Your Phone, Swiss Army Knife Style July 25, 2006
Posted by sfinkelp in cell phones.add a comment
In 1999, I left my hometown of Pittsburgh to go to Slovakia for the Peace Corps. At home cell phone users were still considered snobs– often stereotyped as rude, self-inflated business people yakking away at the most inappropriate of times.
My then 96 year-old-grandmother had a neighbor, a young, single lawyer, who fit the bill. If he wasn’t gabbing on his cell in the shared backyard behind their houses, he was always leaving his trashcan in front of her section of the front lawn. When he refused to put his can elsewhere, she clipped an article from the Pittsburgh Post Gazette about cell phone users being snobs and sent it to him. “P.S.,” she wrote at the bottom, “I’m not a fan of your trash can.”
So you can imagine my surprise when I landed in Slovakia– a still developing Eastern European country– and found that everyone had cell phones. And it was in the Peace Corps that I got my first went mobile.
The thing was huge– a used phone I borrowed from some co-workers. But it was my only phone and I LOVED it. I couldn’t imagine not having it. Suddenly it was so easy to meet up with friends and make plans. And like all Slovaks, I quickly became a text-messaging pro. It was cheaper than a phone call, although reading and writing in Slovak was sometimes challenging.
Two-and-a-half years later, when I returned home to the States, I was surprised again. Americans were buying cell phones in droves. And gone was the stigma that cell users were stuck-up and rude. It was fascinating to me to compare adoption in Europe to the States. In Slovakia, cell phones were cheaper than land lines. Text messaging was cheaper than calling. So everyone had cells and everyone used SMS. But in the US, it was clear that people were warming up to cell phones due to their convenience and peace of mind. And rarely did people ditch their land line.
America’s growing love affair with the cell phone has no end in site. A recent Pew Internet study noted that we sometimes resent our little phone friends. We don’t like that people can reach us more easily than ever before and we often lie to folks about where we are when we’re on our cells! But we put those annoyances aside easily and more and more, we don’t want to be without our phones. In fact, the study revealed that most people want to have more features on their phones. Especially when it comes to maps, the Internet and email. As the study said, we’re looking to have a “communications Swiss army knife.”
No doubt, we’ll have all of this. In fact, we won’t even have “phones” for much longer. We’ll have handhelds that do it all. Life Pilots.
One side-effect that I do like about the mobile world. I feel like it’s bringing a little social spontaneity of the old days back to society. People make plans on the fly and agree to meet each other on the spot.
If only Grammy could see us now.
And You Didn’t Believe in Reincarnation July 25, 2006
Posted by sfinkelp in Gaming, Uncategorized.add a comment
Perhaps one of the concepts that’s “blown my mind” the most in my recent digital journey is that of Second Life. If you haven’t heard of this website, take a look. Thousands of people have become “residents,” buying property, meeting people, partying…
So after several weeks of talking about it, I finally joined. Got myself an avatar and hopped on in. Much to my chagrin, it doesn’t seem to be a super Mac friendly world. It took forever for places and people to load. And I couldn’t get my bearings due to a time lag between arrowing and moving.
Even so, I learned that I can fly, laugh, shout, cry, shrug my shoulders, walk through water, buy a cute frog, and say hi to people. At one point I landed somewhere where a couple was standing kinda close. One said, “Hey Sweetie.” The other said, “Hey Baby 
.” I wasn’t sure if they were talking to me, but it wigged me out and I left ASAP.
It’s funny how in real life I’m not shy when meeting people, but this virtual world felt so strange. I felt very shy and worried that everyone was going to be REALLY weird.
But for as foreign as this place is to me, thousands of people are really at home there. They even call the real world their “first life.” And they aren’t gaming, they are residing.
When I first hear of SL, I was tempted to write it off as some hobby of some fringe subculture. And while for sure it’s still a minority of people who are SL members, the place has a booming economy– it generates more than 500K in economic activity each week.
Listen to a recent episode of the podcast, SecondCast, about SL and it seems somewhat even more normal. Last weekend The American Cancer Society held it’s second annual Relay For Life Virtual walk-a-thon. And it raised $27K! Not bad!
In fact, what is so interesting to me is how riddled SL is with real life. There are scandals and controversies over policies. People sell stuff and hold charity fundraisers.
In our class we compared SL to a modern day hobby like model railroading. But I think SL is a different beast. It’s like escapism and more of our same old life all rolled into one.
So will I go back? I’d like to explore a bit more. Wish I had found some more interesting places to go. But at the same time, I think I’m too much of a lover of the real earth, sun, and sky to sit in front of my computer for long periods of time.
All the same, this world is fascinating. I can’t wait to see how it develops further.
Comment Happy July 18, 2006
Posted by sfinkelp in Joomla, Uncategorized.4 comments
I want to thank my good pal Ryan Ozimek for posting a comment (and a good one at that) to my blog! Being a new blogger, that was very exciting.
If anyone reading this needs a great content management system for their non-profit, check Ryan out at PicNet. His Joomla and NonProfitSoapBox implementations have been really well received by my clients.
Blogging Through the Bad July 18, 2006
Posted by sfinkelp in Blogging, Uncategorized.add a comment
Thoughts on Naked Conversations Part II:
In the second half Robert Scoble and Shel Israel’s book, their discussion on blogging in crisis struck a chord with me.
I used to work in PR and would sometimes wonder what I’d do if a crisis hit my organization. My savvy would be tested. Would I pass?
Facing a PR crisis in the age of blogging seems all at once to be just as scary, but also empowering. If a company or organization has no connection with the blogosphere when trouble knocks, look out. But if the group has been patiently tending their blog garden, they should have a better shot at sailing through the storm unscathed– that is if they didn’t do something really wrong.
In a nutshell, the best defense when you hit a crisis is not only a smart response in the storm, but also your preparation before hand. Scoble and Israel offer many tips in their book for making it through a crisis. Here’s my summary of the ones I think are important:
- Start your own blog. Do it right (see Scobles principles for good blogging). Post often, link, converse. In this way you’ll become known in the blogosphere and you’ll get to know bloggers. This will also prepare you to act fast. Blog word-of-mouth travels at lightning speed.
- Make a practice of listening and answering rather than taking lots of time to craft a perfect statement. I think this is good advice both before, during, and after a crisis.
- Keep it open and transparent. Don’t hide negative comments. Respond to them and let your responses be seen. Be honest if you don’t know all the answers. Take your time in figuring out the right way forward– just keep communicating all the while.
- Scoble and Israel also suggest possibly creating a special crisis blog. An organization or company keeps this waiting in the wings for when a crisis hits. I think this would be most successful, if you are already on the blogosphere.
For crisis communicators, blogs should provide some peace of mind that there is a way to communicate directly with the public (at least the web literate public) without being at the mercy of reporters who filter your message to the world.
At the same time, I can see how crisis communicators might get nervous in the face of what seems like a big disorganized cacophony of blog voices who don’t follow one set of journalistic standards. What if a popular “in” blogger has taken to dislike your organization or company?
Hopefully the skilled communicator will patiently keep the dialogue going and enough other bloggers would join the conversation to direct things toward truth.
Hey WordPress, how do you spell “blog”? July 15, 2006
Posted by sfinkelp in Blogging, Uncategorized.1 comment so far
Has it struck anyone else as ironic that WordPress’ spell checker doesn’t know the words blog, blogger, blogosphere, etc.?
Just wondering…
Hewitt the Blog Cheerleader July 15, 2006
Posted by sfinkelp in Blogging, Uncategorized.add a comment
I don’t think blogging’s a fad. The informal, straight talk conversations blogs foster is something people are craving today. We don’t trust our politicians, we don’t trust CEOs, but we trust our friends. So when that politician or CEO talk to us like a friend, we are more likely to listen. I don’t think we’ll get tired of this kind of direct interaction.
I’ve just read a few chapters of “Blog”, a book by conservative talk show host and blogger, Hugh Hewitt. I don’t fall on the same side of the political fence as Hewitt, but he’s got a lot of good points about what blogging really means for society. I get why he’s so excited about it.
Yet, there’s something about the way he writes. It reminds me of Harold Hill in the Music Man when he shows up in River City. I picture him enthusiastically standing in town square, with a crowd gathering around him…
Are you a CEO and are your ratings are low?
Then blog, my brother, blog.
A lonely housewife with a boring life?
Then blog, my sister, blog.
Whether you’re a plumber or a teacher, a manager or a preacher,
Just find a PC and take it from me,
Let your fingers do the talkin’, get that Google Juice- a rockin’,
You’ll convince, make them laugh, while you argue your own half,
Then watch them change their minds, it works every time,
Soon you’ll see, this is the way of the century,
Just blog, my brother, blog!
But back to the good points he makes:
- The blogosphere is about trust. If bloggers don’t trust you, bad news. Blogging is about transparency and it allows for anyone to call you out on what you say. This is good for society.
- Web-based publishing technology is revolutionizing what we call “media.” A person only needs to know a few basic computer skills and have something to write (or link to) to get rolling in the blogosphere.
- Bloggers aren’t saints. The technology may be amazing and revolutionary, but Hewitt rightly is a realist when it comes to the fact that there are haters, thieves, and bigots who blog.
I also found Hewitt’s discussion about “blog swarms” interesting. Today PR folks can specialize in “crisis communications.” No doubt, a new specialty will be blogosphere relations management.
Those Penguin People Are Onto Something July 11, 2006
Posted by sfinkelp in Cathedral & Bazaar, Eric S. Raymond, Joomla, Open Source, Uncategorized.2 comments
Scenario A: A new piece of software is needed. A company hires a team of developers. Team works on the software. The team develops, tests, de-bugs, all internally. The product is released to the world with a PR blitz. People buy it. The company makes money and continues to issue patches and upgrades, internally improving its own code.
Scenario B: A developer needs a new piece of software to fill a need. Starts noodling and working on it. Goes as far as he/she can and then puts the project out to a larger community of developers via the Net. Turns out, these programmers also have the same need. So they start looking at the work, developing, testing, de-bugging. The software is improved and improved until it finally moves out of development or “beta” status and is launched to the world. This time, no PR blitz, it just spreads via word of mouth from the programming community out to the larger world.
In his seminal paper on open source development, scenario A is what Eric S. Raymond calls the “Cathedral”. Scenario B is the “Bazaar”. Think of the cathedral as a traditional business—there are managers and staff who are paid to carry out the goals of their superiors. In the Bazaar, there is more free flow exchange of information with everyone giving a little and everyone gaining something back. And the direction of work naturally evolves according to the participants’ needs.
Which scenario is better?
The A Team: We pay our developers. So they have to get the job done and done well.
The B Team: Well our developers are like volunteers, tinkering on code that matters to their own personal interests. They don’t need a boss to motivate them. And they can also make money from their efforts. (I’ll get to that.)
The A Team: We hire good coders. We know them and their skills. We can trust them to do good work.
The B Team: Well, given that people are working in a community, if you are lazy or you screw up code, word will get around. We’ve got a natural accountability system not based on performance reviews. If you had potentially hundreds of folks looking at your homework, wouldn’t you dot your Is and cross your Ts?
Oh, and we can have any number of programmers working while you can only have as many as you can afford to pay.
What does my little banter indicate? The Open Source model of programming works. It’s responsible for Linux, Firefox and a host of other well-known and trusted applications.
My own experience with open source software is highly positive. In my job, I dance between programmers and non-profit clients in need of website facelifts and new back-end tools like content management systems, which allow them to keep content up to date without needing to know html.
I’ve hired or used in-house programmers to customize an open source content management system called Joomla many times over. Each time we’ve had success. It’s very easy for my clients to learn and navigate. And it’s attractive because they only have to pay us and/or my programmers the time to manage the project and customize the system to their particular website. They save literally tens of thousands in licensing fees.
Basically, I feel that the software itself is totally on par with the proprietary solutions out there for many small to mid-sized non-profits. The x-factor with open source is whether the software has a robust development community around it.
Raymond’s right in emphasizing the importance of open source projects having good people persons behind them. And I’d add that these people need one more thing—an eye on their end lay-users. That’s the key for widespread adoption—at least when it comes to things like content management systems.
My biggest bone to pick is simply that, as Raymond admits, programmers hate to document. This means that unlike Microsoft, lay-users don’t usually get slick user manuals with their new open source tools. There are online help areas and tons of discussion boards to post questions to, but many of my clients still want an old-fashioned user manual. So that’s one area where I think the open source folks could brush up on and improve.
Get Your Buzz Through Blogs July 9, 2006
Posted by sfinkelp in Robert Scoble, Shel Israel, Weblogs.add a comment
Living here in Washington, DC, I’m often reminded that we are still in a post 9/11 security mode. Bags are opened and checked at museums, I nearly always need to sign in, if not show my ID or even have an escort, when I go on downtown client meetings, and waist-high barricades prevent cars from driving or parking too close to important buildings and embassies. With the war in Iraq, continued Arab-Israeli strife, the recently thwarted Holland Tunnel bombing plots, at some level, we’re still all a tad jittery.
But in this post 9/11 world, one trend flying in the face of this buttoned-down, cautious existence is blogging. As physical barriers are constructed in our physical world, online barriers are tumbling down.
In Naked Conversations, former Microsoft blogger Robert Scoble and Shel Israel, who’s helped launch a myriad of software and hardware including PowerPoint and Sun Microsystem Workstations write about the power of blogs to tumble these barriers in business.
The take home message of the book: blogs allow for direct conversations between CEOs and customers, customers and developers, CEOs and staff, staff and fans, etc. And when allowed to flourish, these conversations build transparency, goodwill, and add an overall human side to the corporate entity.
More and more CEOs, PR people, developers, and leaders get this. But many still don’t. On the book’s blog, Shel Israel cites a Bulldog Reporter survey among Dallas members of the International Association of Business Communicators:
Despite warnings by an expert that we bloggers have become a “legitimate media target” for PR practitioners, a poll shows that IABC Dallas members think:
46 percent of respondents believe bloggers should be ignored, or managed by customer relations departments 42 percent say bloggers should be handled by media relations representatives 6 percent say neither of these departments should handle angry bloggers 6 percent say they don’t know
Looks like the work of Scoble and Israel to educate the masses remains unfinished.
In the book, the authors quote Betsy Aoki, who coordinated Microsoft’s bloggers, as saying blogs are the next logical step for businesses after the yellow pages and websites.
I can’t say I agree that the final step into blogging is so clearly logical or natural for businesses. The yellow pages and a website can offer fast, easy-to-find information such as store hours, policies, locations, etc. A blog is not designed for this. And I just find it hard to imagine that someday, all non-blogging plumbers won’t get by just fine.
But I do think many of the holdouts will come around to blogging as something they ought to do. When they do, I’m guessing that will be the time there will be a marked shift from the golden first days of blogging to the days when readers and customers have to look at blogs with a more discriminating eye. No doubt many late comers to blogging will tuck the task into the job descriptions of their PR and marketing teams. CEOs will be ghost-blogged and companies will try to sell via their blogs. Will there be infomercial blogs?
But wait, if there are blog-infomercials, they’ll be tracked by the infomercial blog and mentioned on infomercialscam.com. Ha! Take that!
In my mind, it really is remarkable how blogging has started fundamental shifts in how businesses are communicating out to the world, how journalists are tracking leads, or college kids are documenting the ups and downs of their escapades. It’s especially so in this world where in the physical realm we have so many barriers to such direct dialogue/access.
But what fascinates me is how this online no-barriers contact could spill back into the real world and usher shifts there too. Starting with Scoble. Looking for summer vacation plans? Robert Scoble has got some for you! Yes, he posts an open invitation on his blog to join he and his pals for an “off-the-grid” wilderness weekend in August. No conference fees, no badge needed, just show up. That is pretty radical. If blogging leads to that kind of openness, that is society changing stuff.
