I’m in Toronto today at the 2010 Consumer Privacy Consultation convened by Canada’s Privacy Commissioner, Jennifer Stoddart.
There are several people tweeting to the #priv2010 hashtag. I’m going to capture the session stream using CoverItLive and post during the day.
For four years and 200 episodes, Terry Fallis and David Jones informed and entertained us with their weekly Inside PR podcasts. But those late Sunday night recording sessions began to wear, and Terry and Dave decided to call it a day with episode 200.
But their co-host, Martin Waxman, had only joined at episode 100 – and he felt that he had another 100 or so episodes in him. So, with Terry and Dave’s approval, Martin decided to keep Inside PR going. But to do this, he needed to find another couple co-hosts.
Well, he has. First, he found Gini Dietrich, the blogging CEO of Arment Dietrich in Chicago. Then, he looked a little closer to home and found me. So, now we have three hosts in three cities – Toronto, Chicago and Ottawa.
I’m really keen to join Martin and Gini in keeping Inside PR alive. I’m a big believer in the culture of generosity. If I share what I know (or think I know), there’s no doubt in my mind that I’ll get back equal or greater measure from the Inside PR community.
Our first effort – Episode 2.01 – is posted on the Inside PR Website. It’s a little rough. We had some technical glitches (we ended up recording my sections at a different time from Martin and Ginnie’s) and our chemistry still needs to be worked on.
But episode 2.01 is live. Now, on to the next 99.
Please give the new Inside PR team a listen and let us know what you think. Even better, let us know what you’d like us to cover as we keep the tradition of Terry and Dave alive.
I’m not Terry Fallis, but I’m trying.
Third Tuesday Ottawa
Are you interested in helping to organize Third Tuesday Ottawa? If so, then please attend this special “organizers only” meetup.
We’re looking for people to help us with
If you have the time and are prepared to help us with these tasks and the other work that goes into organizing Third Tuesday, then please register to attend this special Organizers Only gathering.
Are you interested in helping to organize Third Tuesday Toronto?
We’re looking for people to help us with:
If you have the time and are prepared to help us with these tasks and the other work that goes into organizing Third Tuesday, then please register to attend our upcoming Organizers Only gathering.
In this week’s episode of Social Mediators, Terry Fallis, Dave Fleet and I talk about some of the limitations of the iPad and changes to two of the longest running PR podcasts – Inside PR and For Immediate Release.
OK. OK. The iPad is selling like hotcakes. But I still think that Steve Jobs has made a mistake with the product by limiting its usefulness for content creation. Dave Fleet thinks that “Steve Jobs has always done – what Steve Jobs wants to do.” Terry doesn’t see it as a mistake and expects that Apple will sell a “whack of them.” I think that the iPad takes us back to the era of creators and consumers. And I hope that competitors will push Apple to do better.
Also, after four years and 200 episodes of Inside PR, Terry Fallis and David Jones have given up podcasting. Martin Waxman will carry on with new co-hosts. Why did Terry quit? Partly fatigue. But also a sense that the show needs to be refreshed, that it will benefit from an infusion of new ideas.
We also talk about the changes to the longest running PR podcast – For Immediate Release – as Shel Holtz and Neville Hobson announced that they’ve cut back from two shows a week to a weekly podcast. FIR is a must listen for Terry, Dave and I and we’re glad that Shel and Neville are carrying on.
Is our view of the world distorted by the uneven distribution of content creators? And for those countries and groups who lag in creating content, do they risk invisibility and marginalization?
Social media has enabled anyone with access to the Internet to create and share content. And this makes it possible for us to see the world as we have never seen it before. Not through the eyes of elites, but through the eyes of ordinary people like you and me.
But there’s a problem. Some parts of the world are more visible than others. And some areas risk being marginalized.
There are significant variations in the rate at which people from different countries participate in the act of content creation. And the countries with the highest levels of participation may not be the ones you expect.
The Forrester Social Technographics country profiles vividly illustrate this issue. Forrester’s Social Technographics profiles demonstrate that people participate in social media in a range of ways and with varying degrees of engagement, from simply consuming through to actively creating content.
When you compare Technographics profiles on a national basis, a “content creation gap” can be seen between the most prolific content creators and the laggards. Most important is the proportion of the online population who self identify as Content Creators, the top rung of the Technographics ladder.
There’s a huge gap between the leaders and the laggards – ranging from over one third of people online creating content in South Korea, Metro China, Japan to less than one in five people creating content in countries like Canada, the UK, Spain and Sweden. And barely one in ten people who use social media in France and Germany create content.
Add to this the impact of search engine algorithms. Search engines return results that reflect content that is most popular, most linked to, and most read. That favours the most popular creators. It also favours those countries and regions that are most populous, most connected, and most prolific.
What happens to those creators who come from smaller countries and who reflect a more distinct perspective? Will they be found or will they be relegated to page 200 of the search results? A place that guarantees invisibility.
Should countries like Canada or the UK be concerned that the number of active content creators isn’t higher? Especially given that the means of content creation are accessible for free to anyone with a broadband connection?
Do we accept that 20% of people will create 80% of the content and that’s just the way things are?
Or by doing nothing, do we run the risk of losing sight of ourselves as other more prolific content creating countries generate ever more content?
This week, I found my Social Media Zeitgeist in posts by John Battelle, Steve Rubel, Cory Doctorow, Jeff Jarvis, Michael Geist, Liz Gannes and David Armano.
Could Foursquare be the next shiny object that fails to live up to its initial glitter? John Battelle’s post, Foursquare, I wish it was better for me, highlights some hurdles that Foursquare must overcome before the service is likely to break into the mainstream. Whether it’s the feeling that it’s targeted at a specific demo (what the heck am I doing on it?), the lack of engagement beyond checking in, poor search or an unclear function in the social sphere, there’s a lot of work to do to ensure that Foursquare doesn’t flame out.
It’s the week after the excitement of the launch. Now, people are reporting their experience living with the iPad. And some could do without it.
Steve Rubel spends a 
week working with only the iPad. While he seems to love the device, he calls out Apple for undermining the Web as we know it: “Seemingly overnight the Information Superhighway (does anyone call it that anymore?) became littered with potholes. In the last week Apple sold nearly 500,000 iPads, none of which support key technologies that we have come to rely on, including Adobe Flash, Windows Media and others. (Adobe and Microsoft are Edelman clients.) …For the last week I have been using my iPad as my primary device. I enjoy the slate format and think it’s the next big thing for computing – one that will see lots of winners. Unfortunately, this comes at a cost. I don’t get to experience the web like I used to, but a version of it that only Apple approves of – one that’s peppered with potholes that turns it into the swiss cheese web.”
Writing on Boing Boing, Cory Doctorow called it this way: “The real issue isn’t the capabilities of the piece of plastic you unwrap today, but the technical and social infrastructure that accompanies it.
“If you want to live in the creative universe where anyone with a cool idea can make it and give it to you to run on your hardware, the iPad isn’t for you.
“If you want to live in the fair world where you get to keep (or give away) the stuff you buy, the iPad isn’t for you.
“If you want to write code for a platform where the only thing that determines whether you’re going to succeed with it is whether your audience loves it, the iPad isn’t for you.”
And Jeff Jarvis, saying he doesn’t see a good use for the iPad, put his money behind his convictions, paying a restocking fee to return his unit after less than a week.
Michael Geist tallies up the Canadian Government’s consultation on its proposed copyright reform bill, C-61: “There were ultimately more than 8,300 submissions – more than any government consultation in recent memory – with the overwhelming majority rejecting Bill C-61 (6138 submissions against, 54 in support), while thousands called for flexible fair dealing and a link between copyright infringement and anti-circumvention rules.”
In a post on GigaOm about the current troubles at Digg, Liz Gannes makes the case for why signed comments trump anonymous comments for credibility: “A place where you use a silly moniker as your user ID just doesn’t feel like true socializing in these days of Facebook, Google, OpenID and (to some extent) Twitter. There’s a value to anonymity, but true social interactions are the kind of powerful things that keep you coming back. Endorsing a piece of content with your own name in the context of your known interests for an established group of friends or readers is quite powerful.”
David Armano keeps thinking deeply about what’s really going on in social media. In his post, Media = The Ways We Engage in Context, he brings together the concepts of owned, earned and paid media with engagement and context.
Well, that’s my take on this week’s social media zeitgeist. If these interest you, please share the links on Twitter, delicious, Facebook or the social media platform of your choice.
And let me know what caught you eye this week. I want to expand my reading list too.
Zeitgeist: the attitudes and ideas that are generally common in a particular place during a particular time. These ideas and attitudes show up especially in literature, popular culture, philosophy, and politics.
I’m starting a weekly series of Social Media Zeitgeist posts in which I’ll point to of articles, podcasts, videos, or events from the previous week that I think capture the mood and concerns of the social media sphere.
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know that my interests encompass social media, communities of interest, the evolving relationships between people and institutions, communications, marketing and the impact of emerging technologies on all of these things. And I read many different sources on these subjects each week.
I share articles that I find noteworthy through shared items in Google Reader, my delicious tags, and also via links on Twitter. However, they’ve been absent from ProPR.ca. I’m about to rectify that.
So, if you share my interests, I hope you find the weekly Social Media Zeitgeist posts useful and worth reading.
After all, social media is all about sharing.
It’s tax season. And the scam artists are out in full force.
I received this in my email this morning:
Dear Taxpayer,
After the last annual calculation of your fiscal activity we have determined that you are eligible to receive a tax refund of : $112.00
Regarding this, please complete the Refund Form and mail it to one of the addresses from the second page.
>>You will find attached to this email : the English/French version of the form<<
Your *Refund Reference Number is: Ref/12209/2009.
*Refund Amount : 112.00 $.*(You will need it to fill the form)
NOTE!
For security reasons, remove the form from your computer after printing.Thank you,
Canada Revenue Agency
Yeah. For sure. Canada Revenue Agency is going to send an email with a generic heading to a “Taxpayer” asking me to complete and return a form. You can be sure I didn’t bother to open the attachments.
SPAM. The nuisance that just won’t go away.
The recession is over. Hurrah. And our business is growing. Hurrah again.
Recessions are hard on everybody. But they can be especially tough on the leaders who have to make the decisions that affect others. It can be like carrying the burden of not only your own anxieties, but the anxieties of everyone you work with. Sometimes, you can just be so ground down by the stress and burden of carrying a team through the bad times that you feel that the only way you can get your energy back is with a complete change of scene.
That’s happened to us. The General Manager of our Toronto office was recruited away from us. We’re sorry to see her go. Not only was she very good at her job, but she was one of the nicest people you could ever want to work with and a friend. We’ll miss her.
Now we have an opening on our management team. And we need to move quickly to fill it.
Do you know this person? Or might it be you?
Our General Manager will:
Lead a talented team of consultants whose expertise spans social media, traditional public relations, Web design and development, and advertising. You’ll ensure that they have what they need on a day by day basis to succeed and you’ll ensure that we’re delivering real results for our clients and pursuing opportunities to grow our business.
Set an example of excellence in your communications skills and personal conduct. Be a person who inspires by example.
Mentor and guide the team members. This includes developing an annual career plan with each employee and conducting progress reviews. We want our employees to grow with us. We count on our General Manager to make sure that everyone is thinking about what they want out of their professional careers and that they are working toward attaining that.
Work with our CFO to establish business targets and ensure that we achieve them. A business has to be successful in order to provide a bright future for its employees.
You have already achieved success in your career as a communicator. You have demonstrated your leadership skills through responsibility for a team and a business unit.
You are a successful consultant, having already demonstrated that you understand client needs and that you can organize a team to meet those needs and deliver creative solutions that deliver real results.
You have established relationships with senior executives who lead the communications and marketing functions in their companies. And those people want to work with you again. In fact, you’re confident that when they hear you’re working with Thornley Fallis, they’ll want to talk with you about you and your new team can help them.
You inspire loyalty. The people who work with you love working with you. They know that you care about them and that you’ll put the needs of the team ahead of your own needs.
Does it sound like a job you could excel at and that you’d be passionate about? If so, connect with me on LinkedIn or DM me on Twitter.