SM Global Report

Where we're going

[Howard Rheingold. Photo by Oscar Espiritusanto]

Note: This is part part 2 of two parts. You can see Part 1, Where we've been here.

This title is just slightly misleading. Howard really offered no predictions of where people and technology is heading in the Conversation Age, and I didn't try to get him him to make forecasts.

While his writings have displayed more than a little prescience, he is more of a thinker than a futurist. But he did offer some interesting observations about at least one emergent technology and some useful insights into his students at Stanford and UC Berkeley and from there you might draw some conclusions yourself.

Q. You were an early champion of virtual reality, which may not have
taken off as quickly as you forecast. Do you think it is still likely to
evolve? How do you see it being incorporated into social media moving forward?

You win some, you lose some. I can't really
take credit for being prescient without taking blame for foreseeing events that
have yet to come to pass -- may never come to pass. To be fair to myself, I did
note that truly photorealistic immersive virtual worlds would not exist until
sufficient affordable computation power came along, some time in the early 21st
century. And people like Jeremy Bailenson at Stanford have been doing some
extremely valuable social science research using today's version of virtual
reality.

There are some fundamental unsolved problems. If you can move
your perceptions around a limitless virtual world, what keeps your body from
slamming into the wall when you try to run toward the horizon? In regard to
social media, I've spent enough time in Second Life to see exactly how
seductive to a small portion of the population an immersive virtual world with
photorealistic or Photoshop unrealistic avatars that can not only navigate and
communicate but build and exchange landscapes, buildings, objects with
behaviors can be.

But it's work to create an avatar and learn how to navigate it and
where the action is. In an infinite landscape, human actitivies seem to take
place far apart. So I don't see such worlds as ever becoming universal.

It's
NOT the "future of the Web."

However, I do see them getting less
centralized and easier to use, and people will start inventing uses for them
that we don't foresee right now, and the population of enthusiasts will grow
from a tiny cult following to a small cyber subculture. There are things you
can do in such environments that you can't do elsewhere.

[At right--giant sunflowers from Howard's garden. Those suckers are 16 feet tall.]

Q.I’ve argued that social media is
disrupting all institutions, business, government, education, health, etc. Do
you agree or disagree? What is your vision for how technology will make this a
better/world for everyday people 10 or 100 years hence.

Isn't it evident from what I've written that I've been immersed in experiencing,
influencing, learning about, and communicating about this disruption precisely
because I think it's the single most fundamental critical uncertainty of the
present age?

I think "better world" is an
unrealistically rosy way of framing the present situation. We're in deep shit.
Doug Engelbart and Vannevar Bush saw it coming half a century ago, and the Whole
Earth Catalog started looking at planetary-scale systemic problems decades ago
-- which is part of what drew me to it. We have ancient human problems of
tribalism, hatred, and atrocity meeting modern armaments, including WMDs.

We
have global warming, loss of species and habitat, collapse of key populations
like salmon, the energy and food needs of the world population, emergent
epidemics. I'd say that the main goal of the human species ought to be our own
survival. The next 50 years are going to require a lot of problem-solving. The
most powerful tool we have are all those people.

If only enough of them could
be healthy, fed, and educated enough to help us tackle those problems.
Technology and social media and new knowledge about human collective action
can help.

But I don't want to be quoted as saying that the
technology, the social media themselves are the linchpin. I think the way
people end up using these media,  our degree of knowledge about how our literacy
is connected with a struggle between power and counter-power, the degree of
education of the people who pollute or nourish the infosphere, even plain old
fashioned netiquette -- all matter now. I am an anti-determinist.

I believe in
human agency. But there are no guarantees that democracy will win over
totalitarianism, that tools will be used to feed people, that our social and
political and economic institutions and our own minds will be able to cope with
the pace of change that our inventions have helped us bring on ourselves.

Education
and learning haven't changed, but the circumstances under which they
take place are radically different.

The lecture-and-test method goes
back a thousand years, to the days when books were written by hand and
chained to a podium, where a professor stood up and read them. In
recent years, without (I strongly suspect) any real consultation among
faculty about the pedagogical consequences, wireless Internet access
was installed in classrooms and lecture halls around the world. For the
first time, students could look up information to determine whether the
professor really knew what he or she was talking about. Students can now
chat and share information among themselves during lectures and if the
professor is too boring, there is always Facebook or World of Warcraft.

Many professors are in denial about this, and drone on with the same
lecture they've delivered for decades. Other professors make extremely
bad use of technology by reading their text-laden PowerPoint slides to
their students. Others simply demand  their students keep
their laptops closed for the duration of class.

Of course, since I
teach social media, I can neither ignore nor prohibit laptop use, so
I've taken steps to help my students become mindful of the way they
deploy their attention.

One strategy is to have only the student
co-teaching team keep their laptops open while they are helping me lead
the class; one member of the team makes notes on the wiki, sketching in
top-level headings that the other students will fill in AFTER class,
another member of the team identifies words for the lexicon and adds
them to the wiki (and again the class, as a whole, fills in the
definitions before the next class), and a third member of the team
looks up sites online and projects them (I have three screens in my
classroom at Stanford).

Another strategy -- 20% of my students are
allowed to have their laptops open at any time, but it's up to them to
self-police. I have also made video of my students from my point of
view and from theirs and have shown it to them.

More
profoundly, social media have enabled students to engage in
collaborative inquiry with peers, engaging in online discussions that
are no longer solo performances for the teacher, but engage other
students in digging down into issues that came up in class via forums,
collaborating with each other and me in real time through a Twitter
back channel, reflect on their learning for their own benefit and that
of classmates on their blog, and learn how to learn and compose
collaboratively via the wiki.

The technologies are not used to add
contemporary appeal or techie flashiness but are affordances for a kind
of learning based more in inquiry, collaboration, and discourse than on
trying to detect what is going to be on the test and memorize it.I
ask my students to read in advance my extensive description of what is
expected of them and to commit themselves in writing to the kind of
participation I ask. It
has taken me five years, in close consultation with my students, to
come up with a set of procedures that work. It's tremendously exciting
to see the classroom come alive, and to engage students between class
meetings via their blogs, the forums, and the wiki. Here's a presentation of one of our class sessions.

Q. Can you tell me what’s on college student
minds these days?

Where we've been

[Howard Rheingold in his backyard giant sunflower patch. Photo by Shel Israel]

Howard Rheingold
is a founding father of the Conversational Era. He has spent much of his past 40 years exploring the impact and promise of the
convergence of technology and the human brain. He is a student of the many people, incidents and trends that have brought us to today, and as a prolific thinker, writer and speaker, he has contributed significantly to the body of knowledge and thought.

He's not sure just how many books and articles he has authored or collaborated on, since 1970,  but Amazon offers 72 titles with his byline.  Two of these books, The Virtual Community
[2000] and Smart Mobs [2003] have
profoundly influenced my thinking and writing over the past half dozen years and if you happened to be into social media he is among the early pioneers who blazed the trail the rest of us have followed. He has been a friend & colleague of many of the thinkers and doers who have delivered us to today and in many cases he can say he had been there and part of the collaborating team that did that. He has also been often prophetic in seeing the seeds that began as visions and have since become reality.

Arizona-born in 1947, he graduated Reed College in Portland, Oregon, then moved to the San Francisco Bay Area, where he became an integral part of America's most controversial Renaissance Era. He drank the original KoolAid. He also dabbled at Xerox PARC, the legendary tech
experimental tech center where, among other innovations, the personal computer's graphical interface was developed. He started writing professionally in 1970 and has rarely stopped for long.

He was editor of the Whole Earth Catalog Millenium Edition, an almanac that supported the
counter-culture lifestyle. Founded by thinker-enterpreneur Stuart Brand, Whole Earth Catalogs were a grassroots compendium of alternative lifestyle resources. A young
hippie fruitarian of that time named Steve Jobs would later describe the Catalog as both the forerunner to the
Worldwide Web and Google.

Rheingold was an early and enthusiastic member of the San Francisco-based
" Well," the first internet-based
community to gain widespread notice and momentum. His speaking and writing about it, particularly in The Virtual Community introduced a great number of people to the vision of social media for the first time.

These days he continues to write and speak on issues related to the human brain and technology--his central focus throughout his adult life. He also teaches courses at both Stanford University and the University of California at Berkeley.

I have divided this interview into two parts. In this first part, Howard reflects and illuminates on what has happened so far. Most of Part 2 will discuss his thoughts on tomorrow, partly by discussing what he sees in his students.

One word of caution: this is not a quick read. It is filled with links to some of the people and events that have brought about the Conversation Age and I hope that you will follow some of these links to see and learn. Maybe it will give you some ideas on what you can contribute to tomorrow.

Q. You attended Reed College in the mid 60s, an elite liberal arts college known for free thought and lifestyle. How did that experience shape who you have become?

It's very astute to start with this question. My relationship with Reed was co-evolutionary: Reed seems to send out a
kind of invisible signal that attracts a certain kind of person, and the people
who are able to stick it out (very high dropout rate) tend to remain "Reedies"
for life.

I was a National Merit Scholar, which meant I could
have gotten into any university, but Reed was the only place I applied! I
originally got wind of it because the character in Kerouac's Dharma Bums who
was based on Gary Snyder who went to Reed. Snyder, more than Kerouac, was a hero of
mine when I was 16 years old, so that was about all I needed to know. In
retrospect, I'd say that the dominant characteristics of a person meant for
Reed are:

a.  A stubborn commitment to
think for oneself
b.  A deep and broad
interest in texts and intellectual discourse
c.  Because of the first two
characteristics, we were mostly the smart weird kids in our high schools
d.  We dropped out of the
brand-name college game

Reed alumni magazine did an article on me,
written by Wired [Howard was founding exec editor of Wired.com]  writer and fellow Reed alumni Gary Wolf.

The Reed  years were 1964-68 for me, so
these were also tumultuous times. And I took a lot of LSD. I want to be clear
on this: Many of my friends got in serious trouble or died because of drugs
(and many more because of one drug: alcohol), so I'm not an advocate of
indiscriminate use of recreational drugs. But LSD was an extremely important
influence on my thinking.

I didn't drop acid and go to concerts. I
dropped acid and stayed in my room and painted, read -- I read most of the
Bible on acid -- and explored other dimensions with my fellow travelers.

In
particular 1968 -- the Tet offensive, Prague Spring, China's Red Guards and Cultural Revolution; May revolt in Paris;
Chicago, and assassinations of RF Kennedy and ML King; riots in American cities. We
weren't participants in these events, but the world stage seemed particularly
apocalyptic. I became convinced that we were living in times that would decide
the future of the human experiment, and just as I went to Reed because I wanted
to engage in a meaningful and deep dialogue with others about the curriculum
(the sex, drugs, and rock&roll were part of it, but were always secondary
to the intellectual quest), I left Reed and entered the world with a conviction
that what I said and did with my education would matter not just to me but to
everybody.

When I got involved with people I met from the
Well, my wife, who I met at Reed  said: "This is just
like Reed. A bunch of intelligent misfits have found each other and are going
to town."

Q. The common thread that seems to tie your considerable
writing and thought together is the interaction of the human brain and
technology.  It seems to have developed in the early 80s between your work
with The Whole Earth Catalog and your involvement with  The Well. Can you walk me through how that developed?

The brain and technology--and evolution and consciousness--were
the subjects of my undergraduate thesis. One of the things that LSD taught me
was that what we think we know about our minds is tiny compared to what we have
to learn. I felt technology would open a new front, along with that of
chemical agents (it's too bad that legitimate psychedelic research was shut
down), and the approaches pointed to by Eastern mysticism, in understanding
consciousness -- which seemed to me to be the essential stuff of which the
universe is made.

I had what I later learned I could call a "noetic"
conviction about these conjectures, and was determined to somehow add to our body
of knowledge about our minds and how we could control our minds better.

3.
You coined the term “Virtual Community” and it became the title of one of
your most influential books. It’s first chapter talked about the
Parenting group in The Well.
Your stories in that chapter are strikingly close to stories I found in Twitter.  Can you   compare/contrast The Well and Twitter?
What has remained the same and what has changed?

Absolutely true! In my first months on Twitter, I told fellow Well veterans Twitter felt just like
the Well. While it would be a
categoric error to call the Twitter population in general a community, it was
clear that communities were forming there. People were getting to know each
other, strangers were engaging in discussions with each other; new forms of fun
were being invented; new ways to use the platform to communicate socially like the hashtag and retweet were being invented by users; people were exchanging
and reciprocating knowledge; social capital was accumulating in some groups.

At the same time, Twitter
was totally different. In the Well, each user might participate in different
topic threads in different conferences (forums), but the discussions were
centered on topics and were like places where a group of people accumulated. In
each discussion, we paid attention to each other. In Twitter there is no
such social symmetry. There are no topics, outside of hashtags and each person
sees a different group of others.

Despite, and because of, this asymmetry,
Twitter always had a social vibrancy.

Another similarity is the
sense among the users that what we were co-creating with the Twitter founders
would take on new forms as we went along. The Well was built on Unix, so coders
and users were in dialogue, but with the Twitter's open API and the explosion
of third-party applications, that co-evolving relationship seems to be in
overdrive.

Twestival, 300,000 tweets/hour from Tehran, the Twitpic of the
airplane that landed in the Hudson -- events that change our minds about what
Twitter can be used for seem to be happening with increasing frequency

Q. For the benefit of our studio audience, just what
do you mean when you say the computer is an amplifier of the human mind?

I've learned that most people don't know much history, and those who
know it seem to quickly forget it. Until a couple of mavericks who were not at
all related to the existing computer industry started thinking seriously about
using digital computers to augment human intellect and create new communication
media, this was a crazy idea.

Computers were for scientific calculations and
business data processing. But JCR Licklider [computer time-sharing], Doug Engelbart [the mouse], Bob Taylor [the internet], Alan
Kay [graphical interface] thought differently. What if we could move words around on a screen by
pointing at them, instead of retyping the whole page? What if we could create
documents as outlines, then expand and contract them so we can zoom from big
picture to detail? What if we could command computers by clicking on icons instead
of typing commands? What if we could link texts, documents, and different media
and move smoothly from one to another by clicking on the link?

By automating
these low-level symbol manipulation tasks, would that free the brain to take in
larger pictures, see relationships between micro and macro levels that couldn't
be observed, try many more hypotheses than old methods afforded? All these
capabilities seem obvious today, but not only were they not obvious until
Engelbart's Mother of All Demos in 1968. I told the story of this creation of
revolutionary innovation by a small group of outsiders in my book, Tools
for Thought. I started using a modem when I first started exploring personal
computer culture in the early 1980s, but didn't join the Well until after Tools
for Thought was published in 1985.

I started out to make a living as a writer when
I was 23, in 1970. I had a typewriter, a telephone, and a library card.
Comparing the tools I had for thinking, researching, communicating, organizing
back then with what I have now, it's like starting out my career with a horse
and buggy and now I have my own 747.

It took me about 5 seconds to look up the
passage of Engelbart's that originally fired me up, and to copy it. And I did
it sitting here in my garden, via laptop and WiFi. Keeping in mind what I said
previously about my interests in brain and technology and my conviction
regarding this historical moment and my role and responsibility to it, it still
makes sense to me as an answer to your question:

By
"augmenting human intellect" we mean increasing the capability of a
man to approach a complex problem situation, to gain comprehension to suit his
particular needs, and to derive solutions to problems. Increased capability in
this respect is taken to mean a mixture of the following: more-rapid
comprehension, better comprehension, the possibility of gaining a useful degree
of comprehension in a situation that previously was too complex, speedier
solutions, better solutions, and the possibility of finding solutions to
problems that before seemed insoluble. And by "complex situations" we
include the professional problems of diplomats, executives, social scientists,
life scientists, physical scientists, attorneys, designers -- whether the
problem situation exists for twenty minutes or twenty years. We do not speak of
isolated clever tricks that help in particular situations. We refer to a way of
life in an integrated domain where hunches, cut-and-try, intangibles, and the
human "feel for a situation" usefully coexist with powerful concepts,
streamlined terminology and notation, sophisticated methods, and high-powered
electronic aids. Man's population and gross
product are increasing at a considerable rate, but the complexity of his
problems grows still faster, and the urgency with which solutions must be found
becomes steadily greater in response to the increased rate of activity and the
increasingly global nature of that activity. Augmenting man's intellect, in the
sense defined above, would warrant full pursuit by an enlightened society if
there could be shown a reasonable approach and some plausible benefits.

In 2002, you authored Smart Mobs, which has been critically acclaimed for it’s
foreshadowing of social media. Among the incidents that most impressed me was
how street people used mobile SMS to out maneuver police & eventually
overthrow the government.  When the Iran election took place in June of
this year, did you see a certain similarity? How did has technology involved to
empower people. Where do you see/hope it is ultimately headed?

Let me start with the conclusion and then unpack it:
With a billion people on the Internet and 4 billion mobile phones, the ability to
gain information, to process it computationally, to organize collective action
with others, to publish and broadcast has been radically democratized -- but
whether or not that democratized communication and coordination capability will
lead to more or less democracy is not a function of the technology but of the
social, political, economic activities of the people who use it.

The events in
Iran should be an object lesson that access to digital media and networks
guarantees that it will be impossible to keep the world from witnessing massive
oppression, but does not guarantee the victory of forces of counterpower who
seek liberty from oppression. Power always wakes up and mobilizes when
counterpower threatens it.

The Iranian regime broadcast disinformation. They
shut down Internet access. They ran cloaked proxy servers as honey pots to
catch dissidents. So far, they are succeeding.

In China, the Great Firewall and
tens of thousands of human cyber-police make sure that over a quarter billion Chinese
netizens enjoy the power to do anything they want online as long as it doesn't
challenge the authority of the party.

The victory of smart mobs is not
guaranteed by the power of the tools they hold in their hands. That's just
magical thinking. However, the events I described in my book were real. There
were other forces at work in the Philippines -- there are always other forces
at work -- but the SMS-organized People Power II demonstrations were a large
part of what brought down the Estrada regime. The elections of heads of state
were tipped away from the frontrunner through smart-mobbed demonstrations and
get out the vote campaigns in Korea and Spain.

Where do I see it headed? My experiences have
convinced me that the most important focus for public attention right now
should shift to the literacies that bring power to those who possess them and
leave behind those who don't know how to use their telephone as a medical
instrument, educational medium, social radar, political organizing tool.

Chip
fabrication plants, teenage personal computer wizards and moguls, networks of
fiber optics and satellites have played and will continue to play their parts
in the distribution of computing and communication power to every human on
Earth.

But now that devices with such enormous untapped power are in the hands
of so many, the factor that will most powerfully shape the resulting social
institutions is literacy. My definition of "literacy" builds the
thinking of Neil Postman: I mean the inward-looking skill that enables an
individual to read and write, to decode and encode messages with a medium, and
I also refer to the external community to which this skill provides entrance.
As I've written recently in regard to "Crap Detection 101," the literacies I am talking about are not just about individual empowerment, but
are crucial to the health of the commons.

We can't stop the Web from being
overwhelmed with misinformation, disinformation, hoaxes, urban legends, spam,
porn, porn-spam by controlling the sources - the Web is powerful precisely
because there are no controls on what people put on it. We can only guarantee
the ultimate health of the Web as a source of useful and trustworthy
information by encouraging the spread of crap detection skills. That, to me, is
the most important meaning of the "social" in "social
media" -- that we are not just amplifying our minds and showing off for
each other, we are learning and organizing, creating, innovating, building,
liberating together.

To me, individualism versus collectivism is a toxically
false dichotomy. Humans are humans because of our individual capabilities, the
evolved genius of what we've taught each other to do with our expanded
forebrains. But the "taught each other to do" part is crucial. Our
individual genius would not only be useless, it wouldn't exist without our
social interchanges.

[Janis Krums takes & makes his shot for the Florida Lakewood Ranchers , an amateur league team. He also took another kind of shot in January 2009, which you probably saw. photo by Angie Tyler Jula]

It's one of my favorite stories in Twittterville. In January 2009, Janis Krums, the a 23-year-old entrepreneur from Sarasota, Florida was on a ferry crossing the Hudson River when US Air Flight 1549 careened from the skies, skidding to a halt on the river about 200 yards from the ferry and immediately began to sink as passengers poured out onto the wings.

Janis whipped out his iPhone and took the photo below, which you have probably seen. He handed the phone to another passenger and then assisted in the rescue of a flight attendant who had broken both her legs and needed assistance getting off the plane.

Helping the attendant to safety, Krums got his iPhone back. It was ringing and when he picked up he was surprised to find he was talking to MSNBC and his voice was being carried live on national TV. Viewers were looking at the photo he had taken less than 30 minutes earlier.

In Twitterville, I argued that the incident changed the relationship between professional and amateur journalists; that it has begun to braid the two together on social media venues. I predicted that braided journalism is how most people will consume news in the near future.

It also has changed Janis Krums. The following is an update on what he has been up to since that unintended moment on the Hudson River. He is simultaneously starting two business in two separate categories, one of which has been a passion for years. The second, something called InboxAlarm would probably have not happened had he not happened to be crossing a river at a specific moment in time; and if my favorite social media platform not been victimized by a DDOS attack that rendered it inoperable for several days in early summer.

Please see my recent interview with him below.

Q. How has the incident changed your life?

I am associated with an event that changed the perception of
citizen journalism and the evolution of news and media. The coolest part is to
see that my one tweet changed the way that CNN, Fox News, and others interact
with their viewers. They are actively engaged with viewers now, and seek the opinions
in realtime from all the available resources.

Plus, I have a great story to tell at
parties!

Q. How active were you in social media before the "Hudson River Miracle"
incident? How many follower/following did you have going in to that day? How
many do you have now? How much time did you spend on social media before the
incident. How much now?

Before the incident I was exploring all the different
services and seeing which one made sense for me. I had about 170 followers
before the incident. Now I have almost 5,800. Before the incident, I was spending maybe 20 minutes a day on updates. I think right after I
was spending a lot of time. Now I have learned some tricks and services (su.pr, tweetdeck, tweetie 2) that I use to
monitor and use the different sites more efficiently.

Q. When I interviewed you for Twitterville, you were planning working on
Elementz a nutritional enhancement drink for professional athletes. How long have
you been working on it? How is it doing?

We started a year ago with the idea of what we wanted to do.
At this point we have finalized 5 custom formulations and are finalizing the
paperwork to produce the first two products, Vanilla and Chocolate Whey
Protein. We have some very influential people on board and will be making some
really cool announcements in the near future. You can check out our Facebook
page for the latest news.

7. More recently, you announced InboxAlarm.com. Can you
tell me what it does and how you got the idea for it?

InboxAlarm is burglar alarm for your email inbox. You are
able to create decoy emails that can be as simple as fake password information
or custom emails that cater to your specific security concern. After creating
an email, you send it to one of your personal emails addresses, open it once,
and then forget about it. It sits in your archives until someone opens it. Once
opened, you are instantly notified by a text message that there has been a
breach.

We got the idea after the Twitter breach happened. In that
case the hacker had days to gather information and was able to go from one
employee's email account all the way up to the CEO's.

We thought that there should
be a way for you to protect yourself in the case someone breaks into your
inbox. There are other high profile examples; Sarah Palin getting hacked; the
latest phishing attack, and countless others that don't make national
news.

8. Is InboxAlarm potentially a new business for you, or is it just a
one-off from Elementz Nutrition?

InboxAlarm has the potential to be a new business for Eric
and I. It is too early to tell how it will go, but the initial reaction has
been very positive.

Q. How have sales gone since you announced InboxAlarm?

We have steady sales up to this point. We got some initial
press from PCmag.com
and BNET, which helped the site's exposure. As well as local Sarasota coverage )
We will be focusing on a major marketing push in the coming weeks.

Q. You have previously told me your two passions are health and social media.
Can you compare and contrast starting businesses serving in the two industries?
For example how are the the process and time-to-market similar or different? o

It's been very interesting to see the evolution of both
Elementz Nutrition and InboxAlarm. For Elementz we had the concept few years
ago, but only last year said, lets start the process and develop supplements
that we can be proud to stand behind.

We were very naive in our projected
timeline to get the products out into the market. We thought that it would take
few months to research, develop, test, etc the formulations. That estimate was
way off, it took us around a year to finalize the formulas. Right now we are
finalizing everything with our manufacturer.

However, with InboxAlarm, we had the idea in July and were
able to launch the initial site during the second week of September. We had the
core functionality thought out in the first day and after that just kept
refining until we thought it was good enough to be released to the public. I agree with Reid Hoffman's observation: "If you're not somewhat
embarrassed by your 1.0 product launch, then you've released too late."

We wanted to get it out as soon as possible and then see what the customers did and didn't
like. We've improved the sign-up process and have couple of
other improvements that are directly linked to the feedback from our
users.

No matter how different the market, at the end of the day
it's about selling and getting the word out about your product. It doesn't
matter what industry you are in, if you don't move product, you will not be
around for too long.

Jack Kennedy was president when I entered college. Like Obama today, he had a great impact on the hearts and minds of young people. In Kennedy's case, he introduced a concept of volunteerism through programs like VISTA [Volunteers in Service to America] and the Peace Corps. The attitude that we can do something to make a difference for a good cause or people in need has stayed with many of us through our lives.

When I met Jessica Evans in Vancouver last month, I was reminded of that volunteer attitude when she told me the story of Timeraiser where she has donated over 100 hours of her time in a little more than a year and how she has helped the organization expand into social media.

Timeraiser is a Canadian organization formed by the Framework Foundation. It gets corporate sponsors  finance their acquisition of selected works by local artists. Then it holds a silent auction, where mostly people, mostly in their 20s and 30s, bid their time--instead of money--to acquire a piece of art. The funding sponsors display the art in their offices for a year or so, while the volunteer works off the time pledged.

Most of the volunteer work is focused on using the professional skills of the volunteers, rather than ladling soup in food bank kitchens.

Since it started in 2004, Timeraiser has held these auctions in all major Canadian cities and has generated more than 45,000 volunteer hours for more than
250 nonprofits and has supported local artists to the tune of over $300,000.

Jessica Evans, 30 is one of those 45,000 volunteers, she is an IT professional at a Vancouver-based software company by day and has boundless energy for other activities. It was literally a rocky road she traveled that took her to both Vancouver and Timeraiser.

She tells her story in this interview:

Q. You spend much of your free time in outdoor physical activities such as bike
riding and something called "bouldering." Just what is that, and when and how did
you get into it?

Bouldering is a style of rock climbing
– literally climbing on large boulders without a rope. Your landing is protected by “bouldering pads”-
high-density foam mats similar to those used in gymnastics. It’s a great way to
climb completely free and push your limits.

I started climbing in 2001 - yes,
I think you could say I’ve traveled extensively to boulder. At the height of job dissatisfaction and
restlessness when I lived in Toronto, I
called myself out on my dream to live on the road and climb. I blogged the entire experience from the inception of the idea where I used up my
health benefits before giving my notice, through the emotional challenges and
steep learning curve while living on the road. There’s also advice on the art of living on a few dollars
a day.

It was an amazing experience and
one of unexpected personal growth. I lasted
almost 6 months, living on the road camping and climbing by myself.

I think you could say that
bouldering chose me. When I was on My
Big Roadtrip, I had my gear for rope climbing too but found that it was easier
to boulder since you don’t need to search for a dedicated partner. In roped climbing, you literally place your
life in the hands of the other person. I
found that not knowing my climbing partner well enough to fully trust them made
it tough to focus. I ended up bouldering
more and more, either by myself or trying to get in with a group that was out. By the end of the trip I found that I was a
"boulderer," and now I very rarely rope up to climb.

Sure, I traveled alone and I’ve
gone on some solo bouldering trips since. There’s a bit of teamwork involved – the energy of the group really
affects if you’re able to focus on the moves.
It’s so much better, and even a bit easier, if there’s a good group of
people.

Q. When, how and why did you discover Timeraiser?

I crash landed in Vancouver after the road trip and when I heard
about the Timeraiser in 2008, I saw it as a way to get more involved in the
community of the city I had settled in and had grown to love. Besides, I thought it sounded cool. I like art, especially by local artists, and I
had been meaning to volunteer.

It’s a mashup of silent art
auction and volunteer fair – there are representatives from local nonprofit
agencies, and about 25 pieces of local artwork.
The bidding opens for an hour and participants bid with a pledge of
volunteer hours instead of money. Too
cool.

Q. What appealed to you about Timeraiser, since there are so many other options
where you can volunteer your time?

One of the featured agencies at the Vancouver Timeraiser was Big Sisters. Being a Big Sister was something on my life
to-do list, and it was just so easy to go to the Timeraiser event and talk to a
representative in person. After talking
to someone face-to-face, there was a more natural commitment to follow up.

You could say that I fell in love with the concept at the
Timeraiser event. It was far cooler than I
had expected. Bidding on artwork gave me a taste of a
society I may never be a part of – but the concept of Timeraiser makes it fun
and easy to get involved.

Q. Can you walk me through the process in which you volunteered through the the
Timeraiser silent auction for Big Sisters and how you obtained the photo?

After talking to the agencies at
Timeraiser, I was pretty excited at all the volunteer opportunities that suited
my skills. I ended up getting the
winning bid on a photograph by a local artist  [Miklos LeGrady] and I fulfilled my pledge over the
following year by volunteering as a Big Sister. Donating time goes so far and
you can see the impact you’re having on the community. It’s more fulfilling than, say, writing a
check, though if you can afford that, go for it!

We volunteers are given a full year to complete our pledges. At this year's Timeraiser, I received my artwork.

Q. I understand you introduced social media components to Timeraisers. Can you
tell me how and why you did that?

Last spring, Timeraiser sent out a
message needing volunteers for planning the next two Timeraiser events in Vancouver. You could say I was getting hooked on
volunteering and was happy to spread the word.

I applied for the position of
Media & Awareness Leadership and my pitch was all social media. How can we reach our target demographic? Well, I’m a member of the target demographic
and I’m always online. I could see the
need to leverage Twitter as well as Facebook fan pages.

We’re getting to a point on the
Web these days where people search Twitter to connect with a business entity,
and Timeraiser needed to represent.  I also brought us onto LinkedIn and worked
with Timeraiser employees to implement the Facebook fan page.

The entire “Tweeting for
Charity” experience has been interesting.
I’ve been online since the local BBS days back in the mid-90s. Twitter is the online vehicle to reconnect with people
locally and in person, or globally due to our common interests. I’m not looking to network or promote myself
as a climber or a Project Manager, so getting out there to talk about something
I feel so passionately about – Timeraiser – feels quite natural.

One constant I’ve experienced
while engaging in social media for charity is that when I explain the concept
of Timeraiser to people, if they’re interested, they’re excited like me and
eager to help. It’s important to reach
as many people as possible to build the network of eager excited people.

I have to say it was powerful to
watch the word spread and excitement grow along with the network. We ended up selling the event out, which was
an incredible accomplishment. A CBC
reporter saw a retweet about the Vancouver Timeraiser and picked up our story the
day before the event. Members of the
blogging community posted up about the Timeraiser and some had tickets to give
away via their sites. I think everyone
worked together – Team Twitter.

Q. How has social media changed Timeraiser? What additional potential do you
see?

It was very valuable to tap into the local, grassroots media in Vancouver. Getting the word out via local bloggers is
the way to go. Civic Footprint (Timeraiser's sister nonprofit) is now working on social media strategies for other
Timeraiser cities, to connect via Twitter and social media.

In the Spring, I’ll be leveraging
Twitter again to connect with the local art community. Artists selected for the Timeraiser are paid
market value for their work. In 2009, 20
of the 25 selected artists were from BC.
In 2010, I’d like to see that extend to 25/25.

Also, it would be great if we could
get a participant to blog their experience fulfilling their pledge, so we can
all follow along. I’ll see if I can put
that into place. @Timeraiser_couv is still
the only account dedicated to the Timeraiser, but I hope to see the other
cities follow suit. I’m excited to see
how next year unfolds, since I can incorporate what I learned this year.

Q. I understand that you found romance on Twitter. Can you tell me just what
happened and how has it worked out so far?

That’s quite the bonus, I know! The
first networking event I attended as @Timeraiser_couv was a Meetup and I was
looking for others with @ Twitter IDs on their name badges. I ended up clicking with a guy there – I
remember that I could read him quite well and found him intriguing. We talked about cycling and I sent him an @
from my personal account, not Timeraiser!
When I got home, he had sent me a DM to request a coffee to “learn more
about that charity stuff you do.” We’ve
been hanging out since. You could say we
get along quite well.

Q. Additional comments.

I’m not climbing as much as I used to and it’s amusing
because I made the move out to BC to climb full-time. Dreams change over time, and I got to see my
2009 dream of selling out the Vancouver Timeraiser come true.Timeraiser helped me Commit to Vancouver, and now I’ll never leave.

Life on the road always meeting new people prepped me
for this.

NOTE: This is the second of a two-part interview with corporate communications guru Shel Holtz. You can read Part 1 here.

Can you give me some insight into your views on
how social media is changing the role of the professional communicator?

One of
the myths of social media is that the role of the communicator is completely
changed. I would argue that some dimensions of the communicator’s role have
changed, and they are significant.

Other dimensions, though, continue just as they were. Social
media is an addition to the business communication environment. It has NOT completely replaced the environment.

For example, media relations continues to
be important. Despite assertions that the media are irrelevant, research
continues to demonstrate a considerable amount of trust placed in local news
media, both print and electronic. The behind-the-scenes work of communicators
that is never visible to the general public – like negotiation with activist
groups, in-depth audience research, relationship- and alliance-building with
strategic constituents –  will continue as before.

Now that we have the
“in-addition-to-not-instead-of” argument out of the way, let’s talk about how
the role of the communicator is changing thanks to social media. Or, perhaps I
should say “should change,” since in many organizations, these new requirements
for communications haven’t yet taken root.

The most significant change is the
notion that communication is the crafting of one-way top-down messages. While
there is still a role for some of that, communicators must equally be prepared
to facilitate conversation. Some of the skills required include community
identification, building, and moderation; one-to-one
engagement and message monitoring.

Coordinating the organization’s social
media efforts is another vital role for communicators, ensuring, for example, that employees all have accurate, timely information they can tap into when
engaged in their own conversations with friends, families and online
communities.

Such coordination also ensures a rogue business unit doesn’t do
something inappropriate in the social media space that colors the reputation of
the entire organization. Communicators also need to know what new channels are
emerging and be ready to monitor them and communicating through them should the
evidence suggest they have become important.

And communicators must be able to
demonstrate the effectiveness of their efforts. While there are many points of
view about the ability to measure social media, there is always a way to note
how an effort has paid off, particularly if you knew what your goals were for
that effort at the outset.   Another communications industry issue is the
continuing consolidation of traditional media.

How does this impact the
professional communicator? I don’t see this as a new issue. Media have always
gone through consolidation and change. Television was a new medium. The changes
in the magazine industry of 25 years ago – from general publications like Life
and Look, to specialized, niche publications, like Ferret World – also required
communicators to rethink their approaches. Email – nearly 20 years in the
business world – introduced new marketing opportunities (both good and awful).

But, how often do you see Burma Shave-like roadside promotions these
days? Communications has always been about adaptation. Smart communicators have
always watched the landscape to detect the shifts and tap into the channels to
which audiences are paying attention. Anybody who keeps all their eggs in one
basket (e.g., television) isn’t very good at his or her job. One reason
marketers are embracing channels like YouTube and Twitter is that they
recognize the declining influence of some traditional channels like newspaper
and television advertising and the migration of attention from those media to
newer ones. Concurrent with this, of course, is the need for communicators to
embrace the practices that work in these new media.

Simply transferring the
same messages to the new media – like running press releases through corporate
blogs or trying to deliver marketing messages through Facebook – won’t work.

Solid professionals in the communication business know this intrinsically. Less
professional communicators are surprised.

Simultaneous to all this, is the
relentless emergence of social media people. Where do these new “reporters” fit
into the world of corporate communications? As with everything else, citizen
journalists represent challenges and opportunities. The challenges include
not necessarily getting a heads-up that someone is reporting on
you, and not necessarily getting called for fact-checking or comment on a story about you.

In short,
citizen reporters don’t abide by a code of conduct that you could generally take for granted with "professional journalists," trained, to report through an hierarchy that
includes seasoned editors, and getting paid for their work.

With
major events, the number of reporting outlets will exceed any organization’s
ability to manage its interactions as they have in the past. While all
reporters have some degree of bias, citizen journalists often don’t even
strive for objectivity.

Companies also need to watch for attacks on their
brands. The recent viral blog displaying images of WalMart shoppers is a great
example.

Consequently, companies must broaden their monitoring and find
ways to communicate that potentially reach these individuals as well as their
audiences.

However, if organizations see only the threat and not the benefits
of citizen journalists, they’re missing huge opportunities to tell their
stories. Blogger outreach is just the tip of the iceberg for engaging people
and providing them with things to report that interest them and their
readers/listeners/viewers.

You and Neville Hobson have completed nearly 500 For
Immediate Release podcasts. How has your content and audience emerged since
you started back in January 2005?

In addition to the 480 episodes we’ve produced of
Hobson & Holtz, we’ve also released many interviews, book reviews, and
speeches. Since Hobson & Holtz is a show that focuses on what’s happening
now, the evolution tracks the changes to social and other new media. For
example, we talked quite a bit about Second Life a few years ago; today,
virtual worlds get mentioned far less frequently. Now, we spend a fair amount of
time talking about Twitter, though.

Another change: We spend less time making
the case for businesses to engage in social media and more on the various ways
they can do so. Fewer and fewer companies need to convince management that some
kind of engagement is required. (Statistics bear this out, by the way, with
most research indicating the majority of companies plan to increase their
social media spending) .

The audience is pretty much the same, though. They're mostly early-adopter
communications leaders with a healthy proportion of non-communicators who are
just interested in the topic. For example, one of our frequent commenters,
Clarence Jones, works in retail. We also have a few CEOs among our listeners.

You’ve authored or co-authored six business communications books. How has the trade book publishing business changed over the years? What impact
do you think social media is having on the future of books?

To be honest, I haven’t noted any
change at all to the trade book publishing business from the author
perspective. The process is pretty much unchanged. Sales numbers also look
about the same. I also don’t see social media having any kind of impact on book
sales. On the other hand, the move toward digital (which goes way beyond just
social media) will see some copies moving to ebook devices like the Kindle.

I
don’t see this affecting business titles in the short term, however, since most
people who buy business books like to display them on their office bookshelves
(this according to more than one publisher is an important motivator for
business title purchases).

I also don’t see a complete end to hard-copy books.
Let’s be realistic: Would you take your $300 Kindle on to the beach and risk
dropping it in the sand when you doze off? There’s something to be said for the
$8 paperback that (a) won’t break when you drop it and (b) you can share with
someone else when you finish reading it.

If you were to advise someone
just now entering into the field of PR or corporate communications, what would
you tell him or her?

I’d say that this is one of the most exciting times in
history for getting into this business and that the opportunities are greater
than ever.

Then I’d note that the universities are not necessarily teaching
communication students what they need to know to thrive in a communications job;
that they should pay attention to skills like community moderation, search engine
optimization, social media monitoring and measurement, and the like.

I’d also advise them to get involved before they start sending resumes, completing
applications and going out on interviews. If they can demonstrate their passion
and skill with a blog, a podcast, a Facebook profile, a Twitter account, or
some other combination of channels, the jobs just may find them.

Additional
comments?

One of the most interesting aspects of being a realist is that I find
myself sometimes attacked by both extremes. The social media purists don’t
think I understand that social media changes everything. (It doesn’t; nothing
changes everything.) You should hear the purists when I say there’s still a
role for the traditional press release!

Yet research by the Society for New
Communication Research [SNCR] proves there is.

On the other hand, traditional
communicators and business leaders think I’ve gone over the deep end and assign
too much weight to social media. (I don’t; it’s critically important.) For
example, I don’t think the organizational structures of old-guard companies
will dramatically change because of social media.

The design group will still
design the products, the manufacturing group will still handle production, and
the marketing group will still drive sales. However, I believe the adoption of
social media inside companies will allow for more seamless interaction and
collaboration within those structures, altering the way work gets done. This
viewpoint doesn’t seem to satisfy either of the extremes (either everything
changes or nothing changes).

But I’ve been watching the impact of online
communication on organizations since 1985, and I think I have a pretty good
handle on it. Based on that, I’d advise people that social media is not the end
of the evolution; it’s merely the spot on the continuum where we now reside.
More evolution is on the way. Like the Boy Scouts say, be prepared.

[Author, Communications Pro Shel Holtz. Photo by Shel Israel]

NOTE--This is the first of a two-part interview with Shel Holtz. He simply had too many useful perceptions to share for me to be able to cut it down into one blog post. If you are a communications professional you really should read this one through.

When controversies rage in social media, as they so often do, Shel Holtz is frequently a voice of calm moderation.  He doesn't avoid them, but he is usually late to the conversation and when he joins it he adds value by showing a balanced perspective.

A career communications professional who has sat in agency and corporate seats, a former journalist and a podcast pioneer, Holtz has spent his entire adult life in the communications business. He sees issues with a balanced perspective.

Author of six books and a frequent public speaker, that balance shows that he's picked up a fair amount of wisdom. Shel has been at this social media stuff longer than most people. My view and his do not always coincide. Sometimes we outright disagree.

But his thoughtful, example-filled way of expressing his view always gets my respect and the respect of just about everyone I know.

This is among the longest of my SM Global Reports. I have chosen do do very little trimming because so much of what Shel has to say is worth hearing. If you are a communications professional, it should be required reading.

Last time I interviewed you was in 2005 for Naked Conversations. At that time, you admonished me not to "overrate" blogging.You said it was just "another milestone on the corporate communications continuum." Looking back at it now, do you think blogging was just what you said it was, or is it something bigger?

It’s important not to confuse the tool and
the effect it has had. The blog tool itself – a lightweight content management
system that produces items in reverse-chronological order and allows readers to
comment – simplified and improved  what earlier online tools did. In that
respect, blogs were a logical evolution of earlier online tools.

On the other hand, if
I didn’t think the uses to which organizations can put them weren’t important,
I never would have co-authored Blogging for Business!

Still, I must say that business has not
embraced blogging to the degree it should. The dearth of blogs by Fortune 500
companies, and the overall percentage of blogs among businesses, indicate that blogging is still in early-adopter mode.

Further, most companies that have blogs aren’t
using them well. Forrester’s research notes that corporate blogs are very, very
low on the scale of communications trusted by customers.

This has nothing to do
with the tool and everything to do with the ways they are being used. Many
corporate blogs continue to serve as channels for traditional communication
rather than authentic conversation. These are the blogs that breed distrust.
Between organizations that use blogs in this manner, and those that don’t use
them at all, I’d suggest that if blogs are going to have a significant impact
on business at large, it’ll happen sometime in the future. It hasn’t happened
yet, despite the fact that blogs have had a significant impact on some
companies (GM and Dell leap to mind).

There are exceptions, of course, and the
exceptions get the attention – as well they should. They demonstrate that
organizations can use blogs to improve transparency, to interact directly with
customers, to portray the company’s culture, to solicit feedback and input, and
to collaborate with audiences to solve problems.

It is my belief that every company should
have a blog, since it is the best tool to use when a rapid response is needed.

Finally, the blogs written by customers
provide insights companies would be downright irresponsible to ignore. These
same insights were available before blogs – through surveys, focus groups and
other channels – but blogs have dramatically simplified the process of keeping
a finger on the customer’s pulse.

So, yes, I continue to believe that blogs
were an evolutionary development from a software standpoint, but that their use
is vital to business.

How would you describe Twitter’s role on that
continuum? Does it much change the role of the corporate communicator?

Twitter introduced an entirely new model that has begun to have a
profound impact on communications.

Some would argue that the real-time
monitoring capability is significant. While I believe it’s important, companies
and communicators should always be monitoring any source of information that
will help them make better decisions, react quickly to challenges and better serve
their constituents, from customers to shareholders.

Others argue that business’s leap into
Twitter as a marketing channel demonstrates its importance. But business will
tap into any new channel where their customers and influencers are. Again, I
think some of the innovative uses to which Twitter is being put are exciting,
but finding innovative ways to capture attention in new channels is marketing’s
job, isn’t it?

Still others will discuss the connection that’s
possible between companies and customers. That connection was available on
blogs, and even on message boards before that. Twitter takes this to a new
level (as Zappos demonstrates) that is exciting and full of potential. But it’s
still a logical advance along the continuum.

The biggest change to communications wrought
by Twitter is the introduction of what I’ve been calling “the 140-character
news cycle.” The speed with which news and rumors can spread has accelerated
beyond anybody’s expectations thanks largely to Twitter. We’re beginning to develop
a catalog of case studies: Motrin Moms, Amazon Fail, Domino’s Pizza.

Twitter has single-handedly redefined the
meaning of “news.” The communities on Twitter have an insatiable appetite for
updates when an event captures attention and builds momentum.

Organizations
that do not fill the 140-character news cycle with their own information will
be subject to secondary and tertiary sources of information occupying the void,
often with speculative information, messages based on the public’s risk-averse
nature or general distrust of institutions, or deliberate misinformation spread
by adversaries. Scott Monty’s ongoing infusion of information via Twitter during
the Ford Ranger Station situation is a perfect example of an organization
ensuring accurate and timely updates are available for people to talk about,
preventing the spread of incorrect and potentially harmful information.

I’ve been wondering lately about the
potential usefulness of a lifestream utility like Posterous to an organization.
Updates such as those Scott provided to Twitter could be added with a bit more
substance, while
maintaining a chronological record on Posterous where comments can be
aggregated.

In any case, organizations once had a luxury
of time before responding to events or updating ongoing activities during a
crisis. Messages could be crafted, reviewed, analyzed and revised. Today,
communicators need to respond far more quickly, which puts an entirely
different spin on crisis preparation.

Your website bio puts some emphasis on your
abilities to help companies use online resources in a crisis. How important has
social media become in crisis management. Can you share an anecdote of
something you’ve done for a client in this area?

As I said, the nature of crisis communication has undergone a change that is
among the most significant companies must address resulting from social media.

Interestingly, the fundamentals of crises
have not changed at all. These include:

• The public is risk-averse
• The public attaches little credibility to
  business advocates
• The media’s role is based on conflict
• Advocacy groups will exploit your crisis to
  their own ends
• Emotion, not logic, is at issue. If you engage
  in debate, you’ll be seen as defensive

• Crises are characterized by symbols: dead
  birds in the Exxon Valdez crisis, stunned employees carrying boxes of their
  possessions out of Enron headquarters, overturned Ford
  Explorers in the Explorer/Firestone Tire crisis.

• Organizational goals are also unchanged: to
  present and maintain a positive image, preserve constituent support, address
  mis-perceptions and misinformation and, ultimately, survive the crisis.

Finally, core crisis strategies remain
unchanged from pre-social media days:

• Respond quickly, accurately, professionally,
  and with care
• Be transparent and accessible
• Treat perceptions as fact
• Acknowledge mistakes and address how you will
  avoid a repeat of the situation in the future
• Tailor messages to address the aggrieved
  party
• Acknowledge and respect the other side’s
  concerns
• Make no public confrontations
• Emphasize existing relationships

Given that these fundamentals remain
unchanged, it is critical for organizations to acknowledge what has changed.
Crises erupt with unprecedented speed. Anyone can break news. And the
boboundaries between mainstream media – once (by necessity) the channel for
getting your information to the public – and social media have become very
porous.

With employees engaged in social media –
whether companies like it or not – they also become voices during a crisis. So
organizations need to recognize that achieving their goals and executing their
strategies require new approaches and a thorough understanding of the new
environment.

Again, speed and frequency of response are critical. Keeping
employees updated is also vital. Knowing in advance where your audiences are
online is important. Knowing who will interact with those audiences and
ensuring that individual (or individuals) is empowered to act without endless
rounds of approval is equally important – which means training and preparation before
a crisis hits is also a requirement. Far too few companies have crisis plans. Those that do have them rarely update them to account for these changes, and even
fewer companies drill their crisis plans.

As for my own experience, I recall one client
who was under attack by a competitor using misinformation to draw business
away. I got then to monitor discussions of the issue among
customers so they could correct misinformation, which a customer might inadvertently
be spreading. I also had them create a quick-and-dirty WordPress site
that listed the allegations of the competitor and offered the truth. It was easy
to update and easy to point people – media, influencers, and customers – to the
site during online, phone, or face-to-face conversations.

[Adventure Girl Stefanie Michaels]

I don't pay much attention to celebrities in social media. I don't condemn them, but
overall they just don't much interest me. Usually they lack many
characteristics--authenticity, conversational approach, transparency that have
made me such a champion of social media, particularly Twitter.

Stefanie
Michaels, who you may recognize as Adventure
Girl in Twitterville is among the very few notable exceptions. She clearly
is tweeting herself and is remarkable up close and personal with many of her
followers. She participates in community events and causes and is obviously
informed on conversational issues in Twitter. This may explain why she has more
than 1 million followers.

Her book, Adventure Girl’s Guide to Adventure Travel…without
Breaking a Nail, was released earlier this year and she seems to be trending toward more adventeros excursions. Earlier this year, she braved sub-zero  weather to participate in the Alaskan Iditarod dog sled race.
One month later, Michaels defied gravity  when she, along with astronaut Buzz Aldrin, participated in
the inaugural flight of Las Vegas’ Zero G, an airplane ride that lets
passengers experience zero gravity.

Here are her answers to my questions:

Obviously you were bitten by a travel bug early in life.  Did you start young?

YES! My first plane trip was at 6 months old and everyone
said I squealed with joy and giggled the whole flight to Chicago. My parents
said they knew I’d have a career on a plane… little did they know, I’d
practically live on them.

What experiences got you addicted to travel?

Meeting new people, seeing new places, touching unique
things- nurturing my senses. Addiction is only part of it!   If I am
home too long, I get antsy and grouching. I always say that the jet fuel I
smell when I get to airport gives me butterflies. I am off to have an adventure
filled with diverse people, places and experiences.

It’s an addiction because it’s my “book” in life- it’s how I
learn about the world. If I am not traveling, I’m stagnant in life in a way,
I’m not learning or growing. It’s my passion to ever change, grow and evolve.

[Seeing the pyramids the old fashioned way.]

When, how & why did you decide to make travel an
essential component to your career?

Really, they say if you do what you love, it will come to
you. I didn’t go out seeking travel as a career, it found me.

I did however know the moment I wanted to be a journalist,
the night in 1989, when the Berlin Wall was torn down. I was a kid, glued to the TV and I
wanted to be there telling people’s stories. I also dreamed of being a war
correspondent. I guess I’ve always wanted to be where news happened and where
the action was. Travel encompasses all that.

You came to social media from the celebrity business model. You were a
model, then a TV personality before stepping into Twitterville, blogging and
video.

My parents were in the entertainment business. My uncle was
an actor. He took me in when I was a toddler to his agent and they signed me on
the spot. I was so hyper, and bouncing around and dancing, that the agent
thought I’d be great for commercials. Within a month I had booked my first car
commercial. From there I moved into modeling and television. The modeling I
hated, but used it as a launching pad, thus using my name to create my own
promotional company.

When I was modeling, I developed an idea I called, "Travel Partners," which used email to take my fans with me on locations, where I was doing all this great cool
stuff as a spokesperson.

I'm told I launched one of the first 1500 commercial websites
on line- , and began bringing people along with me to cool locations
around the globe with my film crew. We aired the snippets online. I was
“blogging” daily from location at the time, but then the term was not “coined”-
we called it daily updates from location. That’s also where my fans called me
"Adventure Girl" for the first time. It stuck, so Travel Partners eventually became AdventureGirl.com.

I guess I’ve always done it, shared my experiences, so
falling into social media was the next step in my techno-geek-ism. (My secret dream is to write code) After trying
MySpace, then Facebook, I found Twitter most gratifying. It’s just brilliant
all around, and especially if you “get it”.

[

[Getting sized up by Burmese refugee women in Chiang Mai village, Thailand.]

Why did you decide to try social media?

I’m a journalist at heart, so I am always reading and
looking for ways to communicate. I have been writing online for
several years, but fell in love with
Twitter because of it’s simplicity and “now” real time media advantages. It
took me about six months to get @AdventureGirl out of a squatters hands, so when
I got it, I was all about communicating and learning about it at warp speed.

Twitter has revolutionized the way we send and receive
media. It’s the “new internet” and I saw this straight away. I wanted to be a
part of it.

How has Twitter worked out for you so far?

I was hooked in the first minute. I have never felt more at
home online than I do when I am on Twitter. I have made so many new like-minded
friends, forged relationships I never would have, had it not been for Twitter. I
don’t think you find this with Facebook or MySpace- they are more insular.

With over one million followers, you are one of the 100 most popular
tweeters. Who are these followers?

They are everyday you-and-mes. I even have followers who
are animals- lizards, dogs, cats, which I love because they make me laugh.
Diversity in life, diversity in my friends on Twitter. I love it!

Everyone thinks of me as this celebrity, but in reality, I’m just a girl working, like everyone following me. There is nothing
glamorous about me in my pajamas with zit creme and tweeting!

How do those 'everyday you-and-me' folk help you make a living?

Twitter for me is not about “making money.” It’s about
passing around knowledge, information and connecting. However, it does open me
up to meeting companies and entities that see Adventure Girl-the brand as
adding potential value to what they are doing. Indirectly, it is a great source
for connections, thus business opportunities may come to me because I am on
Twitter.

How has social media changed your image and you?

Social media has given me a platform to share information
that was/is important to me. I don’t need to “hide” behind publicists or
agents, and I can be silly and show I am this real person.

It also inspires me. People like @drew who I learn from
everyday or @invisiblepeople – a former homeless man who is putting a face to
homelessness with a video camera and stories. I think that’s what is most
important to me and I hope it’s made me a better person just knowing them and
passing on their messages.

What is the most important thing you've learned from social
media?

To engage, communicate, and NOT sell your agenda. To be pure,
show concern, to be a real person who cares. I have also learned that so many
people don’t get that. That’s why I love “block.” I don’t want to see your
spam. Also, listening. Your followers will let you know what they like,
what they don’t and they do it in real time.

You are much more conversational on Twitter than most other so-called
celebrity tweeters. Why have you chosen to spend the time and energy. How has
that helped you professionally?

What’s the point of “being social” and partaking in social
media, if: A. You’re not going to be social; and B. You hire people to do it for you.
Celebrities that do this are missing out. It’s  “old media,” and that
way of thinking is obsolete.

You can see the forward thinking celebs like MC Hammer, who
have embraced the power of having their own voice. We as celebs have fought for
this for so long, now there is a platform set up where we can have a voice. Why
give that power away?

I take the time and spend the energy because like any
relationship, it enriches me both spiritually and emotionally, give and take.
There was a trending topic recently called #twittercrush. People were naming
actors, athletes, musicians… I named “Twitter”.

Professionally speaking, by just engaging, communicating, it
indirectly helps me professionally because what you see if what you get, and a
lot of companies seem to be attracted to this.

For the benefit of my studio audience, can you share an adventure you've
experienced where social media played a role?

Sure, Operation Smile, the organization that helps children
with facial deformities receive life-changing surgeries, came to me one day through
Twitter. They asked if I wanted to go on a mission with their doctors to help
kids who were going for their surgeries. I stepped back, cried A LOT, and then
got back to them with a “yes.”

What they did not know is that my brother had a cleft lip
and had died (unrelated cause) before he got his surgery. It was a tragic loss
for my parents- they grieved quietly, burned his photos and never spoke of him
again. I found out via an aunt when I was 11 about him.

Together with Renee Hamilton, their social media guru, we
came up with the 140smiles.org campaign-
and I became their Twitter Smile Ambassador, raising money for 140 kids in 140
characters- one smile at a time. It gives me the chance to honor my brother and
shed a light on this important charity.

Now, TwestivalSF< will honor 140Smiles in the global
Twestival event and I’ll be able to help even more children through this social
media fundraiser. I am humbled and honored.

What advice do you have for someone who wants to enhance a personal business
position by using social media?

DON’T Talk about business. That will come as people get to
know you and you them, trust is formed and there is interest. I want to know
who you are Mr. CEO of company X- not what you are selling. Are you even a real
person who cares? That’s the best piece of advice I can share. Be real. Don’t
sell: share.

Edelman PR is the world's largest independent PR agency, but I'm not really one to be impressed by the largeness of an organization. PR Week has voted Edelman the best large PR agency in the world, three out of the last four years, but I hold trade rags commending industry luminaries suspiciously.

What impresses me the most about Edelman PR is that it seems to be an agency of innovation and big ideas, more than other large agencies I have known. It was the first PR firm to conduct media tours. It set up the first-ever online crisis management service. It was the first Western PR firm in China, and perhaps most impressive to me, is it established trust as the key measurement for PR strategy.

What also has impressed me is Richard Edelman and the thought leadership he has demonstrated in the complex and nuanced area of social media and its impact on the PR industry. He was early to the blogosphere, and he led his own staff to become among the most social media active of all agencies. He also has been an undoubted influence on the heads of large companies, NGOs and even small countries in understanding and embracing social media.

I asked Richard his thoughts on social media and particularly the impact it is having on PR agencies and their images.

1. You recently posted a blog that disagreed with a NY Times piece about Silicon Valley PR practices in the social media era, saying that it used old, false stereotypes. Please summarize your bones of contention.

The NY Times article had an important lesson for communicators, who must recognize that the winnowing of mainstream media will require a different approach to PR. But the idea that PR folks can circumvent both MSM reporters and key bloggers by whispering in the ears of influencers is patently false. So was the characterization of PR executives (especially females in PR) as reliant on relationships to achieve results for clients. Classic stereotypes of PR executives can be summarized as evil spin room denizens as in the movie “Wag the Dog” or superficial party people with megaphones. Both of these canards must be refuted and resisted.

2. It does bode a couple of interesting questions. Here’s PR, which can be defined in many ways, but usually image has something to do with it. Why do you think PR has so many problems with its own image?

The PR industry has image issues because it allows itself to be defined by its least common denominators, from celebrity publicists to Silicon Valley relationship masters. In fact, what we do is more important than ever before. The dispersion of authority, lack of trust in institutions, rise of stakeholder society, need to connect to broader group of influencers are tectonic plates moving. We are pushing the concept of Public Engagement, with action tied to communication, to our corporate clients.

3. How do you feel social media has changed the role of the PR practitioner?

Social media has allowed PR people to have more personal and more continuous connection to stakeholders. The mainstream media news hole has allowed only episodic coverage of companies and has been focused most often on the CEO. Now we can bring a more true-to-life picture of companies, with consumer-generated views of products, blog posts from corporate researchers, and discussions around important issues (ethically sourced product etc.)

4. Let’s go back a few years. You were, without dispute, the earliest prominent member of the PR community to whole-heartedly embrace social media. You started blogging in 2004 and you also started advocating that PR practitioners adapt to the changes that had started to occur. What did you see at that time that convinced you it would be wise to jump in?

I must give all of the credit to my cousin, Linda Stone, / formerly of Microsoft, whose pioneering work on “continuous partial attention” best describes my teen-aged kids. She listened over lunch after my middle child’s Bat Mitzvah, where I carried on about the new role of civil society, the rise of empowered employees and consumers.

She walked me over to the PC, sat me down, and pointed to early bloggers such as Dan Gillmor. In short, she pushed me to get into the game. It is my weekly appointment with the community; what will be new and interesting.

5. So you were early in incorporating social media into your personal brand. How did that impact the Edelman brand, and for that matter, the Edelman business practice? How often is social media a factor today in Edelman being selected, vs. 2004?

My blog, and the 40 others that are featured at Edelman.com, have made us the most popular web site of any company in the communications sector (yes, ahead of Ogilvy, McCann and other giants).

My blog is the leveling element in conversations with potential employees or when I visit companies on new business calls. We don’t have to talk about baseball or golf; we can make a connection on topics in my blog. Social media is a key reason why Edelman is selected by prospective clients; we have also persuaded our clients to be much more open in their communications with the world as control and credibility are at opposite ends of the spectrum.

6. What are the constants for the PR practitioner? What professional skills have remained the same since you started in PR? What's changed?

A PR person must be more broadly knowledgeable and technically proficient. The opportunity to offer advice to the C-suite has never been greater, but we have to earn that position every day by being connected to new voices of employees, consumers, civil society and social influencers. There is a tendency to become narrow and deep, to know your industry top to bottom. That is not sufficient; it is not as if health care or technology exist in a vacuum. There will be pressures on privacy, IP, payment modality, fairness of compensation, green policy; we must offer insight on these and more.

7. Is there any sort of business--any size, any sector-- that can afford to ignore social media in its communications practices?

I thought that the financial services industry could ignore social media, as it was so heavily covered by mainstream media.
I was wrong, particularly as government has become enmeshed in the sector through the bailout last fall. Health care companies are overcoming their fear of regulatory intervention in order to participate in the conversation on diseases and drug treatment.

8. Would you advise young people to go into either PR or corporate communications in this day and age? Why or why not?

A career in public relations should hold great appeal to students graduating from college. The secular trend towards PR and away from advertising has enabled the industry to withstand the present recession in much better condition than in 2001-3. The basics of the job, from writing to media relations, remain the same. But the additional responsibilities, from connecting with new influencers to conversing with social media to creating programs that change policy for corporations, are truly exciting and important.

9. Here's an easy one for you: What's the future of media? Does traditional media continue to wane until it hits the vanishing point? Does social media continue to ascend in importance?  Do the two media categories eventually merge and become "just media?"

I had breakfast last week with Jim Warren, until a year ago the editor of the Chicago Tribune. He told me that the Hartford Courant had reduced its newsroom from 400 reporters to 150 reporters in the past six years; the Tribune is down by nearly 50%. Local papers are becoming hyper-local but even that is no protection against incursions by ESPN (note launch of their new Chicago and LA sports web product).

The local TV news outlets are under terrific pressure as key advertisers in auto, banking and retail evaporate. It is clear we will have five national newspapers, including the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, NY Times, Financial Times, perhaps the Washington Post. Network news will gradually ebb, as the average viewer today is 65 years old.

The consumption of media has not diminished; it is the mix that has changed. The average person sees or reads eight sources of media on a given day, according to the Pew Foundation. So there will be more demand for immediate, short form content, delivered on all three screens (TV, PC, mobile). Social media will fill a hole by offering  personal experience, deep knowledge of sector and opinion.

10. Additional comments?

I am happy to be part of an independent, family-owned business that gives me the ability to speak freely about issues in our industry.

Since 2005, I have used this blog to post interviews on people who are using social media to change their businesses and lives. So far, I've interviewed over 400 people in 38 countries. The diversity has been enormous--from CEOs of Global 100 companies to people fighting for human rights in countries' that abuse them. I've talked to students, government workers and people passionate about non profits.

At the core of my work has been the Social Media Global Report [SM Global Report]. When work there emerges into specific projects, like Twitterville, I move the conversation over to the new category.

Thanks to the completion of the book, and to BurrellesLuce coming on as a site sponsor, I am reinvigorating my SM Global Report. I am looking for new stories that are useful and interesting to people who are exploring social media. I am looking for stories with business or human angles. Yes, I like to write about prominent people, but equally so, I like to find the stories, that no one has previously told. For example, in Twitterville, one of my favorites is the story of United Linen, a restaurant laundry service in Bartlesville, Okla--a company born in the Great Depression, and using social media to get closer with customers in the current recession.

Please help me. Tell me your stories or stories that interest you. Leave a comment here, or send me email at shelisrael1@gmail.com. Let me share your best social media stories.

While there is still some work to do on Twitterville, the heavy lifting is over on my part as the publisher's efforts swing into full gear. Interviews about 125 people for the book and nearly 100 of them will be cited, to varying degrees in the book when it comes out Sept. 3. About that number are also acknowledged in the book for having contributed useful ideas or content.

It seems the core of my work since 2005, has been to talk with people about how social media is changing their work, culture and life in general. I have now interviewed more than 400 people in 41 countries for my two books and for my Social Media Global Report which has appeared on this blog off-and-on for three the last three years.

I put on hold last November when I started working fulltime on Twitterville. In better times, the SM Global Report had been sponsored by SAP, and Intel. I'd love a sponsor, but even without one, I will do the report as a labor of love. If you happen to think your brand would benefit by being associated with this ongoing project, I would of course like to talk with you.

But more than that, I would like your help in finding stories of how social media is changing work, culture and lives. My stories are about people. They can be business stories, but if you cannot personalize or humanize the story, I'm not the right guy to write it up. If you have a story idea, please contact me.

I have a particular interest these days in hearing stories about social media and health. I want to learn and report about people who use social media tools to learn, collaborate and share ideas about health conditions of all kinds. I am aware of the rising number of healthcare institutions joining the conversation, but for now, my focus is on people who have found support, encouragement, inspiration and-- most of all--choices.

I have been talking for a while with a friend about doing a book on the topic of social media's growing role in health and healthcare and I'm curious to see what is happening in this area and what sort of difference it is making.

But please, do not confine any story ideas you have for me to just health. Send me anything you believe would be interesting or useful to my readers.

Using Facebook to Serve Constituents & Stay Alive

                  [ Jawad S. Boulos. MP Lebanon. Public photo file]

In a couple of days, here in the US, we will elect a new president. Many people think both sides played hardball in the two campaigns. We have no idea. In Lebanon, where Jawad S. Boulos, was elected in 2005 to a four-year term in Parliament, opponents are assassinating members of his party in order to trim the voting majority and he is clearly a target.

For this reason, Jawad, a Sorbonne-educated lawyer, his wife and their three children live much of their lives either in hiding, or behind a formidable wall of security. This is not easy for a politician who wants to see and mix with constituents.

To talk to his constituents and to exchange ideas as well as receive epitaphs and insults from those who disagree with his freedom-loving views, Jawad uses Facebook--at least when Facebook's watchdog employees aren't shutting him down as a suspected spammer.

This is the 112th interview in this series and Lebanon is the 34th country we have visited. Although, Jawad speaks in a calm and level-headed voice, this is among the most dramatic and inspirational stories I've reported on so far.

[Special thanks to Stan Magniant for connecting me to Jawad and making this interview possible]

1. As a Member of the Lebanese Parliament (MP), you sometimes have to take extreme precautions to ensure your safety. Why? And can you tell me more about this?

I was first elected in June 2005, a few months after the horrific assassination of Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri and then Minister of Economy and MP Bassel Fleihan. These followed a previous attempt on the life of former Minister and MP Marwan Hamadeh.

All three had been active in attempting to free Lebanon from Syrian control. These events were the straw that broke the camel’s back and brought the Lebanese people into the streets. During a full month of demonstrations culminating in a massive rally on March 14, 2005 more than 1.5 million Lebanese took to the streets in what became known as the Cedar Revolution.

They demanded the departure of Syrian troops and the end of Syrian hegemony and control over the country. This massive turnout of nearly one half of the Lebanese resident population (an equivalent rally in the US would require the participation of more than 150 million Americans) finally convinced the international community, which had been complacently blind to the occupation, to put pressure on the Syrian government to pull their troops out of Lebanon.
 
Hariri's assassination led to international outrage an an international investigation into the assassination to unmask the responsible party. The investigation has been ongoing for three years now in utmost secrecy while, in parallel, the legal, financial and operational requirements for setting up an international tribunal to judge those responsible for the assassinations proceeds apace with the investigation.

The elections that were held right after the Syrian pullout gave the independent faction, known as the 14 March Alliance, a majority of seats in Parliament and therefore control over the apparatus of government. This control was not complete because of the presence of Hezbollah, an armed organization operating outside of the scope of the state. Hezbollah constituted the nucleus around which the pro-Syrian opposition, strengthened by 30 years of occupation, coalesced.

Despite the international investigation, assassinations continued at a pace targeting majority MPs, journalists and leaders of opinion as well as officers in the army and police force. The common thread was the political affiliation of the victims to the “Sovereignist “coalition.

In less than a year, four Sovereignist MPs were murdered, whittling down the independent majority in Parliament at a time when holding by-elections was becoming more and more problematic in the face of mounting security threats and the influence of a heavily armed Hezbollah. As a consequence, surviving MPs were advised to take extreme security measures to protect themselves against assassinations with a view towards destroying the parliamentary majority.

During certain periods, the security threats were so prevalent that MPs had to regroup in severely fortified and protected premises away from their homes and families but also to completely curtail our movements. Though the security threat has decreased somewhat as security services, which were previously subservient to Syrian whim are rebuilt and acquire better capabilities to thwart threats but also after the UN Security Council voted a resolution to create the international tribunal for Lebanon rendering ratification by Parliament unnecessary.

2. Why do you continue? Why do you not just decide to step out of Parliament and perhaps move to another country where it is safer for you and your family?

I do it because I believe in Lebanese exceptionalism. Besides, there is no place like home. Let me expand:

Lebanon has always been the odd player in this region.

We have managed to create a parliamentary democracy that is open and tolerant with constitutional protection of individual and community rights and equality for all citizens. This is unique to the Middle East.

In Lebanon, there is no state religion and religion is not a source of legislation as in all other Middle East countries. It is a system where the military is subservient to the civilian authorities unlike Turkey, for example, where legislation does not discriminate according to religious affiliation (such as the law of return in Israel) and where power proceeds from the people (unlike Iran which is a theocracy). It is also a democracy unlike the Monarchies of the Gulf and the authoritarian states of the Levant and North Africa.

Lebanon has a market economy, a liberal bent, an open society-- and we worship our freedoms. Unfortunately, our openness as well as our geographical location between two states that have territorial designs over our country, coupled with the presence of a very large Palestinian refugee community, have negatively affected our stability since our country gained independence from France in 1943.

The very openness of our system has rendered us vulnerable to shocks resulting from the conflicts that rage in the Middle East. Despite all this, the Lebanese people have been unanimous in defending their system and their country and have consistently refused to succumb to totalitarianism or to theocratic tendencies. Ours is a country worth defending and worth sacrificing for.

3. Tell me about technology in your country. How many people have computers? How many people use mobile communications devices?

Figures are a bit sketchy but there is a relatively high penetration of the Internet and computer literacy is broad. Mobile telephony was a hit since it was introduced. Indeed most people prefer their mobiles to fixed lines and most people own mobiles, which are a must in country with a high level of social interaction and where most business is conducted over the phone. Lebanese software companies, while small, have radiated in the region and the Lebanese are pioneers in the use of communication devices and software in marketing and advertising in the Arab world. Access to computers is widely available in schools, businesses and private homes. However, our infrastructure is not up to par. We sorely need investment in our telecommunications infrastructure.

4. Why did you decide to start using Facebook?

As I mentioned, security considerations had forced me to curtail my movements and draconian security measures made it difficult for me to meet with my constituents--or even friends and family. I had to find a way to communicate with people and connect. This was early in 2007 and Facebook and other social utilities had started to really take off in Lebanon.

It was “cool” to be on Facebook and fun too. I first connected just to see what the excitement was about. But I soon discovered the potential of the tool to communicate with a very large constituency of socially diverse and geographically dispersed population. The Lebanese are like the Irish. They tend to emigrate in large numbers in search of better opportunities. But they remain connected and keenly interested in developments at home. It is a common occurrence for me to be informed about something happening literally next door to me from a constituent who has emigrated to Australia 10 or 20 years ago. The constituent from abroad would call to inquire about an event that I wouldn’t know had occurred in my neighborhood or in my circle.

Quite soon, I started using Facebook as a tool to reach out and exchange views with constituents. That’s when the facebook service started disconnecting me. After the 30th or 50th message, Facebook would interpret my activities as spamming and shut me down. After the third disconnect, the Facebook Help Desk warned me that I would not be reconnected next time. So I had to learn to manage the tool in a less expansive way.

5.  How many of your constituents use Facebook? What sort of conversations do you have with them?

I really don’t know how many of them do, but I am surprised by their numbers. I currently have about 1100 friends most of whom are constituents.

But I receive a huge number of messages from people who don’t solicit an “add.” They just want to ask a question or inquire about an issue or clarify a position. I get some hate mail, of course, from people who sometimes later become friends as we talk about issues.

But mostly, it is people with legitimate concerns or who are just curious or who, for one reason or another, simply do not want to appear on my profile.

I often use my friends as sounding boards for positions I wish to take publicly in order to obtain their feedback and fine tune the message. I also take note of complaints and requests from citizens who require services or who are sometimes blocked by the bureaucracy and who require my assistance. So it is a mixed bag really.

6. Who else do you speak with on Facebook? You seem to encounter some people there who are bitterly opposed to your views. Do you feel these conversations can be constructive?

They are. Facebook is an excellent means to customize a message and explain issues. Modern media favor the sound bite over a more nuanced delivery of a political position.

People are very often confused by issues and need to be walked through the details. I often discover that there is a lot of common ground with people who come across as intransigent or radical in the first exchange.

This is not to say that Facebook outreach is a miracle mind changer. We often agree to disagree but keep up the contact. This is very important in a small constituency where people like to vote for candidates they happen to know personally or have access to. This may be a sufficient incentive for them to vote across the political divide. But is it certainly enriching--and time-consuming though I certainly don’t mind receiving hundreds of birthday good wishes.

7. How do you feel Facebook has changed your role in Parliament How has it changed you as an individual?

I don’t think Facebook is an issue as far as my parliamentary duties are concerned. So there is not much of a plus there though I sometimes wish I could connect during a particularly boring session in commissions.

On the individual level, it has allowed me to connect with friends and family spread across the globe. I have been able to stay in touch with friends I haven’t seen in years. It is very rewarding to be able to share in the lives of people who have touched your own life at one moment or another. Though I am a private person, which is pretty unusual for a Lebanese politician, I enjoy being part of a worldwide network of friends, family, supporters or just ordinary people who want to reach out.

8. What is your vision for the future of Lebanon? How can social media play a role in that future?

I definitely want my children to grow up in a free country where stability does not come at the price of liberty. I want a country that is ruled by laws and where rights are preserved and defended. I want a sovereign country where the right of the state to exercise it’s sovereignty over it’s institutions and territory is not in question as it is today, where citizens are unarmed and where the courts are free and equitable. I want a country that has good schools and respected universities.

This may sound like pretty basic stuff to many of your readers but not in my country. We are still struggling with existential issues. How to secure our borders, how to defend our skies and waters from daily Israeli encroachments, how to sterilize Syrian influence born from 30 years of hegemony, how to avoid paying the price of regional conflicts in which we are intimately embroiled without denying our basic values, how to conduct a dialog between religious communities in a region where religious convictions are an important part of identity and where fundamentalism is on the rise. How do we stabilize and rebuild for the umpteenth time after the latest war?

I do not think that social media can replace broadcast media or come close to the impact these media have. But I am sure that, as far as politics are concerned, that social media can have niche roles such as the one that is the subject of your questions.

I think it really depends on the personality of the individual who wishes to harness its use. It doesn’t make sense to delegate when using a media such as Facebook. You can’t ask a staffer to do the job because the whole point of it is that people want to talk to the person they are trying to connect with. So one has to be able to allocate the time it needs and therefore design a unique role for it in his or her outreach strategy.

9. Is there something that the global social media community can do to help Lebanon's plight?

One of the problems we face is that Lebanon is a very complex society with unusual problems. Our issues do not lend themselves to over-simplification yet they are extremely important.

Had the world community heeded the lessons of our historical experience, many of the issues that are being debated now in crisis mode could have been addressed earlier and solutions found. I would cite the example of the role of Islam in politics for example or the protection of the rights of religious minorities in societies where a complete separation of church and state is impossible.

Had the US made better use of the experience of the Lebanese, it may have avoided many of the mistakes it has made in Iraq. It is not by design that Pope John Paul II described Lebanon as “much more than a country, it is a message”.  We are sometimes amazed by the misrepresentations and superficiality of reporting on Lebanese issues that far exceed the small size of our country in their importance. We would like to see more serious, thoughtful and unprejudiced reporting on Lebanon

10. Any additional comments?

If you are a politician and you are not using social media, you had better start learning fast.

[Interested in sponsoring the SM Global Report? Email me for details.

The Return on Hurricane Tweeting

                        [Home Depot's Nick Ayres. Photo by his wife]

When hurricanes hit, The Home Depot, world's largest home improvement retailer, understands there's a lot of business and reputation at stake.

Such emergency preparedness items as home generators and gas cans must be stocked up in advance. That might be simple enough, except that hurricanes are moving targets. They zig and zag on short notice to endanger communities that can be hundreds of miles apart. Stocking the right stores before disaster hits can be a supply chain nightmare. Trucks, loaded with goods that can bring comfort and safety to a community sometimes need to be rerouted fast. Cold meals for thousands of employees who may work all night to prepare for emergency disasters need to be ordered before other places shut down and sent to the right stores.

Home Depot is an old hand at this stuff, however.  It has a system in place, a tight act that has been  refined over a good many years. As this year's  parade of hurricanes meandered up the Caribbean toward the US Gulf Coast,often varying abruptly in direction and magnitude, Home Depot's Atlanta-based corporate headquarters activated it's four-room Hurricane Command Center. Its veteran crew took their places amid walls covered with maps and monitors, where they could watch an array of news channels as well as "Pulse," Home Depot's own proprietary monitoring software. This War Room could watch and respond to supply chain issues fast. As sophiccated as this all was, it was all on the supply side. The Hurricane Command Center had no direct contact with customers.

Until this year, when the company integrated it's relatively new Twitter account into the system to help customers repare and to earn what was happening to people has the storms encroached their lives.

Social media has long been active in disaster news sharing. Evelyn Rodriguez blogged her experiences when a tsunami hit Phuket in 2004. Brian Oberkirch, helped people in his small hometown of Slidell, La, find loved one's when Katrina flooded it in 2005.  Emergency service organizations such as the Los Angeles Fire Department and the American Red Cross have already used Twitter to provide realtime information during natural disasters. And the Wells Fargo Bank Guided by History blog has served communities during emergencies, particularly fires. Traditional media, almost always short staffed have turned to social media to provide feet-on-the-street first person reporting in disasters.

But The Home Depot is the first commercial enterprise to use Twitter in an emergency to support customers--and increase sales--during a natural disaster. The company could have taken a mercenary approach, but it was extremely careful to not exploit the situation, but rather to serve communities in need.

The Home Deport is an unlikely social media pioneer. Until Spring 2008, its only social social media program was a YouTube channel
where it posted do-it-yourself instructional videos--useful, but not ground-breaking stuff. The company had also tried polling and online contests as well as The Home Depot Garden Club , which the cimpany considers to be an online community, but essentially they were laggards in terms of breaking new ground in social media, at least from my perspective.

Nick Ayres, Home Depot's interactive marketing manager told me. "We kept looking at social media, but we just couldn't quite figure out what would make sense for us. Ayres said he remained unconvinced when he decided to check out the Blog Council, an organization comprised of some of the world's largest companies such as Coke, GM, Dell Computer, SAP all of whom were struggling with many of the same issues related to social media. Formed in December 2007, the Blog Council received a chilly reception in the social media community. But the Council is not intended for SM enthusiasts but to provide a safe and private way for members, who extoll its virtues.

John Pope, a Dell communications officer told me, "Members have been quite
willing to share what works and what doesn't, and I believe that peer-to-peer
openess has been a catalyst for some large companies to seriously engage in
social media."

"In Florida, I engaged in several conversations that convinced me it was time to give social media a try," Ayres said. "We picked Twitter because it seemed like a low-cost, low-risk entry point."

The Home Depot assigned Sarah Molinari, a corporate communications manager to start @TheHomeDepot spend a part of her time playing with Twitter and talking with customers about local stores and hometown events. Early on, Sarah showed an ability to join conversations rather than just hype corporate policy and available goods. She showed candor and humor and started building a modest following in Twitterville.

When Gustav started rolling toward the Gulf Coast, the company started wondering if Twitter might serve a communications role. According to Ayres, the thought was that Twitter could help the company "reach further and faster. Twitter was an obvious tool for us to use to 
offer meaningful advice and help. To be honest,  we weren't sure how the approach was going to go over or how effective it would be." The company decided on four facets to incorporate into a Twitter strategy: timeliness, relevance, accuracy and most important, appropriateness. "This was not going to be a hard-sell situation. We were not going to post: 'We still have generators, and you can buy them for $xx.'"

As Gustav approached, Sarah put her other PR activities aside and moved into the Hurricane Control Center. She posted almost continuously and was present to report when decisions were made. For example, when company officers decided to keep 12 stores open all night, Sarah tweeted the news in near realtime so customers knew what stores had which supplies.

"Before Twitter, we simply had no way to get the information out this quickly and this accurately," Ayres told me.

The more she posted, the ore it was noticed in Twitterville. The number of @TheHomeDepot followers spiked, reaching just north of 1000. News media turned to The Home Depot as a primary source of information. Home Depot management attention went to the Twitter account as well.

I asked Ayres about this and he conceded, "We didn't plan it this way. But the fact is that people greatly appreciated what we did. If gives me some pleasure to think that the next time someone needs home improvement goods in one of these communities, he or she is likely to drive right past Lowe's [Home Depot's leading competitor] to get to one of out stores." Lowe's has no social media programs.

According to Marketing Profs' Michael Rubin, @TheHomeDepot's emergency reporting/preparedness worked because Sarah used clear, direct and personal language. It never tried to hard sell to people in an emergency situation and the Twitter site became an invaluable source for spreading timely valuable information as a community participant.

Ayres added that a few additional benefit that go beyond disaster preparedness. Engaging the community during an emotionally charged time "is a great way to learn from others in real-time. Engaging the Twitter 
community has become a great way for me to not only learn from others in  the social media industry in a real-time fashion. More important, it taught me the value of just listening to what our customers are saying  during emotionally charged situations."

This carries over, Ayres thinks, into more general situations. Home improvement projects are intensely personal and emotionally charged. Through social media, we can tap into that emotion."

Still another benefit is letting customers help each other. Often Sarah steps back at Twitter and lets her followers advise each other.

Then there's the issue of competitive advantage. Neither press, nor customers could turn to Lowe's for tips and timely information. Their competitor did not embed itself into the community like Home Depot. By lagging further behind, Lowe's can only be a follower in this particular area. As a result, Ayres added, "I have to admit that I get a good deal of pleasure realizing that because of what we've done, some people will drive right past Lowe's [Home Depot's largest competitor, inactive in social media] to get to one of our stores.

This is an example of what I recently called "lethal generosity." In social media, the companies who are the most generous to their communities will be the most influential and those who are the most influential will prevail, particularly during tough economic times that most businesses are now facing.

The Home Depot is still digesting what it has learned by this first truly interactive foray into social media. It is looking at what role it can play in other types of disasters. It is also thinking hard about how it can benefit plumbers and other mainstay customers through online conversations.

Until this Report, I've posted mostly about leaders and pioneers. The Home Depot neither claims nor does it aspire to be either. Like most companies, it's really looking for better ways to interact with customer efficiently. It seems to me that the Twitter hurricane blog has lessons for a great number of companies trying to figure out how to get closer with customer precisely when traditional marketing budgets are being reduced.

[NOTE: Interested in sponsoring SM Global Report? Contact me for information.

Straddling 2 Worlds with Balance & Understanding

             [Photo by Guenevere, Kaiser Kuo's daughter, 4&1/2]

I leave for my first visit to China in just 18 days, so this interview is particularly timely for me. For the 55 percent of my readers
based in the US, I believe it is also timely for you. It seems to me
that China is America's most important relationship. It is also among
the most complex with apparent misconceptions on both sides of a very
large ocean.

That is why Kaiser Kuo,
Ogilvy China Group Director for Digital Strategy, is an ideal subject
of this 112th SM Global Report. Both charismatic and articulate, Kaiser
seems to straddle the two worlds more comfortably than anyone else. 

Born in upstate New York and raised in Arizona with degrees from
both UC Berkeley and the University of Arizona, Kaiser has lived
full-time in Beijing since the early 1990s and his passion and
understanding of his adopted country comes through clearly in this
interview.

Kaiser has had what one might call a quixotic career. It includes a
good deal of professional writing including a stint as Red Herring
magazine Asia bureau chief, where he covered the tech business in China
and East Asia and as Editor-in-Chief for the now defunct  ChinaNow.com multi-city online
guide. He chronicles his life in Beijing in the popular
back page column of English-language magazine  The Beijinger—a
column called "Ich Bin Ein Beijinger, which is also the name of his former personal blog." A collection of those columns will soon be published as a book.

He also served previously in a couple of Internet companies, Mobile
Internet Games and Linktone, where he created successful
mobile game concepts and currently advises seven additional start ups.

But before that, Kaiser was really a rock star and I mean that
literally. Co-founder of China's first and most successful Heavy Metal
band, Tang
Dynasty, Kaiser remains active in the music scene, performing and
recording with his band Chunqiu. [YouTube], which goes on tour the day after I meet up with him in China.

1. When and why did you decide to move to China? What is the single biggest change in your life because of that move?

On trips to China with my family in the 1980s, it had become clear to me that the genie was out of the bottle, and that once unleashed, there wasn't any turning back. It was pretty obvious to anyone paying attention that the entrepreneurial talents of China's enormous population, once unleashed, were going to bring on changes of historic proportion.

I realized that as someone with some facility in the language I'd be in an excellent position to watch how things transpired from up close, and perhaps hitch my wagon to any number of opportunities that would come up. I first intended to settle in China in 1988, right after finishing my undergrad studies at Cal Berkeley. I came to Beijing as planned, and very interesting things started happening for me--particularly in the world of rock music, in which I quickly became involved.

But the political upheaval of the Spring of '89 cut my plans short and I wound up high-tailing it back to the States and enrolling in a graduate program in East Asian Studies at Arizona. I spent much of my time there trying to make sense of what I'd seen happen in Beijing. Once I realized that when the smoke cleared, the reform and the opening-up of the country was proceeding apace, I started coming back during summers. After my MA, I dropped out of a Ph.D. program and returned to Beijing in 1996, more or less for good. Initially the lure remained primarily music, but the nascent dynamism--social, economic, cultural--was a huge draw for me too.

If I had to identify one single biggest change in my life, it's that by having spent so much time on both sides of the Pacific I've become something of a credible bridge individual: someone to whom many Americans looked to have China "explained" to them, and conversely, someone to whom Chinese looked to have certain aspects of the West demystified. I'm lucky that I've been able to serve in that capacity both as a rock musician and as an Internet commentator. I've learned, I hope, to see how each side views the other, and to empathize with the perspectives of both.

2. You have spoken and written--perhaps more than anyone else--about the misconceptions the US and Chinese social community members have about each other. You've described what's happening online as "when Worlds Collide." Can you give a quick summary of what we in the West misunderstand the most?

First off, I want to make clear that there are many, many Westerners, whether academics, journalists, bloggers or pundits, who "get" China--who get it as well as anyone can, anyway. On balance I believe the media--especially journalists who live here in China and have taken the time to learn the language and cultivate excellent networks of contacts--do a laudable job reporting China. (I'm referring to Anglo-American media outlets; I don't read other Western languages). That said, their excellent work still can't overcome some deeply-rooted misconceptions. The sad truth about people is that they'll come away from the most balanced of news stories with their own misconceptions reinforced. Social media community members are no exception. Social media lets us choose our own communities and we tend to move in even more like-minded circles than we might in our offline lives. So the same misconceptions persist, are often amplified and continue to color and inform the western sides of citizen-to-citizen dialogs that happen between denizens of the Anglo and Chinese online worlds. Here are a few that I see crop up a lot:

• The monolithic myth. The assumption that Chinese political authority speaks with a single voice. China is a continent-sized country, and its enormous, parallel hierarchies of Party and state are not the perfect transmission lines that run from Beijing down to every village that some people imagine. There's a lot that goes on at the sub-provincial level that has little or nothing to do with the Party line from on high. Even within the Party there are a wide range of viewpoints on the burning questions of the day, to include issues of personal freedoms. But there's this persistent notion that any time someone's rights are violated in a small town thousands of kilometers from Beijing, the order must have somehow come down from Hu Jintao himself.

• The myth of continuity. When someone like Jack Cafferty on CNN calls the Chinese leadership "the same goons and thugs they were 50 years ago," he's simply wrong. China underwent a momentous, revolutionary change 30 years ago when Deng Xiaoping inaugurated his reforms deliberately reshaping the leadership to create one of the most thoroughly technocratic regimes the world has ever seen. Jiang Zemin, his successor, continued to change the very nature of the leadership by embracing capitalists and entrepreneurs--the "most advanced forces of production"--who had had been excluded previously. And now the leadership under President Hu Jintao and Premier Wen Jiabao have shifted emphasis and are addressing many of the excesses of earlier freewheeling market-led development.

They're genuinely focused on issues like sustainability, energy and the environment, and the terrible unevenness of development between the countryside and the cities and between the coastal provinces and the hinterland. Civil society and the public sphere have made major advances--the latter especially on the Internet--and while there have been lamentable setbacks at times, the general trend toward a more open society increasingly tolerant of criticism is undeniable.

• Historicism. There's a tendency by some westerners to discount or even dismiss China's claims that history still has a strong hold on China's political culture. You see this crop up in discussions online between Chinese and Westerners constantly. China's position is that long-entrenched habits of mind aren't so easily discarded and that leaping, for instance, to a more pluralistic, open society would be dangerous and destabilizing--that it could well reverse the gains in quality of life that 30 years of gradualist reform have built, that it would be bad for the world in ways Western critics of the Communist Party's monopoly on power haven't thought through. China's leadership, as well as private citizens, both play this card so often that I can see why Westerners might have gotten sick of hearing it, but among Chinese this notion that China's historical realities circumscribe the possible rate of change is widely--indeed, nearly universally--held. Americans in particular, are relatively free (blessedly so, some would say) of historic baggage, and there's a prevalent sentiment that change can happen overnight through collective will, a faith that things can turn on a dime.

3. And what do the Chinese most misunderstand about the West, in particular our social media community?

As to Chinese misconceptions about the West's social media community, I think it's unfortunate but fair to say that the number of Chinese who've even bothered forming impressions of it are few and far between.
The vast majority simply pay it no mind, just as the vast majority of western Internet users pay little mind to the Chinese social media community, except to convey pity for the oppressive yoke they assume it lives under.

Those Chinese who do pay attention--generally, more tech-savvy, cosmopolitan urbanites who read English and may have spent some time abroad--are uniformly impressed with the ingenuity that social media entrepreneurs continue to display, impressed with the enthusiasm with which social media apps are adopted, and with the level of thought that and reflection one sees in the West about the impact of social media on everything from marketing to politics.

But in the last year, especially after the riots in Tibet, the disruption of the Olympic Torch relay, the controversy over the Olympic Games and China's human rights record, many have been jolted into an awareness that China's image, even among the tech-savvy Americans they so admire, isn't a good one. From their online encounters this year, many--even among China's most Westernized young people--have come away with the impression that Americans and other Westerners are woefully ignorant of China. That's not, of course, uniformly true--and ignorance of the West among Chinese is also widespread and lamentable.

4. You've published a list of Forbidden cliches Western journalists should avoid saying about
Beijing. I get there in 15 days. What advice do you have for me about
what I should look at when I'm there? What stories should I go after
that other Western journalists have missed?

In terms of Internet stories, I don't think enough gets written
about the specific ways in which the emerging Chinese Internet culture
really differs from digital culture in the West, or Japan, or other
developed markets. So many writers on this sector get all breathless
with the huge numbers (and I'm still not invulnerable to that) that
they miss the human dimension to ICT stories.

Articles (and books) that address innovation here are too
polemical: either China's doomed to copy Valley business models for
eternity, or it's going to upend the whole world with some
super-disruptive Next Big Thing. I'd love to see more stories that
explore in a more nuanced way the balance of forces holding China back
and propelling it ahead.

Also, not enough gets written about the culture of tech
entrepreneurship here--about this fascinating ecosystem that involves
nerdy Tsinghua engineers
with big ideas, worldly returnees with their Valley experience and
their Harvard MBAs, silver-tongued lawyers and placement agents, and
all those VCs--from the parachutist who comes to China and expects to
be buried in business plans as soon as he lands, to the jaded,
world-weary China veteran who's seen it all and knows every trick.

I don't think anyone's written the definitive story--not one that's
well-reported and addressed from all the right angles--about how
China's tech industry is going to be impacted by the meltdown of the
global financial system. That's what's really on my mind these days. So
many moving parts--it's really a fascinating story.

5. One of the elephants in the room for Western journalists
is the issue of censorship. Help me to understand why Western
perceptions may be overblown? Is there no "Great Firewall of China?"

First, I don't think Western journalists have been at all shy about
the elephant, about covering the issue of censorship. It's actually
rare for me to speak to someone who doesn't bring the topic up in some
capacity. And I wouldn't by any means say that Western perceptions of
censorship are uniformly overblown. I've seen some absolutely spot-on
reporting by American mainstream media reporters, most notably James Fallows of The Atlantic.

For me the most persistent problem, and one that creates real
misunderstandings between the Chinese technorati and their counterparts
in the West, is this myth of a blinkered netizenry. There's often an
assumption by Westerners that China's Internet is much more closely
regulated and tightly fettered than it in fact is.

The Internet is censored, yes: Of that there's no doubt. But the
parameters within which online discussion is allowed to take place is
surprisingly large, and circumscribing walls are stretched daily. Not a
day goes by when Internet forums aren't abuzz with some instance of
official malfeasance, and criticisms are directed at anyone from the
lowliest county cadres to the loftiest politburo members.

The image that many westerners have of a benighted netizenry
cowering behind a Great Firewall is a terribly misleading caricature,
and one that causes fierce resentment among those Chinese aware of it.
There's
another problem with the west's understanding of censorship in China.
They tend--and I think this is sadly western-centric--to think of
Chinese Internet censorship mainly in terms of the blocking of external
sites:

The BBC, or Wikipedia, or CNN (none of which are currently blocked,
by the way). The truth is, most Chinese aren't interested in looking at
sites hosted outside of China, and by far the more significant form of
censorship is that demanded of operating companies within China--the
blog hosting companies, the Internet forums, the news portals and so
on. That impacts on the lives of Chinese Internet users far, far more
than say Typepad or WordPress blogs outside of China being blocked.
Besides, most tech-savvy Chinese interested in accessing that content
easily find ways around the so-called Great Firewall, through VPNs,
tools like Tor, or numerous proxy servers.

6. Do you think social media will help increase understanding between the two cultures over time, or do we just keep inscrutably bumping? How and why or why not?

I think 2008 has been an unlucky year for cross-cultural misunderstandings in cyberspace: the pace and timing of events never allowed things to cool off, never allowed a respite for emotions to subside. I'm optimistic, though, because I see a growing number of people who've spent time on both sides of the divide stepping up and, out of purely unselfish motives, trying to bridge the chasm and help each side to better understand why the other side behaves the way it does.

Social media communities to which I belong--Twitter, and various social networks like Facebook--are heavily populated with both Chinese and Anglos. I do believe that these two dominant cultures in cyberspace--the Anglophone Internet culture and the Sinophone Internet culture--ultimately have a lot in common. Just as the Chinese-American relationship will be the most important bilateral relationship in coming decades in a purely geopolitical or geo-strategic sense, so too will the relationship between the respective netizens of the two dominant nations. With ever-improving translation tools, talking to one another is going to get easier. I'm confident that a more civil conversation will eventually emerge.

7. Just what does the top social media guy at Ogilvy do?

I'm an evangelist and what you might call an "intelligence officer."

Externally, I try to raise Ogilvy China's profile as the best digital shop among agencies in China through frequent public speaking, writing, and blogging. Internally, I organize workshops and seminars with leading entrepreneurs and innovators, as well as put internal training materials together to help Ogilvy people better understand the fast-transforming media landscape, to keep up with what's new in digital technology, and how to talk about it and sell it to clients.

By "intelligence officer," I mean that anyone within the company--whether from our interactive agency, from our traditional above-the-line agency O&M, from PR, or from our activation practice, can come to me with their questions about what vendors they should work with to get advice on what channels they might be pitching to clients for a particular campaign, to bounce ideas off me for digital components of campaigns they're working on, or just to bone up on some aspect of digital they don't quite get. Another part of my job involves identifying tech companies in China that we (either Ogilvy or our parent company, WPP) might want to make strategic investments in. I love that part of it because it puts me on the ground with a lot of start-ups and I can get a sense for where things are moving.
   

8. Can you give me a brief picture of how Chinese business is using social media?

Chinese companies--and multinationals operating in China--frankly haven't been as quick to embrace social media as their counterparts in the West have been, but that's changing. Companies and their brands are aware, at least, that they need to be monitoring social media. It's not the blogs that they worry about so much: It's really the BBS.

You've probably read stats on how widespread BBS use is in China. More than a third of Internet users post to BBSs regularly. 80% of China's 1.5 million Internet sites have BBSs attached to them. Tens of millions of posts go up a day. It's on BBSs where most of the big controversies, the scandals, the crises all break these days. It's where people are really talking about your brand. A raft of companies has popped up to try to help manage a brand's digital reputation. Most focus, correctly, on BBS. Some of them are quite reputable while others behave with almost comically grotesque lack of ethics, using the most egregious astroturfing techniques you've ever seen.

In social networks, brands are taking cautious first steps to enlist brand ambassadors and corral fans but the social networks themselves have been cautious about user experience and haven't opened the floodgates to targeted advertising just yet. The Internet video sites, which must also count as social media, are making a big push to engage Chinese businesses. Seed ads, either professionally produced or user-generated, are commonplace now on sites like Youku , Tudou, and Ku6 .

9. Do you see some disruptive technologies emerging in China that will impact US business and/or social media?

I've seen some very nifty things developed in China that may very will impact the global social media landscape. Just last Friday I was at lunch with a new crew of entrepreneurs who are building a hybrid SNS/virtual world. And that's the second one I've seen in China. Doubtless, similar efforts are already underway in Silicon Valley or Tel Aviv or in Scandinavia. I have a couple of friends who've developed a terrific Firefox plug-in--a smart, learning discovery engine with a strong social component--which I believe will radically change the way people use their browsers.

At present, these sorts of things are the exceptions. For the most part, Chinese Internet companies still copy business models they've seen in the West so that there's a Chinese counterpart for just about every well-known social media platform or app that's come out of North America or Europe. But I believe that's changing. Valley VCs were apt to fund companies whose business models were easily intelligible to them--to pick the low-hanging fruit. But that fruit's largely been picked clean and as venture starts reaching into higher branches, entrepreneurs will start bearing fruit in those higher branches.

A guy I know at Intellectual Ventures once pointed out that over time, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea all moved from being net IP importers to enjoying a relative balance of payments in royalties and licensing fees and did so at increasingly steep trajectories. China's been no slouch about learning from what its neighbors have done to stimulate innovation. It has some real advantages in innovating--a huge domestic market, like the U.S. had after the Second World War, massive manufacturing capabilities and leadership committed to creating a more innovation-friendly business environment. China's business leaders, educators and increasingly its political leadership are on the same page when it comes to their understanding of the obstacles: China's traditional pedagogy, the lack of credit available to private sector start-ups and so forth.

10. There are more than 100 million "regular" bloggers in China according to Isaac Mao. Yet very few, I am told use social media for business purposes. Is business use increasing? What are some of the main subjects of conversation in the Chinese blogosphere?

Isaac is right that there aren't a lot of businesses using social media, unless you count Instant Messaging (IM) as a social medium. IM is a commonplace business tool not only within an enterprise but for communicating between companies. It's quite routine, for instance, for a sales staffer to have lunch with a potential client, exchange IM account names or numbers and IM each other when they get back to their respective offices to keep in touch.

As I mentioned, BBS, arguably a very primitive form of social media, still trumps blogging in China. Part of that seems to be because of the relative anonymity of BBS compared to blogs whose hosting companies, in theory at least, are supposed to insist on real-name registration.

There may be, as Isaac suggests, a huge number of "regular" bloggers in China but we have a strange phenomena here whereby there aren't really any "celebrity bloggers" like we have in the U.S. -- the Glenn Reynolds, the Drudges, the Perez Hiltons -- but there are rather a lot of "blogging celebrities" -- actors and actresses, well-known writers, and traditional media personalities who write some of China's most popular blogs.

My purely unscientific, anecdotal surmise as to the main subjects of conversation in China: Basically, your pedestrian comings-and-goings blogs: "my kitty got sick and I had to take her to the vet," or "I'm so depressed that my girlfriend dumped me," entertainment (boy bands, Korean soaps, Jay Chou and other pop stars or the latest Hollywood blockbusters. Cars are a big topic--it's like the 50s in the U.S., where young people are car-crazy and of course there's technology, online games and that sort of thing. There is a surprising number devoted to literature. Political blogs are rare.

11. What are the most popular social media tools in China?

In terms of sheer user numbers, Shenzhen-based Tencent, which operates China's most popular IM, QQ [Google Translate] has a suite of social media tools that have to rank up there among the most popular.

Tencent cleverly weaves together a complementary offering including their ubiquitous IM (340 million active accounts, when there are only 253 million Internet users in China!), a traditional portal , a LiveJournal-like mini-blog-cum-social network called QZone and casual and MMO game offerings and keeps it sticky and low-churning by unifying it with a virtual currency.

Social networks are all the rage right now and you basically have three who've carved out strong niches themselves in three separate demographics: Xiaonei.com is the dominant campus-based SNS, relative newcomer Kaixin001.com has come to dominate among first-tier city white collar workers and professionals, and 51.com rules the hinterland and the secondary/tertiary cities of the coastal provinces.
Most bloggers in China blog either through a service provided by one of the leading Internet portals, Sina.com or Sohu.com, or through one of the major blog service providers like Blogcn.com, Bokee.com, or Blogbus.com. A great many also use mini-blog services like MSN Spaces or Tencent's above-mentioned QZone.

Social bookmarking tools haven't really caught on with the mainstream Internet user in China yet, so the Digg or Del.icio.us clones haven't really taken off. But consumer rating sites--one particularly popular one is Douban.com [Link is Google translated], where books, movies, TV shows and music are rated and discussed--are quite popular.

Video sites are extraordinarily popular. In a study last year by MTV and Microsoft, 33% of Chinese answered "always" or "most of the time" when asked how frequently they visit Internet video sites when they go online. That was more than in any other geography surveyed. The dominant Internet video sites in China, Youku.com [Goog Transl.] and Tudou.com [Trans] actually have quite large ratios of professionally-produced content, and so calling them "video sharing sites" isn't quite accurate.

Youku, a company I consult, is, for instance, ranked between the 5th and 7th most popular site on the Chinese Internet in terms of time spent on site. In China, more searches are done per day on Youku than on Google.
   

12. Can you give me any statistics regarding the number of Chinese bloggers who understand and read English blogs?

I don't believe I've ever seen any such statistics, but I reckon the numbers to be very, very low. Some level of English reading ability is common, as it's compulsory in schools, but the outward-facing fringe of the blogging community is still small.

A Daily Breakfast of Fun & the Human Condition

I seem to have a lot in common with Father Roderick, the Dutch podcasting priest. We both have a fascination with technology, yet we both are more interested in how to use technology for story telling than for love of source code and silicon. We also both love to write about our travel experiences and the people we meet and we both find ourselves more than a little concerned with the human condition. Sometimes, we use humor, to lightened our subject matter.

There are two essential differences in us. First, from my perspective, his collar is juxtaposed and my in is not.He's also more prone to wearing black than I am. Second, he is an extremely good podcaster, while I have learned to stick with text. Father Roderick is in my opinion, is among the best there is in mass audience podcasting, and trust me, you need not be Catholic or religious to enjoy his highly entertaining Daily Breakfast shows.

My point of these comparisons is to point out something, that he reveals almost daily. People everywhere are pretty much alike, even if our diverse cultures sometimes make that hard to see. The technology we both use, however, lets more people understand the similarities of each other.

This guy is entertaining, conversational, observant and every morning talks with a diverse group of people on current events ranging from travel, to the causes of the sinking American economy. I have been an irregular listener to the most recent of his more than 550 Daily Breakfasts and have almost always walked away in a good mood with a new interesting or useful insight.

Father Roderick has been active in podcasting since the pre-historic year of AD 2001. He is founder of the impressive and effective SQPN, Catholic podcasting network and 100s of thousands of people tune in to him every morning. I suggest you go listen to a few of his Daily Breakfast episodes, now. then come back to hear his

1. Where were you born and raised? When and why did you decide to become a priest? What was your assignment prior to starting SQPN?

I was born in Leidschendam, not far from The Hague in the Netherlands and was raised in Bleiswijk, a town in the middle of a region dominated by polders, windmills and greenhouses. I went to school in the fast-growing, modern city of Zoetermeer, and contemplated various careers: comic-book artist, writer, movie director, computer game programmer, lawyer and even army officer. 

The idea of the priesthood never even entered my mind: although I was brought up in a Catholic family, I always thought of priests as old men, out of touch with modern culture, leading a life that couldn't be further away from my ambitions and dreams. As an altar boy, my thoughts during Mass often drifted to galaxies far, far away, where I would fight evil as a Jedi knight instead of paying attention to what was said by the priest.

All that changed around the age of 17, when I was challenged by my classmates and teachers to explain why I still went to Church, and I started to read and study what this Catholic Church was all about. My curiosity quickly evolved into fascination: beyond the appearances of an old, dusty institution I discovered a living, active, worldwide community with an incredibly rich tradition and a balanced view on life and on modern issues. An international youth gathering in the French place of pilgrimage Lourdes triggered the idea of getting involved in this Church as a priest. 

I thought this vocation would mean a definitive farewell to my fascination with computers, movies and media. Little did I know that all this would be an important part of my work as a priest today.

2. Tell me how and when SQPN got started. What came first the Daily Breakfast or the network? Can you give me some sense of how big the SQPN and the overall Catholic media network is? How many shows, listeners, countries--any numbers you feel free to share.

In 2001, my bishop sent me to Rome, where I studied social communications at the Gregorian University, one of the oldest universities in the world. Although the university was old, their media formation was very modern. While studying mass communications, journalism, radio and television production and marketing, I realized that this was exactly what I needed to do: help the Catholic Church use modern media to communicate its message to the world.

While speaking at a communications conference in the Vatican, news broke that Pope John Paul II had been hospitalized. Switching on my portable recorder, I ran to Saint Peter's square to find out what had happened, jumped in a cab to the hospital and recorded a report on the situation. The world had just been introduced to the medium of podcasting, and I decided to upload the file to the internet and create a series called the 'Catholic Insider'.

Encouraged by hundreds of reactions from all over the world, I returned to Rome to report on the final days of John Paul II, his funeral and the election process of Pope Benedict XVI. As a priest, I had access to areas and people that were out of reach for regular journalists. The success of these audio documentaries, with over 15,000 listeners per episode and lots of media attention from CNN to BusinessWeek inspired me to set up a network for Catholic media producers, the Star Quest Production Network (SQPN).

undefined soon offered more than 25 audio and video programs, reaching around 250,000 people each month. About 60% of the audience is from North America, 25% from Europe, and 15% from South America, Asia and Oceania.

Half our audience is not Catholic. Our listeners and viewers range from convinced atheists to Protestants to people with Jewish, Buddhist or even Muslim backgrounds. I now host two daily shows: The Daily Breakfast in English and Katholiek Leven in Dutch and I produce a number of other audio and video shows when I have time.

3. The SQPN website says your focus is to build, "bridges between the dominant popular culture of the Western world and the religious culture and tradition of the Catholic Church in order to reach an audience that has little or no relationship with that Church." Why?

The Catholic Church has always reached out to the culture in which it existed, often integrating its language and symbols and transforming the culture from within. Saint Paul's advise to "examine everything carefully; hold fast to that which is good" has given the Catholic tradition a consistent openness to the world outside its Church walls.

Social Communications studies show that in order to establish successful communications, you first need to have a common language. The problem of the Catholic Church today, is that that common language seems to have disappeared. There is a wide gap between the age-old culture of the Church and the popular culture in our western world.

With SQPN, we try to bridge that gap by engaging popular culture with the same openness that the apostle Paul encouraged. Many popular movies and books contain symbols, events and themes that are inspired by the Christian tradition.

That is why we have a show like The Secrets of Harry Potter, or The Secrets of the Lord of the Rings. By explaining the deeper layers of these popular imaginary worlds, we try to show how a better understanding of the Christian inspiration in these books adds new value and enjoyment of these stories.

4. In a recent video episode, you are strolling atop the frozen Winnipeg River, joking about walking on water. In another, you are disappointed that a chapel on a cliff in Southern Portugal has a locked door, keeping tourists out. Do any of your quips get you in trouble with your superiors? How does the Vatican regard SQPN? What obstacles in the Church did you have to overcome to get The Daily Breakfast show going?

I have always enjoyed a lot of support and encouragement from the official Church. My bishop allows me to dedicate 70% of my work to Catholic media and Vatican Radio even started podcasting after I introduced them to the medium. The Vatican strongly encourages the use of the internet and modern communications to build community and to enter a dialog with society.

The only difficult aspect of our work is to find funding. Podcasting, internet video, blogging and social networking are very new phenomena, whereas many potential sponsors are still completely focused on the 'old', traditional media. It would be much easier to raise money for a magazine or a radio show than for the kind of productions that we make at SQPN.

5. You get an amazing array of live call-ins. Are they mostly American? Are they mostly Catholic? Are they screened before they come on air?  What makes you decide to give your listeners 30 seconds of croaking frogs in a storm-flooded backyard?

One thing that sets podcasting apart from more traditional media is the strong, interactive and personal relationship between the host and the audience.

Listeners to the Daily Breakfast are very involved with the show and quickly respond to any question or topic that I launch on the program. The majority of callers are from the US, but I also receive voice feedback from Canada, Europe and Australia on a regular basis.

I always listen to the feedback before I play it, so that I can respond in an adequate way to their questions or remarks. Two types of feedback are very popular: the bit at the start of the Daily Breakfast where listeners can share what is going on in their part of the world, and the Q&A segment about the 'Peculiar Bunch': the Catholics.

It is again, a matter of creating a common language. The more you know your audience and the situation in which they live, the better you will communicate. And the more my listeners get to know each other, the easier it will be to form an online community around the show.

I think that religion is a natural part of our daily lives, and not something that should be confined to specific days or places of worship. The Daily Breakfast is about everything that makes life interesting - from croaking frogs in a storm-flooded backyard to praying monks in a silent monastery.

6. What have you learned from your audiences? How has it changed you? How do you think it may change the Church?

Producing these audio and video programs has had a huge impact on my own communications as a priest.

Getting to know my audience, whether they are listeners in China or my own parishioners in Amersfoort, is of capital importance. Only when I know what people need and are searching for can I hope to contribute something meaningful to their lives.

Communication begins with listening. The same is true for prayer, by the way. I hope that our work at SQPN will lead the way in Catholic new media--that it will show the Church that there are more ways to reach out to the world than ever before.

New media creates new community. The social networking revolution reflects something that the Church has been doing for 2000 years--bringing people together around a common inspiration. Catholics have always used a wide range of communication tools to create these communities, from Bibles to newspapers to radio and television. Why not use the new digital tools as well? When pope Benedict XVI visited Vatican Radio some time ago, they gave him an iPod full of Catholic podcasts. If the Pope uses new media, hopefully the rest of the Church will follow soon.

7.  Do you see a lesson in this social media experience that may be applicable to business or other institutions such as government?

There are a lot of similarities between an old institution like the Church and other business or governmental institutions. The world is embracing new media at a very fast pace. It expects institutions and businesses to do the same. Interactivity, personalized media and social networking, international branding, flexibility, niche marketing and the ability and willingness to involve customers or target audiences in the process are of vital importance for the survival and the success of modern organizations. Any company or organization that doesn't embrace these changes in communication risks losing its audience. 

8.  How do you think SQPN will evolve in coming years? Describe what the network will look like five years from now?

I think that SQPN will continue to raise the bar in terms of quality and reach. Five years from now, I hope SQPN will have a collection of audio and video productions that can rival the best secular programs on radio and TV.

We will also work hard to get some of our best shows syndicated on existing radio and television channels. With about a billion Catholics on this planet, and an even larger potential audience, I am confident that we will be able to reach several million people on a regular basis. Most importantly, I hope that SQPN will continue to produce shows that will surprise people, challenge them to explore, to be curious, to get involved in a community, online or off line. When I look back at what we have been able to achieve in only two years, I have high hopes for the future.

The sky is the limit, or, in our case, heaven is :) .

NOTE: Special thanks to Bryan Person for pointing me to Fr. Roderick

How SM brings a team of 380,000 closer together

                             [IBM's George Faulkner]

In my interview earlier this year with Firestoker's Jevon MacDonald, I speculated there was probably more happening in social media behind the firewall than in front of it. In this talk with IBM's George Faulkner, I would speculate that there is more happening behind IBM's firewall than at any other company.

Faulkner, a 14-year veteran of IBM has played a key role in IBM internal social media, particularly podcasting since 2004, the first the audio social media tool was introduced. He is currently editor in chief of the prolific IBM Media Library, which curates more than seven million employee contributions.

I found the extent of internal social media activity to be far greater than I had expected. This is a company of nearly 400,000 employees residing in over 200 countries. One-third of them telecommute and social media has made it closer, more efficient and more agile. I found parts of what George told me to be remarkable, and as a social media evangelist, some of it was to me downright inspirational.

1. Can you walk me through what IBM is doing behind the firewall with social media? Can you tell me what is going on both with employees as well as with your partners and your ecosystem?

Before turning IBM's 380,000 employees loose to self publish, we felt strongly that social computing could only exist and thrive if founded on some guiding principles and heightened cultural awareness. Like most large organizations, IBM staff  already adhered to Business Conduct Guidelines (BCG) covering responsible practices. With those BCGs, in mind, we initiated, socially drafted, and published a set of company values - created through a three-day, intranet IBM Jam, which is an open forum. From that, we established three cultural principles that we set in place immediately:

(1) Dedication to every client's success

(2) Innovation that matters - for our company and the world

(3) Trust and personal responsibility in all relationships

We view, this third one--trust and personal responsibility in all relationships--as a foundation for all open social computing activities at IBM.

The Jam resulted in us socially drafting the IBM Blogging Guidelines which help IBMers to engage, utilize and represent themselves in all social spaces.

With these foundational elements in place, IBM began to launch internal publishing spaces enabling blogging, podcasting, file sharing, wikis, social networking etc. Most of these spaces support social tagging, comment functions, networking/personal connection abilities, private/public sharing, and have transformed the way in which we find experts, answers, information, and how we connect globally and culturally with one another.

These platforms are guided by the IBM community and are not policed. Intranet editorial calendars do not dictate use and employees may publish as they see fit. The often referenced yet mythological scenario of the "Wild West" that many large organizations fear when considering this sort of mass open publishing has manifested itself as the complete opposite. When IBMers publish their expert opinions or share insight into their work, we all win. When they share opinions - no matter how hard-hitting - it inspires productive conversation. We feel these conversations influence and help shape executive opinion and add tremendous value in supporting the talent, skills and character of our employees.

We are involved socially beyond the IBM intranet - both in external social media and community platforms - with clients and business partners, and find that where conversation and community building are involved, great progress can be achieved.

2. Which of these programs works best in your opinion? What works the least well? Why?

Our most successful social platform by far is Wiki Central. Between publishing, editing, and visitors, IBM wikis achieve over 1 million hits per day. This speaks volumes in regard to what IBMers want and need in collaborative publishing and knowledge-sharing.

Our second most popular platform is the IBM Media Library which supports subscription-based audio, video, presentation and document publishing along with html-friendly page building and much more. The Library has achieved over 7 million file downloads to-date and is home to over 28k files created by IBMers worldwide. Our blogging platform is active as is our file-sharing platform. Our social networking site is quite popular as well. What makes all of these platforms most interesting, when viewed holistically, is how they are all tied together through our Enterprise Tagging Service, which enables extremely valuable discovery/search for IBMers through a variety of aggregation tools.

3. How do you measure or judge the success of your social media programs?

We measure success very simply in all social media publishing efforts on our platforms. The primary measurement is based on the conversations that the content inspires and what we all learn from these conversations. There is deep value in this open dialog. It inspires us to think, to collaborate, to work through puzzles and share our vast expertise. We finally get to be the experts we were hired to be on an extremely broad scale. We have moved from mass communications to masses of communicators.

4. How do you think internal social media is changing IBM as a business? What about corporate culture?

For me, I am more connected than I have ever been in my 14 years at IBM. Vast amounts of information are now available to me, specific to virtually any topic I seek, with just a few clicks. I not only get information, but can access vast opinions, find subject matter experts and even launch broad-scale community initiatives if I so desire. My reach is much wider, my effectiveness multiplied, my profile and reputation enhanced. I understand more of the vast undertakings of IBM in new ways which makes me a more valuable asset to the company, and I am more culturally aware of who my peers are and what my company stands for.

This is a huge change - a massive flip of traditional big business information control that has placed trust into the hands of the employee and enriched our business and our culture, allowing us to be responsible adults who feel empowered, not followers waiting for the next strategic missive with no ability to participate in the conversation.

5. What have been the biggest barriers to getting social media going at IBM? How did you overcome them?

Biggest barriers were fear of the unknown prior to launch. Worries that there could be IBMers with difficult concerns and issues looking for discussion and finding nobody there. Worried some employees may be discourteous or irresponsible for some reason, even in light of our deep values. This never happened.

“The  Wisdom of Crowds,” is not a catch-phrase. It is real. Given the opportunity to publish, IBMers immediately embraced it and have been working together through thick and thin ever since. The fear was overcome in light of our very first Jam - the Values Jam.

During that three-day open forum, we saw how IBMers would react and interact in such a situation. Although it was a controlled experiment with a set length, it was tremendous. The blog platform followed shortly and the rest of the platforms came after that. In any instance - and there have been but a few - where an IBMer gets somewhere close to crossing the line of what our guidelines and values frame, the extended IBM community steps up and speaks up. It is inspiring to see and to be a part of. The community, at large, oversees these situations and always acts to effectively work through these bumps in the road with respect, thus effecting change and progress.

6. I've talked to several global enterprises in the last couple of years and there’s  a similar scenario. There is a small band of social media evangelists and a sea of other employees. In your case, you are part of a 5-member communications team serving 380,000 employees. How do you expect to succeed?

Setting guidelines, launching education materials, creating content that would be inspirational to those sitting on the fence, and evangelizing around all of this was difficult for the first few years. Our social media evangelists are a very widespread and enthusiastic bunch, but not the key here.

The key proved to be simple enablement and guidance built on deep trust. The evangelists were the early adopters, for sure, but as the years roll by, and although it is not as rapid as I had anticipated, these platforms offer such a remarkable opportunity for all IBMers that it is inevitable that most will use one or more at some point, or they will be left behind in our new knowledge-sharing community ecosystem.

Adoption at first for the general population was often done with skepticism. Now they are eager and wide-eyed. It just took some time. I should note that we never announced the launch of any of these platforms in our intranet homepage news spaces. They were all rolled out in a viral manner. This stemmed what I would guess could have been a mass of confusion and/or ambivalence and, in turn, created a slow and steady interest.

7. How do social media programs scale at IBM? When small, pilot programs succeed and require significant budget and oversight, how does it --or will it--occur? Who does social media report to?

All of our social computing platforms come from within the CIO's office, IBM Software and IBM Research.

8. What percentage of IBM's marketing or communications budget is dedicated to social media?

Many of these internal IBM social platforms were built for a variety of reasons by a variety of sources as mentioned above. Over the last six years, IBM Communications has simply played the role of leading IBMers to understand how to use these spaces and take advantage of the opportunities they present.

Our mantra is in teaching IBMers to understand why and how to use them, how to create low-cost content with existing tools and how to focus more on quality of message and creativity (and follow-through) than expensive, slick and sleek productions.

I dare not speak for IBM content creators worldwide - we are a massive group of self-publishers without an editorial board - but investments have surely been made by some to aid in content creation. We feel strongly that low-cost options should always be considered because, when done well, they can be extremely effective and are very often going to prove to be more genuine at heart, thus generating a larger audience and inspiring deeper conversations.

Content created by 'people like me' - non-professional media producers - is compelling and is often devoid of traditional marketing hallmarks and people react very well to that. From my humble cubicle, I've spent the last four years conceptualizing, recording, editing, publishing, promoting and nurturing a large volume of podcast content on a total $1,500 investment in audio equipment and software. My internal podcasts have generated over 266,000 downloads, and I feel IBM has enjoyed a healthy return on that investment.

9. How do internal social media programs impact the lives of IBM's significant number of employee telecommuters?

Some of these IBMers have never met their managers face-to-face. Social media has enabled many of these folks to hear the voices of their peers and to feel and experience our culture and brand in new ways. It's important to realize that globally, fewer than half of all IBMers work in traditional offices. The remainder work remotely from customer sites, from home, are mobile with no fixed office.

IBM employees are bombarded with more content than ever before from more sources than ever before via multiple devices. As a result, they’re consuming large amounts of bite-size content, and later deciding where to more fully invest their time. And they’re exercising unprecedented control over assembling and customizing their content — thanks to wikis, RSS feeds, and meta-tagging. Today’s young opinion elites have a different way of gathering and validating information about companies. Unlike older influencers, they graze for information constantly, trust a multitude of sources, and prefer first-person testimonials to statements by traditional business authority figures.

IBMers are more likely to trust company information coming from regular employees than that being issued from the C suite. And in places like Canada, Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, and the U.S., “a person like me” (i.e., one with shared values and interests) is considered the most credible source of information about our company.

By providing IBMers with self-publishing abilities, tied together through subscription and social tagging, telecommuters participating in this are now more integrated and culturally connected than remote workers have ever been before. At the most basic level, we have found that IBMers react extremely positively to media embedded in traditional intranet news articles, due to the personal nature of most of our social media content and the trust they have in the information. But we also find that telecommuters truly appreciate the aural and visual window into other IBM work locations and the community spirit they encounter in the comment spaces as a result. I telecommute sporadically, and can speak from experience that it feels a lot more like being at IBM than it used to.

10. Any additional comments?

I have been stunned and overjoyed at what has occurred here at IBM in this social media space. IBMers publish a wide range of content, some worthwhile to only a few, some that connects on a widespread basis. Some have 'blogged their way into a new job,' some have prompted procedural change as a result. I'm not joking when I say it has transformed my personal work-life and how it has enhanced my productivity. Such widespread self-publishing enablement is unique to IBM as far as I know, but I see it as the inevitable future for many large organizations.

Using Social Media in Disasters

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                [Charles Brownstein, HSI. from his file.]

It seems to me that social media is at its best during times of life-threatening crises. Robert Scoble was the first person in the US to report the devastating China Earthquake earlier this year. Not only did he find out about it through Twitter, he used social media to report it about 45 minutes sooner than did the US Geologic Service. There are other stories about social media being used in disasters. Back in the days of Katrina, Ernie the Attorney was blogging about the shortage of human services in New Orleans long before mainstream media gave it a mention. The Los Angeles Fire Department has several social media accounts. it seems that whenever there is a natural or human-started emergency, new social media stories emerge.

So when my friend Jeremiah Owyang mentioned he had represented Forrester at a day-long seminar put on by the Homeland Security Institute(HSI), I was more than a little curious to find out more about what is going on. First, I learned that HSI, is an entirely different entity than the Homeland Security Department (HSD). The former group is a think tank, formed in 2002 and operating since 2004 to provide research all matters of homeland security. It reports to the Homeland Security secretary, but also conducts projects work with the US Departments of Defense, Education, Interior, Intelligence and even the Smithsonian Institute.

Jeremiah connected me to HSI Fellow Charles Brownstein who ran the workshop. A 20--year veteran of the National Academies,Brownstein joined HSI in 2005, where he serves as a Fellow. In his role there, he leads projects involving information sharing, innovation and collaboration,
personal identification systems, national and regional small vessel
security, and cyber security R&D planning, among others.

Rather than using SM tools in their own operations, HSI is more focused on empowering on-the-scene orgranizations where the tools can be used to help people at ground zero of an emergency.

1. Before we get to social media, can you give me an example or two of the kind of thinking developed at HSI that has impacted domestic security in the US?

HSI is tasked to undertake a broad array of studies and analyses for DHS,  but to remain independent in its approach and implementation.  Our work has ranged from doing fundamental work on a national response plan to integrating Federal agencies as they respond to various kinds of emergencies, to specific technical assessments on the adequacy of the testing for the Advanced Spectrographic Portal [which scans US ports for nuclear devices]. In the first instance, we helped the government get its act together; in the second we helped to avoid moving too fast with technology not ready for deployment.

2. What sort of social media programs are you using? Are these used for internal collaborative purposes or are they public?

HSI does not use social media programs, if what you have in mind is Twitter, Facebook and the like. We support our internal operations as a matrix organization with shared drives and operational procedures that don't permit stovepipes. We use wikis on a project-by-project basis where the staff finds them useful. 
My particular interest in social media is part of a project that I manage to look at innovation and how to make use of it for Homeland Security applications of DHS. 

Folks at DHS who try to look to the future asked us to do that.

3. My sense of Homeland Security is that it is very top down in it's approach. Social media, conversely, works best when it is bottom up. Are you concerned that social media could wrest control from those currently in charge?

I personally have no such concerns and the folks at DHS who asked me to look into it have no such concerns. The application that we are exploring for DHS is the ad hoc incremental use of social media by end users for self assistance in response to emergencies.

DHS asked us to explore how it has been used, its efficacy for self assistance, how to promote its use for efficacious purposes, and then to see how the sort of formal response institutions (police, fire, emergency response, FEMA, etc)  might take advantage of what the public does and can be expected to do, to improve their own operations.

4. In an earlier conversation, you told me, "HSI got some people together to explore" social media's possibilities." Can you tell me more about that session?

We put on a one-day workshop that brought together a diverse group of officials from the DHS Policy Office, including Assistant Homeland Security Secretary Stewart Baker, state and local emergency responders from the local FEMA Region, and the California Office of Homeland Security, representatives of national fire and emergency responder professional groups, large and small companies and university researchers. Among private sector and non-government participants were representatives from Google, Cisco, Apple, Forrester Research, Microsoft, UConn, UC San Diego, University of Colorado,  Stanford University and representatives from emergency preparedness organizations.

5. Lets talk about disasters. As you've noted, during Katrina, 9/11,during forest fires and earthquakes, Americans have become very active in social media. How can that be braided into HSI & DHS activities?

Again, we are not exploring how to weave social networking into HSI or DHS- but rather doing research into how national, state and local authorities can use social networking in THEIR operations, and advising
DHS on how it can promote such uses. There seems to me to be a number of ways.

First, emergency responders, especially the younger ones, use all of the same social media tools that you use. So they are tuned into how Facebook was used at Virginia Tech by school authorities and students to gain a more accurate picture of events on the ground than the police, the mass media and the public had. So their bosses want to know how to factor their own workers uses into official operations. Police in the Phoenix area, the LA Fire Department and New York City are weaving Twitter into daily operations.
So, from that point of view, we want to make sure that DHS does nothing to stop this from happening more- or better yet, makes it legitimate for local authorities to spend block grant funds to find their own uses.

Second, DHS can look at what information is readily made available by end users of social networking technology, and figure out how to incorporate that information into FEMA and other agency emergency response operations at command centers, such as common operating picture and logistics support systems. To some extent, this means getting local authorities to figure out what works for them, doing some training, or at some point when its well-understood, offering assistance and promoting standards.
Or, perhaps, it means designing and operation "back end" information processing systems dedicated to effectively using the bits that individuals generate for their own purposes.

Third, DHS can look at how the underlying common use infrastructure for social networking, such as application servers, terrestrial or mobile access links and data processing facilities, can be made or kept sufficient resilient, and reliable to be trustworthy in emergency situations.

6. Can you walk me through an example? How would a social media tool, such as Twitter,  be helpful to your purposes?

There’s a Twitter client for the iPhone that has an "emergency" button . It has a pre-typed message asking for help and it sends the geo-location and a picture if the user desires, to whomever is following that user. In an ideal world, authorities could have individuals configure their device to send such tweets to the authorities where a back-end system parses the messages and resends it and the rest of the bits from it to the appropriate response agency (fire, police, etc etc.),and they, in turn, use that information to do triage and issue orders or "trouble tickets" to responders, or set up direct communications to the sender or whatever is appropriate. So imagine an event like an earthquake, and contemplate the utility of such a system if it were available.

7. How transparent can HSI and HSD be in telling the public what they are up to related to social media? What would you say to people who are apprehensive about Homeland Security watching what people say and do in online conversations?

I believe that this stuff will be useful at scale only if authorities are100% transparent and if authorities are very careful in official ways to be appropriate about privacy and about use. The critical variable for citizens and authorities is TRUST. Without that, I believe the use of the technology by all parties will be marginal  and unimportant.

8. Do you see a point in the future when you will be able to say that social media made America a safer place? How far into the future might that be?

Yes.

It has been going on for some time. It started the first time emergency responders started using available tech like instant messenger unofficially years ago, picked up steam with deployments of 802.11 around events like Katrina and California wildfires, and began picking up steam with cities supporting Twitter and other applications. I think it’s not "social media" that is important- its mobile social media applications and the entire infrastructure that supports it.

It is still in its infancy, but I think it will grow as rapidly as mobile technology innovations that look and operate like the iPhone are diffused and become more ubiquitous. That will include many non-Apple products and operating systems. To the extent that the many applications that support Homeland Security find a place in this space, we will be safer or at least better able to respond.

9. What technical improvements could be made to social media, making it more useful to Homeland Security?

I think that the key things needed are to keep the infrastructure inexpensive and make it more reliable, and to do the many things needed make the information for any particular application trustworthy.

I am starting my 16th month of writing my Social Media Global Reports. To date, I have interviewed 108 people in 34 countries. They are a diverse lot, ranging from Michael Dell, founder of the world's second largest computer company to Wael Abbas who uploads hidden camera videos of police brutality in Egypt. The point of these stories is to investigate social media's impact on culture and business.

This project, sponsored and encouraged by Intel, is among my core activities. I have a great deal of passion about it. To date I have posted over 150,000 words on this subject, just about double the number of words in Naked Conversations. Some day, the stories I have gathered may be condensed into a book.

I am saying all this, because I am constantly looking for stories of people--prominent and obscure--who show the wide range of events that are changing business, education, government, communications and just about everything else. From time to time I post on Twitter that I am looking for new stories and I get flooded. While this method has landed me a few gems, I also get lots of stories that just won't fly. In fact, I end up covering about one in 14 ideas that get presented to me. This frustrates me and I'm sure it frustrates all those people who took the time to pitch me only to get rejected.

First let me clear up some stories that I simply do and do not cover:

• I almost never cover a start up on a first launch. I am looking for technologies that are changing business and life. There's a guy named Scoble who just LOVES tech stories. Pitch him at scobleizer@gmail.com. Tell him I urged you to go there.
• I am not really focused on technology per se, but on business and people. If you do represent a tech vendor, please send me the customer who has the most remarkable story.
• I am interested in human elements and how remarkably social media has impacted real people, such as the Kenya orphans who blog to raise money for running shoes, or the Erik Hersman who helped Kenyans by creating a mobile wiki so they could see where violence erupted and avoided it or Laurel Papworth who went to Saudi Arabia to help Muslim women set up a social network, or Isaac Mao, China's first blogger who is now investing in disruptive startups in China.
• The interview that I most covet would be with Queen Rania of Jordan who posts videos on YouTube that educate me about Islamic culture and inspire me in many ways. Perhaps this link will catch her attention more than my email pitches have so far.
• I am interested in behind the firewall stories, such as Peter Reiser, who architected SunSpace, where 15,000 engineers share what they know in a Facebook-type environment and who figured out the ROI is in shared knowledge. I just loved the story I posted earlier this week about Francois Gossieaux interview this week, where he showed how tribalism is a key factor in understand business social networks. I loved Ethan Bodnar's story last year when he was a high school student that he would never work for a company that would not let him blog or Pawel Nowacki of Poland who told me how citizen journalism in his country has greater impact than traditional newpapers.

And so on.

I am looking for stories that will help professionals understand how to use social media to move the needle inside their organizations and will help people to move mountains in their culture. I'm looking for stories that will inspire other people to use social media in ways that most of us have not yet even dreamed about.

In fact, if you do want to pitch me for a story, I strongly suggest you push the SM Global Survey button to your right as you read this page and take the time to read a few. That will get you to understand that if you are pitching a Twitter for the enterprise, there are venues that will treat you with much greater veneration than I will.

I'm looking for diamonds in a coal mine. I will be very grateful if you have one to share with my readers.

Oh yes. One other thing. Most pitches I hear are American-based. I am really eager to hear more from other parts of the world. After all, the name of this space is Global Neighbourhoods.