Watch or participate in a conference about Canada at the age of 150

The Liberal Party of Canada is hosting a non-partisan event called Canada at 150 in Montreal later this month (March 26-28). The three day event features a full program of speakers and aims to challenge Canadians to think about what we would like our country to be in 2017, the year of our 150th birthday. Canada at 150 has offered both media and blogger accreditation (cutoff date was Feb. 22), showing that the organizers realize the value of including social media journalists as part of the planning process.

Don’t worry if you can’t actually be at the conference. Besides the media and blogger coverage, Canada at 150 will be live streamed on the Internet (for those who register for free in advance) and there are a number of interactive tools to encourage Canadians to participate. The organizers have also made available a handbook for hosting your own satellite site to follow the conference.

At your fingertips wherever you go

Ontario Conservative Party leader Tim Hudak became an iPhone App this week. The free app was created by Ottawa company Purple Forge and was modeled on their MyPolitics iPhone App — an app that aggregates political information from all parties and for all levels of government.

Tim Hudak the iPhone App puts Tim Hudak the person at the iPhone owner’s fingertips. Users can access Tim’s bio, his upcoming agenda (though it’s currently a week out of date), YouTube videos and flickr photos, news, Tim’s Twitter stream and contact information. There are additional features for those who register themselves with the application.

I expect relatively few politicians will go as far as creating mobile applications that aggregate their work and centralize the ways in which the public can engage with them while on the go. This is probably more true because of the cost of creating a custom app of this sort, reported to be as much at $9,500.

Video conversation

Prime Minister Stephen Harper used YouTube to live stream his response to last week’s Throne Speech, yesterday. It’s a move that has come with mixed reactions. Christopher Waddell, associate professor and director of the Carleton school of journalism, was quoted as saying “People are trying lots of new ideas and new technologies but to me this doesn’t sound like a winner.” However, the Toronto Star article in which that quote appears offers no explanation from Professor Waddell for his opinion.

Even more interesting than the Prime Minister’s use of YouTube to ensure his message is delivered to the public his way, is his use of YouTube to engage with others online in something called Your Interview with Prime Minister Harper. The PMO has invited the public to submit questions about the Throne Speech and budget in the form of short videos posted to YouTube no later than 7pmET, Tuesday, March 16. A selection of questions that receive the most public votes will be addressed in the PM’s next YouTube video. It will be interested to see which questions are selected and how the PM responds to them.

Investigators will tell you the white space is where the most important information can hide. In my former life as an information security specialist, we often looked at the impact of steganography (technology that allows individuals to hide information such as sensitive financial data or trade secrets in the “white spaces” of JPG images or MP3 files) to corporate security and competitive advantage. Of course, communicators will tell you that the spoken and written word present only part of the message, that there’s more important information to be received in the facial expressions, hand gestures and tone.

I was reminded of this when I stumbled on an old notebook and randomly opened it to a page dated July 17, 2007. At the time of the entry, our daughters were 5 (Bayla) and 7 (Lucy).

I picked up Lucy and Bayla from camp today. I looked at them and pointed out that they were covered in dirt.

Lucy laughed and said “No, Dad. We’re covered in fun”.

Communication is filled with content-rich white spaces. They’re in broadcast and print news reports and the comments posted on online news sites, in blog posts and their comments, videos, podcasts, meetings, speeches and political strategy and tactics.

New channels create new white spaces. For those of us in digital, this means opportunities to identify white spaces and understand how they’re being used — knowingly and unwittingly. One of my favourite spaces to look at is comments because there’s a goldmine of public awareness and opinion to be discovered there.

Where are the content-rich white spaces in your field?

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.

Perhaps the best team building activity I’ve ever been a participant in took place last week in Alberta — and I’m pretty certain it wasn’t planned to be so successful. Eleven of us piled in to a passenger van to make the roughly two-hour trip from Calgary to Rimbey for an off site meeting, then back the same way 24 hours later.

Being trapped in a vehicle for several hours has broken up many a family. In this particular instance, it was a phenomenal opportunity to develop work ideas, discuss current events, share personal interests and even talk a little trash with work colleagues of whom I only had passing familiarity prior to this.

Maybe we can attribute the success to not stopping for the bathroom and noone asking “are we there yet?” Of course, that might have been because the conversation was entertaining.

In his email, Robin says he’s been using the internal microphones in his Zoom H2 portable digital recorder to capture presentations with good results and hoping to take it to the next level — excellent audio. He asks for recommendations, perhaps a wireless lapel mic, to get a high quality recording of a speaker at a conference or other such event.

While a wireless lapel mic offers freedom for the speaker, remember that it adds complexity for you as an audio engineer. You’ll need an electrical outlet and an out-of-the-way place to put extra equipment (the receiver station for the wireless mic) in addition to the cabling and audio recorder.

A decent quality wireless lapel mic starts around $500. The good quality ones are more than $800. Contrast that with a good wired lapel mic which is about $300. It’s not ideal to tether the speaker to a spot, however you might be able to work with a willing speaker to limit their movements to a specific area within reach of the cables you buy. By the way, I’m partial to Audio-Technica lapel mics, though I have rented Sennheiser and Shure lapel mics with good results.

Remember that no matter which type of mic system you decide on, always buy good quality cables. This is particularly true if you’re connecting to a mini-plug input like on the Zoom H2 recorder, though it remains true for XLR and quarter-inch inputs as well. Another rule of thumb is to go with the shortest possible cables. Of course, if you think you’ll need a 25 foot reach, don’t restrict yourself to a 10 foot cable — just be sure that you invest in a better quality cable to avoid signal loss.

I’m hoping Bob and I are able to connect to record a new episode of the Canadian Podcast Buffet this week. If so, we’ll talk more about this.

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?”

Everything came together in five hours. I created the presentation deck, rehearsed, went home to get changed and arrived at the venue with 10 minutes to spare.

The session was about ways to take public affairs activities from good to great.

Knowing that most people talk about tools, statistics and case studies that largely revolve around the creation of social media content including text, audio and video on the net, and building constituencies of support on social networking sites, I decided to challenge the audience to think beyond creation and start putting more energy in participation, In fact, I plan to map the role of  owned media and earned media in digital public affairs using Dave Fleet’s model of the social media ecosystem.

Participation is largely overlooked in most campaigns. Monitoring efforts tend to focus on the quantity and qualities of content created by others (e.g. articles and videos by news organizations, and blog posts, videos, Twitter messages and Facebook groups by individuals to name just a few). Few organizations have the resources for or the interest in wading through the comments left by site visitors. While there’s generally very little to measure in the way of comments on user generated content, there are some exceptions to that rule. The windfall is in studying the sometimes hundreds of comments left on mainstream news sites.

Organizations that develop a matrix and can apply good filters to the comments will find them to be an incredibly valuable index of public opinion and public understanding of news stories — more so than a telephone survey that asks people to park their dinner and rank their opinion and understanding of a specific issue based on a numeric scale.

I was part of a team tasked with tracking an issue that received explosive media attention last year. We built a matrix and studied hundreds of comments on news websites. That data helped us identify new elements of public concern and measure misunderstanding that was driven by both the media and the snack/skim consumption habits of the digital public. While it’s true that a decent portion of the comments were irrelevant and inflammatory, those comments sometimes drew out those who are more knowledgeable on the issue which added further value to our monitoring efforts. I developed evaluation criteria to better assess the individuals behind the comments (see Communication anthropology: evaluating five types of commenters) and shared those findings as part of my session on Friday.

Digital commentary is where organizations can find the breeding grounds for constituencies of support. For the public affairs team, this is gold and can be used to determine how to respond as part of the community on the news site or in the further development of created engagement. This ties back to Dave Fleet’s social media ecosystem.

I believe that participation drives the kind of earned media and public trust money can’t buy. Of course, if your organization tracks time for your financials so you can measure short term payoff rather then long term competitive advantage, participation can become a measurable component of your ROI.

Knowing Dave to be a natural in front of a mic, I cornered him at the bar (he was ordering a Red Bull) before his session to ask him about his session and its significance for communication professionals and the organizations they serve.

The attached podcast is the result of our brief conversation about the 2010 social media ecosystem, communication culture and integration, integration, integration.

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 disappointing news is that chemo number four coincided with the weekend of PodCamp Toronto (PCTO2010) meaning we weren’t able to be in Toronto to reconnect with longtime social media friends, make new ones and be present to learn and discuss new ideas about digital communication and relationship building.

PCTO is one of the few PodCamps that live streams all of the sessions — one of the advantages of being hosted in the Rogers Communications Centre of Ryerson University (THANK YOU, MANY!). The venue is fully equipped which means we could attend the sessions from the comfort of our own house at the mercy of the camera work and quality of the streams.

That’s where technology’s advantages plateau because no matter how much technology you throw at an event, whether a conference or the inaugural ceremony of the President of the United States, the technology just doesn’t exist to turn a mediated experience into a real one.

Social media unconferences have unique advantages over their formal cousins — they attract people who use technology for social engagement. This means that most of the people who attend the event have a desire to connect with others even if their own personalities or anxieties make that difficult for them.

Sue Murphy captured the reason why mediated experiences at PodCamps will never deliver the goods in her post The land of the free. In it, she relates clarity she gained from a conversation — nay, an experience –  with the “spiritual leader” of the Canadian social media community, Scarborough Dude. The Dude has always preached about authenticity and how the digital world can facilitate it.

PCTO and events like it teach us that technology can only facilitate authenticity in digital spaces. Real authenticity can only be experienced by being there.

Photos: PCTO2010 kick-off by Brad Fortner and Tod Maffin and Scarborough Dude by John Meadows.

Tod Maffin will undoubtedly be spreading the word about his new website, CaseStudiesOnline.com which boasts annotated social media marketing case studies. The interface is easy to use and provides access to summaries through a series of drop down menus which allow users to select demographics, industry, organization type and tactics. The summaries then provide a link to an outside site that hosts a more comprehensive version of the case study.

The walk-through video suggests that Tod may at some point add a reward system for people who contribute case studies to the site. He also reminds viewers that the site just launched so there may be a few wrinkles to iron out yet. My experience with the site so far has been smooth.

In the post, Justin shares his motivation for blogging and how audience participation plays an important role in moving ideas forward and providing him with motivation to keep sharing his thoughts. Without participation, bloggers can’t be certain that what they shared mattered to others.

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’m breaking new ground, today. I’m planning to live blog the Liberal party’s Digital Economy round table from Parliament Hill using CoverItLive.com.

The round table session begins at 11amET. If for some reason my coverage doesn’t happen, it’s likely because technology got in the way.

• Click here for Google’s 2010 Games maps site
• Click here to navigate the slopes with the Google “slopesview-mobile”

I’ve been a party to many conversations which took shots at email, particularly the lengthy and messagey emails, as a channel for corporate communication. Many of those discussions focused on ignoring text-based email messages from the internal communication department or senior management largely because the messages were written by and for senior management.

What we have here is a failure to communicate.

The communicators are failing at their job because they aren’t sharing the messages the organization needs (rather then the messages management wants to deliver) in a place they’re interested in receiving the information. Email and email newsletters have been doomed largely because inboxes can be overwhelming.

Advancements in technology have made it possible to share information and even engage with the organization. The advantage being here is that a call to action or a social networking site offers opportunities to confirm that the message has been received.

So, rather than ask how your organization disseminates information, let me ask how do you consume (and even engage with) corporate communication? (select as many as apply for you)

Please add any comments you feel will help understand successes and failures you’ve seen with internal communication over your career.

THE REPORT

Pew’s report shows that teens are more interested in the snack-sized bits of information associated with text messaging and status messages in social media networks like Facebook. Despite fitting this description, Twitter is surprisingly unpopular among teens.

Blogs have lost favour likely because of the relatively high word count and the amount of information contained within most blog posts. That means teens are also less likely to start or maintain their own blog.

INVERTED PYRAMID

The inverted pyramid is a style of writing developed by newspapers to ensure readers get the most relevant information first followed by supplemental information of decreasing importance.

For pure news articles, the lead –the first paragraph– is the most important element. It should tell most of the story in the fewest words possible (typically 30-40 words). Front loading the article with the most relevant information means that editors are able to cut out paragraphs from the bottom up, based on available print space, without having to rewrite the piece. Basically, the author should make sure to put the relative fluff last.

STICKY PIECES

Whether they’ve written a longer piece about a complex idea and have broken it up into manageable sections, or they’re connecting a series of smaller ideas into something bigger, many bloggers have been breaking up posts into logical sections with heading titles for quite some time. Rather than overwhelming readers with the sea of words, they write a larger piece that’s broken up into sticky pieces, each of which could be something bigger on their own.

THE EXPERIMENT

Okay… This post is an experiment. I wondered if the reason blogs aren’t as popular anymore is because authors don’t communicate their ideas effectively which artificially drives up audience-scaring word count.

I decided to take an a-la-carte-consumption view to writing this post. I also decided to remove all personality to over-illustrate how being concise ensures delivery of important information that can’t fit the mold of a snack-sized-information-culture.

The question becomes, how much of this post do you remember?

A colleague just showed me Derek Siver’s TED talk from last week and it bent my brain in a good way. It automatically earned it’s way into my undocumented top 10 TED Talks.

TEDNESDAY

During my second week at FH, I started a weekly lunch gathering to watch TED talks. It’s been very interesting to discuss the presentations with my co-workers and explore ways in which the ideas can influence our work. Last month, I invited one of our team members to present on extending the brand experience. Her session was very well received and led me to invite an internal speaker to inspire the office on the second Wednesday of each month.

POLITICAL VIEW

As a member of the public affairs practice, I’m automatically part of the pool of contributors to our group blog, PoliticalView.ca. Blogging about political goings-on and political issues is new for me. To develop my chops I’ve even let myself blog some of those issues right here. Today I blogged about Stockwell Day’s letter to “Treasury Board land”.

PUBLIC AFFAIRS, THE PODCAST

I’ve spearheaded Public Affairs, a podcast that will feature regular round table discussions with co-workers on issues of public affairs. The first episode which focussed on the distinction between public affairs and public relations — with a few sidebars about digital engagement — was published yesterday. Episode two will be out later this week and I hope to publish an episode each week.

DIGITAL STYLE

Today I launched Digital Style, an internal blog which I will use to help the people that aren’t as familiar or comfortable with the tools, culture and psychology of the digital world. My first post suggests reading The Cluetrain Manifesto. By the way, it’s possible I’ll cross post the occassional Digital Style blog post to this site.

WHAT’S NEXT?

The people that know me well know that once I get an idea in my head, there’s very little that can stop me. While I have some ideas I’m working on, what I’m more interested in is what I’m capable of and haven’t considered, yet.

The good news is that we’ll be able to attend from the comfort of our home and we’ve been invited to deliver a session via video Skype. Our session is called Textual Healing: The use of social media for narrative therapy, connection and support.

Here’s how our session is described:

Communities can exist for many reasons, but one of the most striking recent examples is the support community that has arisen around Canadian social media fixtures Andrea Ross and Mark Blevis, as together they work to make Andrea a breast cancer Survivor.

Their place of wellness on the web, WeCanRebuildHer.com, and the community that has gathered there is “something that’s good for them”, their supporters and for others in similar situations.

In this presentation, Andrea and Mark will join PodCamp Toronto via live Skype video from Ottawa to share their use of social media as a key tool in Andrea’s strategy to survive and thrive and will offer their top tips for healing and sharing in a digital world.

If you’re going to be in Toronto on the weekend of February 20-21, 2010, I recommend you register for and attend PCTO2010.

The resulting podcast series is informative and fun and serves to augment information from official corporate channels — as disclaimed during the intro of each episode. They record after hours (read: on the employees’ personal time), taking turns making the complicated understandable and addressing what they feel are the kinds of questions and concerns the public will have.

Powers that be within the organization recognized the value of the podcast and publicized it on the company website in a list ranked by downloads, which didn’t appear to be a problem until the thousands of downloads each month of the unofficial podcast caused it to rank (several) higher than the official one.

The disappearance of the very popular unofficial podcast from the “top” list suggests the guys who do this from their heart have been able to do something the paid folks haven’t.

Whether a senior person was protecting a financial investment or someone didn’t like being seen as second (or fourth in this case) to an unofficial effort, you have to question a decision that punishes the public and the organization to preserve pride.

All this to say, there is a fantastic opportunity for every organization — commercial, political and non-profit — to embrace podcasts, blogs, videos, etc… produced through unofficial and external channels that support their efforts. Noone’s pride needs to be hurt. In fact, you’ll make yourself more valuable to your consumers/clients, partners and stakeholders if you promote the hand that feeds.

Photo: Lion that Lunches by rofanator on Flickr.

With the exception of hearing that some people can’t get their hands on an iPad quickly enough and that others can’t believe Apple would release a glorified iPhone/eReader, I’ve dodged all of the details about the device. So, what I’m about to share is based almost exclusively on the demonstation of the iPad during yesterday’s product announcement which I watched earlier today.

Like many Apple products, the iPad is a groundbreaking new form with the potential for incredible function. At the moment it’s somewhere between a MacBook and an iPhone, offering some of the greatest advantages of mobile convergence (save the phone) and desktop productivity, with the added bonus of having an eBook reader built in. This means the iPad isn’t going to compete with eReaders like the Kindle and its brethren based on the iPad’s limited battery life (10 hours), but a brand new technology that will likely displace the eReader because it does so much more as both an entertainment centre and business tool in a single device.

That’s right. The iPad is supposed to make you leave your laptop and Kindle at home. If it had a phone capabilities, you could leave your cell behind also.

The iPad is first generation, though. And that means Apple put it on the market to make waves and set the stage for something bigger and better. That’s to say, future releases of the OS will make the iPad a Blue Ocean of mobile computing. Imagine – and I’m speculating here – a stylus that turns the iPad into ePaper. You could take notes, doodle, draw, sketch and design, and have the ability to dog ear and scrawl notes in the margins of your eBook. Uh, oh! There’s the real threat to commercial paper AND eReaders.In fact, the iPad could also become a threat to the Livescribe pen if Apple unifies a stylus and audio recording capabilities.

Remember when I said I wouldn’t buy an iPod? Now I don’t even own a PC. Yeah… I’ll probably get an iPad. Just, maybe not until OS or hardware 2.0.

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.

Enjoy…

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.

For Canadian politics, this is an exciting time. This is the first real public issue to create a digital space actively occcupied by both the public and politicians. And, Mr. Ignatieff is getting in the game at the right time. You see, the story about the Facebook group and its 206,967 members(at the time of this post) has become just as significant as the issue that brought the group together.

Ignatieff’s online town hall may not be the most sexy use of digital tools, but it’s a start. And it shows he’s making an effort to connect.

CAPP is blazing new trails for digital government in Canada. I expect we’ll hear a growing number of politicians graduate from talking about the email messages they receive to talking about and participating in social networks, blogs, microblogging and online media including podcasts after the coming throne speech. Which means we can expect a greater focus on digital campaigning in the next election.

The question becomes, will digital engagement translate increased awareness into increased voter turnout (particularly among young voters) in the next election?

In the presentation I explored three primary qualities we obtain from children’s books — context, character and cargo — and the role these qualities play in our development as children and adults. I called out some amazing books that showcase the impact 32 pages of carefully chosen words, creatively crafted stories and incredible illustrations, and I made the case for introducing children (and adults) to a rich library; not just the books that make you laugh but the books that teach you about people, places and events in a way that prepares us for the evolving world.

Most importantly, I explain that reading a children’s book is not a race or competition. Reading a book with someone and taking the time to enjoy and understand the book with them says they are important enough to spend time with. And each time we equip a child or an adult with a children’s book experience — not just the book, but the whole experience – we equip the world with a new thinker, leader or doer… perhaps all. That makes the future a good place to be.

It came to my attention when I received an email from Kiva.org via Dave Delaney earlier today. That was about the only connection the message had to Dave.

The letter opens with two salutations:

Hello!

Hi!

Dave knows the importance of addressing people by name and he’s more of a “hey” person than a stiff “Hello!” or “Hi!” and definitely not in any combination in the same letter.

I just made a loan to someone in Bolivia using a revolutionary new website called Kiva (www.kiva.org).

This is how I knew Dave hadn’t written the note. He doesn’t use the phrase “revolutionary new website” to describe sites that have been around for several years and definitely not for one that he’s been talking about for at least two years. In fact, I can’t think of a time when Dave has or would ever refer to any website as “revolutionary”.

As far as white-labeled pitches are concerned, the letter only gets worse from there. It’s very impersonal; it sounds like someone regurgitated a marketing brochure.

Even Quechup knew the importance of making messages sound believable. Despite the believability of the messages, Quechup also learned that abusing trust and exploiting social networks rather than partnering with them can bring a brand to the brink of destruction; and possibly bring other brands down with it. That’s a reality Kiva should not be flirting with.

Recognizing the potential damage this incident can have on his brand, Dave issued an apology on his blog. Yes, Dave. We can still be buds.

If you’re not yet in the community, please join us.

I see there being two camps of potential users of Bing!

THE NEWS JUKIES: Some folks will have no choice and will have to use Bing! to get the news they depend on from the source they’ve come to trust. Some might argue the Bing!/WSJ arrangement will be like information extortion by forcing a behavioural change on those who have specifically decided to stick with what they know and those who have no clue what Bing! is.

THE TECH JUNKIES: The technology-purists won’t be told what to do and how to do it. Many would rather forgo the content they love in order to send a message. The fundamentalists among this group will figure out a way to bypass the search restrictions and help the gatekeepers recognize their miscalculation (in case they haven’t yet heard of DRM).

There’s a delicate balance here and it pivots on how Bing!/WSJ will measure their success. I don’t believe it will be based on web clicks and search engine traffic alone. There’s money behind this deal and success will surely be measured by how much money Bing!/WSJ and their advertisers are able to make.

The question becomes, which group has the most influence in that department?

There will be a service celebrating David’s life in Ottawa on Monday, January 25, commencing at 2:00 pm, at First Unitarian Church, 30 Cleary Avenue. The service will be followed by a reception with light refreshments. All are invited to attend and share their memories of David with others. An irish wake at the Royal Oak at Wellington and Holland will follow.

The possibility of Watson and Chiarelli facing off against each other, again, reminded me of an event I was at 10 years ago. At the time, Watson was mayor and Chiarelli was regional chair (those were the days of multi-tier local government). The event was celebrating the launch of “Bronson People”, a citizen initiative organized by local artist Bhat Boy to reduce the speed of traffic along Bronson avenue, a city street that many consider to be an expressway despite the fact that it cuts through residential concentrations including Glebe/Dow’s Lake.

I learned something about politics that night when Mr. Chiarelli took the opportunity to launch a barb at Mr. Watson as part of his comments to the large gathering — comments that had nothing to do with the event and everything to do with a political difference-du-jour. Majic 100 radio host Kevin Nelson was the MC of the evening and introduced Watson by saying “And now for his rebuttal…”. Everyone laughed and Mr. Watson addressed the room. His comments were all about the good work of the community and his hope that their work would have a positive impact on traffic flow and pedestrian safety. Jim Watson didn’t respond to or even acknowledge the attack still hanging in the air.

I approached Mr. Watson afterwards and asked him how he could ignore the public hazing he had just received. He looked at me and said “My mother taught me that sometimes it’s best to turn the other cheek.”

[UPDATE: On reflection, I realize I should have titled this post Knowing how to respond. Damn!]

There’s no denying you need some form of passion to achieve any degree of success. In fact, I’d agree that passion serves as the foundation of success. It’s after this that Gary and I diverge in our thinking about the formula that’s led to his success as he describes in his easy-to-read and very insightful and entertaining book CrushIt!

Gary spends a lot of his time pushing the need to create lots of content. He notes that content is king in all forms: text due to it’s power when indexed by search engines, audio because almost anyone can speak without needing to be seen, video since it’s amazingly popular these days, and live streaming because it’s an oft overlooked way to engage with your audience. Gary suggests tools to use for each of these delivery mechanisms and then urges his reader to get out there and start producing content everyday.

I believe that content is one-third of an important equation for audience engagement, a dependency of media success. The other two-thirds are:

• Context: the elements that determine the meaning of the content. Context can be the descriptions that support all forms of media, the ambient sound of an audio recording and the visuals that create the setting of the video. Without context, the content is just words that anyone can read.
• Delivery: the way in which the message is delivered by the speaker or the media. Gary makes no apologies for his delivery which he describes the way most people describe a used car salesman. His style is certainly unconventional for the world of wine. Yet his delivery works because it’s a strong contribution to the equation, and while it may seem obnoxious to some, there is an authentic and relatable charm to Gary’s style.

There’s a catch to this equation; it’s not a sum of its elements. The audience engagement (AE) equation is a product of content (C), context (X) and delivery (D):

AE=CXD

If any of C, X or D have a zero value, then AE will be zero. Meaningful audience engagement depends on a positive value–even a decimal value–for each of the three elements.

“We” use this equation everyday without actually substituting the elements with numerical values. This is the equation that determines which actor made us connect with their character and the story, which news anchor we trust to tell us what’s going on in the world and which author writes the books we always want to read. And, for each of those scenarios, a casting director, producer or editor made a similar decision to select the best candidate for their needs.

It’s also the same equation that has made WineLibrary.tv a huge success, landing Gary lucrative speaking engagements, appearances on CNN and ABC news (among many others), the Ellen Degeneres Show and Late Night with Conan O’Brien, and countless appearances in newspapers and magazines.

CrushIt! is a great read. Gary did a fantastic job weaving his own personal story with the story of his family, WineLibrary.tv and how to cash in on your passion.

Chris Brogan and Julien Smith aren’t just two people capitalizing on the the trend of pumping out books on the social web and digital engagement. They’ve been living the principles behind their book since before Twitter. They’ve blogged, podcasted and presented  their ideas for years which has created a following large enough to have made Trust Agents a New York Times Bestseller in the first week following its release this past August.

To make their ideas accessible, Chris and Julien have broken up the concept of being a trust agent into six components:

• Make Your Own Game
• One of Us
• Archimedes Principle
• Agent Zero
• Human Artist
• Build an Army

They use stories to map out relationships between social media, real life and pop culture to add depth to their ideas. I particularly like the way they stretch your thinking at various points in the book rather than serve you the obvious.

Readers of Trust Agents who are new to world of social media and whohave picked up the most highly recommended of these books may think very little overall has actually happened since case studies like Dell Hell keep coming up. We really need a new batch of stories so we need more people sharing them — something Chris and Julien ask people to do by sending their trust agent stories to stories@trustagent.com.

My biggest takeaway from the book was being introduced to a basic theory of improvisational comedy: “Yes, and…”. I love this idea for three main reasons:

• “Yes, and…” speaks to the importance of being curious, creative and adaptable, forcing us out of critical thinking and into creative thinking and collaboration.
• “Yes, and…” reinforces the  idea that we need to look beyond our own domains of specialty/interest and spend more time studying what other people do and how they do it, then figure out how to make it our own.
• “Yes, and…” abandons the word “but” which is routinely used and defended even thought it puts an exclusive spin on one end of a statement. “Yes, and…” recognizes both realities co-exist and then seeks to make progress.

This, of course, means that I have yet another book to read — Improv Wisdom by Patricia Ryan Madson. It looks like 2010 is going to be a read-y one for me.

And… while we’re on the subject of reading outside your domain of specialty for inspiration and ideas, I recommend the following books:

• Free Play: Improvisation in Life and Art by Stephen Nachmanovitch (I particularly like the story about sameness brought about by institutionalized thinking on page 115)
• Thinkertoys: a handbook of creative-thinking techniques by Michael Michalko
• Zen Guitar by Philip Toshio Sudo (while the book is rooted in musical pursuits, it’s easy to apply Philip’s ideas in any creative pursuit)

I like the fact that the second question is about measuring all things. This idea ties back to an exchange I had with Chip Griffin, yesterday, in his review of Gary Vaynerchuk’s book Crush It! (which I’m reading). While instinct is an important part of any effort, it’s especially important to define your goals (whether personal or professional) and equally important to be able to assess the progress and impact of those goals.

Besides my own site, Nico’s Snowy Day Design outfit has created sites for Ron Amok!, Universe Creation 101 and Icedsoul Photography. Nico also did the layout and theme for our Just One More Book!! children’s literacy and book website.

If you’re an individual or business looking for creative and professional website and blog themes, I can’t say enough good things about Snowy Day Design.

Thank you EVERYONE for your contributions to my 2009!

9) ADAM SAVAGE, process

Many TED talks have had an impact on me. Few as shocking as the night I was cleaning up my office while Adam Savage talked about obsessions on my computer just a few feet away. I have to admit that it was a bit unsettling at first that with each passing minute Mr. Savage talked faster and more excitedly about minutae of recreating movie props. About halfway through his talk, though, I started to see myself and how I approach my passions in him. The payoff, however… the payoff was worth all of the bizarre obsessive stuff in his talk. Mr. Savage hit a towering home run with his parting thought that his obsession is about the process, not the product.

8 & 7) BOB AND JAMIE O’FARRELL, strength [photos coming]

Back in the day we spent so much time together that it became a running joke with other friends of mine that my two virtual brothers were actually one person, “Bob-n’-Jamie”. They spent the last half of this year watching their younger brother suffer through a very aggressive cancer and stayed with him during the final, harrowing days of his battle. What they witnessed, particularly in David’s final hours, would break most people. Bob and Jamie proved to be stronger than I ever imagined them being.

6) JOWI TAYLOR, passion

Jowi was the keynote speaker at PAB2009 and he brought the house down with his talk about his creative projects, exploring possibilities and especially about his passion for the Six String Nation Guitar, a guitar made of 63 pieces of Canada. His insight into real stories and real people, how they define us and reflect our identity was extremely moving. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house and the spontaneous outpouring of financial support from the community demonstrates the impact he had on everyone.

5) CAROLINE COADY, belief

Our friend Caroline was diagnosed with cancer in June and wasn’t given much hope. The diagnosis had apparently come late and doctors figured that her stage 4 colorectal cancer had spread to her lungs and ovaries. Caroline stood tall and somehow managed to look healthy throughout her aggressive chemo regimen and frequent setbacks. She always believed she would be a survivor. Things took a turn for the worse and Caroline required emergency life threatening surgery. During what ended up being laproscopic surgery, the surgeon discovered a single 2cm tumour and no other cancer in her body. Whether you believe it was the treatment she received to that point or that her belief and attitude got rid of the cancer, it’s still a miracle that Caroline is now one surgery away from being cancer free.

4 & 3) BERT AND RHODA BLEVIS, family [photo coming]

I was probably 13 when I last admired my parents this way. Besides the normal distance that ebbs and flows throughout the evolution of the parent-child relationship, we had additional strains over the years. None of that mattered to my parents when Andrea was diagnosed with breast cancer. My parents “shortcutted” past all formalities, bypassed lip service and went straight into action to help and support us. They’ve cancelled social plans, trips and a three-month condo rental in Florida during the worst months of the winter so they can be hear for Andrea, me and our two daughters throughout Andrea’s treatment.

2) HENRY WINKLER, caring

Andrea, Lucy, Bayla and I went to see Henry Winkler speak at an event in Ottawa this past September. Of course, we’re fans of his from Happy Days, Arrested Development and we had interviewed him about Hank Zipzer books, but hadn’t realized the extent of his humanitarian work until we read his bio. Trust me on this one… there are very few people in the world who have invested themselves in helping others and still managed a career of their own the way Mr. Winkler has. As I noted in a blog post I wrote about his presentation, all of his stories illustrated a life that seems to have taken place as if by design and certainly too amazing to be a Hollywood movie. If it wasn’t enough that he inspired us that evening, Mr. Winkler also left a powerful and moving voice mail message for Andrea after her breast cancer diagnosis (in fact, he was the FIRST of 130 children’s book authors/illustrators to leave a message).

1) ANDREA ROSS, survivor

It’s really hard to believe what Andrea’s been through since she first discovered a lump in her breast four months ago. Besides the emotional strain, she’s had three surgeries, a secondary cancer scare (that proved to be nothing), a battery of disruptive and even invasive tests and she’s begun a regimen of chemotherapy. Seeing her walk tall, recover quickly and shine through all of this is powerful and makes me feel incredibly selfish for the times I feel railroaded by the entire process. Andrea’s amazing medical care combined with a network of energy workers, our support system and especially her positive attitude proves this whole process will be a measured inconvenience after which we can celebrate Andrea becoming a breast cancer survivor.

My colleagues and I have been immersed in reading hundreds of comments left by Canadians on media sites that covered an issue that affects some of our clients.  We built a matrix to evaluate all of the comments and discovered that the public response to and understanding of the issue was based on the coverage of each media organization. Suddenly, new stakeholders materialized and the public revealed their opinion about them.

Small and medium sized organizations should take note — when mainstream media incorporated comments on their web sites, they gave you the gift of free public opinion polling.

The excercise has led me to categorize commenters into five main categories and reinforced how much business intelligence any organization can gain from paying attention to digital conversation. That is, if you seek first to understand (and believe me, reading hundreds of comments is an important and valuable commitment) you can discover what the issue really is and who you should be reaching out to before you figure out what should be said.

Based on my share of the comments, I classified commenters into five categories:

INVOLVED – these are the people that are close to or very concerned about the issue. They know the stakeholders, they have intimate knowledge of the issue, and can analyze the different directions and effects of the issue on the fly. Involved commenters help keep the conversation relevant no matter their stance on the issue.

INFORMED – these are the people that have taken the time to learn more about the issue and its key players. They tend to know the history and appreciate the impacts. Informed commenters generally have a personal interest in the issue. They contribute new ideas to the conversation and help others understand by taking the time to offer valuable responses.

MISINFORMED – these are the people who have skimmed the article, may have misunderstood the information they received and have collected or were fed inaccurate information from other sources. This is the first level of commenter that lets their opinions cloud the issue by letting their opinions fill in the holes of their understanding. Misinformed commenters aren’t necessarily malicious.

UNINFORMED – this is where the participants in the conversation transition from being people to being commenters. The uninformed choose to let their opinion validate their broken logic. They aren’t interested in the back story and don’t know who the stakeholders are. In most cases, they’ve picked up on a single point of the article or taken a single piece of information out of context. Uninformed commenters like to pontificate and are happiest when they deconstruct what other people are saying, sometimes peppering their comments with personal attacks.

ANGRY – known for years as “flamers”, this is the angry mob of people who like to berate others no matter what the discussion is about. They’ve never heard of the issue and probably won’t come back to it. They spray their anger and leave. The angry use emotional attacks and have no interest in logic.

I decided to quantify five qualities of commenters based on several criteria with ratings of 1 (lowest) to 5 (highest). I used 0 to indicate none.

Now it becomes easier to figure out who to engage with, how and when.

Our first post is now live. It features audio from Andrea’s head shaving party which took place at our place last night. Twenty of our friends joined us for munchies, drinks, cake and to show support as I shaved Andrea’s head.

Michael Geist has published more details about the defence on his blog and included his thoughts about this decision being a significant victory for freedom of expression. In his post he includes the following from the ruling:

…the traditional media are rapidly being complemented by new ways of communicating on matters of public interest, many of them online, which do not involve journalists. These new disseminators of news and information should, absent good reasons for exclusion, be subject to the same laws as established media outlets.

The article suggests that the new defense applies to defamation cases based on “‘responsible journalism’ on issues of public importance“.

It seems the defense will be largely based on the quality of the information being questioned and the steps taken by the reporter to verify the information. Basically, the reporter must practice sound journalism, something most bloggers should be doing better than they are on issues of public interest.

Perhaps the most fascinating point raised in the article is in the last paragraph which suggests bloggers were specifically identified in the ruling:

The Ontario court had called the defence “responsible journalism,” but the Supreme Court said that the title of the defence was too narrow and should encompass communications made by Internet bloggers and others who are not journalists.

You can learn more about journalistic principles and ethics at the following sample links:

• Canadian Association of Journalists Statement of Principles
• C.E.P. Media Code of Ethics
• Journalism Ethics and Standards (Wikipedia)

Hat tip: Blake Johnston

David O’Farrell passed away at 1:02 a.m. He was 38 years old. The aggressive spread of the disease made the battle short and extremely painful. David, being the fighter he is, refused to give up. However, in the final weeks, the spread of the disease to his brain was more than his body could handle.

Being the “fourth brother” of the O’Farrell family meant I spent a lot of time hanging out with Bob, Jamie and David. I remember playing half-court with them and then going to the 7-11 so we could each get a tub of Coke to quench our thirst. David was a member of the crew during various incarnations of the band Bob, James and I were in (David did all of the fun work like lugging gear and helping to setup and teardown for live shows and practices). I recall a few outings to the driving range and countless hours of movie watching. I was also at the table for more than a few O’Farrell Christmas dinners and Andrea and I attended David’s wedding to Amanda.

I’m glad I had the opportunity to see David in August. He was in the hospital at the time battling an infection and had a full beard. Bob, Jamie and I had gone to Oshawa for the weekend to visit Dave and clean and paint his house — we also indulged in David’s amazing liquor cabinet and took care of his dogs. Dave and I spoke a few times after that visit, the last time was in September. He emailed me on Dec. 9th to say that he would be in Ottawa later this week. While we didn’t speak often, it seems particularly strange that it’s no longer possible.

This holiday season will have greater meaning for me. Even if I’m not able to connect with everyone I want to, know that I’m thinking about you and I wish you a happy, healthy and safe holiday season and a fantastic new year.

Photo from Dave’s Facebook profile.

It seems surreal that it’s been over two months since her diagnosis. So much has happened since October 6: three surgeries, cardiac and bone scans, x-rays, blood tests, an MRI and an ultrasound and frequent appointments with our surgeon, radiation oncologist and medical oncologist. We’ve also had a meeting with a social worker and Andrea’s met with her GP and a counsellor and spoken to a few people conducting cancer-related studies. Yes, it’s been a full two months.

Three very important things need to be noted.

1) We’re extraordinarily lucky to be close with the right family and friends, local and distant. Everyone’s generosity with their time. gifts and concern has been overwhelming. Whether it’s been emails, phone calls or visits, delivery of meals, gifts and hats, or playdates and sleepovers for our daughters, the last two months would have been very different if we had to do this on our own. Special mention also goes to the amazing team I work with for their support. And, by the way, my parents absolutely rock!

2) Social media is really making the world smaller and more meaningful. Many of our closest friends and supporters result from connections we’ve made online through blogs, podcasts and Twitter. We regularly receive messages of support and gifts from our social media friends, people we consider ourselves extremely lucky and privileged to know.

3) Andrea makes the battle worth fighting. It’s difficult being the support system — you often feel helpless. It takes a lot of energy to put on a brave face, be strong and bring some levity to the process our family is going through. However, Andrea’s courage and personality draws this out and makes it seem not only natural but the only rational approach. We actually have fun. And even though we’re scared mindless 30% of the time, we’re undaunted and laughing together the other 70%. If that weren’t true, I’d have collapsed long ago.

I know the next few months will present their challenges and there will be times we’ll get lost in the details. This a road we have to travel to get to our destination. It’s a bumpy road and we’re not the only family traveling it. Like many a road trip we’ll probably feel like asking “are we there yet” all the time — that’s only because there’s a party we’re anxious to get to; the best party in the world.

Of course, it would be too obvious to go after the important wishes such as world peace or Andrea not ever having cancer, so I thought I’d ask for three things that are equally attainable.

First, I want an email inbox that manages itself using better artificial intelligence than I use. Yes, I use AI to manage my inbox. If I used real intelligence, I wouldn’t have a backlog of messages.

Second, I want a social media metrics monitoring and clippings capability that intuitively knows everything I’m looking for and has the ability to synthesize and summarize the information for me and have it waiting in my temporal lobe when I wake up. This means more face time.

Third, I want Arrested Development to come back. I miss my Bluths.

Photo uploaded to Flickr by steves-photos.

I could list the myriad of specific reasons shared by predominantly government organizations for keeping social technologies off of their internal networks. However, it would be far easier to lump them into a single category: fear (there are some political reasons as well, but fear is by far the biggest single factor right now). The fear includes impact on productivity, overwhelming amounts of content to organize and archive, and turning the intranet into a two-way communication channel. Government organizations also raised concerns about Access to Information requests (which I won’t attempt to address here).

A number of interesting statistics were presented to illustrate why organizations should be incorporating social technologies on their intranet:

• Randy Woods of non~linear creations shared the results of an unscientific study they conducted in which 45% of respondents believe “everyone owns the corporate intranet” (beating the IT, HR and Communications departments, and several others)
• Carmine Porco of Prescient Digital Media Ltd. shared Centre for Media Research findings that 39% of surveyed 18-24 year olds would leave a company if denied access to social media and social networks (social media has become a competitive advantage for productivity AND recruiting)
• I shared Forrester Reasearch’s Canadian Social Technographics report which identifies Canadians as “the most active social networkers in any market” they’ve surveyed to date (57% of Canadians use social network sites at least once a month, 6% more than the U.S.)

The consensus among the presenters and delegates is that social intranets, or hybrids of traditional and social, are the way to go. The issue is trying to get buy-in from the decision makers.

I offered the following suggestions for deriving a Return On Fear to make corporate intranets social:

Leverage the Technology: It used to be that the cost and limited functionally of intranet software demanded centralized content management. The tools are no longer a barrier to entry, functionally or fiscally. You may even have the necessary technology in your organization already. If money is a factor, consider using proven open-source technology that meets your needs.

Keep things simple: It’s important to have a strategy and a plan to execute it. However, don’t over-think or over-complicate things. The more simple things are (reasons, language, interface, etc…), the more likely the organization will embrace the tools. Acceptable use policies should be simple to understand and short (anything more than a paragraph or two will be ignored). Consider creating five to 10 simple guidelines to help the participants.

Community of communities: Don’t think of social technologies as delegating the intranet to the employees. Give contributors a reason to contribute and they will deliver. Have the primary site be an advocate of and aggregate for the various internal communities (geographic, business unit, skills, personal interests, etc…). By the way, management and centralized communications should be viewed as a community like all others. Exceptions must be made during a crisis while still making sure to include the voice of the communities since they also have a role (and concerns) in getting through the crisis.

Support the business objectives: If the tools are deployed to support work, they’ll be used for work. Think empowering vs. policing the communities. Most people and communities will self-police since they understand that some non-work-related chatter will be tolerated. For organizations that think instant messaging, forums, etc… will destroy productivity, ask yourself why you allow employees to have phones on their desk, email and Internet access.

Make it part of the culture: For the de-centralized components to contribute to productivity and the good of the organization (operationally and socially), contributors must have time allocated to keep their community current. They also need the support of management. If management models the social intranet behaviour, the organization will follow. Yes. Management should participate in the social intranet culture.

Apply the “so what?” test: Make sure the content is relevant to the audience. Some people call this the signal-to-noise rule.

Build the basis for trust: Trust is a two-way street. If management trusts the organization with the tools and capability to connect and collaborate on the intranet, they will in turn trust management as an enabler and connector. This can only be beneficial for the organization.

We can save the discussion of creative ways to drive adoption and the management and archiving of content for another day.

Students & the Canary in a Coal Mine by Melissa Love & Elise Jackson

It’s a tough situation to be a young voice in a room full of mostly 30-somethings that are passionate about TED and what it stands for. Melissa and Elise did a great job reaching the audience with their passion for protecting the environment. They introduced the audience to initiatives that students are becoming increasingly involved in including an environmental group called FROGG (Friends Reaching Out for Greener Growth) and an annual two week expedition to the north called Students On Ice. Perhaps the most exciting piece of that session is that Melissa is hoping to lead a project to get solar panels installed on the roof of Colonel By High School.

I spoke with Kneale Mann about this session during the break and the two of us got excited by the idea of how involved students are and want to be in solving the world’s problems. As Kneale pointed out, organizations need to do more with students to capitalize on their energy and enthusiasm. They also need to think differently about how they run their organizations, changing language like “fundraising” and redistributing their efforts to recognize a stronger balance between fundraising and action.

Storytelling by Danny Brown (with Graeme Stewart)

Danny explored the relationship between storytelling and technology using George Lucas as an example of someone who is an incredible storyteller with a keen sense of technology. Lucas’ style redefined storytelling with the release of the original Star Wars, a film that had a strong story that needed technology to enhance the audience experience. The results were incredible — a $6-million movie that created the special effects giant Industrial Light and Magic and that grossed over $300 million. Lucas made a number of decisions that made the movie particularly believable for the audience including showing the world a little bit dirty (until then, almost all sci-fi productions depicted sterile and amazingly orderly spacecraft and environments) and making the Millennium Falcon seem like everyone’s beloved first car with all of its mechanical problems. Sadly, Lucas tinkered with his magic formula when he produced the three Star Wars prequels, an initiative that was based on exploiting new and strong technology rather than telling a compelling story.

Making the Right Choices by Nick Desbarats

Online decision-supporting technology is noticeably absent from search technology and the websites of most online retailers. Nick Desbarats is a self-proclaimed nerd who spent more time designing the technology to help him make an informed and personality-based decision on a car purchase than he did actually purchasing the car. He put a lot of thought into the decision process, weighing individual preferences based on emotional factors rather than objective comparison, and building a useful interfaces. He then extended the application to help make other purchase decisions including a computer and (if memory serves me) an iron.

Nick is still developing the technology and plans to give free licenses to charitable organizations to help them make decisions on the best allocation of their resources to achieve their goals.

How to Learn by Mark Levison

Mark made no apologies for being at the front of the room. He came right out and explained that he was speaking on how the brain processes information and creates neural pathways not as a scientist or expert in the field, but as someone who reads a lot on the subject and tries to apply that passion to his work and family life. He explored short-term and long-term memory and how hardwire neural pathways in the brain that make strong associations for retention. Apparently association with images offers the best chance for being able to retain and recall information and as I type this, I’m able to see the image of a gift wrapped box in my mind (the slide he used to illustrate the point).

Sing Your Song by Bob Ledrew

Using the thread of music and connecting through melodies, spoken or sung, Bob illustrated the importance of passion, connecting and siezing the day. Of all the sessions, Bob’s was the most deeply personal. He related the story of his older brother’s suicide as a teenager and his own cancer diagnosis which came on his 40th birthday [personal note: why do so many people seem to discover the signs of or get diagnosed with cancer on or around their birthday?]. These life challenges combined with some positive experiences inspired Bob to put structure around his work and his passion for music. He described overlapping pie charts, one which illustrates how he derives income (80% from his work, 20% from music) and how he derives pleasure (80% from music, 20% from his work).

Bob’s commitment to music involves taking guitar lessons, playing for fun and hosting concerts at his home. Performers to date have included Lynn Miles, Tony D and Suzie Vinnick.

Six String Nation by Jowi Taylor

The most powerful session of the day was delivered by Jowi Taylor. I’ve seen him speak before and he never disappoints with the story of  his love for Canada and his passion for connecting people through story.

Jowi is the founder of the Six String Nation Guitar project, a guitar made of 63 pieces of Canadian history ranging from ordinary and relatively unknown people that helped shape the communities of Canada, to the personalities that put Canada on the world stage.

There weren’t many dry eyes in the room as Jowi related stories of Joe Lebobe and the Golden Spruce. Indeed, Jowi himself choked back tears as he told the same stories he’s told hundreds if not thousands of times over the last three years.

It amazes me that Voyageur, the Six String Nation guitar, isn’t an officially recognzied icon for Canada.

Impossible 2 Possible by Ray Zahab

The day wrapped up with a motivational speech by endurance athlete Ray Zahab. Ray shared the story of his transformation from the pack-a-day-smoking-beer-drinking-armchair-quarterback to the unwitting winner of his first marathon, the 2004 Yukon Arctic Ultra. That race turned his dislike of running into a new passion.

Ray isnt’ just a Forrest Gump. He’s turned his passion for running into a way to educate and connect people around the world. His i2P ogranization (impossible2Possible) works with schools using the Internet to connect students with Ray and his colleagues as embark on their adventures… setting a new speed record to the south pole, discovered an urgent lack of sufficient clean water in during a 250km run across Africa, and hiking Baffin Island with five high school students.

Congratulations!

Allan Isfan, Susan Murphy, Kneale Mann and their team did an amazing job organizing an event that has an established and well loved brand. Delivering on that brand is a daunting task. I’m incredibly impressed that they managed to do so and still look rested (even if they weren’t).

I wonder if any of the TEDxOttawa sessions will find their way onto the TED site and feed.

I’ll be delivering a session titled Our Future Depends on Children’s Books which I’ve described as follows:

Much of what we become is shaped by the ideas we’re exposed to and the relationships of which we’re a part. The stronger those foundations are from childhood, the better equipped we are to understand the people with whom we interact and the world around us. Children’s books are the tools that help us open the door to a child’s (and ultimately an adult’s) natural curiosity, creativity and desire to connect, and are one of our strongest hopes for shaping a great future.

If you haven’t already got tickets for this amazing event, you’re out of luck. TEDxOttawa is sold out!

The presentation was titled “The Importance of Values Through Crisis” and it focused heavily on Maple Leaf Foods President Michael McCain’s leadership through the best of times and the most challenging of them. No matter how much you can compare his handling of the crisis to the “Tylenol model“, Mr. McCain was genuine and sincere in his approach. And his central concern remained people throughout the crisis. It was risky and simple and based on Mr. McCain’s value system that people come first — before lawyers and accountants.

It would take too long to go through the details of what was done and how. It would also be interesting to discuss values. However, you either have the necessary values as part of who you are or you don’t. If you have them, you’ll know what this is all about and your values can become part of your company. If you don’t have them, trying to explain what’s needed to be the kind of leader Mr. McCain is will be futile — it will just be words.

What I do want to do is share a single statement Ms. Smith used to describe what Mr. McCain did  to help Maple Leaf Foods respond to the crisis, correct the root cause and grow from the experience while helping the food industry and the public as a whole.

Develop a basis for trust.

My wife, Andrea, was diagnosed with breast cancer on October 6. We discovered how quickly life changes and yesterday, as a volunteer showed us around the brand new chemotherapy section of the General Campus, we realized that this building is about to become a central part of our life for the next while. On some levels this knocked the wind out of us; on many more we feel like real people that matter.

Being real people that matter has been a central feeling throughout the last two months. For a health care system that’s regularly criticized for waits and standard of care, we’ve been “blown away” by how quickly our treatment has been moving along, the great care we’re getting and the personalities and passion of the people taking care of us. It’s overwhelming. I’ve been telling people that when the health care system wants to knock your socks off, have a few pair handy.

You have a top notch team and I’d be happy to talk specifics with you about the people that have made this ordeal easy. There are many. I’d also be happy to share the stories that don’t line up with the rest of our experience. There are only two.

I can tell that it will be just as hard for us when we leave the Cancer Centre with the all clear when this process is complete as it was for us when we first arrived at the Breast Health Centre on October 7. That’s a day of mixed emotions we’re looking forward to.

Thank you very much for running a fantastic hospital and having great people around you.

Gratefully,
Mark Blevis

[UPDATE - FULL DISCLOSURE: I learned several hours after posting this letter that The Ottawa Hospital is a client of my employer, Fleishman Hillard.]

Most of Third Storey’s clients came about through word of mouth or online searches, which suited me fine since the services Third Storey was delivering were about building a brand through relationships, mostly online. Besides Tripwire, I had the privilege of working with Moss Adams, Career Joy, Microsoft, Bayer Canada and Bayer Germany, Algonquin College, The Conference Publishers, the National Arts Centre and many other companies as well Canadian government bodies including the Canadian Intellectual Property Office and the Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission.

I’m excited to announce that I’m joining Fleishman Hillard, tomorrow. I’ll be working in the Ottawa office on digital strategy for public affairs. It’s an amazing opportunity and I’ll be working with an incredible group of people. I’ve already started doing some reading on client projects I’ll be working on and I can’t wait to become immersed in the work.

As they parted ways at the airport, Dango gave Linda two CDs; one by Elephant Revival (a band Dango is a member of) and his own solo CD, Banjo Poems.

CDs used to be quite costly. Don’t get me wrong, for many musicians that remains true. However, CDs are not the product. The band and the performance is the product and Dango gets that. Giving away two CDs may have cost him a few dollars to introduce Linda and her friends and family to his music. Linda’s already decided to go to his upcoming concert in the Denver area and when she played his CDs for us over the weekend, we came to love his music and want to know when he’ll be playing here.

Business cards need to be interesting to get noticed. A name, title and contact information aren’t enough of an onramp to a relationship. That’s where smart musicians have the edge on the traditional business world.

I think I’ll stamp the back of my business cards with “Free coffee. RSVP”.

To be clear, I love Daylite. It really is on the verge of being something incredible. As my teachers used to say of me to my parents, Daylite “has a lot of potential”. For the time being, it’s a decent tool for integrating projects, calendars, contacts and communications.

SUPPORT

Marketcircle’s support has been quite responsive. I’ve thrown a lot at them and they’ve been good about registering bugs and feature requests and have done their best to address outstanding issues. Unfortunately, some issues aren’t easily resolved. Read on…

SYNCHRONIZATION

If I had to pick a single deal breaker, it’s that synchronization between Daylite and other programs such as iCal and Address Book is spotty at best and failures cause Daylite to crash several times a week. Every time the application crashes, I’ve allowed Daylite to send email to the mothership for review and each time a different support tech sends me the same set of canned instructions. While the steps are clearly defined, they require some time investment to implement and then more time for Daylite to reset the entire sync. This can tie you up for quite a while if you have a large database. Oh, and the sync reset doesn’t always work.

EXTRANEOUS STEPS

Daylite includes a hook into Mail so you can associate all communications with contact records. This makes it easy to create an audit trail of communications — particularly important for project management and managing your wife’s medical calendar and communications relating to her cancer diagnosis and treatment. The problem is that categorizing the emails is a multi-step process when it should be a single click. That is, to categorize the email and then store it in a mail folder you must first select the email, make the contact selection, make the category selection, then click on a separate email, click back on the original email, then drag the original email to the desired mail folder. It may not seem like much, but try managing an active inbox and following those steps tens if not hundreds of times a day. Marketcircle has acknowledged this and opened a feature request.

USER EXPERIENCE

One of the great features of Daylite is the iPhone app, Daylite Touch. It makes it easy to manage your integrated projects, contacts and calendars while away from your computer. Unfortunately, Daylite has deviated from the familiar iPhone interface in a number of components which impacts the user experience. For example, the Daylite Touch contact list interface has no index along the side and no way to easily navigate all contacts the way the native Contact app does. Also, the interface for adding appointments and tasks uses the arrow button typically associated with replying or forwarding emails instead of the plus sign associated with adding new records. Marketcircle has acknowledged these and opened feature requests.

I’ve also suggested that they allow the user to associate default email and calendar categories with contact records, rather than defaulting to the last used category. If you’re not careful, a client record could get associated with your wife’s cancer calendar . Marketcircle has acknowledged this and opened a feature request.

Which brings me to another feature request. Once you’ve associated an email message with a contact and category in Daylite, the Daylite sidepanel in Mail changes to a button for opening the current mail record in Daylite. I’ve suggested it would be handy to see a summary list of associated contacts, communications records and appointments. Marketcircle has acknowledged this and opened a feature request.

MISSING FUNCTIONALITY

This one I haven’t sent to Marketcircle, yet. Daylite Touch doesn’t offer the ability to set reminders for appointments or tasks. You can create the records but you don’t have the ability to set an alert so you don’t forget.

CONSISTENT LANGUAGE

Finally — for now — the language used for status is inconsistent. Daylite’s calendar includes status options such as tentative, confirmed, completed and postponed while the task area has status options open, pending, deferred and done. Marketcircle has acknowledged this and opened a feature request to change it.

Sadly, my trial period expires in seven days. I wish the product were closer to being perfect so I could justify the expense particularly since I’ve invested so much time and have come to depend on Daylite to integrate Andrea’s medical calendar with related communications, reports and records (of course, that’s what trial periods are for). Instead, I’ll have to let the trial lapse and hope the best for Daylite.

So, Running Room, does this sound like a good opportunity?

Also… word has it that when the video reaches 1 million views, Medline will be making a huge contribution to the hospital in which it this video was filmed, as well as offering free mammograms for the community.

The most difficult part has been coming up with a name for our podcast/blog. So, we’ve grabbed a few of our favourites and decided to put it out to a vote and more suggestions.

We’d be grateful if you’d take the time to vote, add a suggestion and even leave a comment.

[NOTE: if you select Other, please make a suggestion in the field provided.]

Thank you to everyone for participating and to Richard for organizing this.

Front Row: Heidi Stemple, Rebecca Guay, Jane Dyer, Jeanne Birdsall, Diane deGroat, Barbara Diamond Goldin, Nonny Hogrogian, Susan Yard Harris.
Second Row: Brooke Dyer, Shelley Rotner, Norton Juster, Jane Yolen, Lesléa Newman, Brian Karas, Barry Moser, Susan Pearson, Anna Alter, Alice Schertle.
Third Row: Wendell Minor, Jeff Mack, Rich Michelson, Kathy Brown, Nancy Sippel Carpenter, Jeannine Atkins, David Kherdian.
Back Row: Carol Weiss, Mo Willems, Scott Fischer, Jarrett J. Krosoczka, Mordicai Gerstein, Paul Jacobs.

This month’s Glebe Report features a fantastic letter to the editor by Barry J. Smith.

I find it puzzling that the revival of a CFL Football franchise in Ottawa is a “focal point” in the redevelopment of Landsdowne (sic) Park. Let’s look at some numbers.

Each CFL team plays one pre-season and nine regular season “home games” each year. Should you finish at the top of the standings, you could play host to one, or possibly two, playoff games. So, not including the Grey Cup Championship (which would only come around every eight to ten years), the greatest possible number of “home games” per year would be 12.

The average football game lasts about three hours. As most people arrive early or might extend their stay afterwards, let’s add 60-minutes and say the average game lasts four hours. Taking this into account, the 12 possible home games each year equal 48 hours of entertainment value.

The 2006 Census recorded Ottawa’s population at 812,000, while the redeveloped Frank Clair Stadium will seat approximately 24,000 people. This means that at any given time, less than 3% of the city’s population will be able to watch a game live in the stadium.

CFL Football represents a maximum of 48 hours of entertainment for less than 3% of the the city’s population — so, can someone please tell me why football is the focal point in the redevelopment of Lansdowne Park? Everyone seems to be in agreement that Lansdowne Park is a crown jewel asset. As the future of this asset affects all citizens of Ottawa, should the “focal point” not be something that can be used by the largest number of people for the most value?

I thought I’d take a few minutes to share experiences I’ve had with personal groundswell; something I’ve occasionally called support flash mobs. You’ll notice that each successive project is more ambitious and had a greater reach and impact than the previous.

POST-ADVOCACY

Tod Maffin played an important role for CBC employees locked out by management in 2005. He initiated a movement to online support and advocacy for locked-out employees and their CBC audiences. It was a group effort that included blog posts and podcasts created across the country. Tod provided invaluable hope and support to the community and was instrumental in keeping the bond strong between staff and audiences.

When the lockout ended I collected audio thank you notes from CBC staff in Ottawa and from some of the regional staff I knew were closely connected to Tod during the days of the unplugged site — people like Sean Prpick and Shelagh Rogers. All I had to do was ask. They were all too happy to give something back to someone who had given them so much. (Click here for a post that features this audio collage)

CBC Unplugged proved to be a great example of groundswell both as a tool for advocacy and influence during a management dispute, and then as a tool to give back and reflect.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY

Nine months after “Thank you, Tod”, I became involved in another example of tapping in to the groundswell when Bill Deys and Sean McGaughey wanted to do something special for Derek K. Miller’s birthday (his first since being diagnosed with stage four colorectal cancer). Out of that was born another audio project. Emails were sent out to podcasters and bloggers, many of whom only knew Derek by name and from hearing or using Creative Commons music he’d created for the benefit of the social media community. In a few short hours, we’d collected enough audio comments to create a collage of good wishes, mixed to one of Derek’s own songs. (Click here for the post that features this collage)

Earlier this year, I coordinated a different type of audio birthday card when John Meadows and I re-wrote the lyrics to Billy Joel’s Piano Man and invited 120 people to sing them as part of a 40th birthday gift for Bob Goyetche. Forty-nine people, most from North America and a few from around the world, answered the call (including John Meadows, me and my wife). The result was a Band Aid like collaboration of people that gave something back to Bob for all that he’d given them. The final mix of the song featured solos, duets and small groups. The final chorus featured the entire ensemble. In many ways, it felt as though all 49 of us had gathered in one room to stand around a piano and belt out a song for our friend. (Click here for the podcast that features this song)

THE WARRIOR SOUNDTRACK

If Bob’s 40th birthday song was the most technically ambitious groundswell project (it took about 45 hours to mix), by far the most ambitious in reach was the one I recently coordinated for my wife, Andrea. The day after she was diagnosed with breast cancer, I sent a personal email to every one of the 220 interview guests of our Just One More Book!! children’s book podcast asking each if they would leave a voice message on our hotline sending good wishes to Andrea. My plan was to create a CD of audio messages Andrea could listen to during recovery from surgery and during her chemotherapy treatments; something I was inspired to call The Warrior Soundtrack.

The messages started to pour in immediately (Henry Winkler responded first, within minutes). In all, 126 messages came from authors, illustrators and publishers from around the world (including England, Spain and Israel) and ranged from newcomers to celebrities. Many of the messages were more than just good wishes. Some people recited poems or sang songs they wrote for Andrea. Some related their own experiences with cancer and others offered to speak on the phone anytime Andrea wanted someone to talk to. An overwhelming 75 minutes in audio! Plus, Andrea received a number of packages in the mail — handwritten cards with original artwork by famous illustrators, t-shirts, books and other gifts. Andrea even received two “bionic” candy apples.

In fact, we received so many messages that I realized I needed to also create a summary audio clip for Andrea so she could get a quick hit of support and energy any time she needed it. The result is an audio collage packaged over Sunshine and Starlight, a fantastic instrumental by Bjork Ostrom. (Click here for the post that features The Warrior Theme)

BIGGER THAN OURSELVES

Being human means we have the desire to connect, make a difference and be a part of something bigger than ourselves. Everyone has the ability to make or break a company or change someone’s life. It can start with a simple thank you and grow from there.

First, there’s the ad for the Ottawa Senators that features a firey banding tool stamping Forever Red on the webpage…

…then, a television screen unfolds from the banner and a woman walks across from the far left to the centre before posing with an ad (obstructed by the Ottawa Senators ad) for Larco TV (I hope they got a huge discount for being mostly covered up).

Neither ad is easily closed. In fact the Larco TV close link didn’t seem particularly responsive when I used it.

I understand the need for advertising dollars to support news delivery. However, when the ads dominate, interfere and impact the site visitor’s experience, it’s time to find a new news source.

I refer to helping Andrea become a breast cancer survivor as a project for several reasons. First, I recognize there’s a process to follow to achieve success, that we will achieve success in a finite amount of time (a year or less) and there will be a celebratory bash when we wrap-up. Second, I’ve taken on the role of primary support for Andrea which means I’ve taken responsibility for scheduling appointments, acting as the central contact for all communications and coordinating our support network. Finally, it’s a way to draw on my professional skills, learn new skills and exploit the situation as an opportunity to relate what I’m doing for the benefit of the world at large.

Besides Andrea and our two daughters, there are many people or groups that I need to interact with:

• family
• friends
• support network
• clients (of my business)
• family physician
• surgeon
• radiation oncologist
• medical oncologist
• social worker
• insurance adjudicator
• energy workers
• naturopath
• researcher
• lawyer

That’s a lot of very important relationships involving a lot of phone calls, correspondence, appointments and information exchange.

Let me tell you about the three mission critical tools I’m using and you should consider.

1) Livescribe Pulse Smartpen

I’ve been a committed user of my Livescribe pen since I bought it last December (thank you Whitney Hoffman for the introduction). I believe it represents the best money I’ve ever spent on any technology, ever, and feel that it heralds the beginning of paper-based computing. I’m particularly attached to this technology right now because it allows me to simultaneously capture both physical and digital copies of my notes (multiple copies in multiple modes is important so I can be sure I have a copy, somewhere). I’ve also recorded a few conversations when I was most concerned about retaining critical and new information.

The Livescribe pen is my workhorse and trusted ally through this process because I can use it anywhere, particularly situations where it would be physically and socially awkward to open my laptop or tap away on my iPhone.

Note that the Livescribe is compatible with both Mac and PC systems.

2) Aurex Business Ring Binder/Portfolio

It’s one of those things I bought and used in a haphazard way many years ago and, when I was done with it, threw it in a cupboard because I couldn’t bring myself to throw away something that was in great condition and may one day be useful.

Ta da!

I like this portfolio more than the binder many people recommended I use because it has a zipper — I’m able to close it and know that I won’t lose any papers.

I’ve divided the binder into 10 sections: Reports, Notes, Community Care Organizations, Receipts/Statements, Medications/Instructions, Research, Directions/print-outs/miscellaneous, Insurance, Resources, Loose notes/prescriptions/receipts (which is a folder I can throw loose papers into). All of these sections hold the pieces of paper that are very important to us.

There are two types of paper in this binder: the pieces that I’ve just collected and need to be scanned for electronic backup, and the pieces that I’ve already scanned for electronic backup. Having hardcopy/electronic duplicates is just as important as being organized and mobile.

My only mistake with this portfolio is that I used a fancy gold marker to label the exterior. The ink didn’t really adhere to the portfolio and it made a huge mess of gold that got on my hands and other things when I handled it. It’s mostly dry and messy now.

Note that binders and portfolios are compatible with all environments.

3) Daylite Productivity Suite

This is the newest piece of technology in my toolkit and one that I both love and get frustrated by (partly because I’m still learning it and partly because there are a lot of things that could work better or important features it needs).

Daylite allows me to organize all of my electronic correspondence, notes, appointments, projects and tasks so I can manage and monitor everything more carefully. A particularly important feature is linking which allows me to create relationships between people and activities, making it easier to find and follow progress. It’s particularly handy because I’m able to also use it for work and family activities, meaning I don’t need to run additional tools. Daylite also syncs with Address Book and iCal (this is one of the areas that needs improvement) and there’s an iPhone app which allows me to use the power of Daylite when I’m on the go.

Daylite isn’t cheap and I’m not looking forward to having to pay so much for the Productivity Suite and the iPhone app when my trial period runs out. Having said that, I can honestly say that Daylite isn’t a cute piece of software, it’s a mission critical management tool that knocks the socks off Outlook and any project management software I’ve ever used.

Daylite Productivity Suite is only available for Mac computers.

Wow!

Okay… this post is getting long and I need to get ready for the day. I’ll try to make time this week to share more detail on how I use these tools.

I haven’t gotten the flu shot for about five years, around the time that Andrea and I found out that the vaccines contain mercury as a preservative. We learned this fact the day after we had our two daughters, then five and three, vaccinated. When we told our daughters we would never do that to them, again, our older daughter asked why mercury wasn’t good for them, but it was good for the adults in her life. I couldn’t argue with that logic.

This year is different. With Andrea heading into chemo, my family needs to do everything it can to ensure that we all stay healthy. Where possible, we need to eliminate potential ailments from the running.

That’s how I found myself sitting in my car outside Tom Brown Arena at 5 a.m. this past Saturday. It wasn’t that hard to get myself moving at that hour since I haven’t been sleeping through the night for the last few weeks. I expected there to be a long and established line when I arrived. It turns out there was only one person ahead of me. He had already been there for an hour expecting the same concert-event-of-the-year lineup I was.

People really didn’t start arriving until after 6am. The clinic was scheduled to begin distributing wristbands at 7:30 a.m. The wristbands guarantee you a spot for the vaccination clinic and even block you into a time frame so you can return with your family and not have to worry about a long wait.

A cheery attendant marched through the lineup tent around 7 a.m. and belted out a friendly “good morning”. He asked if everyone was comfortable and if we all knew the order of the line. His energy level re-energized the crowd and he announced that he would be back shortly to begin handing out the bracelets.

He returned and began handing out the wristbands at 7:15 a.m… 15 minutes ahead of schedule. I got my four wristbands and was told to return at 9 a.m.

I went home to my family, had a shower and ate some breakfast. When I returned for the vaccination clinic with my family, I was able to reconnect with the folks I’d been hanging out with before the sun rose and even introduced my daughters to a few of them. It was all very friendly — and not just the people waiting for their H1N1 vaccine, but the people receiving the public, the ushers, the nurses, the volunteers… everyone was pleasant, cheery and genuinely concerned that everyone feel welcome and attended to.

We left the clinic with our antibodies 9:45 a.m. We wouldn’t be reminded of the clinic until about 4 p.m. when our arms started to hurt.

So, if I’d arrived around 6 a.m. instead of being unnecessarily early with my 5 a.m. arrival, I would have waited a grand total of 90 minutes for my four wristbands. That’s it. The remaining 45 minutes was all about processing, getting our needles and waiting out the 15 minute post-vaccination “health watch” period.

Kudos to the clinic staff and a heartfelt thank you to everyone who went through hell to make our experience a great one.

Based on the conversation, I came up with three ingredients to my audio secret sauce.

1) GOOD EQUIPMENT

Not everyone has the budget of my client and can stock up on good quality microphones (I believe my client uses Hiel mics), preamps, mixing boards and recording hardware. Get the best equipment your budget can afford.

I highly recommend establishing a good relationship with a local store and make arrangements to try their equipment out, renting or borrowing equipment is that’s an option or having a decent amount of time to try it out in the store. Before making my decision to buy an Electrovoice RE-20 microphone a few years ago, my contact at a local store sent me home with five expensive microphones (almost $3500 worth) to try in my home studio and on my recording equipment.

It’s not only the microphone that makes a difference. You also need to consider the cabling ($10 dollar, 25 foot cables give $10, 25 foot sound) and the sound board and/or sound card you’re plugging your microphone into. Everything in the input chain affects the quality of the input signal you’re recording.

The same goes for your portable recording setup. Buy the portable audio recorder that offers you the best quality for your budget, not the one that you think looks cool. If you have the money, invest in a decent handheld microphone (and cable) to use with your portable recorder.

2) ‘LESS IS MORE’

This rule applies throughout the recording, editing and mixing stages of audio production and is a lesson I learned many years ago from Mark Blacher, owner of the long lost DB Recording Systems.

To start, you want to do as little input-processing as possible. In the case of my client, I know the engineer only does a little bit of equalizing to account for the room in which they record. Aside from that, I recommend doing nothing more than a little bit of limiting to prevent clipping. Limiting is done using an effects processor called (appropriately enough) a limiter to prevent music or the person speaking from being so loud that it negatively affects the recording.

My client’s engineer does a fantastic job with the recording and I’ve told him as much, encouraging him to not change anything (more on this later). His recordings are clean and warm. That’s easy to work with in post production. As Mark Blacher used to say (and probably still does), “you can’t make a bad recording sound good, you can only make it sound less bad.”

Signal processing is where people tend to make the biggest mistakes. Whether its equalizers, compressors/limiters, noise filter and gates, reverbs, delays or maximizers, the trend is to add elements without listening to how each adjustment affects the whole. The goal of using effects is generally to make all of the pieces fit together in the final mix. Of course, this is different if the goal is to be wild, crazy or a little more artistic/avante-garde.

In the spoken word and corporate audio production work I do, I use only the effects that actually add something meaningful to the mix. Then, another lesson from Mark Blacher, I add as much as it takes to audibly notice the effect over the mix, then back it off so it’s part of the mix.

To help with the understanding, let’s explore a few scenarios.

VOICEOVER WITH MUSIC: Here, we want the voice to stand out over the music and have both be elements of the mix without competing for attention. A rookie mistake is to focus strictly on bringing the music down in the mix (or worse, bring the voice up) so the voiceover stands out. The danger here is that the music gets pulled back too much and the mix loses a lot of the energy it needs from the relationship of the music and voice, together. I try to use both levels and equalization to pull the music back enough. With a little experimentation, I use the equalizer to find the dominant frequencies shared by both music and voice (voice being the primary user of those frequencies) and then pull those frequencies back from the music (depending on the music, anywhere between -3db and -12db). The goal is to carve out a space for the voice and music to co-exist.

In fact, when it comes to less is more, a supplement to that is take away before you add. This is particularly true when it comes to mixing. You’ll get far better results turning the loud things down than turning the quiet things up. And, your listener will appreciate your efforts much more (even if they don’t know it).

EVEN-ING THE ODD LEVELS: It’s not uncommon to have variances in the volume between recorded voices. There are a lot of tricks to getting the levels evened out, the most common one is to use a compressor. Compressors work kind of like a vice on a workbench (and many people use it that way), pressing everything together to hold it in one spot. In the audio world, this means that every sound below a certain audible level is amplified to that minimum, and every sound above a certain audible level is decreased to that maximum. The mistake people make is to trust the compressor to do its job without listening to the result. Common results are audio that has no dynamics (everything from a whisper to an explosion ends up being the same volume) and that there is an audible event of amplifying weak signals and crushing strong ones (think of how your ears feel after coming out of a loud concert). Telltale signs of improper use of a compressor is that ambient sounds like appliances, electronics and air movement end up taking residence in the mix. This is bad. Very bad! Where possible, do as much level tweaking using your level faders. Use compression only to bring things a little closer to each other. Moderate discrepancies in the levels are far better than overuse of compression.

ADDING SOME ENERGY: This is more of a technique used in recording music, though there are applications for corporate voiceover work, as well. I’m talking about using reverbs and, to a lesser extent, delays to add depth and energy to a voice. This is not something I generally recommend, by the way. However, if you must try it, I stand by the mantra of ‘less is more’. In fact, done well, most people won’t even notice the reverb at all. I remember when Mark Blacher introduced me to this approach of reverb use, I was irate that I was paying him to add reverb to the mix and I couldn’t hear it. Then, he muted the reverb and the song suddenly sounded empty and thin. Delays add an echo which, for obvious reasons, will be indentifiable in the mix. The real trick is to make sure the delay doesn’t become overly dominant.

NOISE FILTERS AND GATES: My best advice… get good foreground sound as far away as undesirable noises (such as refrigerators, fans, hums, etc…). Noise filters and gates introduce a lot of challenges and can really mess up a recording. The same goes for auto-ducking. Stay away! If you really must use these effects, see ingredient #3.

3) PLAY

The only way to know how to use the various dials, switches, faders, pans, pots, cables, blinky lights and especially your ears is to play with your equipment and as many different recordings as you can. Take advantage of quiet time and hobby projects to figure out how things work, how to make some things sound like hell and how to make others sound great.

There’s a million different ways to make good chilli and your job as the audio engineer and producer is to figure out which ingredients go best together, in which quantities and sequence, and how the result should sit in the bowl (and which bowl to use, for that matter). Then, figure out how to do things entirely differently.

With play comes fun and real experience.

THE NOT-SO-SECRET INGREDIENT

During our phone conversation, it became apparent that my client had ended up with processor creep (including a loudness maximizer). In an attempt to develop a sound they liked, they had moved so far away from the great source recording that there was a real disconnect between the original performance and the resulting audio.

When asked which processors I was using and how I was using them to get the great sound, I double checked and confirmed I was using only a little bit of subtractive equalization and nothing else; no compressors, no reverbs, no maximizers. The warm and full sound of the final product I produced came almost entirely from the skill and technique of the recording engineer (and the great equipment he’s using).

If I had to identify the one ingredient in audio secret sauce that makes a great product, it’s this… use your ears. Listen. Really. Carefully. Listen to the individual elements and (more importantly) how they all fit together. Everything you hear must make sense to your ears.

…each challenge we face is designed to prepare us for what comes next. We must therefore ask ourselves four important questions as we face and then assess our handling of each challenge: (1) how did this challenge come about? (2) what did I do to address the challenge? (3) what have I learned? and, (4) what will I do differently next time?

…considering challenges as a sum, not of individual parts, complicates problem solving and makes it difficult to understand what happened.

…regret anchors us in the past and denies us permission to do the next thing.

…each of us has the ability to change the world.

Except yesterday.

I opened my box and discovered a motion sickness bag that had a return address stamped on it — from Chapter1Studio. I couldn’t pass this one up. I opened the bag and found a letter that posed the question:

Does your printed material make you sick?

While I have no printed material, nor any need for it at the moment, I know that it will take quite a while for me to forget the name Chapter1Studio. Which means they’ll be fresh in my mind when I do have printing needs.

I wonder if any other companies have the courage to surprise me, today.

Where books used to lead to radio shows, Terry and Mike went the other way. On October 27th, they released their book The Age of Persuasion: How Marketing Ate Our Culture. Just days earlier, Terry, knowing me to be a fan of his radio show, left a message on my blog, making himself and Mike Tennant available for cross-examination.

Little ol’ me. I guess it’s true what they say: “bloggers and podcasters really do have influence…”

Subjects covered:

• marketing
• advertising
• collaborating
• creativity
• curiosity
• “Do This Or Die“

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.

That approach, and others, overlook one thing: people talk and always have. It started a long, long time ago with face-to-face communications using body language, then spoken language with town criers and messenger, which led way to written language and the postal system. Don’t forget about smoke signals. Then the telephone, radio, television and this thing called the internet.

Organizations have embraced many technologies over the years to help with communications, business development and networking. None has been more controversial than the internet which offers ample opportunities to build and sometimes destroy business with a few keystrokes. As a result, an increasing number of businesses are waging war on democratized social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

The biggest fear is the rate at which information travels. Gone are the days when an employee would leak information to the wrong person at a social gathering and find the information reaching the press several days or weeks later. Stories break on the internet, particularly Twitter, on an hourly basis and companies don’t like that the data doesn’t know social, geographic or political boundaries.

Things have changed significantly and quickly for business. I understand their concern. Particularly since the new wave of authentic, transparent and regular communication is something the establishment hasn’t yet embraced. Old traditions die hard. We have to graduate through another generation of business leaders, perhaps two, before modern social communications finds its way into the fabric of the corporate world. Until then, communications will remain the work of an individual or specific team, not the entire company.

In my work over the last few years, I’ve become aware of a number of situations in which sweeping decisions were made with little thought about the impact. For example, many government departments I’ve worked with have blacklisted Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Those restrictions also applied to the communications and human resources department, teams that could benefit from using social media to monitor conversations, participate in conversations, recruit and check up on potential hires. Getting exceptions for these departments was/is challenging. Conversely, I’ve heard of some forward thinking companies that recognize making allowances for personal use of the company phones and internet connection means people are happier at work and don’t have to leave the office for extended periods or  sneakily try to do online banking at the office.

Some people I’ve spoken with noted that their management views social networks as unproductive use of time, apparently forgetting ill-planned and poorly executed meetings, many of which start late, end later and achieve nothing.

There are many ways social media tools can work for companies. The simple lesson to remember is that people talk, no matter which channel is available to them. The companies that create a culture of trust and provide support and education are best positioned to manage and even benefit from the use of social media.

Out, damned lump! Out, I say!

Andrea’s lumpectomy went very well. We had planned on it being a mastectomy and when we learned that the surgical date would be pushed out two weeks because of the extra time required, we decided on the lumpectomy. We wanted to get the cancer out without delay. And out it is. We’re looking forward to a good pathology report that confirms the surgeon got everything. After Andrea’s recovery from surgery, we’ll prepare for chemo.

… in The Age of Persuasion

I’ve written a few posts about The Age of Persuasion, a brilliant radio program produced by Pirate Toronto for CBC. Terry O’Reilly (host and co-creator) left a comment on one such post last week to notify me that The Age of Persuasion book (by Terry and producer/co-creator Mike Tennant) is being released today (October 27) and offering to be available for an online Q&A with me. I’ll be interviewing Terry and Mike this Thursday morning and will publish the audio shortly after.

Social media and the workplace

CHQR (Calgary) has invited me to talk about social media and the workplace later today. The discussion stems from reports that a growing number of businesses, sports organizations and entertainment companies are preventing the use of social media tools such as Facebook and Twitter as communications channels by employees, athletes and movie stars (respectively). In some cases, companies are blocking access to these tools from internal networks using technology such as firewalls. In the case of sports and entertainment organizations, the prevention is being written into contracts.

Issue #4: the risk of wearing people out or, worse, doing too many things badly rather than few things very well

When they first moved to digital, newspaper, radio and television organizations used the Internet as yet another channel to distribute content they’d already produced. There was little in the way of breaking news on the web because the media outlets didn’t have the knowledge or agility to get news on their website quickly. The Internet didn’t drive traffic to their primary channel, nor their primary channel to the Internet. They were competing with themselves and marginalizing both of their efforts in the process.

I’ll hand it to them now; they learned very quickly that the present of media and communications is the integration of digital and traditional modes of distribution and engagement. During a meeting I was in, yesterday, an accomplished and well respected public affairs professional referred to this as digital being part of the marrow of a communications campaign, not a graft on to it.

This recognition is important, yet it comes at a cost. shrinking budgets means fewer staff that are expected to do more. For people that have been in the business for a while, it’s a reinvention of their workflow and a lengthening of their day – I’m guessing at the same salary.

During a presentation he gave last spring, Ottawa Sun sports columnist Chris Stevenson explained that he is now expected to write his column, keep a blog that augments (not competes) with his column and produce a video for the Ottawa Sun website, all from the same fact finding missions. Where he used to carry a pad and pencil to take interview notes, now he seemingly has to write with one hand and operate a hand-held video camera with another. The intent is that each work he produces appreciates the value of the other.

Let’s return to my earlier study of the O’Brien trial. Here, the new normal (the integration of digital and traditional) may have been just a minor change in mindset and tools. Ottawa Citizen columnist Glen McGregor (legally) broadcasted courtroom proceedings over Twitter. It was like he was a digital court reporter for the public and the “tweets” (I’m guessing) became the notes from which he wrote is article. News junkies loved this because they followed unfiltered facts from the courtroom in real time from which they could make their own assessment of the situation. Then they could read Glen’s column the next morning to get some analysis. CBC Ottawa’s Alistair Steele (radio) and Cory O’Kelly (television) found Twitter’s 140 character limit too restrictive so they tag-teamed short blog posts, focussing their energy on their deadlines and creating strong reports for the evening news. Unfortunately, that approach meant that on many days, digital seemed like an afterthought.

Suggestion: Realign production demands and deadlines. Overloading the journalist could lead to doing too much badly, worker burnout or (worse) diminish the personality of the column or media brand. Integrate digital in a way that becomes part of the existing workflow instead of adding more work to the flow. Or, find a way to spread out some of the work.

• I will probably blog more about this than I had originally planned to
• I’m the project manager of Survivor Cancer: The Andrea Project

When it comes to this project management role, I realized that there’s a lot that corporate and government communications folks can learn, particularly in crisis situations, from people in my situation.

Communications

Andrea and I didn’t wait to tell people. Indeed, many of the people we told about Andrea’s diagnosis seemed taken aback at how transparent we were. One person told me she had always thought the best policy was to keep serious illness secret from as much family, and especially from friends, as possible.

There are three reasons we didn’t wait. First, our situation will definitely affect our normal routines, many of which involve family and friends. Second, we may need help. Finally, other people may benefit from our knowledge and experience.

We shared our news in appropriate ways, and didn’t gloss over it for any audience. That is, we didn’t do a soft delivery, leading people along as we went. We came out with it – like pulling a band aid off. There’s only one way to say “it’s cancer”. It stings for a moment and it avoids a prolonged build up to the news.

To relate all of this to the “business” world, Andrea and I were direct with our internal stakeholders (immediate family, our daughters in particular) from day one. They knew there was a concern and we answered all of their questions as they came up. We didn’t spin anything. We shared the good possibilities and the not-s0-good possibilities and told them we’d update them with each new development — which we did.

With the exception of a very select few people we consider to be trusted confidantes who are in a position to help us out, we didn’t share our situation with “external stakeholders” until we had a diagnosis. When we did make the announcement, we used all of possible channels to make it swift and clear.

Support

Our network of family and friends kicked in right away with offers of support and help. More surprisingly, many of my clients offered support and flexibility with projects. One client responded right away with an offer of regular meals delivered to our home. Members of our online communities started emailing, postal mailing and phoning from around the world with good wishes. Friends who have been through, or are going through, similar situations offered to get together with us to share experiences and strategies. We’ve also received many offers of help with our children.

As first timers with this kind of situation, we’ve suddenly found ourselves better equipped to deal with the dynamic and unpredictability of treatments, and energized to face the rocky roads ahead. More importantly, we’re able to better filter and process the information we receive from reliable resources — I recommend staying away from Internet-based information as much as possible since you can become easily overwhelmed and even frightened.

The Fringes

Tylenol shocked the corporate world when they were decisive, swift and transparent in the wake of the cyanide contamination. Everyone thought the company would fail if not because of the crisis, because of their response. Then, they shocked the corporate world a second time by coming out stronger having invented tamper-proof packaging. It’s a model that’s been followed and rejected with a full spectrum of results.

When iSTAR (Canada’s first national-scale ISP) was being sold to PSInet in the 1997, my co-workers and I found it very hard to stay motivated and supportive of the transition because it was painfully obvious that the information we were being fed was disingenuous and incomplete. Even some senior executives told me, personally, that they felt the town hall meetings were ill-conceived attempts to keep staff on board by simply telling everyone to soldier on with no rationale other than “we’re telling you to”. To paraphrase Andy Nulman, management was selling “soldier on”, not establishing an argument to buy it.

The Internet has created a global village, blurring the lines between the providers and consumers of products and services. Companies and governments have taken on personalities. People understand that crisis happens and have demonstrated that they’re willing to be patient and even help out when necessary. The delicate thread that helps organizations — and families — succeed, is communications.

…pay attention to your customers. Why? Because your children need food and as much hugs as I get in the world, I can’t eat a fucking hug.

The room, myself included, welcomed “I can’t eat a fucking hug” as a new commandment of social media. I’ve discovered that, like any good rule, there’s at least one exception.

Nearly two weeks ago, we announced that Andrea has been diagnosed with breast cancer. Life, reality and schedules change very quickly (and erratically) with this news. The outpouring of support is incredible. We’ve received a steady flow of hugs, real and virtual, and I’ve learned that while hugs may not put food on the table, they give you the will to sit down and eat and keep good care of yourself. I don’t believe that any amount of money can do that.

While driving home from the rehearsal, I started to wonder why I was so keen on this guitar stand being a part of the band’s live show. Which got me thinking about the concerts I remember. While I remember the performances and the musicianship of the bands I’ve seen, those memories get a bit foggier over time and they certainly don’t translate well in conversation.

“You wouldn’t believe the riff he played!”

“The bass player was in the groove.”

“That was the best version of their hit I’ve ever heard.”

These really sound like you-had-to-be-there moments.

I find that my most-clear concert memories usually centre around what I can easily explain and a listener can easily visualize — things like ZZ Top’s working junkyard stage during their Recycler tour, Dire Straits opening their On Every Street tour with a high tension screen that recoiled upwards in an instant on the opening hit of their first song, and Sting threatening to stop his Nothing Like the Sun concert in Ottawa because the general admission folks were forcing the people at the front into the protective fence.

We often talk about the stage layout, the pyrotechnics, the jumbo screens and the light show because we can describe it. It’s hard for us to hum back a great musical performance.

It’s worth noting that bands like ZZ Top aren’t just great live bands; they’re great live performers. They’ve incorporated incredible laser light shows with disco balls that make it look like it’s raining drops of light on the arena.  During their Recycler tour, Billy and Dusty were compacted into prop-compressed cars (midway through the show) which they burst out of wearing shiny gold jackets and new instruments.  They also walk, and seemingly slide around, on moving conveyor belts which always gets a roar from the crowd. Maybe that’s why I’ve seen the band five times — it’s more than just the music which I know they can play very well.

On the Monday two days after our performance as part of a benefit concert at the Elmdale Tavern a few weeks ago, Woody and Doc took a few moments to talk about the event on the Doc and Woody morning show on CHEZ 106. Woody wrapped up the 45-second conversation by saying Robert Farrell was “on fire” (the only band or musician mentioned by name). That sounds like a lot of post-concert reviews to the average listener. I can’t help but wonder if an elevating guitar stand would have spiced up the conversation and had listeners curious enough to come to the next show.

I’m sure Drum-Mark and I (Bass-Mark) will continue to bug Robert about his guitar stand. Come see us when we perform in November. Perhaps you’ll get to see this famed elevating guitar stand.  Our next public concerts are November 6 and 7 (POSTPONED TO DECEMBER, DATES TBD) at Buster’s Bar and Grill (2525 Carling Avenue, Ottawa).

I’m sure there are lots of sites that feature stories from cancer survivors and their support teams. Today, though, I’d like to add my site to that list. If you have a story to share, please add it to the comments of this post, or add a comment that links to the page where you’ve already shared your story. There’s 31 days in this month; let’s see if we can chart 31 stories right here!

Thanks.

TIME

“Time”, I started.  ”You need to accept that it takes time to build a community and for a dialog to gain momentum. Sustainable relationships and meaningful communications rarely, if ever, happen from a single instant or one encounter. Digital communications is about the marathon, not the sprint.” [with props to Rukhsana Khan for the running metaphor]

ENERGY

“You must put energy into everything you do”, I continued. “To run a full marathon, you need the energy to take you from the staring blocks to the finish line. In digital communications, the finish line moves ahead just as quickly as you do. If you invest only a small amount of energy, or if you spend all of your energy on an early burst, you’ll never be able to keep yourself going when the technology and nature of digital relationships and communications evolves. Besides, relationships are about the process, not the product.”

AUTHENTICITY

“Everything you do and say as an organization and as individuals throughout your organization must be authentic. That means accepting your people as part of organization’s character and voice. Pontificating isn’t welcome here, nor is corporate messaging coming from the mouths of real people. The public is much more savvy and far less forgiving than it has ever been, particularly when it comes to state and corporate communications.”

MONEY

“Digital communications costs money — whether on resources, technology, travel, etc… — though money alone will not buy you success. More importantly, you need to allocate your money on your relationships, not on a Ferrari.” [I used Ferrari because it was fresh in my mind.  This morning I saw an architect or designer emerge from one to talk to a homeowner about his renovation plans.] “You’re better off taking everyone out for a coffee and sitting down with them for a few minutes than investing in an expensive ad campaign. Use your money to get to know people, not show them how successful you are.”

That’s when it occurred to me: time, energy, authenticity and money — TEAM.

I’ll be walking the audience through an exploration of digital communications and how content in a variety of forms (text, audio and video) can be used as onramps to engage an audience and build relationships.  The session will also draw on my approach to producing engaging content — Content Paleontology.  Instead of the traditional style where a story is identified and mapped out during the planning and acquisition stages of production, Content Paleontology discovers and reveals the story through a series of iterative steps.

The best part of our list and stories is that while they were delivered with a book industry focus, the golden rules themselves are portable to any industry and community.

Here’s our list…

10. Be a champion of the industry/genre. (celebrate others)

9. Never approach a network or individual in a network with a greedy one sided agenda. –Keith Burtis

8. KNOW the site/people you’re approaching, and why.

7. Follow the site’s guidelines/policies if they’re published. (read About, FAQ, everything!)

6. Customize and personalize your message. (add value and be reasonable)

5. Address the site/people by name.

4. Never harass the site/people. (a follow-up is fine)

3. Be polite, gracious and humble. (books are not currency)

2. If the site is good enough to approach, it’s good enough to promote.

1. If you let the site/person love you and your work, they will become your champion.

Enjoy!

I’ll be performing with Robert Farrell as the headlining act at a fundraising benefit concert for breast cancer research.

The event is taking place Saturday, October 3 at the Elmdale Tavern (1084 Wellington Street W) in Ottawa.  We’ll be taking the stage around 10pm.

This week’s one-hour session, Bloggers/Podcasters are People, Too: Engaging with the social media community will feature our take on the Top 10 Golden Rules for engaging with online communities and individuals.

The series wraps up next Thursday (October 1) with a final session, Remarkable Use of the Internet to Promote Books and the People Behind Them.

To register, follow this link, put a check mark in the box next to each webcast you’d like to attend then click the “Register” button.  Your registration will apply to each webcast you selected.

Here’s another look at the state of media — traditional and digital — and how things continue to evolve in that space… Did You Know 4.0.

Hat tip: Dale Arseneault.

I reflected on that after rehearsal, wondering if my Waterstone would displace my Precision Special as my primary instrument.  A few hours later Robert called me basically suggesting that the Waterstone become my main bass.  That has me thinking even more about ways I can adapt some songs and tweak my effect chain (perhaps some octave) to create a unique sound for myself.

If you want to learn more about Waterstone guitars and basses, check out an interview I did with Waterstone founder (and Neurosurgeon by day), Dr. Bob Singer, a few years back for my Electric Sky podcast.

Thank you, Dr. Bob, for an amazing bass!

I first met Robert in 1989.  I had become good friends with his younger brother, Jamie.  Jamie sang and played saxophone and still does both. After finishing high school, I suggested that we start a band.  Jamie introduced me to Robert and, shortly after, Millennium was formed.  It was a loose outfit, seven members strong: Jamie (vocals and sax), Robert (vocals and guitar), Graham (guitar and vocals), me (bass and vocals), Linda (keyboards), Danielle (vocals) and a revolving door of drummers (Rob, Al, another Al, Jessel and one or two others).

Millennium played songs by the Scorpions, Smithereens, Jethro Tull, ZZ Top, Sting, Van Halen and others, and a few of our own.  We were all over the place musically. When the band wasn’t playing, Robert and I practiced, wrote and recorded music.  When we weren’t working on music, we worked for the same company and hung out.

That seven-piece pop/rock band went through a number of turbulent transitions.  Robert and I remained the core of the band.  Eventually, with a drummer named Eric, we became a tight and energetic three-piece blues/rock band, Thunderbird, with a decent following.  Our music repertoire made more sense: Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughan, ZZ Top, The Arc Angels, B.B. King, Buddy Guy and others, and a few of our tunes.

Lots of stories later…

The Wellington Roadhouse gigs (with Lorenzo on drums) came at a time when I couldn’t keep up with Robert’s ambitions.  Since then, we’ve talked several times over the years about playing in a band together, again.  The reason has always been that we had fun playing music together.

I’ve actually been in a few bands since my last gig with Robert and I’ve enjoyed working on music with other people.  However, there’s a chemistry that I’ve never found in any other combo I’ve been a part of.

After a long break, Robert and I hooked up with yet another drummer — another guy named Mark.  The three of us opened up our first rehearsal, today, with Stevie Ray Vaughan’s Cold Shot.  It felt great.

Rehearsals will continue and there’s talk of some gigs.

Issue #2: focus on content, not delivery, in the “Age of Niche”

It’s not fun when “your” industry finds itself under huge external pressures that are well beyond your control.  The music industry has been struggling with this in several stages; first with MP3 files and then when Peer-to-Peer (P2P) networks made file sharing simple.  If you consider the reasons for this shift, you realize it had more to do with portability and ease of distribution — both of which came with simplified user interfaces — than it did with the product and the price.

Niche interests in news and entertainment is nothing new.  Music, movies and the media have organized their content by categories for years.  The distribution, though, has been largely about targeting the masses, not the specific audience that would most appreciate the specific product.  That’s the difference between a garden hose on spray or stream — there’s a lot of wasted water in the former.

These new technologies have made it easier for individuals to make choices specific to their own tastes.  In many respects this means further segmentation of the news.  More importantly, this means ensuring the delivery is structured so that each audience receives only the content it wants.

It takes more to reach the audience on its terms than just organizing the content by subject, it takes genuine knowledge of human interface and user experience — be that online, in broadcast media or print publications.

Suddenly the media organizations need to think a lot more about availability, accessibility and design in a variety of media channels, each of which has its unique features and challenges.

Suggestion: Spend the time to design your website and produce your media (traditional and digital) in a way that appeals, individually, to a large number of diversely focused interests. Pay special attention to the interface and the way you engage each audience — if it’s ugly, confusing or not engaging, noone will be interested.

It was his role as Arthur Fonzarelli that both propelled him to fame and overshadows the amazing work he’s done in the entertainment industry and for humanity.  A small portion of those accomplishments were highlighted in an introduction that took nearly as long as Mr. Winkler had for his own speech.

It was an inspirational evening.  The Fonz told stories about his own amazing journey through life, stories that illustrated a journey tied to the idea of “If you will it, it’s not a dream” — a powerful message Mr. Winkler has always lived by without realizing it until receiving that exact message on a card from a fan.  All of his stories illustrated a life that seems to have taken place as if by design and certainly too amazing to be a Hollywood movie.  And yet, despite his fame, Mr. Winkler’s life and work seems completely relatable — it really seemed as if I was spending an evening with a close friend.

While he may have had the audience completely engaged during his 35-minute talk, by far the biggest reaction he received was when he quoted The Fonz, in character: “Hey Ritchie, you can get a library card, and they’re free.” The theatre went wild.  That one line in an episode of Happy Days resulted in a 500% increase in library registrations in the United States.  Mr. Winkler used that story, and others, to illustrate how simple it is to make a positive difference in the world.

After a passionate standing ovation, Mr. Winkler wound his way through the audience, happily speaking with and signing autographs for everyone who took the opportunity to approach him (yes, I was one of them).

I had the privilege of interviewing Henry Winkler last year about his Hank Zipzer books and the challenges he’s faced with Dyslexia.  You can listen to that interview by CLICKING HERE.

I produced this video for EDC which documents the victory of their Export THIS Plane Pull challenge team as they pulled a 193,000lb Fed/Ex Airbus A310, 12 feet in 5.529 seconds, to take the cup.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SFGt4qr9-Ek