Search results matching tags 'digital' and 'Audioboo'

Collaborative Individualism Emerges At Reboot Britain

2292853 — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 08:32:00 GMT

This week's NESTA sponsored Reboot Britain conference brought together a mix of government, business, banks, technology, media people from the UK, and visitors from the USA that saw left leaning Labour/Liberal Democrat political views engage and collaborate with conservative Tory representatives. The crowd's reaction saw the many of those who are normally distrustful of government, financial institutions and conservative politics try to mingle more with what they historically view as the "other side" of the spectrum.

Opening remarks from conservative Jeremy Hunt MP, Shadow Secretary of State for Culture Media and Sport, had him lovingly embrace the Internet, new technology and the governments increasing integration of it into public services. He praised the transformative nature of new technology's impact in delivering high quality factual content to the world from ordinary citizens, with Wikipedia, and talked about a new effort to publish and provide archives of government documents online for access to all. Hunt said that politics has been stuck in a rut toward progress, with its stance to first fight online, then ignore it, and only now begin to embrace it. People have flipped politics on its head by rushing online to express views and grassroots organizse around issues in powerful ways that have not beeen witnessed before, making for the emergence of a new movement composed of "collaborative individualism."

"Huge change is possible with the Internet and the Internet also makes possible some very unpleasant things," he said. "The Internet is a powerful way to connect voters and as a politician I have to engage more intelligently with my constituents."

Hunt's speech received mixed reaction and a bix of cheeky tweet banter from a crowd of professionals who live on the bleeding edge of the technological world, think liberally and radically, and often wonder why the conservatives, and the government, with its recent release of the Digital Britain report, have taken so long to embrace new technology that the left and leaders like Al Gore have been pushing the agenda toward for years. Now, it seems, the people have collectively forced politics to adapt or be left behind.

Visiting Reboot Britain was a digital celebrity group of Americans called the Travelling Geeks, who mingled with the guests and presented panel sessions throughout the day, including Craig Newmark, the nerd who many people feel changed the world with Craigslist.org.

"The Internet makes public service people feel they can come out of the darkness, and feel liberated and my hidden agenda is helping people in government affect change, and talk, and accelerate collaboration across the Atlantic," he said. On the good side, most people want to be a positive influence, and on the evil side, noisy, idiotic spammers and trolls with extremist views pollute the channels of communication and need moderation to combat this ugly side.

To combat the ugly side of the Internet, people need a friendly "nudge" to do good, and regulations toward social media use among public service employees needs to be relaxed so that they can feel safe freely expressing views and using the tools to improve things, citing the example of Newmark's favourite project FixMyStreet.

I caught up with Newmark after his talk, and you can listen to his commentary here on this Audioboo.

Pock marking the day was an insulting and demeaning panel presentation asking "Is the Web Female?" that attracted a majority of female attendants, only to sucker-punch them with horrible commentary from two of the American panelists who behaved like the scary, exclusionary popular girls in a Beverly Hills 90210 high school class. While lifestreamer Megan Asha and technology journalist Sarah Lacy may be respected digital influencers in US circles they did themselves, nor the women in the audience, any favours by describing how women behave online as being "catty, gossipy" and wanting to shop a lot. The comments provoked anger among the audience:

"Disappointed is the web female session seemingly stymied by pointless focus on imaginary gender characteristics. A waste." tweeted @josiefraser

"A few minutes of listening to 'is the web female' debate and you lose the will to live." tweeted @hollandshurst.

"Finally giving up on 'Is the Web Female', which is relying on a narrow, depressing & slightly weird definition of "female" tweeted @justinpickard

Panelist Joanne Jacobs balanced out the nasty catty female debate by smashing stereotype demographics and openly confessing that she often gender-switches online to allow herself more freedom with masculine-style expression. MT Rainey brought home the concept that the web is neither male or female but simply a place where humanity gathers.

The day's closing address saw Howard Reingold outline ways to improve digital inclusion with digital literacy, and more activism.

"Boring blogs and Twitter accounts show that participating just isn't good enough, being an active citizen is a start but from passive consumption you have to move toward participation," he said. Reingold called for the end of crap content, miss-information, spam, porn spam and helping more people develop their own "crap detectors."

Master of ceremonies for the day was Policy Unplugged's Steve Moore who remarked at closing that he was thrilled to watch #rebootbritain trending above the dominant topic King of Pop Michael Jackson's death on Twitter.

Feeling gossipy, catty and like shopping so guess I should get online and surf the Web today,

-Lisa

Is TV more fun when you tweet?

2292853 — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 15:29:00 GMT

Boring old telly has been getting a lot more fun lately, if you are using Twitter. The micro-blogging service is increasingly becoming the back channel of broadcast, where people turn to exclaim delight or disgust about what they are watching. Tuned into Channel 4's My Monkey Baby, and wondering what others are thinking about the parade of monkey loving characters? Popping onto Twitter and searching for the programme title reveals a trail of hilarious tweets, and you can add in, that is, if you actually want to confess that you are watching the show.

A television programme can come alive when you chime in with your own views, and see the intelligent, dumb, off-colour or utterly bizarre commentary of others, adding a whole new layer of entertainment experience. In America, broadcasters are fully embracing the interactive power of Twitter, with even local news stations inviting people to tweet in with updates about the weather conditions, or share views on issues. Political elections were the first and most noticeable examples of how the views of many can be shared using Twitter, as seen when Hack The Debate aired on Current TV in the lead up to the presidential elections.

For broadcasters, the service can be an instant way to guage if programming is having any impact on viewers, or, for the more clever, use the service to ignite interaction with audiences. When a show starts "trending" on Twitter, broadcast executives can know they have a hit, as has happened with Eurovision, ITV's Britain's Got Talent and Channel 4's Surgery Live.

Twitter got noisy surrounding Eurovision, as it sparked hundreds of amusing tweets about the song contest, and gave rise to an alternative tweeting voice when journalist Ewan Spence used Twitter to cover the event from the show's frontline in Moscow, sending tweets, blogging and podcasting from the event. Followers of @ewanspence got treated to extra facts, insights and a few trumpeted early previews of what was to come, as entrants paraded on stage in gladiator costumes, thigh high patent leather boots or full green body paint.

"I decided to offer pithy, humourous, pre-emptive insight of what we were all seeing, and joined 1,000 other press people from around Europe to cover Eurovision," he said.

With viewing figures of 10 million in the UK, and 112 million across Europe for Eurovision this year, Spence thought that 2009 would be the year that millions of fans would tweet about the song contest, based on the growing number of entertainment trending topics he noticed, and recognizing that this year Twitter's popularity has expanded, with estimates of 33 million monthly visits. He out-tweeted much of the official BBC correspondents by speed of updates and depth of information, winning rave reviews from followers. Several said they preferred the commentary of the renegade Eurovision tweet host to the banter of Graham Norton's debut year as Eurovision host.

"The public love it, but mainstream coverage does not match up to the public viewpoint so the Internet's communities are augmenting what they see using Twitter," he said. Listen to an Audioboo interview with Ewan Spence here.

Ewan Spence

While Spence may still be a rare visionary in how he used Twitter as a journalist, the big broadcasters are certainly wading into the water with experiments. Channel 4's Surgery Live invited people to send in questions using Twitter, some of which the show's host Krishnan Guru-Murthy then posed to both the doctors, and even the patient, on live television. Following along with the programme's hashtag of #slive, a rather surreal conversation developed with audience members, with one even asking if the patient's brain tumour was edible. Brave, risky, groundbreaking, Channel 4 proved that entertainment can also be educational, and the show did manage to top Twitter's most watched trending topics.

"What this new generation of social media brings is a networked conversation which is global, searchable, tagable and open. In other words, unlike emails, text messages or phones, you can join in a discussion among numerous people from right across the Uk and beyond -- fellow viewers, experts, medical students, enthusiasts, all manner of interested parties -- live and simultaneously," said Adam Gee, Channel 4's Cross-platform Commissioning Editor for Factual.

Channel 4 has just started a new programme incorporating Twitter, beginning to share updates from documentary film maker Ed Wardel, who is putting his wilderness survival skills to test in the Yukon, for the series Alone In The Wild. The programme airs in July, but Wardle has already started tweeting about his experience.

Using Twitter, and other social media websites, to add interactivity to television watching might just be transforming how we interact with the medium, and Twitter's founders are keeping an eye toward possibilities, with news that a Twitter television show may be in works for the future.

"Twitter's open approach might have the power to transform television -- the dominant communications receiver worldwide. We're very excited to see where these experiments take us," posted Twitter founder Biz Stone on his blog.

In the not to distant future, a new transmedia entertainment venture called Purefold from Ag8, a partnership production with Blade Runner director Ridley Scott and Tony Scott's RSA Films, will see an even more multi-layered approach to integrating social media with viewing experience. Purefold will cull storyline ideas from comments people share on Friend Feed, and other social networking websites. The programme is not planned to air on any maninstream channel, as episodes will be spread across the Internet's video sharing platforms, and brands will be invited to collaborate in the content creation to fund the programming.

Confused? You are not alone. Best stay tuned, and have some fun participating in the 2.0 tool of Twitter, and think of it as training, to get ready to adpot for the entertainment world flashing forward to even more futuristic technologies.

Watching television and tweeting at the same time,

-Lisa

Digital Britain Report Will Make PR Sector Think More Digital

2292853 — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 13:53:00 GMT

With the release of the government's Digital Britain report this week, it comes at a timely juncture in the industry of public relations, where new technology tools are increasingly being used for communications campaigns, far more than in past years. While the main highlights of the report address infrastructure needs, improving digital access for all and controversial funding decisions for media resources such as the BBC and Channel 4, the ensuing discussions of the report have put digital on the intellectual radar for all, including those crafting PR strategy in what is more and more a fractured, niche-driven digital media landscape.

Previously, and still today, traditional PR professionals, and clients, have been reluctant to include digital media in their outreach strategy, among some excuses being:

Our clients don't care about blogs, they only want to be in the Financial Times.
We don't have the budget or time to manage online outreach, as well as traditional media outreach.
Why should we care about what someone says in a forum or a tweet about our brand?

Now, partly by force as a result of high profile cases such as Amazon experienced with bloggers and Twitter, or Domino's experienced with employees posting inappropriate YouTube videos, partly because of recessionary budget restraints on PR budgets, and partly because it seems that the tipping point of mainstream involvement in social networking has been reached (Oprah Winfrey is on Twitter!), it seems digital has snowballed into a force that must be reckoned with -- like it or not.

The government's Digital Britain report addresses many issues, and its recommendations are controversially being debated among many industries, but one of the key things it does is further force digital into the forefront of public attention and gives it a new level of credibility among businesses who may have previously scoffed at the online world.

For many years now I've been an advocate of using digital media for communications outreach and have advised many clients in how to incorporate new technology tools into campaigns, often being met with a mix of disbelief as to if it would be a worthwhile investment, and general befuddled ness as to what I've been talking about. It seems the whole wide world is now turning new attention to using digital media, and this, I think, is exciting and positive both for people and bussinesses.

While many of us who can be classified as early adopters of the digital age are already well established or have even moved onto the next new thing with tools like Audioboo for the iPhone, FriendFeed, Su.PR and the coming soon Google Wave, we've all got to remember that there are millions of newbies from all walks of business and humanity that are just testing out the tools of the online world, with a bit of intimidation and fear.

It is is up to us, who are deeply online, to welcome, to teach and to help newocmers navigate this territory. It may be your family members, your co-workers or even your boss, who have basic questions, and if the government is going to see any success from its Digital Britain report, it is up to everyone who is already active online to be friendly mentors and teachers in helping the rest of the world catch-up with digital life. Yesterday, after reading over the report, it seemed to be a 200+ page document stating a lot of the obvious. However, these last few weeks, I've got more and more people both professionally and personally asking me questions about the basics of how to use Twitter, how to write a blog, how to manage the weird professional/personal world of Facebook, and what might seem obvious to some, just isn't to most.

Recently I've also joined the ranks of being a trainer with Pinnacle PR, a company providing all levels of communications training. My role is instructing a course in PR 2.0, providing a comprehensive look at the many multimedia digital media tools available online, and giving real-life workshops in how to construct campaigns with the tools. With the release of Digital Britain this week, I'm seeing more of the increasing importance digital is playing for business, and, based on training and conversations with people, understanding more that it is still, in fact "new" media for most people.

If you are in PR, and would like to increase your skills of PR 2.0, or other offerings from Pinnacle PR (including traditional courses of media training, media relations, crisis communications, strategic campaign planning and more) sign up for a course, and get a 10% discount up until the end of July. Pinnacle PR has offices in London, Brussels, Dubai and a newly opened training centre in Bahrain, where experienced instructors both from the media and public relations sectors provide junior up through senior level executive courses and instruction.

Training for the digital future,

-Lisa