively engaged by allowing it to create text or multimedia comment to any media file in your Podcast feed, and then apply the comment to a specific location of that file. Imagine having your content indexed by comment threads and being able to consume comments by clicking a specific location of your media file, and then participating in the discussion yourself. In fact, you can even index your own content and then let the conversations begin. That’s the core of this tool.

It doesn’t stop there. Crowd About can be integrated into your own Podcast site (WordPress and others) so that the “playground” (my term, not theirs) comes to you and your community – instead of you and your community having to go to the playground. About the only drawback of that integration is that participants are required to be logged into a Crowd About account.

Of course, requisite profile and friends technology is part of the tool. Has anyone figured out how to create a single friends repository in WordPress that can be referenced by every other technology, yet?

What an incredible validation of social media technology.

The good news is, there is a fix published on moeffju.net.

Things will be back to normal as soon as possible.

Omry has made some changes to the Sociable plugin and released sociable-1.2-firestats-safe.zip as part of ticket #51 on the FireStats site. He has also sent the updated code to the author of Sociable, Peter Harkins.

Now that’s a great story about open source!

I installed FireStats on two of my WordPress sites today. The installation was typically easy and the interface is slick with a collection of important statistical information. Even so, one of my FireStats installations came up with nice tabbed navigation interface, the other did not. I posted a comment on the FireStats Blog to report the problem. Omry was right on top of the post – he replied within fifteen minutes. The issue appears to be with the way the Sociable plugin applies javascript to the WordPress administrative interface, and Omry is tracking the problem as issue 51 in his ticket system.

If Omry can add a graphs tab that provides graphical representations of hits and visits by hour, day of week, day of month and month of year (current, average and running totals for these graphs would also be great) I would have no reason to operate any other statistical plugins. For icing on the cake, I would love it if FireStats had full featured statistical gathering for the PodPress plugin since PodPress has some unresolved bugs and development efforts seem to be stagnating.