Techophilia and Social Progress

How can your business or nonprofit leverage Web 2.0 strategies to deepen your engagement with customers, win new fans, and position yourself for explosive growth? Marketing strategist Dorie Clark interviews Phillip Djwa of Internet strategy and development firm Agentic. In this interview, you’ll learn the most common mistakes businesses make with their websites (and how to avoid them), the mechanics of “going viral,” how you can take advantage of hot trends such as geolocation and mobile, and tips you can employ right now to make your website better and more effective.

Hear the interview

Went to the CMF town hall last week. I was interested to see that the “experimental” doesn’t refer to experimental content, though they are looking for innovation, but rather it is an experimental fund, as in, they aren’t really sure what it will bring. I think it will bring a real tsunami of stuff as most of the folks there were interested in that stream instead of the broadcast convergent stream.

Speaking of the convergent stream, I’m not 100% clear on how the financing of this will work for the new media component with the broadcasters. The CMF will pay 50% and “ask” that the broadcaster put in 10%. Leaving you the producer to raise 40%, but the point is the broadcaster. What do they actually get out of this. Will they have rights over it if you sell the property to a different geography? For 10%, that’s not a lot of equity to put in and many of them are asking for a lot of the online rights.

Also, most of the broadcasters have their own online presence that they want to bolt on to any show’s online property. What happens when you sell to a different broadcaster. My guess is we’ll have to share the bylines. But it will get confusing. For example, CBC wanted a header on a recent project, and that is complicated to remove or to change.

The biggest issue will be the financing of this. Don’t really understand how this will work and how it will be of value to the broadcasters. I think they will kick and scream to be part of this.

Having drinks with the fabulous Deanna Zandt, she suggested a blog titled “Just Brown Enough” and that made a lot o’ sense to this brown boy. So hereon in i’m renaming this to be that. I’ll have to update the gfx so that’ll take some time. My plan is to chat about not only the things I like, but also what’s up with being brown! I’m living it baby!

Just been trying a cool new social network that is done as a comic. You can use your own characters or pre-made characters to say your blog words or whatever. Love it! Bitstrips.com

I’m really disappointed that my Alma Mater, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute has decided to continue banning video artist Wafaa Bilal’s show at the RPI arts dept. Giving various reasons, the administration, led by President Shirley Ann Jackson (whom I had hoped would be more progressive) has closed the show. It opened again at http://www.mediasanctuary.org/ but was closed after one day by the city of Troy citing some bylaw infraction. Clearly, they are trying to prevent Wafaa’s message getting out. Ironically, he is a pacifist. The only aspect that is good about this censorship is that it is at least generating discussion about Free Speech. But hey, wouldn’t you have thought that was already something we could agree on??

I saw a youth video on the weekend at a conference and I was struck as we all applauded that while it was cool that they could use the videocamera and editing tools, it was clear that the message was one of violence. Not intense, but more the “wanna-be gangster”…. We’ve been working with youth for the past few years, and the last two years we’ve been teaching a lot of digital literacy skills. But I realize that is only one side of the coin. What we also need media literacy as well. First off, sensitizing them to violence and the unreality of the gang culture that’s put out in a lot of music that the youth I work with love to listen to. Youth have to understand how to decode media so they can create responsibly the messages and stories they want to convey. I read a sad story of a Labrador community where the youth believed the TV “Friends” lifestyle was possible in the “big” cities. I read in some article that the actual value of the supposed New York Friends’ lifestyle was in the millions. Even youth here when they come to Vancouver, somehow think that the world they encounter in television is actually here for them. This isn’t too say that it is impossible to reach, but if you think that the streets are paved with gold in Vancouver, you aren’t likely going to want to stay around home in Terrace…

From a new report by Ipsos-Reid:
“Contrary to popular belief, teens are not online as much as they are stereotyped to be, the time they do spend on the Internet is focused rather narrowly on particular types of websites and activities, and their comfort level with technology is actually much lower than adults. ”

This is fascinating research. One point that did stand out is that many teens’ access to the Internet are limited by their parents. If this was removed, would they have sky-high Internet hours?

Listening to Brian Oberkirch and he asked an interesting question, how many social networks do you belong to. I naturally thought of one, the one I use the most, which is Facebook, but he mentioned a bunch more. I realized I have a Myspace, Last.fm, Linked In, Pandora, Upcoming, flickr, del.icio.us, twitter, this blog, as well as Facebook. Many of these I don’t use a lot, but it actually surprised me. Brian’s main point was around OpenID. We need more ways to share these services. So I’ve just gone and signed up my new OpenID, which is great. Now hopefully I’ll find ways to use it!

We’ve been using Drupal for two years now, and it has become the main CMS for our development work. Which is why it is interesting to read this article http://www.xconomy.com/2007/12/20/a-big-drop-in-the-bucket-for-drupal/  Basically, the company Acquia aims to be to Drupal what Redhat is to Linux, which to me is a professionalization of the Drupal product. I think this is a pretty great idea. Drupal is great, but lacks such fundamentals as a well written user manual, or more careful upgrade instructions. Plus, some modules are not quite complete, so maybe this will be a way for some of them to be addressed as well.

I wrote this up to share this with folks as it struck me as I’m interested how other people do this.

For the main aspect, I use MS Outlook 2003 tied into a TREO 700p. All of my contacts, calendar and notes are synch’d. I just use the email on the my TREO to check when I’m out of the office (which is pretty often).

I just love TREO and use it a lot nowadays, from taking notes in meetings, checking email, and getting maps from Google. I text msg with my employees for scheduling updates. I take photos of whiteboards, flipcharts with the phone and share them in email. It’s so easy to check my schedule now compared to pen and paper.

One thing I find is a lifesaver is Simulscribe.com. It answers both my cell and office phone, and transcribes the audio into text and emails me. I haven’t had to listen to voicemail in a year!

I also use Groove and Basecamp on my laptop. Both are file sharing programs. Groove, made by Microsoft, is an application from Office 2007. I use it for internal processes with staff, keeping files sync’d, graphics share, proposals, forms and documents. Groove also costs too much and was a pain for my clients without admin access to their computers. (Also, it’s not available to clients on Mac.) I use Basecamp, which is a web app, to communicate with my clients as it’s so easy they can figure it out without training. It is a nice way for me to also keep track of the documents I’ve shared with them and they know when I’ve completed things.

I use X1 as an desktop search engine, mostly for email and documents. I used to use Google Desktop, but I got nervous about the comprehensive way it indexes. X1 gave me more precise control, although it’s also that I am pretty used to the interface. I scan all the biz cards I get from clients, suppliers, etc into Outlook.

Other things I use to keep organized – I use Successfactors to manage HR and Salesforce to manage my sales funnel. Both are good, but take a lot of time to regularly maintain. My staff have not really embraced the use of Successfactors. Salesforce I used more before a recent change that made it awkward to upload new contacts. I use flickr for my photos, but that is mostly personal.

One new web app I’ve tried is Soonr, as I can look at files that are on my computer from my cell phone. But I am never that far away from my laptop and can usually wait. Plus I have a laptop which means that often it is with me, and sp unavailable to be accessed via a cell. So while neat, it hasn’t been much use yet.

I do wish there was a better way to have a single device. A better camera and MP3 player into my phone. iPhone might be the one, but I do use Palm apps for other things, like reading books while I travel.

Anyway, reading this, maybe now I think I’m not all that common! But I’m pretty happy with my level of organization, thanks to all of these online services and software!