Happy Synchronicity

I LinkedIn with David, after meeting him at a trade show a few years ago and our professional paths continue to cross here and there. This week he sent me a friendly email  letting me know about an upcoming "Broadway on Broadway" event at TImes Square. Apparently, his client's tech product - Aerva's Pic2Screen application - will be make it a consumer-controlled billboard - enabling tourists to upload their photos on the jumbo Kodak screen. Super-sized social media.

Cool.  I like Broadway. I like new consumer tech applications.

So, I clicked on the link to read more on David's blog, Eat Media, which featured an article on Aerva that he included. His blog included his Twitter feed where I happened to see his interesting tweet about how that Kodak screen enabled more awareness for a Diabetes event, featuring pictures on the big screen of kids with juvenile diabetes who were working to raise research money.

Cool.  I like cause marketing.  I like new tech that helps consumers raise their consciousness.  AND, I am working with Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation on some of their chapter's social media efforts. So I clicked on THAT link from Twitter and read more about that case study.

That led me to a terrific story about 9 year old Noah, The Diabetes Dude.

And that is where this story ends...and begins:

The story is REALLY about Noah, and HIS combination of charisma and a good idea to help leverage star power, media, and social media to get people thinking and acting. 

Noah The Diabetes Dude, and his parents have set out to do their version of the traveling garden gnome, but using blue flamingos as a pop icon of diabetes awareness..."flocking" people with the plastic birds to create engagement and interest. 

They have a nice little site, a blog, videos, photos, a donation button...even an interactive Google map to track the growth of their flock!

The value of sharing good content, across multiple platforms, and the joy of synchronicity led me to learn more about this inspiring little activist, so I hope you'll read about Noah from here, and decide to do your part to "flock someone" and spread the word and donate some dough to help eradicate this terrible disease.

Cool?

Oh the Places you might not Like to go on Facebook

There's Trouble again in Facebook land, and that starts with T and that rhymes with P and that stands for Places.

Per a really interesting article in Ad Age that describes a "real life" experiment in trying out the new Places feature on Facebook in real life, there are a lot of aggravated people. The issue at hand is again the DEFAULT settings that Facebook arrogantly selected including one that enables anyone to check anyone in to a location, true or not, desired to be revealed or not.

You would think Facebook would have gotten the clue from the Beacon fiasco, but not so much.

There are a lot of good articles on Places to learn more (like on Mashable ) if you want, but as always, I think the reader comments (including my own) especially on this particular article are a reflection of the feelings of many. It all feels very similar to the uproar created by Beacon which infamously automatically posted purchases made online via Facebook connected sites to one's wall. The Beacon anecdote that circulated as an example of a good idea gone wrong was the guy who cancels on a date, only to have the movie tickets he purchased posted on his Facebook page, to his girlfriend's dismay. Now imagine being location-outed by a friend to the delight of a stalker-ish ex, or your boss if you're playing hookey!

We have got to pull the reins in on giving power to the people and keep it with the person.

The majority of commenters on this story echo how I feel, and why I immediately disabled the ability of someone else to "check me in" on Places. While I have a lot of respect for Read, Write Web content, they are not as much concerned about "asynchronous" check-ins. But they DO bring up another issue - that of labeling a place with a less-than-desirable name...like, say, your own home, or a restaurant you didn't love...and having it stick.

So, if you agree, and I think most do, go to your privacy setting immediately.
Here's a how-to from my @rww source.

Predicting a Social Media Based Society

As a media marketer, I've been awed by the impact of social media on all our lives for a while now. In a Faith Popcorn moment recently I was trying to imagine the even greater impact it will have on society down-the-road. Will the transparency social networking forces on brands now drive us to be kinder, gentler human brands because of the power of mob to criticize? We already open ourselves up to criticism for every opinion posted. And we make instant heroes of the Steven Slaters of the world (212,000 Facebook fans and counting) who act out secret fantasies in public.

So, think about where will we be as the walls are continuously torn down... where that will put us in 20, 30 years under our belts of a medium that is only in its toddler-dom today?
What adjustments will we make?
Will the pendulum swing backwards to greater privacy than ever, as a backlash to too much crowd judgments on every move one makes?
Will it burst open even further and manners and mores be damned?
Will we become vanilla pudding, scared to make a move or take a stance?

I wonder.

Tamar Weinberg wrote a nice blog on balancing social media social lives and blending with relationships offline, applying practices of one on the other.

As social media enthusiasts, we often forget that we live in a different type of world than everyone else. We might be more keen to open up to strangers and share our feelings with people we don’t know. It’s the world we’re living in — for us, at least, and it will continue as we spread these ideas to our peers and colleagues, all of whom will likely slowly open up to this world in due time. All paths will ultimately lead to here whether or not these “outsiders” have chosen to accept it yet.

Faith Popcorn, criticized by some, lauded by others, predicts less conspicuous consumption (driven by fear of criticism again or is it the economy, stupid?...though we won't hesitate to rubberneck in awe of a Real Housewives' lifestyle and shop their bankruptcy sale). Either way, social media is part of the problem and the solution:

Amy Avitabile, senior vice president of marketing at Lord & Taylor, called the use of social networking a “complete game-changer.” Lord & Taylor is using Facebook and Twitter in nonpromotional ways. It also has a mobile strategy for messaging. While Lord & Taylor was late to the party with e-commerce (its site is less than two years old) “it’s the number-one trending door by a lot,” she said....

“Our big message was to alleviate the guilt of shopping,” said Avitabile. “We don’t sell things she needs, but what she wants.” So the store developed the “Shop Smart” campaign, created by David Lipman with the tag line “Shop More, Guilt Less.”

Popcorn also thinks supermarkets will work to compete with local farmer's markets' rise in popularity but may fail without "authenticity and transparency." Why? Again, because of social media, and our ability as consumers -- or just humans -- to point fingers and get to the truth.
Truth is the breath of life to human society. It is the food of the immortal spirit. Yet a single word of it may kill a man as suddenly as a drop of prussic acid.
~Oliver Wendell Holmes

Thoughts? Criticisms on this post? Please share, but leave the prussic acid at home.

Looking Up

My dear friend Rita, a respected businesswoman in the marketing world, forwarded me a link to Pete Blackshaw's column today in AdAge. I was very moved by the piece and submitted a long comment back to Pete, but the topic is worth a couple hundred extra words...at least.

Pete, a regular AdAge columnist and VP at Nielsen Online Digital Strategy, lost his sister recently. He became aware of the contrast between real, deep offline connections and community created by her passing and shared grief and support vs the surface kinds of connections we are all running after in our online world. Here's a link to his column: http://bit.ly/Blackshaw-adage

I found myself buying every admonishment and silently vowing to work those offline relationships harder than my Twitter-based ones, but found the comments posted very interesting for the push back from a few readers. This is actually why online conversations can be so important and compelling. We actually have more opportunity than ever before to share and hear other opinions. This hopefully will make the world a little smaller, but it also reminds me of the need to remember the middle ground.

Here's what I wrote in response to Pete's column and others' comments:

"Pete, I too am sorry for your loss, and sadly grateful for the column it inspired.

Yes, there are those who feel the connection you made between your experience of a family member's death, offline, with the lifestyle we live now, online, was "kind of too much" or "nearly blasphemous."
And others will share the pathos completely and hang their heads in shame for a moment vs just hanging their heads down over a smartphone, thanks to the reminder that we need to emerge from our avatar-selves and raise our eyes and our consciousness more frequently, and seize the offline day too.

That said, the ship has sailed and I fear we won't easily be able to find our way back to the kind of connections we SHOULD have. I'm guilty of missing the chance to share a smile or receiving one, and have heard annoyed passersby say, "Look up!" And I've been annoyed in return to see every single person on the train completely absorbed in their own digital world.

Tim Sanders wrote his book, Love Is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends back in 2002 on the premise that "being a lovecat" is the only way to succeed in the 21st century, and necessary to overcome our Dilbert society of isolation in cubbies.

We crave community. I think we're creating it in any way we can.

Digitally, time suck that it is, is just easier for many. Unfortunately, we end up back in the digital version of a cubbie after all.

Thank you for the excellent reminder to look up."

Learning to Swim at Broadband Speed

I was just reading "High Speed for the Sparsely Wired" in @NYTimes this week about the portion of the government stimulus program that allocates $7.2 billion for extending high-speed Internet access. I have to say, I'm pretty fascinated by both the possibilities facing rural communities about to get transported to the web 2.0 community via the economic stimulus plan...and by the perspectives of people in and out of those in dial-up-speed land.

Think about it: if you're reading this blog, chances are you didn't have to wait a half hour for the page to load. (And if you did, and think I'm THAT worth it, bless your heart.) That means you likely live in an area where broadband means PDQ* access to the world wide web. It means traversing global villages and accessing the knowledge of the crowd on literally any topic you can imagine. It means you can, like view images of Mars or play web chess with someone in the Czech Republic...or try the impossible of keeping up with every damn article on social media marketing, staying up every night til 2AM....

The comments on this news story are inspiring, as many in rural areas talk about gaining the ability to work virtually, or post resumes, or set up online storefronts -- helping to open up new commerce opportunities. And imagine this: expanded health care options, too! For example,

"doctors in Anchorage, 400 miles to the east, can see patients via videoconference."

It's a whole new frontier for many, down to learning how to build a skyscraper ad right in their own backyard. Of course it also means closer examinations of the less illustrious and the downright icky. Or, as "Mike" commented on this topic in a NY Times story:

"How can you not look at that [article] and think, "Hi, JokrBoy. I'm HotBlonde. What r u wearing?"

Access to the vain or glorious aside, it means a whole new part of the country will be exposed to social media tools that some 500,000,000 Facebook users take for granted. We're not talking total social media virgins, as patience, or satellite and cellular services have certainly enabled access for many. But from an almost anthropological perspective, it will be interesting to observe how superfast, 24/7 entry to Twitter, YouTube, Flickr and Digg impacts life as they knew it. I can already hear the cries of "and WHY do I want to 'tweet'!?" or "What a time suck!" Oh the stories I could tell...the caveats...the techniques... Don't use all CAPS! Don't "sell!" Do remember my social coaching mantra of "Look. Listen. Learn. Participate. Lead!"

Unless our rural friends stay up nights studying Mashable and Brogan, Ochman to Owyang til all hours, they will have to learn it all the hard way. They will be jumping into the deep end that most of us had the chance to hold hands and wade into more slowly back in the day, last year or so.

*Now it will even be easy to figure out obscure references like "PDQ."

Black Gold and Blues

On the day that yet another attempt was made to cap the disasterous oil leak in the Gulf, I reread a blog post from the NRDC on 5/21, about dealing with the feelings of frustration and anger. Since I awoke this morning to news stories of pelicans drowning in oil and the spread heading towards all of our mid-Atlantic beaches, rereading Sheryl Eisenberg's thoughts stemmed the flow of some of my tears. For now. In my rage against the machine I offer some of her words to help us all funnel action to good:

From This Green Life blog of the NRDC: Gulf of Mexico Oil Spill -- What You Can Do

In 1968, when I learned about the population bomb in biology class, I was overwhelmed. The planet was heading for disaster and there was nothing I could do to stop it. In the 70s, it was nuclear weapons; in the 80s, the ozone hole. This spring, it's the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But these days I know something I didn't know then. There is always something I/you/we can do.

I don't mean we can erase the disaster that has already occurred. That's oil under the bridge—and if we're unlucky, into the Gulf Stream. What we can do is help prevent recurrence. For recurrence is not only likely but inevitable as long as we allow offshore drilling, depend on oil and, indeed, continue to consume energy as if there were an unlimited supply.

Therefore, this is the time—when we are sick at the thought of the workers killed, sea turtles and other endangered species harmed, fisheries ruined, coastline polluted and coral reefs destroyed—to change our lives.

To begin, we must change our mindset.

We are running on borrowed energy. Oil is just one part of the problem—and oil spills just one of the risks. The trouble is our whole fossil fuel driven way of life. There is not a big enough store of fossil fuels on earth to sustain it, and if there were, it would only make matters worse. Prices would go down and use would go up. The environmental costs of extraction would rise and the climate would be wrecked that much sooner and more completely, perhaps irretrievably so.

We who care need to follow Gandhi's dictum and "be the change we wish to see in the world."

Here's how.

Step 1: Drive less. Do you hop in the car whenever you need something? Zigzag across the landscape to perform errands in opposite directions? Drive where you could easily walk? Join the club.

Americans burn up gas so freely because it hardly seems to cost them anything. The price at the pump is deceptively low and the true price—environmental destruction—is hard to recognize.

But for this brief moment in time, thanks to the oil spill, we can connect the dots. Use the opportunity to change the way—and amount—you drive. Plan your trips. Carpool. Walk. Bike. Give public transportation a chance.

Step 2: Care and repair. Cars and appliances, along with virtually everything else in our consumer culture, are considered more or less disposable nowadays. Since we expect to replace them, we don't keep them in good working order. Thus, they continue to operate, but grow less and less efficient, eating up energy unnecessarily when they run.

So take your car for regular tune-ups, keep the tires inflated, change your air conditioner filters, lubricate the moving parts of motors and do all those other pesky maintenance tasks recommended in the manuals.

Step 3: Get energy-efficient equipment. The difference between conventional products and energy-efficient ones can be quite staggering. For instance, an incandescent bulb uses four times as much energy to produce a given quantity of light as a compact fluorescent bulb—and 10 times as much as an LED. Yes, the energy-efficient alternatives cost more to buy, but they also cost less to operate. Besides, becoming the change you want to see in the world includes paying more for a cleaner, safer future. So, shop for Energy Star appliances and factor fuel economy into your choice of car.

Step 4: Go local—and not just with food. It's simple: goods need to be transported to market. The shorter the distance, the less energy required. Therefore, look for products made close to home.

Step 5: Change your habits. Today's norm is to live wastefully, but you don' t have to go along. To save energy:

• Turn off lights when not in use.
• Wash full loads of dishes and laundry.
• Air dry both.
• Change your clothes before the thermostat.
• Unplug chargers and always-on appliances.
• Reuse and recycle.
• Eat less meat.

Step 6: Buy less stuff. It takes energy to produce goods. Think twice before you throw it away on things you do not need.

Whatever you do, don't let this moment pass without some step toward change.

And one thing I just did with some savings from buying less? Contributed to the Coalition to Restore Coastal Louisiana. It's a start.

TED brings it home - augmented mapping from Bing

If you have heard of "hyper-local" or "augmented reality" meet them combined in Bing's mapping discussed this week at TED:


This is an important video to watch all the way through (it's only 8 minutes) if you want to see what is possible RIGHT NOW. Just another example of how we are truly in the midst of seeing change take place in the world as we know it -- and not just HOW we see it, but how we CAN see it -- right in front of our eyes, and right in the palm of our hands.