So last night, as I was twittering while reading a book, watching tv and returning phone calls/text messaging I wondered if 10 years from now, there may be cyber-rehab for all of us who are superconnected *allthetime* and addicted to it.

Naturally, I threw this theory out to my twitter peeps and not surprisingly, a few people thought they'd be ready for cyber-deprogramming group. My pal Connie Reece quickly sent a tweet alerting me I'm a candidate for Socnet Rehab.

Now, while Socnet Rehab may be a clever spoof, I really suspect that cyber-rehab isn't far away. Many of us *are* addicted to our communication tools, as crazy as that may sound. Withdrawal from social media communities can result in depression, anxiety and yes, in severe cases, even panic! Even more telling, as more and more entrepreneurs make money via social media and online/mobile platforms, they have more money to spend on access points to their addiction. They also have money to pay for costly rehab programs.

My question is, what do you think the gateway drug is for us cyber/tech-addicts? Was it e-mail? Text Messaging? Will we have to swear off mobile phones (please God, no).

I hope we can get a group rate somewhere. And they'd better have a hand surgeon on-hand. I don't know about the rest of you, but my carpal tunnel is getting worse; I'm going to need surgery upon check in.

British Monarchy launches Youtube Channel

Just in time for the Queen's yearly televised Christmas message, Buckingham Palace today launched its own Youtube channel to broadcast this year's royal Christmas wishes. The Queen is hopeful that the new medium will make her Christmas message "more personal and direct" and reach younger audiences.

A nice PR move to make the royal family more attractive in the eyes of the younger generation.

I'm excited to be a part of a new community movement online, that started in Twitter. Last week, two of my Twitter friends, Connie Reece and Laura Fitton, started tweeting about PEA-vatars. The next thing I knew, I looked at my Twitter page and it was populating with Twitter friends who also featured avatars with peas. I learned that the PEA-vatars were being adopted for fellow Twitterer and bloggerSusan Reynolds, whom had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer. Susan had changed her avatar to a photo of a package of frozen peas and explained that the meaning behind the image was that she used a bag of frozen peas on her sore breast after several biopsies. To show my support for this member of our Twitter community, I quickly jumped aboard and created my own PEAvatar.

Not even a week has passed and peas abound in Twitter avatars. Connie Reece and Laura Fitton and a few others no doubt, even created a "PEAple" Twitter account, which they are asking members of the community to "follow" and they use to share news about Susan and the PEA-movement. On December 21st, The Frozen Pea Fund will go live, and anyone will be able to donate money via this site to help raise money for breast cancer research.

I'm excited to be a part of this real-life, positive social media movement. I think this is great example of how a global community can connect to support each other for no reason other than helping someone who needs support.

I'll keep you posted on our progress but I hope you'll join in and participate!

Give PEAs a chance:)

I've noticed a trend among the most popular social networks/communities online that is disconcerting to me; I'm calling it the McDonaldization of social media. Platforms and communities that I have used and participated in because of their different services over the last few years, such as MySpace, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Plaxo have moved away from their initial core services and become everything to everyone. What's even stranger about this trend, is that somewhere during this evolution, they morphed into each other, becoming this MyFaceLinkedPlaxo that I can no longer tell apart.

I don't know if this is a case of a Silicon Valley Meetup gone wrong or if one designer had a great year winning business from all the top communities, but everything is looking the same to me anymore, right down to the common denominator of blue and white templates.

Even worse, this blurring of the product/service line confuses me on the products. I no longer know which community does what, best anymore. When you do everything, can you really distinguish yourself as doing any one thing well?

It's almost as if social media has become the beast that we ran from: mass media. We left mass media because they weren't speaking to "me," they were speaking to everyone about everything. Think of The New York Times "All the news that's fit to print," versus our online news moguls like Digg that started as just tech news. Now, McDonalized social media properties are all offering the same fast food social media products, with different marketing campaigns and Madison Avenue taglines assigned.

"Plaxo keeps you in-touch and up-to date!"
"Facebook is a social utility that connects you with the people around you."
"LinkedIn: Relationships Matter"
"MySpace: A place for friends"

Sounds a lot like: "Burger King: Have it Your Way" or "McDonalds: I'm Lovin'It," doesn't it?

I worry that just one year after Time Magazine Named "You" as person of the year, social networks have forgotten about us.

I also worry that we are ignoring history and the valuable lesson of hubris. It's only been a few years since we were misled and misinformed by MSM's Jayson Blair, leading even more people to cynically defect from MSM media and seek truth by reading more news sources online. Yet, here we are just a few years later, watching Mark Zuckerberg similarly trip up in his own hubris, in what seems to me, his abandonment of his Brand's core audience and product because of greed.

Is social media becoming the new "corporate america"? Worse, are we allowing them to become this? Like sheep, will we simply graze, nod and follow? What's the alternative to a social media world that sells out? Where do we go next? Or, are do we have a chance to save social media and not make the mistakes of msm? I'd love to hear other thoughts on this.

I attended the Cultural & Heritage Tourism Alliance conference held in Seattle about a week and a half ago. Seattle is a favorite destination of mine, and visiting during the holiday season did not disappoint. They do wonderful job lighting up the city.

I was there to speak about Philly and how we are using social media to connect with travelers, but I really felt like I was schooled by some other smart session leaders.

In the morning, we heard from Glenn Kelman, President & CEO of Redfin, who was a breath of fresh air. This guy is the CEO of a healthily growing business, but he hasn't lost site of what's important: his site's users. He knows which users are cult-like in their devotion to the site and periodically reaches out to them directly and personally, via email, shares things like new features they are thinking about adding and asks for those loyalists feedback. And he LISTENS to their feedback. That's engagement.

Cari Guittard, Executive Director, Business for Diplomatic Action, talked a tough topic, "The State of America's Reputation and How it Affects Tourism." I applaud her for starting by acknowledging Zakaria's recent Newsweek story titled "America The Unwelcoming." If you haven't read it, I strongly encourage you to do so. It is an alarm bell sounding for all Americans and our economy, which is largely reliant nationwide on tourism dollars. The basis of the story is built around the Commerce Department finding that "the United States is the only major country in the world to which travel has declined in the midst of a global tourism boom." This, as the dollar drops against many foreign currencies.

She showed us Discover America Partnership, which is a site targeting businesses and individuals, seeking to connect with them in a big enough way that inspires them to act as positive WOM ambassadors for the US when they travel. I like the idea, the execution underwhelmed me. I felt like the red-white-and-blue of it all was too establishment to win over someone like me, who travels abroad and doesn't politically align with the Bush Administration. Design-wise, I think the header graphic wastes too much of the page and looks like a McDonald's commercial (an image that I would think we'd want to get away from overseas).

They did much better on their "consumer" site, world citizens guide. I like the design, the animation and the content here. Do click on the "100 People" tab - absolutely brilliant educational application. Simple, easy to comprehend and to me, thought provoking about "my" world vs the global world we all share. I can see why they won a Webby. To win another Webby, I think they should refresh this site with a area for a community. A place for people to converse, speak, listen and learn. Or, if they aren't equipped/ready to build their own community, join a pre-exisiting social networking community that will better connect them with "connected" citizens; be present and participate in a NUMBER of those communities. We're already there, so rather than working relentlessly to convert us, come JOIN us. Get in the conversation. Sure, those traditional media hits are great for some people; but many of us employ the internet as our default news source. We're missing your 60 Minutes hits, unless it's recapped on Gawker or you post it on Viddler.

Revolution isn't just occuring overseas. We are in the midst of a global social revolution. The world has changed, whether we like it or not. So marketers (yes, even you, USA), either get up to speed and join the new world or let it pass you by, but understand, the global social revolution is in full swing and there's no turning back now.

Well, I did it. I finally did it. I deactivated Facebook.

I have been angry with Facebook for a while now. I was angry when they started publishing our feeds; I didn't need all my friends seeing a 2am scribble on another friend's wall. I was angry when they abandoned their core audience and their brand equity by opening the community to everyone and their grandmother.

And then came the widgets. Jesssssuuuuuuuuuuuussssssssss. The first pirate invite was cute. The next 250? Not so much. And the vampire bites? Never cute, never fun. Just. SUPER. Annoying.

And then they decided to split things up: individuals here, bands and brands there. OK. But did you need to delete the pages of Brands that were already in-community WITH NO WARNING, OVERNIGHT, after you made the announcement, Facebook? That's like breaking up with someone you live with and not giving them a chance to pack up - just throwing their shit out the window and on the street!

And then came Beacon. With this, it's almost hard to believe that Facebook started out as an Ivy League community, although I'm Jesuit educated and we believe we're smarter than Ivy anyway, so I guess it shouldn't be that surprising that a bunch of Harvard kids could eff up marketing so hugely in this day and age. Rather than even tiptoe in the stupidity of their "opt-out" answer, I defer to Chris Heuer's excellent post on that topic.

So, I tip my hat to my friend Colin, with whom I've bitched, lamented and threatened to do this for many, many months, but whom beat me to the punch to it earlier today and I bid adieu to my Facebook friends. You can find me on Twitter, here, MySpace, LinkedIn, Plaxo and many other places but you will no longer find me on Facebook.

Good riddance and AMEN.

Facebook tries to save face with Beacon apology

Seems like it finally dawned on Facebook founder, Mark Zuckerberg, that he needed to join the Beacon conversation! He posted an official apology on the Facebook blog today, acknowledging that his company was wrong in the way it handled the Beacon problem. Note that he directly addressed one of the hot-button issues in his post - his choice to make Beacon an opt-out instead of an opt-in program - thereby showing that his company is listening to user concerns.

Zuckerberg's blog post is structured like a textbook example of a crisis PR response:

• Paragraph 1: Apologize for the specific problem


• Paragraph 2 & 3: Explain what happened/what let to the mistake


• End of paragraph 3: Condemn the mistake


• Paragraph 4: Explain what needs to be done to fix the problem. In my opinion he would have been better off addressing Facebook users directly here instead of referring to them as "people" (not very personal)


• Paragraph 5: Explain what has been done to fix the problem and tell users about it


• Paragraph 6: Thank users for sharing their concerns, thereby validating them. The only thing he didn't do at the end was discuss how Facebook plans to "make up" for their mistake (such as Apple offering in-store credit to early iPhone adopters, or JetBlue issuing vouchers after the Valentine's Day disaster). But then again, Facebook is a free service which sets it apart from those examples.

Zuckerberg's apology is similar to Steve Jobs' open letter to iPhone users after Apple upset its fan base by dropping the price of the iPhone after only a few months on the market. The apology is not the only similarity though. Facebook and Apple both managed to anger an otherwise ultra-loyal public - the people who love their service/product. Apple's iPhone faux-pas and Facebook's Beacon dilemma also act as a good reminder to companies not to underestimate the power of their key publics to organize online and pressure for change.

Facebook Group for PR Job Hunters

Since some of you will be graduating in two weeks, I thought you might be interested in this Facebook group for PR job hunters. It would be a good place to show off your new social media resume.

NATO takes the war against the Taliban to YouTube

I caught a story on the news yesterday about NATO realizing that it needed to take the war against the Taliban to YouTube. In a speech delivered last month, NATO's Secretary General explained the problem: "When there is an incident in Afghanistan, the Taliban are quick to say there have been high numbers of civilian casualties. The wires pick it up, then the TV stations, then the Web. Our response comes days later – if we are lucky. By that time, we have totally lost the media battle." According to a NATO spokesperson the Taliban is "doing better than we are on key battleground -- and that's video".

In an effort to counter Taliban propaganda, NATO has declassified some videos showing Taliban fighters disguising as women and using little children as human shields. The Record, a daily local Ontario newspaper, ran an interesting story describing how NATO came to change its position on releasing these videos.

In response (?) to NATO's move, al Qaeda's TV production unit today released a new Bin Laden tape accusing NATO of having disrepsected the rules of war and having attacked and killed women and children on purpose.

That just goes to show that fighting a war is about much more than just the physical combat on the ground. The real war is fought in the court of public opinion with YouTube videos as the new weapon of choice.

Facebook Beacon & Facebook Social Ads

When we talked about Facebook Beacon and Facebook Social Ads in class today, we used those two terms interchangeably. They're not quite the same though. Let me try to explain the difference (as I understand it):

Facebook Beacon:
- Beacon works by allowing one of Facebook's partner sites to put a cookie on your browser when you interact with their site (i.e. when you buy something on Overstock, rent a movie, etc.)
- The cookie then sends the information about your online activity (i.e. what you bought, what movie you rented) to Facebook
- Facebook then publishes that information to your friends' news feeds.

The result looks something like this (picture from Charlene Li's blog):


Facebook Social Ads:
- Company writes the ad copy and decides who they want to see the ad
- Facebook displays the ad "in the left hand Ad Space — visible to users as they browse Facebook to connect with their friends — as well as in the context of News Feed — attached to relevant social stories."
- So social ads can work independently of Beacon, but they don't have to. Facebook Beacon allows Facebook to feed the social ad to users whose friends have interacted with the company's Facebook Page or their website

Here's an example of a Facebook Social Ad (note that it displays the user's profile picture):


According to Facebook's website, "Facebook Social Ads allow your businesses to become part of people's daily conversation." Judging by the growing popularity of MoveOn.org's Stop Invading My Privacy group, that conversation seems to be turning against them though. Even the mainstream media is starting to weigh in on this issue. Here's a CNN story on Facebook Beacon that should qualify as negative media coverage:


I've also just stumbled across this blog post which outlines a lot of the privacy concerns we discussed.

Update: According to the New York Times, Facebook has bowed to the pressure and announced changes to its Beacon program which are aimed at protecting its users' privacy. Here's the official press release. And lastly, an interesting story from CNN on behavioral targeting in online advertising.

Yet another update (Dec. 4):
Brian Solis just published a good post which analyzes Facebook's reaction from a crisis communication perspective and criticizes Zuckerberg's choice of a press release as a way to communicate changes to the Beacon program to a community of networked users. So if the press release was a bad idea, what should Zuckerberg have done? Todd Defren has a suggestion or two for him.

Whew!It's been a while since I've posted. I had a spate of bad luck. First my laptop mysteriously died, then I lost my wallet while running around trying to get my laptop repaired. Two days later, I tore my miniscus in my knee.

My laptop is semi-repaired thanks to a colleague in my work web department who patiently sat with it, ran checks, updated it, removed and reinstalled programs. However, I have to call out Dell Customer Service, who, perhaps *because* of Jeff Jarvis's loud voice about his experience with them, have been OUTSTANDING in response to me. The customer service rep was patient with me (and I'll admit, I was cranky and frustrated with him) and has called me everyday for 10 days to check on the machine and see how it is working. I would definitely recommend Dell to anyone looking for a new machine.

My latest social media indulgence has been Firebrand. This is an exciting platform for Madison Avenue. It's a home and community for great commercials. I love it! We were all tired of commercials on TV because it was oversaturation. We were drowning in them, ergo, the fast adoption of DVR. However, that doesn't mean there isn't a place for advertising, especially spots done artfully. Firebrand is that place. I love the idea of giving consumers a CHOICE to view ads rather than force feeding us where we are captive. I have a feeling consumers will embrace this less disruptive advertising.

For now, here's one of my favorite spots of recent years:

Analysis of Viral Video Trends

Considering our latest discussions of viral video, you might be interested in the following article series on YouTube trends from the No Man's Blog.

This series of 5 reports examines the most viewed videos (all time, monthly, & weekly) on YouTube and provides some interesting insights into what goes viral.

Cluetrain Manifesto Reading - The 95 Theses

We'll be examining the Cluetrain Manifesto next class. Please read the 95 theses of this manifesto so that we'll be able to have a class discussion on it.

As you read them, think about how these theses apply to the practice of PR and how we could change current PR practices to respond to some of the criticisms contained in the Cluetrain theses.

Google's inner workings explained

Since search engine rankings are equivalent to influence in this Web 2.0 world, it seems like a good idea to take a closer look at the inner workings of the mother of all search engines - Google. More than half of all online searches are currently run by Google!

This page does a great job visualizing what takes place behind the scenes when an Internet user runs a search on Google. This site doesn't discuss Google's search algorithm, but rather focuses on the logistics of running the search.

CNN announces Second Life Reporting Endeavor

CNN today announced that it is launching an I-Report hub in Second Life to report on events and stories happening in Second Life.

This is how it works: SL residents submit reports and CNN I-Report producers decide on what stories to run, and then publish them in SL. Here's a video explaining it all.

So in essence, a virtual news station to cover virtual news.

A great literary voice and technophobe, Norman Mailer, passed away today. He lived a full life, so kudos to him. I imagine him, an alleged anti-feminist, being schooled by Dorothy Parker at round table somewhere in the sky.

I love this quote: "Mailer built and nurtured an image over the years as pugnacious, street-wise and high-living. He drank, fought, smoked pot, married six times and stabbed his second wife, almost fatally, during a drunken party."

Well done, Norman.

I'm at the First Person Arts Festival demonstrating a blog post.

Greenpeace's social media campaign for a greener iPhone generates publicity

We've already discussed how Greenpeace used social media technologies to pressure Apple into producing more environmental computers. We also briefly examined their latest attack on the iPhone and the lawsuit that was filed against Apple last month. (Below is the Greenpeace iPhone video that sums up their charges against the iPhone:)



Looks like Greenpeace was rather successful in generating publicity for their latest campaign, as CNN ran a major story on it today - the same day that Apple finally launched the iPhone in Britain and Germany.

Honor Hunger Week by Entering the UN World Food Programme Viral Video Contest

As St. Edward's University is getting ready to honor national Hunger Week, you can participate in your own way by practicing your newly acquired viral video production skills and producing a 30 or 60 second video that raises awareness about world hunger.

The United Nations World Food Programme is calling on amateur video producers to put their creativity to good use in an effort to influence public opinion about world hunger. The detailed call for entries can be found on the Hunger Bytes YouTube page. The submission deadline is midnight August 1, 2008 - so there is plenty of time to get your entries in and make your contribution to the fight against hunger.

Here's another fun (and educational) way to honor the spirit of Hunger Week and improve your vocab at the same time. The FreeRice website donates 10 grams of rice to the United Nations World Food Programme for each word you get right on their vocabulary test. According to their site, "When you play the game, advertisements appear on the bottom of your screen. The money generated by these advertisements is then used to buy the rice. So by playing, you generate the money that pays for the rice donated to hungry people." A creative idea IMHO!

Social Advertising on Facebook

On Tuesday, Facebook unveiled its somewhat controversial plans to launch an advertising system based on social networking (see the press release announcing Facebook Ads, and a CNN story explaining how the system will work).

The announcement has let to concerns about privacy issues (see the Techcrunch story). It will be interesting to see how Facebook will go about convincing its users to embrace this new advertising format, especially considering the anti-social advertising groups that have already started to pop up on its site.

Further to my point about Facebook in yesterday's post, this video sums up how I'm feeling about the social network (hat tip, Mark):



And check it out, I'm in the Metro today! The story is about a workshop I am leading this Saturday as part of First Person Arts Festival. Please come! It's going to be fun and I can use the hecklers;)

Happy Election Day. Here's cool and helpful voting Tool that someone twittered to me recently. The company behind it appears to be non-partisan and agenda free. One can hope...
*~*
I had an interesting discussion today with some colleagues about web 2.0 and web 3.0. I know everyone loathes the term, but it's here, so let's get over it for the sake of discussion.

I stand with Team 2.0, meaning, I don't think 3.0 should even be uttered because 2.0 isn't even flushed out or saturated yet. To quote my friend Josh Hallett, "I've been waiting for four years to get to the second version of my social media discussion."

I tend to think it's media pushing for 3.0 here - and I don't just mean traditional media. I mean CGM too. A nice tidy term to coin and bandy about - it's not just attributable and viral, it's wikiable too.

And sure, I've heard the predictions. "Web 3.0 is semantic web." It's "smart web" or "smart search." The internet becomes your personal "database." It's the Internet moving ahead to suggest to us, based on our past participation, which chess piece to play in interactive games or suggesting topics for blog entries based on an analytic algorithm of the news stories we clicked on, that we spent the most time reading, what we posted to our del.icio.us, related blogs we read and commented on, etc.

Perhaps, after all of this participation, web 3.0 means there is finally a payoff coming? Sounds like web 3.0 is simply the ultimate in lazyweb.

If that's the case, I welcome 3.0. Lately, I find that I'm over many of these online communities I've been involved with for years. I mean, does anyone even remember Friendster? I haven't killed my account there because it's my only link to the friends I had in 2002 or 2003. Whenever it was. When I see a MySpace alert in my mailbox, I sometimes groan because it's usually a friend request from some wannabe gangsta rapper or weeping singer-songwriter. And Facebook, the place where I used to volley cheeky comments back-and-forth on my personal friends' "walls" is now populated by everyone I know, including business contacts. Many of whom are now sending me "vampire bites" and "virtual happy hour cocktails." Huh?

Our social world has become an open book, one for everyone to read and participate in all across the globe. Instead of embracing this endless frontier, I find myself retreating from the boundless universe. I find that I prefer communities like LinkedIn, which are function more than form. Or Twitter, where I can lock my account and only converse with people I agree to "follow."

So tell me, what about all of you? Where do you stand on all of this? Are you in a 3.0 world? Are you loving your social networks? Or, are you growing weary of overparticipation? LMK.

Social Media Resume for Students entering the PR or Advertising Industry

In the newest Forward podcast, Bryan Person discusses the idea of a social media resume for PR and advertising students (11:36 minutes into the podcast). Bryan also elaborates on the need for a social media resume on his own blog and provides a couple of examples.

These examples are very close to what I would like you to do for your upcoming SMNR assignment in which you are supposed to "announce” your qualifications, career goals and job expectations in form of a SMNR. The point of this assignment is to demonstrate your social media skills to prospective employers in a creative manner and to tie together all the different technologies we have explored in this class (such as blogs, podcasts, web video, social bookmarks, etc.). As you explore the examples posted by Bryan, pretend that you are a potential employer looking at these resumes. Which type of resume would make a stronger case for a candidate's social media skills? A traditional resume, describing the skills, or a multimedia resume displaying them? Loaded question, I know.

Wikipedia Vision: See who is editing Wikipedia in what parts of the world

This neat web application, named Wikipedia Vision, displays anonymous edits to the English Wikipedia as they are made. The data map displays "the title of the article, the summary of the edit (if the person who made it gave any summary), link to the changes that were made to the article, geographical location of the wikipedia user and the time the edit happened".

It works by matching Wikipedia users' IP addresses to their corresponding geographical locations and mapping them on Google Maps.

Resources for capturing web video

Here are some web applications & add-ons that will allow you to capture web video:

• Media converter: A simple 5 step procedure to download & convert media files.


• Online FLV converter: Just type in the URL of the video you want to capture, and Vconvert will convert it into a number of formats (.mov, .wmv, .flv, etc.)


• You Convert It: Convert any file or online video to any number of formats.


• YouTube Video Saver: Same idea: Just paste the YouTube URL in a form field and it will save it to your desktop


• KeepVid: Download videos directly from most video sites


• Firefox Download Helper: A Firefox add-on that allows you to download video files with one click


• A list of even more web applications that allow you to download web videos

For free video stock footage, try this site.

For free stock photos, try the Stock.Xchng.

And finally, for help with iMovie, check out Apple's iMovie tutorials.

Dove Onslaught Video - The follow-up to the Evolution Video

Here's the newest Dove video, a follow-up to the "Evolution" video we discussed today.

A comparison of Wal-Mart's and Target's Facebook Campaigns

Here's a good comparison of Wal-Mart's and Target's Facebook campaigns we talked about earlier in the semester.

Thanks to Kami for pointing me to her post about the how the Red Cross is using social media to communicate with victims, donors, etc. about the California wildfires. I just added their Twitter account to my list of people to follow and I added their news widget to the righthand sidebar of my page (see it over there?).

Kami's post details how you can donate via text from your phone, one of my favorite features of technology. Smile, dial and donate.

Local Social Media Club right here in Austin

When we talked about the social media news release a few weeks ago, we also briefly discussed the Social Media Club and its role in pushing for SMNR publication and distribution standards.

If you are at all interested in the work of the Social Media Club, you should check out the local Austin Social Media Club and their events.

The Austin Social Media Club will be hosting a workshop on the effective use of social media tools and strategies in business in November. What's great about this workshop is that the workshop site contains a series of videos and slideshows from previous talks and presentations - a great resource for this class. Check it out!

Learning from the 2007 PRSA Conference & Conference Blog

Today marks the end of the annual Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) international conference. Although the conference might be over, the discussion surrounding some of this year's hottest PR topics continues at the PRSA conference blog.

If you are still wondering whether or not we are in the middle of a technology revolution and whether PR professionals really need to understand new social media technologies, take a look at this year's session highlights and at the conference theme: "PR Evolution: Innovation. Collaboration. Influence." Conference highlights included:

- Campaigning on YouTube and in Second Life
- Video Blogging to Build Brand Reputation
- New Media, New Metrics: How to Survive in the New Consumer-Driven Media World
- Strategic Blogging for Successful Marketing
- Understanding and Influencing the New Influencers

The neat thing about this year's conference is the conference blog which is supposed to carry on the conversation about all these issues online. So take this blog as your chance to catch a glimpse of the conference and join the conversation.

I'm trying to think back in time to pinpoint exactly when journalism became mean. Because the-magazine-who-will-not-be-named-on-my-blog is promoting a mean-spirited survey about Philly.

I guess I'm ugly. Oh well.

Blogger Relations: What not to Do

Since we just talked about blogger relations in class, I thought this post on "How Not to Pitch a Blogger" might be of interest to some of you.

I just love this post by Todd Defren about the Social Media Release. Go go and read that and remember, social media isn't just about having all these neat tools in our toolbox (although 1-click publishing is nice!. For marketers and for PR people especially, it's an opportunity for us to get back to what our professions started out doing - relating directly to the public where they live and breathe. All those places online and off. Sure, it's a lot of work, but here's the thing some of you might not know - it's fun too;)

InnoTech Conference on the effects of Web 2.0 on Marketing & Business

Ben just forwarded me an email about a technology conference taking place here in Austin today. As part of the Innotech conference, there will be live interviews from the tradeshow floor on the effects of web 2.0 on business, marketing and the world economy. The interviews will be broadcast on web2point0.tv between 9:30am - 11:30am and 1:30pm - 3:30pm. Listen in if you have a spare minute today!

Update:
Here's an interview from the conference with Rudy Rodriguez, General Manager of the St. Edward's University Professional Education Center. In it, he talks about Web 2.0 and its effect on the education industry:

I have so much to cover on here. First, let's talk about BlogOrlando while it's fresh on my mind.

The day before the sessions, our fearless leader and BlogOrlando organizer, Josh Hallett arranged for the lovely people at Delaware North Corporation (a park service tour company) to provide the session leaders with a comprehensive tour of NASA. Personally, I was primarily looking forward to meeting and spending time with the other session leaders, some of whom I follow on Twitter or via their blogs, others I've spoken with via email and never met, and of course, reconnect with those that I count as friends.

Thank GOD for Dave Coustan, whom I met through Josh last spring and did a bang up job leading a session at BlogPhiladelphia last July. I hitched a ride with Dave for most of the unconference - I'm city girl, I don't know the way of these "car" cities.

So Dave gave Tom Biro and I a ride to NASA, during which, they made me laugh several times while trying to record my outgoing voicemail for work and somehow determined that I am a "spacist" because I questioned why we must continue to dedicate billions of federal dollars to continue to send equipment and people into space. In my mind, we landed on the moon, it was an amazing feat, and as suspected, there's nothing there - case closed. Dave and Tom, on the other hand, were excited to see the rockets and learn more about the program.

The tour we were given at NASA changed my mind about the Space program. We started with the IMAX movie that was narrated by Tom Hanks and other actors from the Apollo 13 movie. The 3D aspect of the film was incredible on an emotional level of starting to understand the firsthand experience of the astronauts who've landed on the moon and their jobs there. The explanation of the escalating political situation of that time between the US and the Russia helped me understand the political, societal and patriotic need for the US to have a successful mission to the moon. The physics lessons that came later in other films demonstrated that the minds at NASA have defied the laws of nature and made the impossible, possible. Those scientists, likely too many to name here, not only stretched their imaginations, but carried the weight of knowledge that the fate of astronauts lives, were contingent on them thinking through every step of development - without ever having the chance to truly "test" their work. And all of this with the world watching. That's what I call pressure.

We were treated to a lunch with a special guest speaker, astronaut Bill Pogue. Wow. That guy has some stories. Bill spent 84 days in space aboard the Skylab 4 and he talked us through some footage from his time in space.

Of course, most of us jumped at the opportunity to ride the rocket simulator, which is a remarkable experience. If you have the opportunity, definitely try it. The gravity-less portion is wild.

Thanks to our excellent tour guide, Nick, whom we all agreed must have been the VIP guide because he knew more about the NASA space program than you can imagine and his enthusiasm was contagious. As someone in the tourism industry, I was truly impressed with our tour.

I should also apologize here, to poor Nick, who probably didn't know what he was getting into with a bus of bloggers who communicate in 140 characters and try to make everything into an LOLcats joke.
~*~
But let's get to the event, already! I know, I know.

The incredibly tan Shel Israel opened the event with a great discussion about his background and evolution as a blogger and reinforcing the importance of blogging and social media as conversations among real people. Unfortunately, it was during Shel's keynote that my work kicked in and I had to excuse myself to find a corner and rapidly do my social media magic for the 2007 Liberty Medal, which had been presented by President Bush (41, not 43) to Bono and his charity DATA the evening before in Historic Philadelphia. At least I had the company of my Social Media Club liason, Kristie Wells, who was running check-in. Love Kristie. How can you not? It was fantastic to finally meet her in person.

Although I was working, I tried to take advantage of my surroundings and attend some morning sessions. Connie Reece gave me a few things to think about with her session on "Building Connections and Networking Online." Not all of my social network accounts have the same username, which doesn't help my personal brand.

I caught about two minutes of Alex Rudloff's co-working session with some help from Philly co-worker (and my friend)Alex Hillman, before I had to hop out to connect with work.

I raced against the clock for the entire lunch hour, plugging directly into Rollins College's high speed network in their Computer Repair Services dept. Huge thanks to the both the college for lending their GORGEOUS campus to BlogOrlando and to the guys in the Computer Repair Services room for letting me plug in and literally hole up in a corner muttering curses under my breath as I raced against time to get my work done before my session.

I barely finished uploading the last file when it was my turn to speak. I was a bit disoriented from the frenzy of work I'd been rushing to do that morning, and I wasn't at my best. I spoke about the social media work we've done at GPTMC to promote Philadelphia on both gophila.com and uwishunu.com. I also showed people TubeMogul, a beta tool that I had used all morning to upload the Liberty Medal footage simultaneously to 10 top video sharing sites. People seemed to be interested and asked questions, so I hope I provided value. I had intended to speak about other DMO sites I think are going a good job, like: Uniquely Knoxville, Explore Minnesota, Montreal's Brits Wanted and even Starwood's redesign of the Sheraton site. Fortunately, the group was great and asked questions and before I knew it, I ran out of time.

My pal Dave Parmet did an awesome job of presenting nothing and pushing back on the audience to ask questions about his topic of "Business Blogging and Next Steps."

Someone else I really enjoyed meeting, was Geoff Livingston, and I'm not just saying that because he's a former Philly guy;) I could tell early on that Geoff is a smart guy and a strategic PR counselor - two things I love. I got the sense that Geoff is one of the elite group of high level PR people who takes the time to listen to a client and understand their business first and then works to develop objectives/strategies/tactics that will help them achieve their business objectives rather than "yes" a client looking for the placement on their favorite media outlet or looking to be a part of the social media buzzword of the moment. I say this because that's how his session "Participation in Marketing" felt. It was thoughtful, engaging and an open dialogue. Geoff gave the sense that everything he said had a great deal of thought behind it and his topical questions to the audience made me think more too.

I hopped out of Geoff's session early to catch some of my girl Alicia Dorset's session on "Separating Your Work Life from Your Personal Life," a session that Alicia led for us at BlogPhilly but I wasn't able to attend as the organizer. Alicia and I met at a Blogher conference in NYC last winter and she, along with a few other bloggers, was one of the best takeaways for me from that event. I hope that MS&L knows what a star they have in their agency. Let me just say, I am so glad I made her session. Holy. Hannah. The conversation was en fuego!!! One woman in the online scrapbooking community told us firsthand accounts of some CRAZY flaming that goes on among some members. It's like a Blogger version of "Mean Girls"! Other people shared stories of online stalkers and job opportunities they happily walked away from because of their social networking pages. Again, I heard more people heatedly express the opinion that a client or employer who wasn't cool with their personal/weekend/recreational flickr photos or blog posts, weren't people they want to work with. That's something that I hear more and more and still surprises me. I guess that's because I remember when the bubble burst back in 1999 and we all learned quickly that jeans and t-shirts worn to "cool" dotcom work places with outfitted with fooseball and fridges stocked with beer were memories of the past.

Dave Coustan led a discussion that was very educational for me, "Using Blogs for Product Development." I learned more about applications that can foster creative collaboration and advance R&D. Thank God for wifi, as I had to google a several terms that came up in this discussion.

Finally, we get to Chris Heuer, someone I've spoken with on Social Media Club con calls and emails, and followed on Twitter but hadn't met. Josh warned the crowd that Heuer was returning to BlogOrlando with a fan club that had formed after his session last year and you can count me in as the club's newest member.

If you get a chance to meet Heuer or listen to him speak, run, don't walk to that opportunity. Here are a few of my takeaways from his presentation:

• There’s still value in editorial perspective but some of the editorial is coming from in here (meaning all of us), because we’ve learned to trust one another

• Social media is tearing down the walls that keep us apart and changing the rules from what’s kept us from being human inside our companies or organizations

• People having conversations – it’s messy

• Why would I want to work for a company that doesn’t trust me?

• Companies: make clear your intentions

• Live the life, love the life

• Social media = human organizations

• You can’t rely on just one source (like digg)

• The brands with the best storytellers win – how do they have them – because they have the best products. (When you have great products, you can find great stories)

• Pondering for reflection; who here stops and thinks about what happened this week? Stop. Remember to step off the fast track, unplug and reflect.

Heuer really brought it all home for me. We're all so busy living this life that is our work, but by nature of it being in a community, it requires us to make our work our life. That said, don't forget about YOUR life. Live YOUR life TOO. Don't just use the media tools, be social too. That's something I lost sight of at my last job and much of the reason I moved to Philly. I needed to take back my life and find the joy in living again. I'm happy to say that Heuer's discussion made me realize that I've done just that.

There were so many other smart people at BlogOrlando that I regretfully just didn't have the time to see. I've been reading everyone's recaps about the event to see what I missed and I encourage you to do the same. Google "BlogOrlando 2007." I especially enjoyed reading the recaps about my bus seat partner Jake Mckee, Tom Biro and Jeremy Harrington.

Congratulations are much deserved to Josh Hallett and his team in Orlando who made the event fun and valuable. Thanks to Rollins College, NASA, Universal Parks, the exquisite EO Inn and all of the sponsors who made the event possible.

I will *definitely* return for BlogOrlando 2008.

Resources for producing and publishing a podcast

Here are a few resources for producing and publishing a podcast:
- Apple's web seminar entitled "The Podcast Recipe: Producing a successful show"
This free online seminar is divided into three parts: a section on performance (and microphone selection), a section on production (using Garageband), and a section on promotion (using the iTunes directory). The production section serves as a great tutorial for Garageband novices.
- iTunes Podcasts on learning to podcast
This link will take you to the iTunes store where you can you can download those podcasts for free.
- Another free tutorial from Apple on how to Create a Podcast
- South by Southwest panel discussion on 5 tips to make your podcast listenable
- A tutorial on how to podcast using Blogger and Feedburner
- 70+ podcasting resources from Mashable

Conversation on PR education and the role of PR 2.0

The Forward blog just released Forward Podcast 32: A snapshot of PR Academia. In it, Bill Sledzik, associate professor of Journalism & Mass Communication at Kent State University, talks about PR education and the role of social media in today's public relations practice.

I encourage you to listen to this podcast, both as a supplement to the things we talk about in this class, and as a great example of a podcast interview (which will be your next assignment - due October 25th).

Use your blog to pay for college - seriously!

I just stumbled upon this scholarship opportunity for college bloggers. The bad news: the application deadline is October 6th. The good news: the application essay for this $10,000 scholarship has a 300 word limit. So what are you waiting for?

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Originally uploaded by uwishunuflickr

This one is for the Phillies. Why do I think we are on the cusp of a regional explosion of babies named Chase, Cole, Shane, Aaron, Ryan/Howard and Brett?

Citizen bloggers shut down in Myanmar

Here's a disturbing CNN story on the Burmese military junta silencing citizen bloggers & journalists by cutting of the Internet connections in the country. The fact that they saw it necessary to shut them down shows what a powerful force citizen blogging can be. Some exiled bloggers have vowed to continue reporting on the brutalities of the military junta.

Update: I just read a post on the Textdepot which mentions a new grassroots Facebook group that was launched earlier this week to support the protesting monks and currently counts over 100,000 members. The group is coordinating protests in cities all across the world and urging people to wear red on Friday in support of the protests. Need I say more about the power of social media?

Ok, September has gotten away from me on my blog. If you want to follow me, you are better off following me on Twitter. It's my lazyweb platform of choice.

I've been so busy, working on things like this live webcast of Bono and DATA receiving the Liberty Medal in Philadelphia tonight (webcast will be reposted tomorrow morning on LibertyMedal.org), that I haven't even recapped yet!

Now I'm really gonna be in trouble, because I'm down here at BlogOrlando, and I still don't have time for a proper update. Come to my session at 1:15PM tomorrow at Rollins College. If you wanted to learn something about new/social media and didn't know how or who to ask, come to BlogOrlando. It's a free event and smart folks who know this stuff AND can speak in plain English, are here and leading a whole day of discussions. Come ready to talk, because this is an "unconference," and not some stuffy line up of powerpoint presentations.

This isn't your grandfather's technology seminar;) See you tomorrow.

Ikea launches major social media project

Looks like Ikea has decided to go web 2.0 with the America at Home initiative they announced today. The project is dubbed a "collaborative photo event" and invites Internet users to upload pictures that capture the "emotions of home". Judging from their FAQ, the America at Home project is designed to support a major new branding campaign entitled, "Home is the Most Important Place in the World." Both HP (Snapfish) and Google are providing technical support for this project.

Monitoring Conversations on Facebook

As we start talking about new influencers, consumer evangelists, citizen marketers and empowered Internet users, questions of whether or not organizations should actively monitor, and participate in online conversations, will begin to emerge. Today we will look at conversations on facebook and what they mean to PR professionals. We'll look at an on-campus example first before we'll examine Wal-mart's latest facebook endeavor.

Campus examples:
Facebook Groups that are opposed to the new parking garage on campus:
Boycott the parking garage group - 304 members
Students against parking garage fees - 339 members

Business examples:
Wal-Mart's facebook group
Target's facebook group

Below are some thoughts on Wal-Mart's Facebook strategy collected from around the blogosphere:
WalMart’s Facebook Strategy Sinking: Analysis and Reccomendations - Jeremiah Owyang
Facebook Sponsored Group Analysis: Target vs Wal-Mart - Jeremiah Owyang
Can Wal-Mart's Facebook Campaign Survive Transparency? - Robert Gorell
Sorry, Wal-Mart. The kids would rather talk labor politics than home décor - Burt Helm
Walmart on facebook. beginning of the end? - Darryl Ohrt
Ad Week report comparing Wal-Mart's effort to Target's

Netscape announces social news website

The Netscape blog today announced that Netscape will soon launch Propeller, a social news website.

You might want to check it out once it goes online.

Some ideas for deciding what to blog about

Since you are required to start blogging on a regular basis starting this week, I thought I'd add a few tips on how to identify potential topics. Remember that the idea of these posts is to get you to engage the course material critically and to have you keep your eyes open for interesting material to blog about. You will need to become an active learner and start being on the lookout for material to incorporate into the class instead of relying on me, as the instructor, to tell you what is important. Your blog posts should demonstrate your ability to locate examples of PR applications of social media on your own.

1. Start reading the PR blogs (Micropersuasion, PR 2.0, PR Squared, etc.). I have added a number of them to our course blog. This is where you'll find a lot of info pertaining to our class.

2. Read technology blogs. There are tons of them out there!

3. Watch/read the news. The presidential candidates, for instance, have been using different forms of social media for a while now, and you could find out about their latest uses by keeping up with the news coverage of their campaigns.

4. Start using some of the social bookmarking services we talked about in class. Find someone who tags social media sites and subscribe to that person's bookmarks via RSS. That way you'll come across sites/stories you may never have looked up on your own.

5. Just keep your eyes open while you are online - and have fun!

Social bookmarking & tag cloud sites we talked about today

Here's a list of the sites we talked about today, in case you didn't write them down:

- Del.icio.us
- Furl
- Stumble Upon
- Many Eyes
- Newzingo

Geocaching as a PR tool

We briefly discussed geocaching last class. This site talks about how the boy scouts use it for PR purposes among other things.

The Wikiscanner - an Anti-Astroturfing Tool?

When we talked about wikis last class, I mentioned the wikiscanner, developed by CalTech graduate student Virgil Griffith. Wired ran a story on it last month which is worth reading.

The wikiscanner was designed to shed light on anonymous Wikipedia edits by identifying the source of those edits. It does so by checking the IP address of the editor against a database of IP addresses in order to locate the organization that owns that particular set of IP addresses.

Now what does that have to do with PR, or this class? Remember astroturfing from your intro to PR class? The open nature of Wikipedia carries with it the disadvantage that it can easily be used by organizations, governments, and individuals to push their own agenda and engage in astroturfing.

With no easy way to check the sources of the thousands of Wikipedia entries and edits, "wikiastroturfing", unfortunately, has become an all too inviting option for businesses and individuals with shady ethics.

The wikiscanner's ability to out such incidents of astroturfing makes it a powerful new tool in the fight against unethical PR and business practices.

Why PR students need to become involved with social media

In this brief interview, Paul Young, director of the Forward podcast, discusses the growing importance of social media in the PR field and specifically addresses the need for PR students to learn about new social media technologies.

Listen to the podcast:

The Band's Back Together! Tonight was the kick off party for Podcamp Philly hosted by the awesome dudes at interactive design firm P'unk Ave. Viddler's Community Evangelist, Colin was on a roll tonight. I think he made me laugh for almost 2hours straight.

I left the party early to try and get some rest. I need to be at Podcamp by 8am tomorrow and it's a full day of sessions, a night of parties with the band, and another day of sessions on Sunday. No rest for the web 2.0-weary!
*~*
In other news, check out this clip of Cate Blanchett playing Bob Dylan. Wow. I have to give it up to her, I bought her as a man and as Dylan. Can't wait to see the film!

Now here's a great story illustrating how social media can quickly take a bad situation and make it worse by exposing it to a massive, global audience, and how someone then LEVERAGED social media to come back on top - bigger than ever.

During the recent Miss Teen USA pagent, Miss Carolina made a huge gaff on-air. Yes, it was nationally broadcast, but as we know, TV audiences are dwindling, so it's once and done, right? Enter youtube. By Monday, the clip had so much traction, it was even picked up by Gawker Media sports site Deadspin.com. The video on Deadspin alone generated almost 25,000 views. On Youtube, nearly 8 million people have viewed the clip. And those are just two of the many websites who posted the clip. In a matter of a days, a bad interview got much much worse.

Now this is where Miss Carolina (or her management team) proved she's not as simple-minded as she sounded. Instead of allowing herself to be the butt of blog jokes and late night show banter and fade into oblivion, she joined forces with a credible and visible third party, People.com, and poked fun at herself, virally.

Suddenly, she's laughing with everyone.

One of the most important things to remember when responding online via social media is to have a sense of humor. It's important to understand the tone online: irreverent, cheeky, snarky and quirky. While I rarely recommend a snarky tone for a response online, because it has to be done right and can read as defensive in a response, I do recommend being playful and picking a safe channel to host a response, both of which, Miss Carolina did. Well done.

One last note, I acknowledge that not every crisis or gaff is appropriate to respond to via social media and humor. Of exception would be incidents like product recalls of serious consequence to consumers, like the recent toy recall, a pharma crisis or a pending litigation.

**Thanks to Jeremy Pepper for tweeting the the link to the People.com video.

I'm on vacation! The weather is dismal.

Nevermind that, please subscribe to the new Philly Social Media Calendar. After BlogPhiladelphia, many of us in the local community realized that we had been segmented by our individual networking groups and we wanted continue the momentum of meeting as a larger community. Ergo, the birth of this calendar. Many thanks to my partner in Social Media Club Philly, Steph Fox, who created this tool.

Who's excited?!?! Mememememe!!!

I'm going to BlogOrlando! Have you registered yet? Well, what the heck are you waiting for???

Knowing Josh Hallett, it's going to be filled with great sessions, smart people and chock full of learnings. Oh, did I mention I'll be leading a session? Yep. I'll be leading a conversation about using social media to market tourism.

I'll be there, Sept 27-29! Hope to see you, too.

Go Philly! We're the second Bloggiest city in the nation! We rule!

Here's a real life of example of why it's important for Corporations/Brands/Service businesses to hire PR experts who live and breathe social media.

Last October, I bought the Verizon Wireless PC Card. I had just moved from out of state and even though I made arrangements a few weeks prior to moving, the local cable provider scheduled my hook-up for their earliest available date, about 2 weeks after my relocation. I was prepared to suck up a TV-less life, but no Internet access for 2-weeks???? Not an option. So I decided to try the PC Card.

Verizon Wireless offered the card with a 10-day free trial. The deal was that if I didn't like the product and returned it within 10 days, I would be fully refunded. Sounded great.

Unfortunately, the card wasn't compatible with my laptop. I returned it within the 10 day timespan, the store stamped my receipt as returned, I didn't have a second thought about it.

Until 6 or 7 months later when the calls started on my cell. I was getting calls from credit agencies, which I ignored, thinking it was a mistake. I've had mix ups before because of a duplicate name. I assumed it was an error.

Then my parents called me. They were getting calls at their home, a residence I haven't resided at for 15 years. Now I was annoyed.

I called the debt collector to find out what this was about. After an hour long conversation, we realized that it was a mistake. He had me call Verizon. I spent another 45 minutes on the phone with Verizon. They saw the error in their system and told me it was corrected. They said the credit agencies would be alerted. I called back the credit agency and relayed the information.

For the next two months, this cycle was repeated. Two different agencies continued to harrass me via cell phone. I would call Verizon and they would tell me the error was corrected in their system and the agencies were alerted.

Today, I lost it. I spoke with the credit agency at the end of last week! At that time, I called them yet again, explained that the debt was erroneous and Verizon had cleared the account and alerted the agency. Two separate agencies called me twice this morning. Then I checked my credit report and saw that my score was still low, showing this false claim. I grew irate.

I called Verizon and I demanded action. This time they told me that the paperwork had been sent to the collection agencies on June 27th, so the account should be deleted any day now. The rep explained that it took a week or so after the notice was sent for it to show in the collection agency system. "July 27th?" I repeated several times to him. "Yes" he confirmed over and over. I started to laugh. "Today is AUGUST 8TH. IT'S BEEN ALMOST 6 WEEKS SINCE THIS LETTER WAS SENT. WHEN IS THIS GOING TO HAPPEN?"

There was plenty more to this conversation, but we don't need to get into it. That's not the important part here. This isn't Dell Hell.

What happened next is that I was royally ticked and I wanted to tell someone, so I started to Twitter about my war with Verizon. I even went so far to say that I was so angry, I was going to digitally record the calls with Verizon customer service and start posting the mp3's of the stagnant, frustrating conversations online for my readers to listen to. Then I said I was going to pitch the whole terrible story to consumer reporters on TV.

Here's where it gets interesting.

You see, Verizon Wireless, while ticking me off, had the foresight to hire a smart PR team. Immediately after my twitters, I was directly contacted by Jeremy Pepper, one of the smartest blogger/social media professionals in the business. First he asked me what happened and then he empathized with my experience and noted that if this round of calls didn't resolve the problem (it sounded like it will - finally!), he'd be happy to lend help from his side. I was impressed. If Verizon Wireless hadn't aligned with Jeremy Pepper (Disclosure: we've met via industry conferences) and if he hadn't be visible to me as a blogger and someone to follow online...if he hadn't been paying attention on Twitter, I would have launched a debilitating campaign against the company and it may have been too late for him to manage it.

It's not enough in this day and age of citizen journalism and microblogging to have a online monitoring program. Marketers need to acknowledge that the model has changed and the consumer now has a greater share of voice than ever before. Broadband and mobile have enabled huge groups of global consumers to speak to each other like never before. For marketers who don't have the time or the desire to handle this massive communication task internally, this means finding PR partners who live and breathe in this world to handle it for you.

Although my experience with Verizon has been frustrating, I will continue to be their mobile customer, not just because I think their mobile coverage is the best but also because they've invested in a PR team who "gets it" and "engaged me."

My new friend Chris Conley is the good kinda crazy. Last weekend he blogged for 24 hours for charity. I was one of the people he interviewed to create all of that content. We talked about social media here.

Scott McNulty on Blogging from Blogphiladelphia!

While on my way home from work on Friday night, doing my usual routine of texting, checking emails and hitting refresh on my browser to update Twitter - all on my PDA - I suddenly stopped and looked around me. I looked at my PDA and then I asked myself, what did I used to do before I had a mobile device?

It's not that long that I've been part of the connected generation. I was one of those people who refused to join the cell revolution and was the last person you knew to have a cell phone; the only reason that I finally did get a cell phone was because I worked for a wireless handset manufacturer/marketer. I went wireless in 2001.

So what did I do, before mobile? I realized that I was more aware of my surroundings before mobile. I people watched. I paid attention to where I was walking. I looked up and around me. I looked into people's faces. I looked into store windows.

I don't do much of that anymore. I walk and text. I stand and text. I twitter in taxi's.

Once I realized that, it dawned on me that I am a walking target for crime because of my addiction to technology. I could easily be mugged and never see my attacker. If I passed a business being robbed, I may not be able to provide any information. I'm not paying attention.

Then I wondered about the link between crime and technology. Are there statistics or studies showing a rise in crime and its direct correlation to victims using technology at the time of the attack? I know I'm not the only person out there preoccupied with my devices. Are we at danger because of our constant usage of devices?

Is this a trend for our future? What do you think?

I'm ready to talk about BlogPhiladelphia. The unconference was all that I had hoped for and then some. Were there things that I would do differently next year, given the opportunity to organize a year two event? Absolutely. Key learnings are to be expected with any event.

The success of BlogPhiladelphia should be attributed to the people who participated. I still can't believe that 270 pre-registered and we had to turn people away. Even better, I am thrilled that more than 250 people showed up. The biggest measurement of success in my mind, is the community that was forged at the event. All of these people who knew "of" each other - or didn't - had the opportunity to meet in person and collaborate, share and learn. That was the real goal of BlogPhiladelphia. Sure, as an employee of GPTMC, I hope that you fall in love with Philadelphia and this region that I love and promote, and I hope that the community embraces our social media tools and content, like uwishunu.comand Sound About Philly. However, as a fellow geek, I hoped that people would connect and exchange ideas and ideally, make contacts that lead to more work or improve their business services with new knowledge.

Selfishly, the unconference was also an opportunity for me to catch up with and learn more from people who have been teaching me for years: Josh Hallett, Dave Parmet and Howard Greenstein. It was a chance for me to reconnect with some really smart people I've met along my path: Alicia Dorset, Dina Kaplan, Whitney Hoffman and Doug Bellenger. It was also a chance for me to learn more about topics that interested me from experts in those areas, like: Dave Coustan, Scott McNulty, Lisa Marshall, Chris O'Donnell, Valerie Maltoni,Tony Guido and Don Bain. Many thanks also to our diverse panelists: Neal Stewart, Caroline Marks, Vince Veneziani, Emily King and the infamousA.J. Daulerio. A fist-pumping "yeaaaaah" to city blogger and friend Joey Sweeney, who rocked the panel with his moderation, and with his awesome Philebrity team, hosted the perfect wrap party.

And that brings me to BlogPhiladelphia's not-so-secret ingredient, the man whose blog couldn't be more aptly named, Alex Hillman of Dangerously Awesome. For as much as the blog world can be filled with snark and feud after feud, the geek world is filled with talented people who are rapidly propelling forward and making industry names for themselves globally with their innovation and yet not getting caught up in the ego that consumes so many. Alex Hillman is one of those people and if you know Alex personally, you're nodding your head right now while reading this. Accolades and rewards (personal and financial) are truly deserving to this smart, gifted, helpful and energetic guy. We connected early in the planning stages of BlogPhilly (thanks, Brian Oberkirk !!) and Alex made the mistake of offering his FREE help with anything I need to make this unconference happen. He was experienced in the world of Barcamps, fresh off the high of SXSW and newly committed to staying in Philly versus moving to SF and joining the well-established (tech) establishment. Alex's passion re-ignited my passion for a project that I was dedicated to but now planning with limited resources that at times seemed overwhelming to accomplish in the less than 3 months we had to organize. Alex didn't just bring ideas (like the open-grid, which was awesome) but he was a tangible resource for me; he was a team member and then a partner.

And then there are all of the new friends I met BECAUSE of BlogPhilly: Roz, the P'unk Ave guys, Philly Tipguys, Marisa, John Bilotta and his bro Vince, David Speers, the insane and brilliant dudes at Viddler who are totally going to bury YouTubeWho? and more!
I could go on forever about the people who pitched in and helped with organizing - maybe that will be a part II to my wrap up?

I hope I touched on all of the core participants in BlogPhilly, if I haven't, I apologize.

Thank you to everyone who attended for making BlogPhiladelphia truly one of the highlights of my life both personally and professionally. The social media community in Philly and beyond is a remarkable community of talented and good people and I am proud to count myself as one of you. Thank you.

I'm on a blogging break. Blogphiladelphia took the blogger right out of me.

Not to mention, it's just so much easier to twitter than blog.

But I will be back. Until then, look at the "tooned" annie that stan at Toonamation created! What a talent and program this guys has - and he can "toon" entire videos. And this isn't that mac program - it's patented and more So, as someone at BlogPhilly pointed out, we could have him "toon" the spiderman movie so we can watch it the way we *wanted* to see it. I can't wait to work on a project with Toonamation!



(Are the bags under my eyes really that bad? I think I was just very, very tired;p)

Wow, the last few days have been a whirlwind of activity. BlogPhiladelphia was a blur for me but I'm pleased with the outcome. Our session leaders were all excellent and the participation by attendees impressed me. The social media world has come such a long way since I entered the circuit a few years ago; marketers and citizen journalists are just so *smart* anymore. That's what really impressed me about BlogPhiladelphia. The last few social media "conferences" I attended in 2006 in NYC bored me. The speakers rattled off "tips" that were basics and even outdated. Often, I knew more then them but didn't have the opportunity to contribute.

At BlogPhiladelphia, the session leaders were smart and the participants were just as smart. It was stimulating just to be among the conversations.

More to come soon, but now, I have to head to the Wrap Party (Thanks Philebrity!)

Yet another reason why, David Pogue is one of my top 5 favorite reporters.

Ha. I lovelovelove Chris Pirillo's20 Reasons I'm not getting an iPhone today. Granted, I'm not an Apple disciple, but I don't get the hype for the iPhone. Maybe I'm too much of a mobile phone techie to buy in? Maybe it's my displeasure with my video iPod? In my opinion, the only thing great about the iPod is 1)the streamlined aesthetic and 2)the memory. Beyond that, I don't love the product. I hatehatehate the click-wheel. I'm on my third unit (under warrenty, thankfully!) because of unit malfunctions. Apple customer service has been the worst of my life and that's coming from someone who formerly repped a wireless handset manufacturer that required me to switch carriers to activate and test large numbers of new phones for at least two years; I've probably had more than the average person's experience with customer service AND I've worked with just about every carrier in the US. I would NEVER give up my Verizon service.

I guess the other issue is that I don't have a landline. I doubt I ever will again. And I live alone. I can't risk my phone dying or malfunctioning and have to mail it in for a replacement. I don't have that luxury.

It's funny, because I'm a mobile phone junkie. I upgrade ALL the time. I have so many friends in the mobile industry that they may send me a review unit to play with or I'll just see one that looks interesting and upgrade on my own. My friends & family accuse me of having a new wireless unit every two weeks and sometimes they are right.

However, while I admire the design of the iPhone from afar, I have to say, it's unlikely I'd purchase one now with AT&T service. Their coverage blows.

But I'm sure many people out there will snap them up and love that status it gives me. Me, I'd rather have the function and service;)

Someone pass the codeine - I just gave birth. The labor involved may set a new world record, but we did it for YOU.

Now hurry up and register, if you haven't already. Just one week left to sign up!

All this talk about the iPhone, enough already! Sometimes I get frustrated with the consumerism element of social media. We in America and the western world continually scramble to buy the next big "thing," but what happens to all of those old-next-big-things as we continually upgrade?? I saw a Twitter today with an awesome link to a blog that recycles the old Merlin Calculator into an MP3 player. How AWESOME is that?!? Man, I always wanted that Merlin, but I went to Catholic school and we weren't allowed to use calculators. We even had to SHOW OUR WORK in math - even in the high grades and more advanced math. I'm still convinced that if I hadn't been DEPRIVED (no bitterness here, folks) of the Merlin I would be a much better math person today.

In other, equally, exciting news, BlogOrlando registration is live! Wooohooo! I can't wait! Hurry up and register everyone, it's going to be AWESOME!