In the meantime, here’s a refresher of where things were in my original report.

While sitting at our table, we watched a red Sunfire pull into the rear-most parking spot of the line. The next spot up was also available and when the driver turned off the ignition, the first three feet of her car were well inside the next space (leaving a good six feet of available space in her own spot). In parking this way, the driver had made it impossible for another car to use the spot (except a Mini as the driver later noted).

As the woman fumbled for change through her purse at the hood of her car, one of my colleagues politely pointed out the situation. The driver immediately responded by saying she was lined up with the meter (she was well past it) to which my colleague replied that bylaw officers measure parking spaces by the painted lines. She stepped back from her car to inspect the painted line before sniping that she had to be on [Parliament] Hill in five minutes and had “far more important things to do than to worry about other people.” This is when she pointed out that a Mini could fit in the available space.

I find it particularly interesting that certain personalities succeed by rationalizing their actions on internalized importance — they do better by assigning their mistakes to others rather than accept responsibility for their actions. For them, this approach applies equally to qualitative and quantitative measures.

Is it their self-importance or the fact they succeed by it that most infuriates the rest of us?

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Kady led an engaging Q&A on journalism, politics and digital media at PAB2010. This video features excerpts of of her session.

OPENING PITCH

I was once a committed baseball fan. That love led me to the exciting summer of 1995; the first and only championship season of the Ottawa Lynx. I worked for them that summer. I delivered my first real business pitch — on my own initiative. It was a time when companies were getting into the website craze, most of them pushing products and merchandise online rather than offering value to customers, current and prospective. I could sense it wouldn’t be long before minor league ball teams would follow suit and saw an opportunity to offer greater value to fans and ticket holders through the web. So, I approached the front office of the team and pitched the idea of creating a website that delivered value rather than a shopping cart.

The Lynx loved the idea. The plan was to publish line scores, box scores, team and player stats, season and club records and summaries of club activities (such as roster moves) on a daily basis. Basically, to offer the fans what they couldn’t get anywhere else. My proposal was designed to augment any media coverage rather than compete with it (I didn’t want the website to result in lost interest in Citizen or Sun coverage of the team).

FIRST UP

The Ottawa Lynx became the first baseball club in the International League to have a website.

As webmaster, I woke up at 5am everyday and grabbed the latest statistical information, scratched together some other relevant updates and manually coded the web pages. The information was online before the vast majority of the public had gotten out of bed. I kept a historical record of the games of 1995 on the site so fans could cross reference the information. It was all linked since site search technology wasn’t freely and easily available.

Two or three other ILB teams launched their own web pages as the season progressed. Those sites were about merchandising.

THE RALLY (AN ASIDE)

The Lynx had a great team in 95. That combined with the URL being promoted during the games helped drive interest in the site. They clinched a playoff spot at the second last game of the season (against the Syracuse Sky Chiefs, for those keeping tabs). If I recall correctly, manager Pete Mackanin celebrated by granting pitcher J.J. Thobe’s request to set the batting order for the final game. It was comical. Catcher Bert Heffernan, who usually batted mid-to-late in the lineup, was given the lead-off spot. Most of the players showed up hungover. A fun day, though not the most inspired playing. The team reserved that for the post-season.

LATE INNING CHANGES

That same year, Major League Baseball had tested out live online coverage of regular season games. It was before live video streaming, of course. They used a static cartoon-like graphic of a ball park with a line score below. After each play, the page would be updated with a text blurb that would describe what happened and provide a new version of the graphic — something like “Grissom singled to right”, and the graphic would indicate a player standing on first base. Knowing that out of town Lynx games weren’t broadcast on the radio, intrigued by scenes in the movie Bull Durham and inspired by MLB, I convinced the front office to try out online, text-based coverage of the out-of-town playoff games. I would get a call from the press box between each half inning and would update the site.

It was an idea that was ahead of its time. While the website was attracting 800-1500 hits each day, people weren’t (YET) conditioned to sit in front of their computers to consume near real-time content they couldn’t get anywhere else. Only the hard core baseball geeks like me would do that. According to my memory, that was 15 at best (including me, the person on the phone, transcribing the updates and publishing them to the site). It’s funny to consider how much has changed since that one series I put my friends on hold to be a sportscaster.

DOUBLE THREAT

Besides swimming in a sea of cool statistical information and helping promote my home team, the club gave the game-time job of “Ticker Boy” — making me a double threat in baseball parlance. My additional role was to monitor baseball scores coming off the dot matrix printer in the press box during home games and provide updates to the scoreboard operator and game announcer. For that, I was fed, paid to watch every home game with the front office staff and media, and had the added bonus of chatting with players and even getting to shag fly balls during batting practice.

I was known in the press box as the thin, geeky guy who knew all about the web. With the exception of the location, not much has changed.

CORKING THE WEB

Noone in the box, myself included, appreciated where the web was going and how our little website was part of a trend toward connecting what was then called COINS (Communities of Interest Networks) through digital channels. It was an experiment in doing things that are now basic functionality of the technology.

EPILOGUE

The Lynx won the Governor’s Cup on September 13. It was an exciting game made more-so by a lengthy mid-game rain delay. I updated the website to announce the win then joined the celebrations in the clubhouse. While there was beer and champagne flying everywhere, I didn’t drink anything that night. I grabbed a bat and carried it from player to player for autographs… Curtis Pride, Jim Buccheri, Bert Heffernan, Julian Yan, Ted Wood…

Word was F.P. Santangelo was driving to Ottawa after the Expos game to participate in the celebrations. By 2am he hadn’t arrived and players were dispersing to homes. I got in my car to head home and wondered what kind of reaction I’d get if stopped by the police reeking of alcohol and blowing a pass in the breathalyzer.

I arrived home to a voice mail message from Millie Lundgren, partner of iSTAR Internet where I’d been working on contract providing IT support for a few weeks. It was a job offer. My career was beginning.

I took our youngest daughter, Bayla to the ballpark on September 3, 2007. We’d been only a few times since the team had ended its affiliation with the Montreal Expos in 2002. However, this was the last game of the Ottawa Lynx, a team that couldn’t get fans in the seats, and I needed to be there for the goodbye. For the occasion, the team dusted of original mascot, Lenny, to share cheer leading duties with his successor, Skratch. After the 8-5 loss to Syracuse, the team opened the gates and allowed fans to run on the field. Bayla and I had a great time. When it came time to leave, we scooped some dirt from the third base line and brought it home in a container.

Baseball card created using MyTradingCards.com.

…five years since CBC Unplugged christened podcasting as an important channel for media talent to stay connected with legions of fans (and vice versa)… five years since Shelagh’s Caravan made its way from Vancouver to Signal Hill, podcasting their unregulated adventures and interactions with Canadians in homes, community centres and schools… five years since podcasting made its debut as a tool for advocacy.

Think about that.

Podcasting had barely hatched and, guided by traditional media folk, was establishing itself as a tool for connecting Canadians to each other. Given the thousands of people downloading and subscribing to “raw” regional programming from real people (media people), a case can be made that the engagement and connection made possible by podcasts played a significant role in creating a groundswell of public support for the locked out employees – people who no longer had access to transmission towers. Their content marginalized the BBC reruns on traditional CBC frequencies.

New media proved itself a substantial force in modern communication. Recognizing this, the CBC expanded its new media strategy after the lockout was settled. Now, five years later, the two types of distribution are more seamlessly integrated — as they should be.

It’s quite by accident I remembered earlier today I had supported the production and publication of Locked Out Live, the podcast created by the locked out employees of CBC Ottawa (still available on my Electric Sky site) as well as publishing a few of my own podcasts featuring locked out talent (check out I Want My CBC, The Penance-Cast and Locked Out Idol). It was my opportunity to apply my media appreciation and understanding to a new way of producing and distributing content. I remember those days fondly for the opportunity to learn from the best and was all to happy to see those people return to the airwaves.

By the way, congratulations to Alan Neal for taking over the host’s seat for CBC Ottawa’s All in a Day. Some suggest it was Alan’s appearance on Electric Sky that tipped the scales in his favour.

Thank you to James Clendenan for maintaining a CBC Unplugged mirror!

One such speaker was Mike Tennant, co-creator and (now retired) writer of the amazing CBC radio show Age of Persuasion. Using specific examples of radio programs and advertisements throughout history, Mike delivered a keynote which illustrated the role of creative in the modern age of media and how content creators can use creative to build, engage, and motivate audiences.

This video features excerpts of his talk, Beyond Words: What makes great media resonate.

Derek Miller was the first to introduce me to the idea of a Digital Executor. In fact, it’s possible he coined the term. While I didn’t act on his thoughts, he was the first person who made me consider that my content will likely outlive me. And, at PAB2010, Adele McAlear exposed us to the stories of real people left behind a digital legacy, challenging us to think about the intersection of death, social media and technology, and what things we should do to protect our digital assets.

I was reminded of Sylvain Grand’maison’s JOLT at PAB2010. Sylvain challenged the conference to purge our subscriptions to blogs, podcasts and video content, delete that… er… stuff… and build up fresh lists based on content that has meaning to us now.

It’s amazing how much we accumulate over time. Whether it’s picking up something we think we may one day need, keeping something that once served a purpose and may one day be necessary again, or items that have sentimental value, we’re amazingly adept at filling the spaces in our space with personal and professional clutter.

Our house is much more navigable now. Our space is much less overwhelming. I wonder what took us so long to do this.

Now on to fifteen years worth of hard drives.

I’ve always been extraordinarily careful to backup my data, code, settings and even take screen shots of important configuration information before doing any serious maintenance on any of my sites — even my personal websites. After gathering all of the important pieces, I back them up on two hard drives (or a hard drive and USB key). Then, and only then, do I perform the maintenance.

Not so a couple of weeks ago. It was late evening and, as I contemplated the effort of following my standard process I considered that I’d never caused myself a catastrophic situation.

As I think back to that fateful moment when I killed my site, I realize I was overly conscious of the possibility because by giving fate an opening I was daring it to enter.

Thanks a million to Nico for bailing me out. There are still a few wrinkles to iron out. However, I’m able to post, again.

Photo: Helpdesk Warning Sign uploaded by matildaben.

Mr. McLoughlin punctuated his talk by saying “The world needs more content creators” and went on to explain “…every technology, every media you can concoct, requires creative content creators with something to say.”

This video is part of the Session Clips series from PAB2010 and includes Mr. McLoughlin’s five rules of communication and creating compelling content that’s relevant for your audience.

In his 2010 TEDTalk How to listen to global voices, Ethan Zuckerman explains that a myopic view of the world comes from not looking beyond ourselves, and living in a world in which data doesn’t always travel faster than atoms (as much as we might wish to believe otherwise). Mr. Zuckerman makes a fantastic case for exposing ourselves to different languages and cultures, and seeking to understand that which we don’t.

Targeting key influencers means a lot of things. I’m going to kick off the week with a sobering look at “key influencer” marketing.

OVERSIGHT

Going after key influencers means leaving behind a lot of “smaller” voices that may have an aggregate influence greater than a single big voice. The smaller voices can have significant reach and probably enjoy a closer relationship with their cozy audience than a key influencer does with his/her enterprise.

INFLUENCER AND AUDIENCE FATIGUE

Many key influencers are pitched more times a day than you can imagine. Your issue and pitch must resonate with the influencer and should come to them at a time when the issue can be wedged into his/her established editorial calendar. In considering whether or not to participate, the key influencer will consider if the audience will eel put off by yet another call to action. Key influencers will not want to engage in anything that will result in audience fatigue.

DRIVE-BY EFFECT

With large and engaged audiences comes the risk that any single Twitter message or blog post will go largely unnoticed. One Twitter message among one hundred or more in a day might come and go without capturing the interest or even the eyes of people in the community.

PUBLIC VALUE STATEMENTS

An organization that selectively decides whose voice is worth responding to in the digital world makes a public declaration of which voices have value to them and which don’t. This can be a dangerous proposition since an organization loses audience one person at a time and a company one customer at a time (oh, and a politician one voter at a time). Miscalculating who should be acknowledged could be disastrous (see The Cataclysm Effect).

THE CATACLYSM EFFECT

Ignoring a sea of “small voices” expressing concern over an issue could mean an organization will face a rather large storm if that issue hits a tipping point. For example, there was already a swell of anger growing online when, in 2005, Jeff Jarvis went public with his frustration over problems with his Dell computer and the lackluster service the company was offering him. Mr. Jarvis’ blog post became the catalyst that turned that sea of small voices into the head of the storm which was just as angry for being ignored by Dell as they were about problems with their computers and the company that had failed them.

In a conversation with a “key influencer” last year, we laughed that “A-listers” like himself have only one direction they can travel in quickly. The small voices are the ones building strong and engaged communities everyone else will join.

These friendships and that fun evening wouldn’t have happened if it weren’t for our blog and podcast. The same is true for our friendships with author Sheree Fitch who has visited us twice this year and author/illustrator Lee Edward Fodi whom I’ve visited a few times in Vancouver and who visited us when he was in Ottawa for the first time a few months ago.

This past weekend, Isabelle Michaud, Dave Brodbeck and their “kids” Madelaine and Jon visited us during their road trip back home to Sault Ste. Marie. They arrived midday Saturday and stayed overnight. We had a great visit with them, a visit that wouldn’t have happened if not for their podcast Broca’s Area, my Electric Sky Podcast and me co-creating the Canadian Podcast Buffet community and the PAB conference (both with Bob Goyetche) some years ago.

Today, Whitney Hoffman and her son Jon are arriving in Ottawa and spending a couple of nights at our place. Besides the adults spending time together at various conferences, our two families have gotten together a few times (Niagara Falls and Montreal). That friendship wouldn’t have happened if not for Whitney’s and my individual passions for podcasting and community building (and the encouragement of the aforementioned Bob) taking me to the first PodCamp Boston in September 2006.

I have many other stories of engagement and friendships I could tell you, all of which came about in a similar way and all of them about having an impact. Most of us connected folk would help (and have helped) out the others without a thought — both online and off. We would spend (and have spent) hours together chatting and developing ideas — both online and off. We may have at one time asked each other to broadcast a message to our extended networks for that quick promotional hit — that was before we knew and understood effective ways of online community building and long-term connections, rather than  treating our other online connections as superficial distribution networks (a practice which seems rampant today).

The people who say digital communication and social networking is mundane, and those who direct their exclusive attention to the “key influencers”  obviously haven’t tried the tools or figured out how to engage effectively.

Photo: Muchies by Andrea Ross.

If you love what you’re doing, you don’t notice how hard you’re working. I’ve always liked to exceed my customers’ expectations. If someone’s flight has been delayed by a storm, say, and I can help them make up the time they’ve lost, they leave the airport with a smile on their face, and that’s the kind of thing that makes my day.

On behalf of the people you’ve helped, Lloyd, thank you!

We published a series of videos about the DII, sharing the findings with a sector-specific view. A standout video for me features John Sparks, the general manager of our Calgary office. John does a great job explaining in plain English why digital matters, how corporate executives are approaching communication the wrong way and why people pay attention to “some guy”.

However, digital is no longer a bolt-on to comms plans. Digital has become integral to all communication initiatives. Why are we still creating social media specific policies? The same rules and due care should apply to all channels, be they traditional or digital. This means I’m starting to trumpet the idea of one policy applying to all communication channels, and guidelines should be created to help communicators navigate the tools and cultures.

What are your thoughts?

Photo: If You Don’t Follow, You Will be Rejected uploaded by Dan Dickinson.

We hadn’t expected Julien would ask what we wanted him to speak about. Since I had extended the invitation, I had to come up with something pretty quickly. In the heat of the moment I suggested medieval alchemy and niche programming in the modern age. It made absolutely no sense and likely came to me because I suspect Julien once said the words “medieval alchemy” in his podcast and I wanted him to know I was still a regular listener.

The shocking thing is Julien actually delivered a talk not only with that title, but that connected the two thoughts and made a lot of sense (hear for yourself). He delivered the talk at 9am!

Nearly four years later, Julien was at my birthday party back-pedalling on a rant he’d done denouncing the iPad as four iPhones taped together. Among the points of his revised thinking is the iPad has completely reinvented Dungeons and Dragons for him. With one JOLT! opening available at PAB2010 (now transformed to a conference about content creation), I asked Julien if he could talk about what content creators can learn from D&D.

If you know Julien you know how he says “sure” with a calm and dismissive tone and a shrug of his shoulder as if to say “can’t anybody?”

What I love about Julien’s JOLT! is that he ties in content creation and audience engagement and he makes you feel like the whole thing just occurred to him.

I was reminded of this when completing the Podcast Listener Preference Survey posted by Adele McAlear and Donna Papacosta. They ask participants to share expanded thoughts at the end of each section, including the section on advertising and sponsorship.

Here’s what I said.

Podcasters worth their salt and who understand the importance of their audience will work with advertisers to create an ad that is consistent with the show’s vibe and approach to communication (rather than flying-in a 30 second spot provided by the advertiser).
There’s nothing wrong with advertising so long as the new digital channels aren’t treated in the same way as traditional ones.

Besides, I’m much more likely to buy into a sponsor with a host who says “Brand X has been very supportive of my show and is helping make it possible for me to produce this show on a consistent basis. I’d be grateful if you consider their y-product next time you’re on the market for one” rather than a canned ad, played or spoken.

I should have pointed out that I will definitely consider a product or service the host loves and raves about — whether they’re paid to or not. Audiences can tell the difference between genuine praise and contractual obligations. [update: Also, I don't mean to suggest that podcasts MUST embrace advertising and sponsorship. These are my thoughts for those who are considering or have decided to go that route.]

The Catfish Show did it best when, in 2006, they were sponsored by HBO to help promote (the now long-cancelled comedy) “Big Love”. Bob and Cat worked the ad into their regular content format when Bob pulled out a guitar and tackled the key points of the ad in an apparently impromptu song. It felt in place.

Online communities emerge out of the relationship that develops from valuable content and the authentic voice. The audience needs to know that the advertiser/sponsor has been welcomed by the host for value-based and authentic reasons or the host will gamble away the trust of the audience.

Nothing resonates with online audiences more than situations to which they can relate and stories from people they feel they know.

In Online Relationships and Real Life: Finding your sweet spot, Eden Spodek told PAB2010 how she used her shopping blog to share her personal story and how she trusted her online community with it.

Related: Contested Irrelevance by Andrea Ross

I remember when I did IT support for iSTAR and was visiting our Halifax office. While helping him with his Mac Powerbook (yes… it was 1995), Chuck Mora took a phone call during which he absent-mindedly [on reflection, it was very purposeful yet subconscious] moved the tip of his pinky finger around the built-in screen, creating mesmerizing swirly patterns in the gas plasma display. Chuck’s moment of zen nearly sent me into convulsions. [I now recall Chuck defending himself noting how interesting the patterns were.]

I can say the move to all-screen computer interfaces on the iPhone and especially iPad, with their healthy diet of my own fingerprints, has been therapeutic for me. I clean my monitors less often and I laugh instead of cringe when people mistakenly touch computer screens when they’re told to “click on…”

Yes, a little screen anarchy is a healthy thing.

However, I still carry a soft cloth.

Photo: iPad Fingerprints uploaded by Chris Pirillo.

Andrea was right. And I was thrilled that our last JOLT!er of the weekend, Nancy Morris, ended her JOLT!, the last item of the official speaking program, with a fantastic question. And with it, she encapsulated the entire conference.

John Meadows has the ability to be insightful, critical and funny (a very dry sense of humour) at the same time. An important part of his charm is that he regularly laughs at his own jokes (with everyone else, by the way). John is great at taking matters that are important to him, and the community, and making them light.

A big part of the PAB vibe has always been that content creation and digital channels are not owned by marketers and communication professionals. This is a sentiment that many in the community hold dear. And, since the conference is about creating compelling content and engaging audiences, the professionals come to the conference to learn from the amateurs who have been online since it all began (nearly half the people at PAB2010 work in PR, marketing and communication, and journalism).

John earned a standing ovation from the entire room for this serenade.

I used to assume all of these seemingly natural storytellers were born with the built-in ability to craft images. When I interviewed Stuart McLean (one of Canada’s best-known storytellers) I was shocked to learn that some are dedicated artists or technicians. I’ll always remember the moment I heard him describe the process of writing and refining stories and then his comment about the process and participants:

We work very hard to make it look like we don’t work hard at all.

Frankly, it doesn’t matter to me. While my producer-self is desperate to know the minutiae of the process, my listener-self doesn’t believe it’s anything but chance when absorbed in a great audio program.

By the way, the same rules apply to video — a medium for which many amateurs rely far too much on the easy access to cameras and editing tools to create mundane content, mistakenly forgetting (or ignoring) the importance of good video elements and especially good audio elements.

Anthony Marco nailed it at PAB2010. He used his JOLT! to demonstrate — simply — how words can create images in the minds of the audience, and that less is more when it comes to giving your audience permission to be in the moment with you.

This year we video taped the entire speaking program and will be releasing something from each session.

The PAB2010 JOLT! videos were officially launched on the PAB conference website this morning. Over the next week, PAB will trickle out blog posts to highlight each of the the JOLT!s. I’ll be publishing my own version of those posts, here.

Today’s featured JOLT! comes from Sylvain Grand’maison who compared the impact of healthy content consumption habits on the brain to healthy eating habits on the body, and issued a call to action for media consumers.

The PAB2010 JOLT! that started it all, though, was Andrea‘s. Her talk about discovering the impact of meaningful online relationships and communities left nary a dry eye at the conference and commanded a standing ovation and lots of hugs.

It seemed like a crazy idea, analogous to telling a National Geographic collector to purge and start over from zero, giving up the collectors’ editions in the process. The premise of his idea is that as you start to subscribe to content, again, you’ll subscribe more discriminately and won’t blindly recompile your “old” list — save the content that was most important to you. It’s scary and brilliant at the same time.

I’ve done my own version of this. It’s working so far. And, I feel refreshed because the shows that I haven’t been able to keep up with and that were feeling like a burden are now gone. Ahhhhhh. I think the new list tells an interesting story about who I am.

Photo: Sylvain Grand’maison – You are what you year taken by Alexa Clark.

Now, friends have scattered in planes, trains and automobiles (though a few are spending a day or two more in Ottawa).

Some Twitter messages speak of naps. I had one. And now I find myself in the annual post-PAB state of exhaustion and elation. I’m inspired to explore new limits and projects, incorporating the ideas I was exposed to this weekend. Prepare yourself. You’ll be hearing quite a bit about this year’s conference from me over the next few weeks.

Thank you, everyone, for another incredible event. I’ll be ready for the next dose in time for PAB2011.

Speaking of which, early registration for PAB2011 (June 24-26, 2011) is CDN$120 and will be available only until 11:55pmET on July 1, 2010. Limited spaces are already filling up!!

PAB2010 Family Picture by Martin Jones using Bob Goyetche‘s camera.
PAB2010 Panorama photo by Tod Maffin.

Like previous years, we put together a show of clips from the community — thoughts on how to prepare for and extend the PAB experience. It’s kind of hard to explain, but PAB is really like no other conference you’ve been to. So, the audio clips serve as a great reminder for PAB veterans and a fantastic introduction for PAB virgins. The intent for this type of show is to be listened to en route to PAB.

We received so many clips this year that we had to do two shows (listen to episode 163 and 164 of the Canadian Podcast Buffet). One standout comes from John Meadows who explained so well, what makes PAB so unique. It made me feel extraordinarily proud to be a part of the PAB community and to have the trust of others to contribute to the event.

You can hear John’s thoughts in the attached podcast.

DOWNLOAD THE PAB2010 PROGRAM

I began thinking more critically about conference decisions when co-organizing PAB in 2006. I realized that if I was going to contribute to the conference landscape, I had to contribute something that I myself would want to attend. This is even more important if I was creating a conference for which I was expecting people to pay registration fee; if I wouldn’t pay to attend the conference out of my own pocket, why should I ask others to do so? That thinking has been the driving force behind PAB. I’ve been to far too many conferences which were quite obviously planned as an excuse to bring people together, charge money and deliver content without much attention to the experience.

This has led to me being more selective of the conferences I attend while making me envious of some conferences. I find myself asking the question “is this a conference I wish I had organized?” It makes attending conferences a bit of a challenge — I find myself constantly analyzing the conference and the apparent planning decisions that made it happen “that way”. I wonder why things were done and how the organizers worked to make the event memorable.

With just three days to go before PAB2010, I’m in that place of wondering if we’ve done everything to make this event stand out and build on last year’s success. And yet, it’s time to relax and let things unfold as they’re meant to. The good news is that each year I head into PAB knowing it’s an event I would pay my own money to attend and that I’m honoured to have organized.

The weekend looks something like this…

Friday, June 18, 2010

• 1:00pm Behind the scenes/backstage tour of the NAC
• 2:30pm TBD
• 3:30pm What It Is: Awesomizing Your Podcast Using Secrets From Radio (Tod Maffin) [1 hour]
• 7:00pm Registration and Community Lounging
• 7:30pm PAB2009 Kick-off (Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche)
• 7:45pm The world has changed…now what? (Barry McLoughlin)
• 8:45pm Socializing

Saturday, June 19, 2010

• 8:30am Registration
• 8:50am Day two opening remarks (Bob Goyetche and Mark Blevis)
• 9:00am Make the Irrelevant Relevant: Apply Three Adult Learning Principles to Your Media (Mare Swallow)
• 9:40am JOLT! Contested Irrelevance (Andrea Ross)
• 9:45am Break
• 10:00am Independent humanitarian organizations and social media (Avril Benoît)
• 10:40am JOLT! You are what you hear (Sylvain Grand’maison)
• 10:45am Break
• 11:00am What if my boss finds out? (Dave Brodbeck, Tom Merritt, Ken Hernden & Scarborough Dude)
• 11:40am LUNCH (Atlantic salmon or vegetarian)
• 1:00pm Beyond Words: What Makes Great Media Resonate (Mike Tennant)
• 1:40pm JOLT! A Word is Worth a Thousand Pictures (Anthony Marco)
• 1:45pm Break
• 2:00pm Disruption of Social Contracts (Whitney Hoffman)
• 2:40pm JOLT! Where did all the amateurs go? (John Meadows)
• 2:45pm Break
• 3:00pm Communicating Responsibly (Tamir Israel)
• 3:40pm JOLT! Online relationships and real life friendships – finding your sweetspot (Eden Spodek)
• 3:45pm Break
• 4:00pm Strong media brands (personal and mainstream) in the digital age (Kady O’Malley)
• 4:40pm Day two wrap-up and group photo (Bob Goyetche and Mark Blevis)
• 8:00pm BOAT CRUISE — PAB registrant partners and families are invited [2 hours]

Sunday, June 20, 2010

• 8:50am Day three opening remarks (Bob Goyetche and Mark Blevis)
• 9:00am Death and Digital Legacy (Adele McAlear)
• 9:40am JOLT! When in doubt, have cultists attack (Julien Smith)
• 9:45am Break
• 10:00am Cult of Listener: Podcaster as shaman in the post-literate Global Theatre (Adam Gratrix)
• 10:40am Making Meaning: How to Create Content that Speaks to People (Susan Murphy)
• 11:25am JOLT! The currency of relevance (Nancy Morris)
• 11:30am Conference wrap-up (Mark Blevis and Bob Goyetche)
• 12:00pm PAB2010 ends (hustle out of the venue and spend the afternoon together)

1) Enforce a time limit

It’s easy to decide that each show will stay focused on a particular topic or idea. Sticking to that rule is a lot harder. Deciding to communicate the story or idea in a finite amount of time is a perfect way to force yourself to stay focused and can ultimately help you make tough editing decisions. In my case, I set a 10 minute limit.

2) Leave space

Too many content creators find it difficult to leave breathing space in their productions. The breathing space can be actual silences or silences in the ideas. Silence in ideas means knowing the story in such a way that it’s obvious when adding something takes away from something else. This could mean eliminating one line of thought because it works better as a suggestion rather than a billboard, or it could mean recognizing that the additional thoughts are extraneous and take away from the whole. Learning to leave space is where you really earn your battle scars of great content creation and storytelling.

3) Have a hanging thought

Many of the podcasts I listened to wrapped up nicely and I went on with my day having no relationship to the people or ideas in the program. It was like the producer stole some time away from me and gave me nothing to take away. From experimenting, I discovered that having a hanging thought at the end of my show kept the people and ideas rattling around the heads of my listeners. Some sent feedback saying they wished there was more in the show; others sent feedback that they’d done their own research online or had bought a book on the subject. Wanting more meant my listeners did more for themselves and came back for the next show.

Sure there are other pieces of advice I can share such as provide value for your audience, create your show to cater to your own self interest, be authentic and passionate and have fun. Most people already do that because those are the obvious and easy choices. It’s the tough choices that make your content stand out just as it’s the tough choices in all of our pursuits that make our achievements that much more meaningful for all involved.

I had largely forgotten about those tough choices until I received a great piece of feedback from a dedicated fan of Electric Sky. It came after a new episode was published following yet another extended production break (eight months this time). And that’s all the motivation I need to dust off a few episodes that have already been recorded and to conduct a fresh interview tonight.

I had prepared myself for the possibility the Rideau Centre Apple store would be sold out by the time I arrived. Though, I had also built up my excitement to get an iPad on launch day – a first time, first day adopter, cementing my place in the Cult of Apple.

I practiced discipline when I arrived at the office. It wasn’t until the second wave of colleagues came in to my office to admire the shrink-wrapped box that I decided to open it among friends. We were all spellbound. Even more surprising is that I spent very little time with it over the weekend (I spent most of my weekend away from digital lifestyle).

As little time as I spent on it, I can honestly say this… the iPad is an incredible piece of technology and it will go almost everywhere I go. I can see that it will play an important role in productivity and creativity. And while I, like many others, wonder why it doesn’t have a camera or the ability to annotate books (among other things), I’m impressed by the display, interface and even the on-screen keyboard!

The iPad is easy to use, fast and powerful, and there’s almost no limit to the applications available for both work and play. It will definitely change my game.

You can learn more at MyColdCup.com.

In fact, Smitty and I look so much alike that when my longtime best friend and former bandmate Robert Farrell signed a birthday card (made by my friend Franc Epton) featuring a photo of Smitty on stage, Robert’s only thought was that he didn’t realize I owned that model of Fender guitar. Others at the party who weren’t familiar with Smitty were similarly shocked to learn it wasn’t me in the photo.

The most shocking part for me, though, was the card was made to look like an iPad to represent the intention of an Apple gift card I was given by my friends during my birthday celebration last night. WOW!

Thank you very much Rick Claus and Kelli, Bob Goyetche and Cat, Jay West and Ann, Bob Ledrew (OtherBob) and Cat, Jamie O’Farrell, Julien Smith, Robert Farrell, Maurizio Ortolani and Jacinthe, and Franc Epton and Lisa. Thank you for being a part of my life, thank you for being at my 40th celebration and thanks for the amazing gift.

That gift card will be the desktop wallpaper for my iPad, which I will try to get when the Apple store opens on Friday.

There. I said it.

Really, it feels about the same.

I had thought about doing a podcast like the one James Whittingham did a few years ago which he recorded at midnight heading into his 40th birthday. Instead, I thought I’d recount 40 memories that help tell the story of my 40 years. These are not “THE” stories. They’re just stories that happen to be on my mind these days.

By the way, I wrote this straight through so don’t get upset with any spelling or grammar mistakes.

1. Lego was a religion for me for many years. I could entertain myself for hours building and playing.
2. One of my main distractions was a Radio Shack 100-in-1 project kit my parents bought me as a gift. While I enjoyed a variety of projects, by far my favourite was the radio transmitter. I spent many hours in our basement broadcasting from in front of the console stereo which allowed me to spin tunes for my audience — a transistor radio that sat on the opposite side of the room.
3. The 100-in-1 project kit led me to make regular trips to our local Heathkit store. I remember building a crystal radio and spending hours sitting on the floor by the outlet under my window listening to AM radio. I also remember discovering that at night I could pick up AM radio from hundreds of miles away.
4. I know there were lots of class parties, especially when Bar and Bat Mitzvahs kicked in. One party that I will always remember was at Ariel Dalfen’s house during grade 8. She had a DJ and I remember very distinctly when Safety Dance came on and suddenly the awkward “I’m not dancing” feeling everyone had evaporated and everyone started to dance.
5. I wasn’t much into reading, though I had a healthy love of radio. I remember setting an alarm for midnight to listen to The Zero Hour on CHEZ106.
6. Tim Carley was the only person I knew whose family had Pay TV. Not only that, they had First Choice and Superchannel. I slept over there often and we’d stay up late watching movies and The Police Synchronicity concert from Le Spectrum in Montreal.
7. Using the money left to me by my grandmother, I got a Commodore Vic 20. With that computer and the Commodore 64 that came after, my dad would spend hours in the basement with me, helping me type in the code for games and other programs from the back pages of Compute! magazine. I also remember when he and I went to the computer store and bought our first printer, a Mannesman-Tally dot matrix.
8. Somehow I landed the gig of mowing the lawn of local radio celebrity Brian “The Source” Murphy. Brian was a walking library of music, and his house was the physical manifestation of that passion. The best part is he paid me in blues mix tapes and bootlegs of Police and U2 concerts.
9. School was not my strong point. I just wasn’t into academics the way I was into socializing. That’s probably why Mr. Mitchell told me before the end of grade 9 that I was an underachiever.
10. One of my great high school successes was meeting Jamie O’Farrell, who would become my best friend. Jamie and I spent so much time together that I eventually became a surrogate member of the O’Farrell family.
11. If The Police weren’t going to keep releasing albums and touring, I’d have to settle for Sting. I waited outside Sam the Record Man for it to open the day Dream of the Blue Turtles came out. I listened to the album, start to finish, three times that morning.
12. I really found my love of radio when I spent a co-op work term at CHUO, the University of Ottawa’s cable radio station. I reported to Tom Metuzals and worked closely with George Regan. I think I still have a cassette with some PSAs we produced against drinking an driving.
13. On the advice of Mr. Ashworth, my high school co-op advisor, I spent my second co-op work term at the accounting firm of Ginsberg, Gluzman, Fage and Levitz. Mr. Ashworth saw that I’d done well in my accounting class (doing well stood out on my report card) and felt it would be a good fit. I really enjoyed my time there, though I did very little in the way of accounting work for the firm. I did spend a lot of time fixing up their basement file vault where I discovered a rat problem. This led to a well-paid summer job with the firm. I remember that Love and Mercy (Brian Wilson) and Everlasting Love (Howard Jones) were in incessant radio rotation that summer.
14. My father rarely took me out to practice driving. Instead, he’d take me out to parallel park for an hour or two. I despised parallel parking and I would imagine terrible fates for my father. To this day I can parallel park on a dime.
15. The first bass guitar I bought with my own money was a metallic silver Ibanez RB-820. I found the bass in the classifieds and took the city bus to Orleans to buy it without telling my parents. It was a great bass, though I remember it weighing a ton.
16. As high school wound up, Jamie and I talked about forming a band. Jamie enlisted his older brother Bob who apparently liked how diplomatic I was after our initial phone conversation about the band. Jamie, Bob and I became very close. I was eventually ribbed by other friends that I couldn’t refer to one and not the other, making it sound like “Bob-n-Jamie” was one person.
17. Bob-n-Jamie and I spent a lot of time writing and recording music in their parents’ basement. I have a box of cassettes with original songs, covers and recordings of our live shows. We dabbled in a variety of styles and tinkered with some of the coolest analog and digital technology. We were a great team when it came to getting ideas developed and recorded. To this day, of all of the musicians I’ve played with and projects I’ve worked on, I’ve had the most fun working with Bob.
18. Once, when my parents were away, I had some friends over to watch movies. I threw a bag of popcorn in the microwave, set the timer for five minutes and went down to watch more of the movie. The popcorn was in for about 90 seconds longer that it should have been. The microwave belched smoke into the kitchen. It was incredibly thick and was spreading to the dining room before I came up from the basement. It took the rest of the time my parents were away to air out the house.
19. Besides being in a band together and hanging out all of the time, I eventually took a job with Bob. We worked for a woodshop. On my first day, Bob and I had to deliver custom trays for artifact storage to the Canadian Museum of Civilization. As I coached Bob when he was backing up the truck, I slapped the back of the truck with my hand and then quickly lay down so my legs could be seen emerging from behind the truck in the side view mirror. Working with Bob proved to be as fun as everything else which we always seemed to do together.
20. On the subject of that woodshop… I once picked up the owner’s Casio PDA, an electronic toy which he never used. I figured out how to type in a note for him. Two months later he went into a tirade when he turned on his PDA and he saw the phrase “Eat fibre”.
21. My favourite theatre was any drive-in. It wasn’t unusual to go once a week, sometimes two nights in a row.
22. I began my career at iSTAR. It was an incredible workplace and time to be entering the IT world. It was particularly exciting since it was a startup and there were plenty of opportunities to get experience with different technologies and projects. Perhaps one of my best memories from there was being a part of the trade show team. Our booth was monolithic and took a team of about 12 of us, 20 hours to build.
23. I met Andrea at a Christmas party thrown by one of Bob’s former roommates. Andrea was on a date she didn’t want to be on so her friend Kita tagged along. I wanted to speak to Andrea and didn’t have the courage to approach her. If it wasn’t for Kita intercepting Bob and me on our way out to go to another party we’d been invited to, I wouldn’t have met my soul mate. In fact, it’s kind of incredible to think of everything that had to happen for us to meet.
24. Lucy was born by C-section after three days of induced labour (poor Andrea!). When the doctor first saw her she said “he’s looking right at us”. Andrea and I were both a bit surprised when we heard “he” since all of the ultrasounds indicated we were expecting a girl. I could barely see Lucy when she was handed to me. I was so emotional, it felt like I was looking at her through a swimming pool.
25. Lucy was 10 months old when our friend Rick drowned while fly-fishing in the Ottawa River. He was last seen on the banks of the river the day after my 30th birthday. His body wouldn’t be found for another 10 days. I would drive from work in Kanata to sit with Rick’s family and other friends during my lunch hour, watching the diving team looking for him and remembering the last time I’d seen him, just one week before he disappeared. It was the first time I ever had to say goodbye to a friend.
26. Bayla was born by scheduled C-section (like Lucy, she was overdue). It was kind of surreal that her birth was such a scheduled. We made the day before “Lucy Day”, spending our last with Lucy as an only child doing things like going to the brand new Little Ray’s Reptile Adventure where she held a tarantula and had a scorpion climb up her shirt. Bayla was born with a full head of dark hair. The doctor sent me and Bayla out of the room so Andrea could be stitched up and I remember being alone with Bayla, singing to her and telling her about me and our world for what seemed like an eternity before we were reunited with Andrea.
27. While I admit I was never much of an academic, test anxiety caused the worst damage to my grades. So, passing my 6-hour CISSP professional certification exam in 2004 was a huge personal victory. I became disenchanted by the certification, though, since it did very little for my career. I decided to not renew it when it expired 3 years later.
28. For my 35th birthday, I went in to the recording studio to record my own version of a song I’d written with Bob O’Farrell 10 years earlier. It was meant to be the first track of a CD I wanted to record, and remains the only track I’ve recorded for that CD to date. The experience was amazing and I still have plans to work on that CD. In fact, I’d hoped it would be done for my 40th birthday. My discovery of podcasting derailed that effort. I wonder if I’ll ever get back to the CD.
29. I was at what is believed to be the first podcast meetup in Canada. Tod Maffin organized it when he was in Ottawa to deliver a keynote speech. Maurizio Ortolani of the NAC was also there. It was great to be with other people who understood the excitement of audio production and was the start of two very good friendships.
30. Tod was back in Ottawa a few weeks later and a much larger podcast meetup took place at the NAC. Besides local podcasters including some high school friends I hadn’t seen in years, a group of podcasters made the trip from Montreal. That’s the night I met Bob Goyetche (and his wife Cat) and Julien Smith. The podcasting community was still small then and this meeting became important in the evolution of the Canadian community.
31. Bob Goyetche and I reconnected at the famed Montreal Podcast Meetup a few months later. That’s the famous meetup which Bruce Murray arrived in the form of a cardboard cutout. It was also the night Bob and I came up with the idea of the Canadian Podcast Buffet, an effort to bring together the various regional podcasting groups that had formed as part of Tod Maffin’s efforts.
32. I’ll always remember the feeling of 80 podcasters from across Canada and the United States coming together for the first time at PAB2006, and event I co-founded and co-organized with Bob Goyetche and his wife Cat and Andrea. Everyone was excited to be there and be meeting each other for the first time. There were no egos, just sincere enthusiasm to meet each other and learn from each other. We all really felt that we were part of something new and important.
33. Perhaps the most exciting result of PAB was that Andrea suggested we do a podcast together. Less than a month later we launched Just One More Book to promote a love of reading and great children’s books. We were nobodies in the children’s book community then and didn’t have any particular plans other than to have fun. It was fun. Andrea and I were a great team in making that podcast turn into a community and we became an important connection for publishing industry insiders. I have many favourite moments from our three year run with JOMB. I’ll identify interviewing Henry Winkler as a standout since his name will come up again below.
34. I’m surprised when I think about how I handled the break-in of our home. I’m not sure if it was a defense mechanism that I focused on getting life back to normal or if I was really that driven to be a problem solver. I remember deciding in the moment I discovered the burglar alarm was the real deal that I would lead the family through the recovery and not get caught up emotionally.
35. Despite being a major fan of The Police when I was growing up, I had to wait for their reunion tour to see them in concert. A group of high school friends and I did a road trip to Montreal together to see them perform during the first leg of their tour. It was a fantastic road trip and an amazing concert. I saw The Police for a second time when they kicked off the third and final leg of their reunion tour in Ottawa. My daughters remembered that when the tour was announced I proclaimed that I would dye my hair blond if they came to Ottawa. My daughters reminded me of that when the Ottawa date was announced and I did indeed have my hair dyed for that (although, it came out kind of strawberry blond).
36. My Toastmasters club-mate and friend, Marcel, was killed in a car wreck two years ago. It was extremely hard for me to understand how that could happen. It was a very difficult time for me and made me think more about life and death. Thank goodness I was part of an amazing Toastmasters club. We served as a great support system for each other. Nevertheless, I found Toastmasters meetings painful for the next 9 months.
37. The most important speech I’ve ever attended was delivered by Henry Winkler. More than being inspiring, his speech was about real life, real people and real possibilities. He wasn’t selling anything but recognizing your own potential and having the confidence to be yourself from the inside out.
38. My world was rocked when Andrea was diagnosed with breast cancer. My fear led me to envision a much worse outcome. It’s amazing that we’ve come so far and I’m inspired everyday by how Andrea is handling this journey. After she was diagnosed, I invited all of our JOMB interview guests to leave a voice message with good wishes for Andrea. I sent out 220 requests. The first person to respond was Henry Winkler. He left a great and personal voice message.
39. In the period of a week, two of our close friends finished their journey through cancer. One of our friends had beaten the odds and was deemed to be cancer free after being handed the equivalent of a death sentence 7 months earlier. After getting over the excitement of her situation, we learned that another friend, the younger brother of Bob-n-Jamie, had succumbed to a cancer that took over his body in the same 7 month period.
40. Even though the bell didn’t live up to my expectations of it, I will always remember the feeling of being a part of Andrea’s last chemo treatment. That day made me realize that anything is possible. It proved to me so much about my life and the potential that lies ahead. That CD of mine will really happen. In fact, last night I dreamed that I was in a recording studio with Bob O’Farrell and Stewart Copeland. I’m not suggesting it will happen… but… it could. I’ll make that my selfish birthday wish.

Thank you to everyone who has been a part of my life so far — too many to mention. You’ve helped shaped my experiences and the person I am today.

Which reminds me of another story.

Andrea and I went for a walk along the Rideau Canal about a month ago. As we approached Dow’s Lake, we noticed a sign with large swastikas painted on both sides. I called the National Capital Commission (responsible for the sign and the park to which it directs pedestrians) to let them know. When I explained that their sign had swastikas on it, the attendant sounded confused and asked “So, you can’t read the sign?”

I wonder how often the subtleties of communication are lost in translation.

I’ve offered some thoughts on SMRs and how to use them effectively here and here. The use of hashtags, particularly in a headline, is a great example of how SMRs should be integrated more closely with the digital culture from which they originate in order to achieve a greater impact. In fact, within minutes of the release going live, people were already incorporating the hashtag in their Tweets.

Miranda is quick to point out the hashtag does not appear in the traditional media release for the ChipTrips campaign. However, the online version of the traditional release directs attention to the SMR where the full story is presented. I suspect it’s a matter of time before digital culture is more tightly integrated into traditional media releases.

Full disclosure: Frito Lay Canada is a client of my employer, Fleishman-Hillard.

I ended up having a bit too much fun with it. By the time I was done pulling ideas together, the music sounded like a hybrid of Prince and Barry White. So, I woke up early the next morning and embellished my morning voice to do a satirical spoken word track. I made an eight-second version as well; the long one is much more ridiculous and worth a listen.

I’d completely forgotten about it until I stumbled across it on my hard drive this morning. I had a great laugh listening to it and, since I have no shame, I thought I’d share it.

Photo of Mitch Joel and John Wall by Bob Goyetche.

Idea to Air examines the qualities of compelling audio and storytelling using examples to illustrate what creates “driveway moments” and makes listeners part of the process. This workshop has been part of PABs past and inspires participants to think and act differently when it comes to planning, recording, editing and sharing their content. In fact, this workshop is so popular that in the years it hasn’t been part of the PAB program, Tod has graciously held the session for small groups in his hotel room!

Let me take this moment to acknowledge Tod as one of the reasons the Canadian Podcast Buffet and PAB became necessary. If it wasn’t for his efforts to connect podcasters and content creators within communities across Canada in the early days of the media, Bob and I wouldn’t have been inspired to try connecting the communities. Who knew that our little experiment would attract people from around the world?

By the way… Tod is one of a group of people we call PAB lifers — the folk that have been to every year of the conference since its inaugural event in 2006.

Tod’s workshop will take place at 3pm Friday, June 18. A full program schedule will be published in the next few days. Remember, we’re accepting proposals for JOLT!s until 5pmET May 14.

A JOLT! is a timed 5-minute, slide-free session during which the speaker wakes-up the imaginations, brains and collective energy of the community.  Successful proposals will identify how you will present new ideas for innovation in content, production, tools, activities (real and virtual).  Remember to relate your talk to the theme. This is a chance for you to inspire others or make a pitch to collaborate to improve upon an existing idea or tool, or launch a new one.  JOLT!s cannot be used to sell a product or service, or launch a business venture. They are meant to get people thinking, talking, connecting and collaborating. JOLT! speakers receive no compensation.

We are accepting proposals for PAB2009 until 5pmET May 14, 2010.

If you are interested in being a JOLT! speaker at PAB2010, please submit a written proposal of no more than 150 words or an audio or video proposal of two-minutes or less to podcastersacrossborders@gmail.com.  Your proposal must include contact information, a title, and a summary of your JOLT!

Lack of time was among the reasons the candidate has given for not managing his own Twitter account. I suggested the volunteers can manage that by following Twitter activity for the candidate and breaking up the engagement into three blocks of time, selecting 5-10 messages that need to be responded to each morning, another 5-10 each afternoon and a final wave of 5-10 each evening. The volunteers should bring the messages to the candidate at regularly scheduled blocks of response time each morning, afternoon and evening, along with a summary of the ongoing conversation and sentiment. This makes sure social media is integral to the campaign and the candidate doesn’t become overwhelmed by the activity.

A similar approach can be used to manage all social network activity. Candidates can’t be expected to follow all of the activity, nor should volunteers be taking away the candidate’s opportunity to engage with the public.

By the way, I highly recommend that volunteers bring a mix of messages to the candidate. Responding only to the happy messages denies the candidate the opportunity to convert a voter. I have a great story about that which I captured in audio. I’ll publish that as a podcast.

This is meant to be an informal gathering to re-energize the group, find out what everyone is up to and what challenges they face and build up momentum for the upcoming PAB2010 conference (June 18-20 at the NAC). It’s possible some media may come. CTV has expressed interest in doing a piece on the local scene and the conference.

Click here to learn more about the group, join the group and RSVP for the meetup.

Tomorrow morning Bob Ledrew and I will spar, laugh and answer questions about PAB2010 on Thursday Special Blend, the Thursday morning radio show of Carleton University’s CKCU radio station. You can listen in on 93.1FM in Ottawa and ckcufm.com online.

To further illustrate the point, it’s worth watching this TEDtalk by James Howard Kunstler. Mr. Kunstler makes the case for public spaces worth caring about.

OSEG… are you paying attention?

Keynote speakers

• Friday keynote speaker Barry McLoughlin will explore the elements of style and how they impact media credibility and relevance.
• Saturday keynote speaker Mike Tennant (Age of Persuasion) will talk about the role of creative in the new age of media (traditional and digital) and how journalists, producers and community leaders can explore creative to build audiences.

Speaking sessions

• Cult of Listener: Podcaster as shaman in the post-literate Global Theatre; or, How to recruit disciples and brainwash your audience for fun and profit (speaker: Adam Gratrix)
• Making Meaning: How to Create Content that Speaks to People (speaker: Susan Murphy)
• Disruption of Social Contracts (speaker: Whitney Hoffman)
• Make the Irrelevant Relevant: Apply Three Adult Learning Principles to Your Media (speaker: Mare Swallow, aka The Etiquette Bitch)
• What if my boss finds out? (moderator Dave Brodbeck and panelists Tom Merritt, Ken Hernden and Scarborough Dude)
• Canadian Supreme Court “Responsible Communication” Ruling (speaker: Tamir Israel)
• Independent humanitarian organizations and social media (speaker: Avril Benoît)
• Strong media brands (personal and mainstream) in the digital age (speaker: Kady O’Malley)
• Death and Digital Legacy (speaker: Adele McAlear)

Things get confused with the use of audio and video as a feature of the media release. I’ve become aware that many organizations believe that adding audio and video constitutes a social media release because, as it turns out, they believe this offers the media release an interactive component. I disagree. Audio and video enrich the media release and make it easier for news organizations to include the originator in the news coverage without having to squeeze a phone call or site visit into an already tight news cycle.

Basically, we now have three types of media releases:

• Traditional text-based Media Releases which need to have news value and follow language and style rules (in Canada, that’s typically Canadian Press Style);
• Enriched Media Releases are Media Releases with audio/visual components which need to have news value and follow Audio News Release (ANR)/video Broadcast News Release (BNR) style rules; and,
• Social Media Releases which need to have appeal and offer value to the public, and provide a platform through which (and the opportunity for) the public can engage with the publisher of the content.

One of the great things about blogging is, rightly or wrongly, you can develop your thoughts in public. Much like a social media release, it creates a platform and opportunity to engage with others to come to a thoughtful conclusion and help figure out how to explain things well for others. This is yet another distinction between traditional media releases and social media releases which puts opportunity over finished product. Here’s a table I’m working on. I’d appreciate your thoughts on it.

My other posts on Media and Social Media Releases:

• Communication or relationship: which do you want?
• Social media releases: five harsh thoughts

* I still read printed books and use a pen and paper. In fact, I even write in cursive most of the time.

Social media has a similar problem — at least for companies/organizations that are being encouraged or find themselves with significant market pressures to adopt social media as part of their communication plan. Getting to the point where they actually pick up with social media, or following through on the effort in reaching their audience will continue to stymie businesses and leave them with a bad impression about social media and its potential.

I’ve pulled together five thoughts that can help organizations overcome the first mile/last mile problem of social media adoption and success:

Take that first step. Yesterday I blogged about press releases being a tool for communication and social media releases being a tool for relationships. The same rules applies to traditional and digital PR. Organizations that are willing to change the way they think about marketing and communication will be more likely to take a chance that will pay off. You have to take the first step to get to where you want to be.

Bring real fare. I’ve never heard of a company spending $1000 to produce and publish a national television commercial or allocate only $5000 to do a national product launch. To be successful in social media, companies need to put real money into the campaign. Real money will help yield real results.

Have a skilled driver. A car is a technology that allows people to drive between two places; without a capable driver, it’s just a tool. The same goes with social media. Organizations need real people — real capable people — to navigate the tools and make good decisions on behalf of the company.

Create a flexible map. I advocate guidelines rather than policies because guidelines offer agility and flexibility in recognition of the ever evolving nature of digital culture and tools. Just as copyright laws haven’t been able to keep up with advancements in technology, policies are cumbersome and slow innovation. They require debate, decisions, senior management signatures, enforcement and regular committee meetings for review and revision. Where policies create barriers and imply sanctions, guidelines support informed decisions and imply solutions.

Keep up. Cars need gas and oil and routine checks on tire wear and breaks; drivers need to improve skills and stay alert and agile for all sorts of driving conditions and situations. The same applies for maintaining social media tools and the people that use them. Technology and content should be current and presented in a pleasing manner, and the people behind them should develop their networking and digital engagement skills, and constantly keep up with the community that grows.

For those of you who have lost track, here are the speaking sessions announced so far:

• Friday keynote speaker Barry McLoughlin will explore the elements of style and how they impact media credibility and relevance.
• Cult of Listener: Podcaster as shaman in the post-literate Global Theatre; or, How to recruit disciples and brainwash your audience for fun and profit (speaker: Adam Gratrix)
• Making Meaning: How to Create Content that Speaks to People (speaker: Susan Murphy)
• Disruption of Social Contracts (speaker: Whitney Hoffman)
• Make the Irrelevant Relevant: Apply Three Adult Learning Principles to Your Media (speaker: Mare Swallow, aka The Etiquette Bitch)
• What if my boss finds out? (moderator Dave Brodbeck and panelists Tom Merritt, Ken Hernden and Scarborough Dude)

For my part, I suggested the press release is a message/communication tool and the oft-misunderstood, oft-misused social media release is a relationship/value tool. Both tell stories in different ways and, as David explained, both remain relevant and complementary.

For a press release to be an effective tool, writers need to follow a specific structure and rules about language and newsworthiness. Press releases are more valuable than ever because of the attrition of newsroom staff and budgets though I believe they have a bad reputation right now because fewer people are doing them well. A well written press release with a compelling and relevant story will be picked up by a newsroom and reused with little if any editing. I see far too many press releases with no story or a poorly told story, weak leads and with little attention to spelling and grammar.

For a social media release to be an effective tool, organizations need to think about how they can connect with one individual at a time, building a relationship using voice, rather than language. Few companies understand that and are using social media releases as a new distribution method for traditional press releases (good or bad) — much like television was radio with pictures until innovators began to experiment and discover ways of making this new media exciting and interesting. I believe SMRs need to be thought of as part of a larger strategy and should be connected with existing online efforts in order to offer amplified value. David also pointed out that properly done, SMRs can contribute to SEO which can give the organization and additional boost.

The discussion will be available on PBS.org’s Media Shift in the next few days. In the meantime, you can read my Social media releases: five harsh thoughts post for my views on how to make SMRs more effective for your organization.

In order to demonstrate things are happening, Bob and I have decided to publish information at regular intervals as it becomes available to keep people in the know. Which means we are pleased to announce the first three speaker selections for PAB2010.

• PAB alumn Adam Gratrix is the winner of the longest session title award. He will be delivering a session called Cult of Listener: Podcaster as shaman in the post-literate Global Theatre; or, How to Recruit Disciples and Brainwash your Audience for Fun and Profit.
• Susan Murphy will be participating in her first PAB and inspiring us with Making Meaning: How to Create Content that Speaks to People.
• Community leader, PodCamp den mother and longtime PABster Whitney Hoffman will be presenting Disruption of Social Contracts.

We’ve confirmed our Friday night (June 18) keynote speaker and are waiting to coordinate with this person to make the announcement. All I can say at this time is we’re very excited to have such a respected leader in media and communication to kick off this year’s event.

LISTEN TO UPDATES

CPB episode 156 was published this morning. It features an interview with original PABster Barry Lock (Barrie from Barrie and the new podcast The Sport Nerd) who’s registered for PAB after a two year absence. We also discuss some of the reasons PAB is a unique and valuable event which many folks have told us is underpriced at $150/person (listen to Chris Brogan’s JOLT in which he suggests we should be charging $400). We will begin publishing audio on the PAB website very soon.

REGISTER FOR PAB2010 AND TAKE ADVANTAGE OF THE EARLY DISCOUNT CODE

Remember, the early registration discount code (PAB2010) expires at 5pmET on Friday April 16. Register for PAB2010.

You probably remember that a house nearby our own was destroyed by a five-alarm fire a few weeks ago. As the fire became manageable, the fire department called in an excavator to demolish the smoldering building to ensure the fire was completely doused and the structure wouldn’t pose a safety risk.

The City of Ottawa has posted an Order to Comply notice on the fence surrounding the rubble that was the house. The notice reads…

THE INSPECTION on or about 31-March-2010 at the above-referenced address found the following contravention(s) of the Building Code or the Building Code Act, 1992.

YOU ARE HEREBY ORDERED to correct the contraventions itemized below immediately, by the date listed or by Immediately.

Item: 1
Reference: 8 (1) Act
Description and location: Demolition 2 storey duplex without benefit of a Demolition Permit

As you’d expect, the Order to Comply notice has earned the city a lot of criticism and laughs from passersby.

In case you haven’t seen it, here are a couple of videos I shot; one of the spectacular fire and the other of the excavator demolishing the smoldering building under the supervision of the Ottawa Fire Department.

Click here to register for PAB2010

The speaking program is being developed. We will begin making speaker announcements on Monday, April 12.

Thank you to everyone who has submitted a speaking proposal. We will be in touch soon. If you haven’t yet submitted a speaking proposal, time is running out. Deadline for submissions is 5pmET, April 9 — that’s THIS Friday!

In the end:

• I gave Bayla a colour photograph taken after Andrea’s last chemo treatment (last week)
• Bayla gave Andrea a 70% dark chocolate bar
• Andrea gave Lucy a notebook inside a pouch Andrea sewed for it
• Lucy gave me a reversible tie she designed, cut and sewed herself

The inaugural PAB in 2006 was a sold out event that drew delegates from across Canada and the United States. It kicked off with a keynote address by the CBC Radio’s Shelagh Rogers, featured a full day of speaking sessions and ended with a concert by two Canadian independent bands.

PAB has evolved into a social/new media conference and expanded from a one day to a three day event that includes speaking sessions, our popular five-minute JOLTs, workshops, concerts, social activities and a charity drive. The conference has flourished on a reputation of strong content and a welcoming community, attracting participants from as far away as the U. K. and South America.

We are currently preparing to open up for registrations. In the meantime, we are accepting speaking proposals. If you’re interested in being part of the speaking program at PAB2010, please submit a written proposal of no more than 150 words or an audio or video proposal of two-minutes or less to podcastersacrossborders@gmail.com. Your proposal must include contact information, a title, a summary of your session and your audio/visual requirements. Deadline for submissions is 5pmET, Friday, April 9.

Hope to see you at PAB2010!

Twenty fire trucks lined four sides of the block. There were pumpers and rescue vehicles on one side, and aerial ladder trucks on the other two sides. Fire suppression teams hunkered down in front of the house while other firefighters stationed themselves like sharp shooters on nearby roofs, spraying the burning house from the flank. A paramedic bus was stationed on the remaining side of the block and two ambulances sat nearby. Police vehicles cut off traffic at four distant intersections forcing city buses and their stops to be rerouted. City crews set up barricades while the hydro and gas companies closed down the grid. Neighbours took in the people who had to be evacuated, serving them tea and bagels and the Salvation Army sent its canteen truck to serve coffee and sandwiches to emergency personnel.

There was a real sense of camaraderie. Everyone was working together and looking out for each other. It was organized madness.

Five hours after the fire was reported, a flatbed towed an antique car from the parking lot of the adjacent auto garage to make space for an excavator, and the gas company dug a trench in front of the smoldering house to cap the gas line. After studying the blaze for hours and taking a detailed report from Frank (the man who reported the fire), investigators gave the go-ahead to move the excavator into position to begin tearing down the smoldering building. The excavator began exposing hot spots which firefighters calmly doused with water — a particularly delicate part of this process was taking down the chimney and exterior wall that sat just a few feet from the neighbouring house. The crews of the ladder trucks drained and rolled their hoses, closed down and left and roads were reopened. The paramedic bus headed home and the barricades were moved inwards. A hydro crew spliced the wire that fed the house.

A short time later, all that remained of the fleet of emergency vehicles and 55 firefighters was a single pumper truck and its crew. City workers swept up pieces of house, some of which had traveled several blocks on streams of water, and another crew cleaned up clogged sewage lines.

Things are quiet now. Power and gas service has been restored to the neighbourhood. A single security guard sits in a car in the barricaded block that was bustling with activity all day. The house has been reduced to a pile of rubble that has drawn people for a look during their evening stroll.

Two trees remain standing tall at the front of the affected property. They seem to have survived the trauma. One is covered in a blanket of ice which shimmers under the street light. If that tree could only talk.

Updated March 28.

I had the privilege of speaking with Liberal MP Denis Coderre and NDP MP Libby Davies about their use of Twitter. Unfortunately, Heritage Minister James Moore was unavailable. This podcast features the full-length version of the round table discussion. The podcast was recorded for the Fleishman-Hillard PoliticalView.ca group blog.

Topics addressed include:

• Twitter as a channel for personal and political-professional communication
• Twitter in humanitarian efforts and advocacy
• engagement vs broadcast mindsets
• Tweetups (gatherings organized through Twitter)
• managing individual opinions
• digital economy

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

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

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

Earlier today I blogged about Sanofi-Aventis and the lumps it’s taking for not understanding the new culture of communication and interaction in the digital age. Around the same time, the Globe and Mail’s Ivor Tossell published a critical piece about Prime Minister Stephen Harper and his asynchronous video town hall with Canadian citizens using popular social media site YouTube. Meanwhile, many companies are unable to embrace social media due to legislative or regulatory restrictions of which most of us are unaware.

It’s culture –not technology– that scares institutions.

Many social media advocates like to blame traditional values as the reason most establishments aren’t online or for “getting it wrong”. There is truth to that. However, I believe fear plays a bigger factor. And, many of the same social media advocates are to blame for that, too.

One such example took place in December 2009 2008 when Chris Brogan came under fire for a sponsored (positive) review of a shopping experience at K-Mart. Despite being transparent about the sponsorship from the very beginning, Chris’ following (and a large group of “griefers” that emerged for the opportunity to complain about something) couldn’t believe it was possible to have a good experience at K-Mart, paid or not. What the mob didn’t consider is that for all the opportunities it seeks to encourage businesses to get involved online and to invest money in online sponsorship and advertising, it actually portrayed the web as a hostile environment of which companies should be weary (and K-Mart got some free public opinion polling in the process).

Score one for Canada.

The speed at which messages are expected, misinterpreted and amplified is scary. This leads to baby steps like Your Interview with Prime Minister Stephen Harper. Of course, politicians and governments are not known for being on the cutting edge so we can expect the digitization of those worlds to take significantly longer — what I call the Long Head of adoption.

Having said that, apparently members of the US Government were stunned to learn Finance Canada Twittered the federal budget on March 4. The Ontario Ministry of Finance announced they’ll be doing the same on March 25. Perhaps the video town hall is “ho-hum”, but it is a small step toward 2010.

The best of both worlds.

As much as they’d like to venture into the unknown, it’s safer to stay where they know how the pastures look and act. That comfort and a fear of change leads Mitch Joel to quote General Eric Shinseki who said “If you don’t like change, you’re going to like irrelevance even less.”

Organizations need to be allowed the opportunity to test the waters and know they can be effective and productive in them. That means the digital masses (and media) will have plenty of opportunities to be critical of institutions for not embracing social media quickly enough and then berate them when they do it wrong.

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

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

Ooops!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

This is where things will get interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

To make matters worse, the cashier I asked about the sign didn’t seem to know where the money went, saying “I sure hope with a sign like that it’s not going to the company’s income statement.”

By asking the cashier about the sign, I inadvertently caused a number of other customers to start questioning the sign and speculating about this apparent environmental initiative. (It was like getting re-Tweeted in real life.)

Before I left the store, I stopped by the customer service counter and asked a manager about the sign. Apparently all profits from the sale of the plastic bags go to the World Wildlife Fund. The two of us spoke about Loblaws missing a perfect opportunity to include this information on the sign thus preventing the obvious speculation. It’s a wasted opportunity to gain some good PR.

You can read more about the campaign in this release on the WWF website.

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.