Global Neighbourhoods

Google's Schmidt Advises GOP to Blog

Through Richard Brandt, I was pointed to this Reuters Report of Google bigwig Eric Schmidt advising the Republican Party that if they want to succeed in our next national elections, they need to get more active in politics.

To which I say, "no shit, Schmidt."

More and more people are turning to the Internet as their primary sources of information.  For example, a decade ago, the very Reuters report I pointed to would have been available to you only if you worked the International wire in a newspaper or other traditional publication.

If you want to attract young voters, you will find them on the Internet. More and more elected officials and candidates are turning to the Internet for conversations with the voters.  This includes Anthony Williams, mayor of Washington DC.; David Cameron, Tory candidate to replace Tony Blair; Michaelle Jean, Canada's Governor Genera, two Italian cabinet ministers, Indonesia's secretary of defense, Iran's president and all sorts of hopefuls in all sorts of places, many of them democracies. [Note: Michaelle Jean title corrected and link added].

Why are people in the political spotlight going to blogs? Well, let's do a brief analogy. Willy Sutton, the legendary Depression Era American bank robber was once asked why he robbed banks. "Because, that's where the money is," he replied.  Why is David Cameron using a video blog to get elected? Because that's what the voters are watching to an increasing degree.


Because increasingly the people who vote can be found there. Looking forward a few years, the trend is clear that if you want to get elected you need to go online. Every day 100 million YouTube videos are being watched.  There are 90 million people on MySpace, more and more young people are using SecondLife and these trends will not change.  Nor will the downturns on the numbers of people gleaning less information from traditional media.

I suspect however, that Republicans already knew this.  I have heard persistent rumors that in the last presidential election, while headlines were blaring and bloggers were gushing about a blog allegedly by Howard Anderson, actually written by Joe Trippi, ministers in Indiana, Ohio and Texas were blogging to their congregations, urging them to vote for George Bush. This latter tactic is obviously more authentic and more effective in delivering voters where they are needed most and t was a Republican tactic.

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The Sexiest Naked Conversationalists

Have I mentioned that Kathy Sierra is consistently among my favorite bloggers? This post right here is one of my reasons. She has a way to pull out stuff that I find fascinating and I never would have found on my own.

In this case, she shows a,well provocative photo of a pretty naked woman whose most private areas are veiled by a shower curtain baring only a bit of leg, arm and face while the rest is left to imagination.

She says scientists argue that this sort of photo, leaving key points to the beholder's cognitive imagination, turns on people of the male persuasion more than a full frontal nude would.

I am not going to er... reveal if this is true of me, but I do wonder how scientists researched the matter and how they drew the conclusion.

The marketing point, however, is irrefutable. We all hate total brain dumps. We like being fed information in little spoonfuls taking more if we wish after we've digested what we've receive so far.  There are no business stories that I recall hearing, where I could not fill in the unrevealed parts and felt, well satisfied.

As far as Kathy's photo goes, well I have to admit that i really love the shower curtain.









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Is MySpace Over the Hill?

Theresa Valdez Klein over at the Blog Business Summit  points to the growing evidence that MySpace is over the hill, mostly because it has an ugly interface, crammed with ads inside a walled garden. I thought her drive-the-point-home statement is: "Social networks as we know them
will meld seamlessly with the other functions of the Web."

This is good food for thought.  I'm in my 10th day of self-flagellation in trying to determine precisely what my book is about and MySpace is relevant to that point.  To a larger degree, what young people are doing with social media is key to my attempt to paint a picture of how social media will change the world over the next 5-10 years.

What's relevant to me is that 90 million young people have embraced MySpace, despite its irrefutable flaws. They are forming social habits, processes for  information gathering, becoming comfortable with neighborhoods much larger than their local school districts.

The users are what are so damned important. Whether MySpace lasts or dies is no more relevant to social media than whether Wordstar lasted after it popularized word processing.

The same goes for YouTube. Personally, I think YouTube is brilliant, but whether it becomes a financial success for Google is not really the point.  To me, the point is that 100 million people watch these citizen-generated videos every day. How many will that be a decade from now? What impact does that have on commercial television? What will be the mindspace of the kid that comes of age after watching YouTube-type videos for half his or her lifetime? How will that impact his or her buy habits, politics, awareness, relationships, ability to share or collaborate.

Yeah, I'm not really debating Theresa, so much as struggling through a mild case of writer's block trying to determine exactly what this Global Neighborhoods book is about, and more and more, I find the answer in young people.

In terms of business, those MySace kids are your future employees, customers, competitors and investors. If you don't much care for MySpace that's one thing.  But if you don't pay attention to what's happening with the kids, then you are missing something that is a lot bigger.









Technorati Tags: myspace, theresavaldezklein,

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Amazon Lists Naked among year's 10 Best

Amazon.com has named Naked Conversations as #6 on its list of the 10 Best Computer & Internet books of 2006.  This is indeed an honor and my thumbs are tugging at my suspenders as I strut about the office.

NOTE:  I have replaced a previous comment with this input from our editor Jim Minatel, who contributed significantly to the quality of the book. Jim tells me that Naked was selected from between 1200 and 1500 books in the category.

That's not so bad for two rookie authors.

Social media & world peace

Brussels was just a whistlestop on my recent Europe tour.  Kris Hoet, a really nice marketing manager for Microsoft had invited us for a quick walking tour of the remarkable marketplace followed by a fabulous lunch, made more fabulous when Microsoft Belgium picked up the tab. I figured, I might get a couple of good leads on business apps for social media, then catch the plane to the next stop..

But the lunch topic got bigger than that... a lot bigger.  First there was Pieter Baert, a talented photographer, who has co-founded a fascinating site that selects a single citizen-generated photo of his home town each day, then lets you clicks back one day-at-a-time to see a very cool photo story of a single physical community.

That got me into a talk about the universality of photos and their internet advantages. Photos are language agnostic, and the implications are still evolving. This brought me to the very special Ine Dehandschutter .  The soft-spoken, but passionate, Ine has  pioneered a photo project that seems to me to be a small but very effective step toward world peace.

What has that to do with a book on business and social media?  I don't know. But Ine's is one Hell of a story and it seems to me that if people shoot more photos and fewer bullets at each other, the world may have more safe markets for conducting business.

The following is mostly Ine's story in her own words with a few editing liberties taken on my part.

1. Can you tell me a bit about yourself and your work?

            
            ©Catherine Vanholder

I live and work in Belgium as a freelance photographer and web designer. I'm busy with making a living. I am neither a politician nor a peace activist, but I do try to make best out of life and understand it.

I became a photographer to show the world what I saw and mostly what I wanted to see with my own eyes, was what was going wrong. I traveled to Iraq back in 2002 when Saddam was still there, and I saw what the UN embargo did to the people, I was in Russia in 2002 when the last 'free television' station was shut down by Putin, and was stunned the world didn't react to it. I lived in Israel for 2 years and I still have the feeling I cannot grasp it. I traveled the Middle East: to Lebanon, Syria, Jordan and I was in Israel when the US-Iraqi war started and I still have the feeling the West doesn't understand what it is doing. Photography is a language to me, very powerful since it is so universal. It provides a way for  me to tell the world my opinion.

2. Did you always want to be a photographer?

Actually, my dream had been to become a journalist and report. But once I was working as one, I realized the news is ruled by money and the public only sees the highlights, missing bigger pictures. Content is produced to please readers, instead of really informing them.

So I dropped the dream and figured out the internet is a nicer way to tell your story.

There is no editor. I can tell my story and spread it. I  stumbled into blogging that way: I started to write my daily story on a site for friends. After a while I noticed I had many more readers than I thought I would have, and met a lot of people I didn't know. That's when I learned people are looking for alternative sources of information.

I learned blogging works. The power for me lies in the personal story. Blogs add a nice background to the news, additional info that can differentiate the main story, add accents, put faces on it.

Make it personal and thus touching.

The nice thing about blogging and the internet, is that there is one very important added value: contact. Today I open a site, I add a comment and I am in real contact with a stranger I don't know.

3. How was the idea for Snowblog born?

©SnowBlog

I studied photography in Israel. While living there, I was stunned that more than a physical wall which is being built. There is also this psychological wall.

I had 2 friends, one Israeli and one in Palestinian. As a 'free traveler' with the right passport and nationality I could move freely between Palestine and Israel. I spent a lot of time there and talked with many people, two of them good friends, one Yasser, a Palestinian guy and the other, Sigal, my Israeli roommate.

I'd carry conversation back-and-forth from one to the other, I told the other side what I had seen and what they said about each other. I kept getting into these circular conversations of "well tell your friend this, and tell your friend that." At a certain point I had enough, so I emailed the two of them:  "Look, I love to hear all your arguments but maybe you should just talk to each other."

I think this stunned them both because neither one answered for a while. I don't remember who first sent the other an email, but then they started writing to each other, and the next moment they were phoning each other.

        So I thought, heck, it is that simple...but there were other pieces.

Back in 2003, I started Photoblog with some friends as a project for fun that grew into a community. We started with 50 people and ended up with 400.000. We were showing pictures to the world, but most of all, exchanging ideas about photography and thus becoming friends and exchanging ideas out of life.

When PhotoBlog grew so popular, I remember thinking: this is it, people that never thought they would know each other are exchanging words, worlds and are widening their horizons. Suddenly we had Israeli's and Iranians online, and they were putting comments on each others blogs. And they started to communicate, eager to talk to each other.

That's when the basic idea for Snowblog was born. Snowblog was supposed to be a one-year project, while I studied in Israel.

Eventually, I found Language Connections, a nonprofit group of teachers working for world peace. They had an existing educational framework, but they had not yet considered the internet and its power. It turned out to be a perfect match.

Working with them, I would go to different locations, such as Gaza, to teach kids some basic photography and have them take pictures and put them on the web. We adapted Photoblog to our new needs, closing the environment for safety and legal reasons. Instead of just nine kids, 120 became involved.

I am still involved in the technical part.

4. Precisely, what is Snowblog?

Snowblog is a closed blogging site where children show pictures of their own lives and start to talk about them online and thus get acquainted with each other's cultures. It is not only the site, but is accompanied by an educational context, where children are taught a basic in photography, internet and English. All in a project form, integrated in the English class in traditional school rooms.

Why not get children to talk to each other through the web? Children who could not be in contact because of a conflict. Like Israeli and Palestinians. I went to my Belgian consulate in Jerusalem and asked them if they were interested in supporting a pilot project featuring nine kids: three Israeli, three Palestinian and three Israeli Arab. The consulate was enthusiastic and provided financing for what they called 'Preventive Diplomacy.'

5. What's the origin of the name "Snowblog?"

I wanted to call it "Snow in Jerusalem," because I once saw snow there. It was magical and is burned into my memory. Nobody thinks of snow in Jerusalem. It was surreal when I saw it. Israeli soldiers were playing with Palestinian kids, throwing snowballs to each other. The weapons became innocent snowballs and a game and it appeared on that day that peace was possible.

Anyway, we changed the name to Snowblog, because it was all about blogging and not limited to Jerusalem but snow remained a perfect match for self narratives on the web.

6. Where does the concept of Snowblog go?

My biggest dream is that Snowblog becomes an 'open source' thing, where teachers from all over the world can plug in their projects and use the 'framework' or platform or call it network to enable the exchange of ideas and have children widen their horizons. Where other teachers can look into these projects and re-use them.

My main example to refer to is the Apple Learning Exchange Program where projects are shared by teachers--a very strong statement. But the most important thing isn't available there and that's the network. I think a teacher should be able to say 'this month I'll do a project on Palestine, so let me find a school that wishes to connect with me.' or This month I am talking about Jews, so let's exchange cultures, by really exchanging cultures and not just 'talking about it'.

But that's the dream.

7. Give me an example of how the kids learned from this project?

We had a project 'food' where they exchanged pictures and ideas about food. The teachers got the kids to think about food. They wondered how to picture food.
We explained that they had to think beyond the obvious, so they learned food also could be seen as 'something important in cultural events, like the Muslim feast, Jewish Passover or Christian Christmas.


©SnowBlog

As they started to explain the meaning of the food rituals they ended up explaining their culture to each other and they liked it a lot.

8. What did you learn?

That kids are eager to know each other.

An interesting project sidebar was that problem kids, who were difficult to handle in other lessons, or had learning difficulties, were extremely enthusiastic and active in our lessons. One teacher told me one of her kids NEVER did anything during the whole year, and he keeps on asking when you are coming.'

We managed to arrange a meeting between 2 schools after the kids insisted on it, which was really not that easy, considering the political situation. At first, they were very shy, but then pointing to each other, 'hey, you are Amal, I recognize you from your picture' and it ended in a soccer game with mixed teams. The buses left home way too late, and then too, I had several kids coming over, saying 'teacher teacher, thank you so much for giving me a friend'

9. What lessons are there for people in general in the Snowblog experience?

On a high level. when you have an idea, or a dream, try to realize it.

More pragmatically, there's a need for a good program evaluation and changes for the program to evolve and keep current. For example, PhotoBlog was developed in 2003. It is almost 2007 and online platforms have developed a lot.

Also, kids today are different from the kids of 3 years ago. Today, youngsters have mobiles, SMS and the internet, so the program needs to get into them more profoundly.

And always, the program lacks funding.

10. What would you say to those who would argue that projects like Snowblog are too small and insignificant to make a difference?

If you manage to change only one person, making a difference for that person, then it is worth the effort.

One could say it is all cold water on a hot plate, evaporating. But it isn't. Some kids are changed by such projects. Maybe only in their own life or maybe in a bigger sense.

I really believe with the project we changed the idea of some kids, not because we said so, but because they decided for themselves.

©SnowBlog

And we have to keep in mind: the kids of today are the leaders of tomorrow.

Scoopt! sells Ewan's shot to the Times. But did I see what I recall seeing?

I've already told the story of how Rick Segal, Edublog's Ewan McIntosh and I saw Tory Prime Minster candidate David Cameron and his video blogging entourage talking to homeless folk on the streets of Edinburgh, Scotland a few weeks back. The one you see here is my version, Ewan's is a bit better.

The meeting happened just minutes after we had met with Kyle MacRae, founder of Scoopt! a service that sells citizen journalist photos to traditional media then splits the receipts with the camera journalists. Ewan sent his photos to Kyle and today through Scoopt!, Ewan's shot of Cameron squatting to chat with a homeless guy is on Page 16 in the London Times.

Here's Ewan's version and all the links.

For me, I'm having a "BlowUp" moment, a 60s movie in which the key figure thought he had filmed a crime, but on closer look, he's not so sure.  I recalled seeing candidate Cameron grimace at his hand, then wipe it on his suited buttocks after shaking the hand of a  homeless guy. I thought Ewan had captured that, but I don't see it in his Flickr photo set.

Was a real?  Did I see Cameron do this, or is it my mind embellishing what actually happened? I don't know either way for sure. In either case, congrats Ewan.  Nice job Kyle. For all you digital clickers out there, Scoopt! is a service worth considering when you find yourself in a position to capture a newsworthy moment.

Happy Anniversary Scoble

Scoble leaves a comment on Jeremiah's very kind post  lamenting that he cannot join me for a glass of red wine and some company.  The poor guy has to fly off to London on this fine Thanksgiving morning, therefore he has declined our invitation to join us for dinner (as has Jeremiah). Meanwhile on Scoble's blog, he seems to have provoked a rematch with Amazon.com CTO Werner Vogels, with whom we had a solid bump, back when we visited the Amazon home court during the Naked Conversations book tour.

My recollection of the Vogels incident is different than either of them recount.  We may have spiked sales for a few days, but it was not our finest moment together and as for Werner, I will not nominate him for Host of the Year.

But I digress.

On this day, our house will be filled with company, and as is our tradition we will go around the table, talking about what each of us has to be thankful for. When it comes my turn, I will toast Scoble, on this the eve of our second anniversary.

On the day after Thanksgiving, 2004 I flew to Seattle to pitch Robert Scoble about co-authoring a book about why business should blog. He said yes, but it was a most inauspicious start.  The guy did not become engaged in the project for another month, when he told the world and me at the same time that we would blog the book right out in public, where everyone could see it.

As I have written, at the time I though the guy was Loony Tunes. I though publishers would walk away.  I thought our intellectual property would be ripped off.

In fact, blogging the book was pure genius.  The blog built a modest community of Naked Conversations champions.  Their word of mouth contributed most significantly to the book becoming the success it has become. Bloggers also made Naked Conversations a much better book, by adding cases, telling us what did and did not work, by fact checking and even by catching the typos.

This was Scoble's genius.  It not only changed our book and contributed to its success. By my last count there have been at least a dozen additional books that are being first blogged in one case or another and the authors as well as their publishers are enthusiastic about the results.

Meanwhile, I'm just thankful to Scoble for having partnered on the book with me. I greatly changed my life for the better. Robert, enjoy the UK.  This is a great day to land in London.  Thank those Brits for the country.  Overall, we've done okay with it so far.

Bloggers and wise old asses

I found Liam Cassidy's blog because I use search tools to feed my own ego. He said the magic words know  "Naked Conversations," and there he was in all my  RSS feeds. Once I got to Liam's site, I not only liked what he said about the book, I  discovered someone new who shared my interest on a variety of subjects.

He mentions, for example, the ability of bloggers to shout back at big branded companies and to tell others about shoddy support. I care about this and have been known to climb a soapbax with megaphone in hand on this issue. He writes how bloggers seem to champion fair play. I have some religion on this issue as well. In fact, Liam's post got me to do what I assume he wants me to do. I followed my ego feed to his post.  I liked it. I looked around the whole blog and liked other stuff, so I subscribed and now I am attempting to send some traffic his way by pointing you to check out his blog as well.

If patterns prevail, Liam will get a few more hits, and then a smaller percentage will subscribe, and maybe point others his way if he keeps writing on matters that are useful or interesting to his new subscribers. This is how the network works.  the power is not really in the rank, but in the network of blogging.  The topic determines the neighborhood of that network.

This brings me to the one key point where I am not joined at Liam's hip. He and I do not precisely agree on how influence works.

"I'm not complaining," Liam says, but "rather, commenting on what I think is an interesting emerging condition, or state, in the blogosphere. When it comes to influence, some bloggers, to paraphrase, Benjamin, the wise old ass an Orwell's Animal Farm, "some bloggers are more equal than others," then goes on to offer a few good pointers on how bloggers can make themselves better noticed.

There is undeniable truth in what he says. If I write something, it may have some degree of greater influence than Liam, because, according to Technorati, I have more readers and links than he does--at least at this moment, and if Robert Scoble writes about it, Technorati says he's ten times more influential than I am.

But that perspective overlooks the real power of the blogosphere, which is in the network, not in us nodes, some of whom are old asses, even if the wisdom part remains in doubt.

The nodes are highly dynamic. Eighteen months ago, Michael Arrington was virtually unknown. Now he's the top blogging influencer if you happen to be a Web 2.0 company. If Michael pisses off too many people over too long a period of time, or if people display more brilliance, provide better information or write with greater prolifically, than Michael will get pushed off the rankings mountain. This will be difficult, because along with pissing off lots of people, Michal is extremely good at what he does.

But he's only relevant in an increasingly slender slice of the blogosphere pie. He's worthless to you, if your passion is hummingbirds or sports or politics or cooking.

Liam mentions the influence of Paul Thurrott's Internet Nexus regarding product support issues. In that category, Paul has great influence today. That is because Paul continues to contribute on that topic. Other people like Jeff Jarvis and others come and go.

What gets your rankings up is by writing about things that are relevant to others on a shared topic.  What keeps you climbing in the ranks is to keep contributing to the relevant community.  I'm told the alleged "Top 100" blogger list has a 60% year-to-year turnover rate.

I've written too many times about the list of unknown bloggers rising to the top by: revealing Dan Rather's sloppiness; photo blogging punctures in an Alaskan Airlines jet in flight; exposing rotten working conditions; the horror of being in a London tube when a bomb goes off; the wrath of a tsunami hitting Phuket's shores; the need to connect with loved ones after a hurricane wallops a small town and so on. Some of these blog authors rose to the top for a day then disappeared.  Others have remained prominent.

For business people, the day to day contribution on a specific topic have brought them to prominence. Arrington is a shining example. My friend and client Pat Phelan has risen up several hundred thousand ranking places, not by writing on spectacular topics, but writing prolifically and with relevance just by writing about what is interesting and valuable in the area of low-cost phone calling. The same goes for another friend, Web strategist Jeremiah Owyang, who has become prominent by showing how corporations can either build communities or become influential over existing ones. In fact, he has followed all the pieces of advice that Liam offers at the end of his column.

The way all this happens is not by watching the rankings and determining your position with it.  It is by watching the network and determining how you can benefit those in closest proximity to your position in it. We are all nodes on the social network. We are all connected.

Liam, who says he has relatively low ranking has addressed issues that are proximate to me and I enjoy decent rankings.  I amplify what he has to say. Some people follow my link and check out Liam's post.  If they like it, they check out what else Liam has written about recently. If they like that, they click on an icon and subscribe. If Liam keeps posting things that are relevant to a particular network neighborhood, than he rises in popularity. In that popularity there is influence. To become even more influential he has to remain generous with thoughts and information that are valuable, and hen the other nodes keep pointing to him.

This is a very long way of saying that it's not about the rankings which are temporary. Michael Arrington is considered on top of the influence pile for Web 2.0 start up companies. Eighteen months ago, very few people ever heard of him. If over the next 18 months, he may become the leopard frozen at the top of the mountain, or he may disappear. Sooner or later we all disappear, making room for Liam and the multitude of new bloggers coming in every day.

Or may these are just the mutterings of an old ass.  Have a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone. This happens to be my favorite of American holidays. We should all remember once a year, all the things we have to be thankful for, don't you think?

Jim Forbes' Neighborhood

I mentioned Jim Forbes recently as the founder of what is now DEMO Fall and mentioned that he had been a talented reporter and editor.  I did not mention a couple of other facts on Forbes: (1) Despite his hard-boiled demeanor style, he has a heart of gold and over the years I've heard of many acts of generosity on his part, and (2) Jim saw big action in the early days of the Vietnam War. I am sure those experiences are still with him as much as they were when I first met him in the late 70s.

Jim writes today of finding out out how someone was killed years ago in Vietnam on behalf of the family that suffered the loss. he used the internet to make the connections that finally gave the family important missing pieces of action.

The shared experience of a war ended more than 20 years ago is still part of Jim's Global Neighborhood, and the story he shared today is one for the book.

The Power of Languages

Self-confessed undercover geek Justin Thorp posts a great summary of what must have  been an outstanding talk by Pierre Cadieux, president of i18N Inc. about the intricacies, difficulties and challenges of language at a recent conference on internationalization and Unicode.

This is a geek conference and Pierre seems to be among the geekiest of the speakers.  But he elevated the conversation, so that he was addressing the issues of language in general or so it seems to me. He observed, for example, that there are 6000 languages in the world and only 25 percent of them are written. Hebrew is just on language that was dead for more than 100 years before it was revived. English a short while ago, represented 45% on Internet content and not it is just 35%.

I have been thinking about language a lot lately, particularly. I want to write a book about how internet connection makes the world easier and more accessible. This is what makes geography less important.  This is what enables global neighborhoods.

But how does this get achieved without without a common language. I keep hearing the English is the language of the blogosphere.  But that may only be because it was first adopted in English-speaking places. And as more of the world's people get connected, less of it will be in one language.

My wife and I are movie goers.  We swap on who picks the flick. My turn is next.  I think we'll go see Babel.