theory.isthereason

Interview on CBC Business News: Examining eBooks

Kevin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 19:16:14 +0000

On 12th June 2009, producer @NishaPatel invited me onto CBC Business News to talk about the eBook phenomena. I think I talk a little slow for television, but oh well, that’s that.

I initially passed this opportunity to Dr. Alex @Halavais, whom I knew was in the process of digitizing his entire personal book library. He had given me great advice on the evolution of media industries from analogue to digital, specifically on how the book publishing industry is likely to mirror the course of music and movies industries into the digital domain.

Here are some questions from CBC News, as well as my responses:

1. Why are eBooks taking so long to turn mainstream?
Short answer: Aesthetic experience. Music and movies tend to be experienced same way be it analogue or digital (i.e. screens, headphones), while the experience of browsing a physical book hasn’t been replicated in the electronic form. I think we’re compensating by recognizing the new-found features of ebooks, including the ability to search within books and to carry along more books with us than physically possible.

2. Who are going to be the real losers here? Bookstores, publishers?
If we were to look at the demise of Tower Records, or the state of Blockbuster today, it’s quite certain that if ebooks were to take off, then the brick and mortar bookstores would be next to go. As much as we romanticize the loss of physical browsing, bookstores might have to adapt themselves around alternative aspects of business. I’m seeing many bookstores take the Starbucks route by turning themselves into The Third Place, which focuses the business on communal aspects of books, such as operating cafes, hosting author readings, and catering to book clubs.

3. Which device do you think will lead the ebook revolution?
I personally enjoy reading on my Amazon Kindle, as well as my iPhone. They compliment each other very well, and the convenience and comfort these devices bring to reading ebooks make them strong contenders as mainstream devices for the publishing industry.

If you’re interested to see why the Kindle and the iPhone rock for reading, check out this recent discussion I had with my fellow Kindle fans.

UPDATE: The RamblingLibrarian now offers his thoughts on ebooks as well.

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Sneak Preview: Pukka 1.8 = Tighter integration between Delicious and Mac OS X

Kevin — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:04:16 +0000

If you’re on a Mac and find yourself bookmarking the entire Internet on Delicious, you’ll want to check out Code Sorcery Workshop’s upcoming Pukka 1.8.

While it’s easy enough to use the Delicious bookmarklet to tag sites you love, having a desktop app integrates Delicious with your entire Mac OSX experience.

The Basics
Upon launch, Pukka may look diminutive, but the real power lies in how it speeds up your social bookmarking workflow in two key ways: Bookmarking and Searching

After entering your Delicious (or Ma.gnolia) account into Pukka (supports multiple accounts), it starts to cache your bookmarked links, tags and descriptions in the background. This action helps with your tagging and searching efficiency.

Bookmarking
To bookmark, tag and describe a link, you would first install the Pukka bookmarklet from the app into your favorite web browser. At your favorite site, hitting the bookmarklet launches the app and auto-fills the URL and Title of the page. If you highlighted text on the web page before hitting the bookmarklet, that specific text would also appear in the Pukka’s Description area (a real time-saver!).

Searching
While the earlier versions let you browse your recent delicious bookmarks in a pull-down menu, the new version features live search your bookmarks from the menu icon. Mind you, with Command-F to find, it’s lightning fast!

As you can see, almost everything in Pukka can be executed with simple keyboard commands, making the entire bookmarking and searching experience ridiculously quick once you get the hang of it.

New features of Pukka 1.8
While Pukka has always had a ton of features, here are the new ones you can look forward to in version 1.8:
* New search feature
- available from Window > Search (Command-F)
- also available from menu bar
- global keyboard shortcut assignable
- allows filtering by title, URL, tags, description, or all four
* Ability to drag-and-drop reorder accounts in preferences
- allows you to set a preferred account at startup (first account)
* Auto-expanding description field
* AppleScript access to all bookmarks and their properties

On the whole, the live search feature is where I feel the app is given a second life, while Applescript access would let hardcore users get the most out of Pukka. The description field has a unique touch of auto-expanding, though I’d simply prefer to be able to resize the entire window so I can also see my lengthy tags with less clicks.

Code Sorcery Workshop notes that pricing remains the same as the last version, $16.95. Current owners of Pukka 1.x get this as a free upgrade. Look for Pukka 1.8 this week or so, which will run on both Mac OS 10.4 and 10.5.

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serendipity: my best man’s toast

Kevin — Fri, 26 Jun 2009 16:16:20 +0000

I’ve never been huge on weddings, let alone imagine myself being anyone’s best man. That’s life taking us into unexpected places. Yet, instead of being consumed by change, we’ve to learn to ride it. This is perhaps the best quality I’ve seen from my friend, Kelvin (aka MrBig).

Serendipity
by Kevin Lim

As the “Best Man”,
I’d like to propose a toast
to the bride and groom

My name is Kevin,
which misses one letter
from me becoming
the groom’s doppleganger.

Even though I came to know Kelvin from undergrad,
we’ve actually come to realize
that we’ve crossed paths while serving in the military.

While history may have tricked us into being strangers
bunking just a corridor apart
Our missed connection certainly didn’t happen twice.
Look at us today, We stand as grand friends.

Such “near misses” were the start of many more,
From which I’ve come to know what defines
this humble man with deep compassion for others.

From Singapore to the oddest of places: Buffalo, NY.
Kelvin had recently found his place in Greenville, SC
through academic necessity, sheer talent and dumb luck.

With just one year of internship as a school psychologist,
Kelvin could have come and gone as most have,
But once again, he was denied the well-beaten path
for he was made not miss the greatest gift yet to come.

Enter Alaina.

Having known Alaina for a short while,
I’ve discovered that she shares Kelvin’s
“for better or for worse” traits.

They both embody a Singaporean quality,
known as being “Chin Cai”
Which roughly translates to
“Don’t sweat the small stuff”.

While you’d say it in five words,
We say it in two,
That’s the Asian efficiency (or laziness) for you
Something Alaina would certainly have fun learning in Singapore.

Finally, it would be loudly unforgiving
if I didn’t sound off how Alaina and Kelvin
demonstrated comparable talent of the musical tongue,
for it speaks volumes of their immensely shared frequencies together.

If I had to lose Kelvin to anyone,
I can’t imagine
a more perfect woman than Alaina.

Cheers to both of you.

Aside: Greenville, SC, is quite an interesting city. You can check out my photos or a quick video where I check out popular eateries including Sonic (drive-in) and Chik-Fil-A.

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Lunch with fellow Amazon Kindle users…

Kevin — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 00:43:08 +0000

Over lunch at the UB Commons, Jim Milles, Kristina Lively, Joe Hsu and I chat about our Amazon Kindles.

We casually discuss our user experiences with each version of the Kindle, and make quick predictions on the future of books.

I couldn’t resist a family portrait of our entire line of Kindles…

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How I survived MediaTemple’s thousand dollar invoice

Kevin — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 07:14:49 +0000

This weekend was a real shocker…

As some of you already know, I received a $1084.40 GPU overage charge from Media Temple last week. Quite an adventure this turned out to be… one that I was fortunate enough to walk away from scot-free.

This whole incident really showed me how lucky I am to have great friends. Not only were they empathetic, some were ready to offer donations, while a few went above and beyond. For your benefit, I’d like to share my story with you.

I could be so lucky…
When I first tweeted about my $1084 Media Temple bill, I kept things formal by reporting only the facts. Since I wasn’t sure what exactly happened, I needed to make sure I could keep all options for recourse open. Part of me believed that I could work a reasonable deal with Media Temple to lower or remove the charge.

Then came along a stranger named @DavidAndGoliath who caught wind of my sob story and made a shocking offer to pay off my entire Media Temple bill. His stipulation: To merely sign on with his FusedNetwork.com web host for at least a year, and write a review of the service. As a founder of FusedNetwork, David McKendrick said to give an honest review, even if it meant saying that his service was garbage.

Off the bat, this wasn’t your everyday web host provider. Confident, generous and above all, responsive, I’d switch in a jiffy if it weren’t for my friend @Lucian who offered to help resolve my issue with Media Temple. As an established web designer and information architect, Lucian wrote an email to persuade Media Temple to work with me on this.

After a few email exchanges, I received a call on Monday from Media Temple’s VP of Customer Service, Andrew Won. First, he calmly explained where the root of the problem was, which I understood as a technical oversight on my part (I’ll explain in a while). We talked about how this problem could have been prevented, and he entertained the possibility of an option to have a user’s hosting service temporarily shut down when severe overages occur, thereby alerting the user without severe penalties. Finally, he went on to say that they were going to grant me a one-time exception by washing away the charge over this time period. Huzzah!

What actually went wrong (i.e. the nitty-gritty)
It started with the typical email alert about GPU overages on my web hosting account. I’ve gotten these emails before, but since I had recently upgraded to a higher tier server, I thought it was a residual issue. Nevertheless I went in to take a look, noticed nothing outstanding, then went back to my daily routine. Unfortunately for me, something went really wrong after I last checked my GPU Usage Report, as seen below:

Yes, I didn’t realize how my blog’s GPU usage was spiking.

For the longest time, I’ve been wrestling with the problem of this blog taking up too much server resources. Being such a complicated outfit, the problem could have been with my customized old K2 template, any of the WordPress plugins, or some other script I had deployed.

After consulting with the Media Temple administrators, they helped me isolate the problem to a few WordPress plugins. The main culprit was the “Permalink Redirect” WP plugin which I had installed to redirect any weird variables in URLs to proper pages on my site.

Perhaps the Permalink-Redirect plugin was badly configured, but whatever it was, it started hitting the server for pages that didn’t exist, generating redirects and looping on itself. We quickly took it off, together with other high GPU consuming plugins such as flickr-rss, jquery-lightbox-balupton-edition, and vipers-video-quicktags. These last three plugins were inactive to begin with, which made me realize how it’s better to delete inactive plugins than to leave them lying around (Update 6/10: See WP plugin dev Lester Chan’s comment on how this is “subjective”).

From here on, I have to learn how to read Media Temple’s GPU Usage Reports carefully. I know that a blog overhaul is long overdue, but I’ll have to get to it when I’ve more time. Meantime, if you ever receive a warning email or a massive bill like me, keep in touch with your web hosting company to work out a resolution, especially if it’s your first time encountering such a problem. If nothing can be done, reach out to friends via twitter, email and so on, but don’t get too emotional about it. Help could be just around the corner.

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On Tiananmen’s 20th anniversary: How China is becoming a Giant Singapore

Kevin — Sat, 06 Jun 2009 06:29:24 +0000

The Tank Man: Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 - Jeff Widener (The Associated Press). Also see NY Times “Behind the Scenes: Tank Man of Tiananmen“

You might be aware that I’ve been on a blog hiatus since I writing on my dissertation on Cyberactivism in China. With the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square this week, I’d like to brain dump what I’ve come across so far. Please let me know what you think.

When veteran filmmaker Antony Thomas went to China in search of “The Tank Man“, he showed this iconic picture to undergraduates at the Peking University. Back in 1989, this university served as the nerve center of the Tiananmen Square protests.

None of the students recognized the photograph.

Lacking any context, the four Chinese students mustered their best effort and proposed that it was some kind of military parade (watch 1 minute into video).

While illustrating this in the Frontline documentary, it became fairly obvious that the Chinese regime has managed to erase the infamous Tank Man’s image from Chinese memory. This effectiveness highlights the China regime’s central effort to control information through widespread filtering of the Internet. Such a complex undertaking is not performed alone, but in unison with Western corporations such as Yahoo!, Microsoft, Google, and Skype. In order to tap into the thriving Chinese market, these companies have had little choice but to be complicit in China’s censorship strategy.

China: Now with the most netizens in the world
This year, China dominates with the largest population of Internet users in the world. On January 13, 2009, China Internet Network Information Center (CNNIC) released the “23rd Statistical Survey Report on the Internet Development in China“, which shares detailed statistics on the country’s virtual well-being. According to the report, by the end of December 2008, the amount of Internet users in China had reached 298 million, with 279 million being broadband users. Out of this massively networked population, 162 million (54.3%) of them had blogs.

Owning a blog is one part of the equation, returning to update it frequently is another. While the blogger population grew, so did activity in the Chinese blogosphere. Around 105 million users were updating their blogs on a regular basis (that’s 35.2% of Chinese bloggers). This figure helps legitimize the Chinese blogosphere as a public commune for mirroring and mediating everyday culture. In addition, the CNNIC report shared that the introduction of Social Networking Services (SNS) played a role in promoting the growth and influence of bloggers.

Chinese netizens are rhetorically sophisticated
Just how much impact does social media, particularly blogs, having on China’s national agenda?

In 2006, NPR reported on the Chinese blogosphere, and found that only a few are political. There were unusual ones, such as Mumu, a Communist Party member who has clips of herself doing sexy dances, but the typical Chinese blogger is more like Jasmine Gu where “It’s all about me, myself and my life”. Reports like these reflect the matching diversity of blogs to the aspirations of citizens. Not everyone is naturally into political sophistication, yet similarly complex rhetoric can also be found in the relative safety of entertainment media.

For instance, the Anglosphere is familiar with the television series “Sex and the City”. While the show has never appeared on the Chinese airwaves, it has certainly been well-received among China’s college students and young professionals. They have started to have increasingly sophisticated needs; natively undersupplied by their developing society, while artificially fulfilled through the distribution of pirated DVDs and online copies. As they watch the show to learn English and get a glimpse of life in New York City, the globalized Chinese is realized. Their interests may not be directly political, but the accumulation of cross-cultural granules eventually amounts to a greater potential for openness and acceptance of international opinion.

All this happens while the Chinese government filters the media, and particularly, the self-publishing Internet. Western nations have typically taken the stance that the Internet would bring about democracy whether authoritarian regimes realize it. This technologically determinist sentiment was no better remembered than when Bill Clinton, who in referring to Chinese Internet censorship in the 1990s, remarked that “trying to control the Internet is like trying to nail Jell-o to the wall”. To some extent, censorship can be circumvented. Multiple studies and tools have emerged to prove this, including Rebecca McKinnon’s demonstration that not all Chinese blog platforms censor consistently, where some are more relaxed than others. On the whole though, the Chinese government has been successful in hindering easy publication and access to what they deem as nationally sensitive information.

Ethan Zuckerman and Rebecca McKinnon elaborate from this point about China’s complicated culture. There appears to be an equilibrium, since for every push the government makes, an equal push is made from netizens opposed to their idea of censorship. Talented Netizens start developing sophisticated satire as a means to aggregate thoughts and spread awareness of their messages. Such culturally absurd products have included a harmonious image of a “river crab dressed in three watches“, as well as “Song of the Grass-Mud Horse“, which phonetically translates to roughly as “Cao Ni Ma” or “f*ck your mother”. As seen below, this cao ni ma music video is a cleverly vulgar rhetoric on how Chinese netizens will always find a way around online censorship:

The Great Firewall of China (or Iron Curtain 2.0)
In filtering information flow around the Chinese network, China’s Great Firewall is often mentioned. It refers to the censorship system that controls the flow of information into and within China. While technically elaborate, it still cannot filter every piece of sensitive information shared online. Instead, by making it inconvenient to read certain sites, the Chinese government can keep politically charged issues from surfacing in the national discourse (James Fallows, March 2008). Rebecca MacKinnon elaborates on the Great Firewall (aka #GFW on twitter) by stating that it merely accounts for “a small part of Chinese Internet Censorship“.

Lokman Tsui contributed his idea of the Great Firewall as being the Chinese equivalent of Iron Curtain 2.0. In reference the Cold War, his telephone survey showed that the Great Firewall myth is the belief that China’s efforts to censor the Internet must ultimately fail, and that the internet will eventually lead to the country’s democratization. Lokman then argued that this myth affects the way we perceive how China, and how the United States form policies around it (such as to build filter circumvention and jamming tools). In reality, the Great Firewall of China is a mere deterrence, but one that is sufficient at steering most netizens towards more accessible, perhaps entertaining points of interest on the Internet. As such, the Great Firewall is not simply controlling web access; it’s filtering the social and political discourse of Chinese netizens.

In a surprising move on June 4th 2009, the Communist Party’s made their agenda clear through the People’s Daily (specifically the Global Times):

“Twenty years after the June 4 Tiananmen incident, public discussion about what happened that day is almost non-existent in mainstream society on the Chinese mainland. It’s still a sensitive topic. Scholars, officials and businessmen declined interviews with the Global Times on the subject. And searches for ‘June 4 incident’ on the Chinese versions of Google, Baidu and Yahoo were blocked.” (via Straits Times)

Assassination of Foreign Web 2.0
Ramping up to Tiananmen’s 20th anniversary, the Chinese government dealt another blow to the globalized Chinese conversation by blocking off Twitter, Flickr, Hotmail and Bing in China. After news of China’s network filters broke, I recognized that this would be the perfect opportunity to see if Berkman Center’s Herdict Web project stood up to the challenge.

The Herdict Web aggregates reports of inaccessible sites, allowing users to compare data to see if inaccessibility is a shared problem. By crowdsourcing data from around the world, the project is able to document accessibility for any web site, anywhere. In order popularity on Herdict, twitter, flickr, Youtube, TOR, tibet.net, Microsoft’s Bing (including CN.bing.com), Hotmail, Blogger.com and even Plurk were all reported by users as inaccessible.

As you’ll see on Herdict, Youtube and Tor (anonymity tool) were blocked earlier on as well. China isn’t the only country to have blocked Youtube; Bangladesh, Pakistan, Thailand and Turkey temporarily shut off access to the site after users uploaded content the countries’ governments considered politically embarrassing.

Since a few well-known Chinese personalities were actively discussing this issue on twitter, I asked Chinese videogame designer, @frankyu:

To which he replied…

Frank Yu’s response reiterated to me that China truly wanted domestic control over the Internet services used by the Chinese population. By cutting off access to popular Web 2.0 services in the States, the China regime seemed to be assaulting the intellectual reach of the cosmopolitan Chinese. This would seem to me like a modern day act of a biblioclasm, where instead of burning books, external far-reaching channels of communication are disabled in order to stifle the flow of critical knowledge and information in and around China.

Where (and Why) Web 2.0 fails in China
Frank’s tweet also reminded me of the talk I watched which renown journalist and researcher, Michael Anti (Zhao Jing), gave during the Berkman Center Luncheon Series (Nov 2007). As documented by David Weinberger…

What happens when decentralized, open blogging meets the centralized, closed Chinese society? From 2004-2005, most dissenting news of China came through blogs. After that, it comes through chat rooms. Chat rooms started in Chinese in around 1998. Now China has gone back to that — very Web 1.0, Michael says. Email and mailing lists are also important for sharing dissenting news about politics, religion, etc. “We don’t use Web 2.0. Why not?” Web 2.0 is democratizing and decentralizing. But blogs aren’t really decentralized because they need centralized servers, which make them easy for the government to control. It is much harder for the government to find chat rooms and shut them down.

To me, this was the first instance where Web 2.0 services (e.g. twitter, youtube, flickr) were explained as being disadvantaged for online discourse. Being centralized and locate-able meant that they were easier to block, compared to earlier generational Web 1.0 services which were anarchic, massive and perhaps fragmented (e.g. IRC, IM, mailing lists), thus easier for netizens to find cover in informational complexity for stealthier communication.

Building on his Web 1.0 proliferation argument, Michael Anti recently predicted twitter’s demise in China in an interview with Danwei.org (that’s May 2009).

The Chinese Exception
While Michael builds a credible case, Frank Yu’s hint of QQ’s globalization points to another interesting aspect of China’s censorship practices. Tencent QQ, generally referred to as QQ, is the most popular free instant messaging computer program in Mainland China, and is said to be the world’s third most popular IM service (IndiaTimes, May 2007).

The significance of QQ here is that the Chinese govt appears to have no issue with international communication via their instant messaging service, since they didn’t appear to disrupt it during the June 4th lockdown. The probable reason for this is because the QQ service was home-grown and legally bound in China, this made the logistics of controlling both business and the regulation of online content much easier.

A similar rationale was given by Michael Anti on how China developed Red Flag as a knockoff of RedHat. His reason was that “[t]he government doesn’t trust RedHat. It only uses Red Flag. Microsoft gave much of the Windows source code to the government so the government verify there are no back doors.” (David Weinberger, Nov 2007)

Ultimately, “China is becoming Singapore”
While there are the visible networks of elite Chinese personalities like Frank Yu and Michael Anti (e.g. on twitter, Facebook), there are also the more obscure chat rooms and mailing lists they participate in. Michael notes that these are the two faces of the online social discourse in China.

Michael points out how liberal the modern Chinese actually are, in comparison to Europe and America. As hinted earlier in the “Sex in the City” story, this could be attributed to how they had no rule which prevents “sex before marriage, are more tolerant of homosexuality, have no conservative party, and they have no God”. He sees the Chinese people as accepting of this freedom from the government, to the extent that they were willing to exchange it for political restrictions. In fact, he believes that at least 95% of people don’t care about censorship, so only the weird ones do.

This begins to sound like Singapore, except that there’s barely any need for censorship in the country; our citizens are accustomed to self-censoring. When asked about the Internet bringing about any possible change in China, Michael said that he didn’t think so. Rather than the Internet turning China into the likeness of the United States, he goes so far as to explain that China was becoming a “big Singapore”, where we have “happy citizens without any political ideas”, (David Weinberger, Nov 2007).

While there may be this sociological mirror between China and Singapore, there has been technological policy sharing between both countries. It’s worth nothing that in 1996, China had sent senior information official Zeng Jianhui to Singapore to learn about Internet policing practices. Upon returning to the Mainland, Chinese officials followed the Singapore example of more selective restriction, and a greater reliance on the threat posed by the mere possibility of monitoring (Craig Hill, April 2009).

I welcome further insights you might have. Really, go ahead and drop me a note.

UPDATE (June 6th, 2009):
The Rambling Librarian send me a plethora of articles relating to the Singapore government’s “light touch” approach to online discourse. I’ve re-read through them, and while the approach is encouraging, I found little change in the current situation. As I’ve mentioned in the comments, “[t]he light touch discussion so far appears to liberate discussion online, but this may already be moot as Singaporeans have arguably been conditioned not to push the grey areas. [In addition], the “fear of govt action” as a local myth as well as “citizen driven propaganda” [perpetuates this condition].”

On a related note, this article he sent me legitimizes the Singapore condition I mentioned: Political observers expect more alternative voices over next 50 yrs, by Imelda Saad of Channel News Asia. From the article, observers estimate that it will take more than just the next 50 years for Singapore to see a two-party system. The reasons include how the political process is trying to compensate for fundamental biases that come with representation by proxy, while pursuing greater equality and transparency. Beyond a legitimate excuse, this reflects the present Singaporean condition. My argument lies in how there is a lack of opportunity for citizens to display any political sophistication, because the dominant PAP party has been both forward-looking and efficient. It’s a peculiar problem. Also see Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong’s previous comments in New Zealand concerning the “efficiency” of single party government.

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Watch Henry Jenkins discuss Transmedia Storytelling (video)

Kevin — Mon, 25 May 2009 17:51:12 +0000

Henry Jenkins is the director, Comparative Media Studies Program at MIT. In this viral-info-snack he discusses the power of media in a 21 century trans-mediated world. A world where converging technologies and cultures give rise to a new media landscape.

Thanks to the ever wise Cross-Media Specialist @ChristyDena, I checked out Henry Jenkin’s short video on transmedia, which discusses the origin of media and how it’s transformed today. The video showcases much of the phenomena I’ve been illustrating in my recent presentations on the social web.

Starting with storytelling shared within tribes, it goes onto the modern day commercialization of media owned by a few powerful conglomerates, and finally today’s re-tribalized media which is reproduced and remixed by anyone handy with digital tools as well as participates in online social networks (e.g. Youtube, Facebook). Evidence of this remix culture can be seen in Youtube spoofs of major events such as the Gitmo torture and the Obama campaign.

More importantly, Jenkins discusses the emergence of transmedia, which is an affordance of such democratic media tools. In short, transmedia refers to the idea that a story can be told across various media. A popular example would be The Matrix, where the story is told across three movies, an animation series, a video game and so on. Extending further, we could also consider fan-made works as part of the transmedia experience, where we see variations (e.g. spoofs) produced and shared by fans all over the world.

In summary, today’s experiences are best served flowy. It’s not just about letting content be in the hands of fans, but enabling them to remix them in their own image. This participatory way of production isn’t simply fan-inclusive; it invites them to help us sustain our stories beyond our means.

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Starting the social media journey for communication agencies

Kevin — Thu, 14 May 2009 07:54:27 +0000

Click to see full-size panorama

Looking back at the emergence of popular social networks, I’m quite convinced that much of their success happened not through incredible planning and foresight, but by accident and adaptation. Youtube was supposed to be a video-based HotorNot.com, Flickr was spawned off a MMORPG multiuser chat service with real-time photo exchange (called FlickrLive; I was there), and Twitter was meant to be a “livelier” Livejournal.com

As serendipitous as this may be, we can still take time to observe the tendencies of social networks. Explaining this at Buffalo PRSA back in February, Kate Torok kindly invited me to give a social media primer for her colleagues at Travers Collins & Company (TC&C) on Tuesday morning.

The night before, I spent some time examining their online network presence, by checking out their professional group blog TC&C insights, their twitter @TraversCollins, as well as their LinkedIn company profile page which neatly displays their employee roster.

By around 8.45am, twenty-two friendly faces had descended around me at the TC&C conference room. Surveying the room, I was delighted to know that they all had experience with twitter as well as Google Reader. Soon after, I noticed that John Pitts @Pitts88 and @schoenorn tweeted in while I presented. I wished more of them did the same, so we’d have a backchannel for sustaining post-session discussion.

Since Travers Collins & Company is an all-rounded communication agency handling advertising, public relations as well as investor relations, I showcased my Phelps vs. Kellogg’s case study (as seen at Buffalo PRSA), with a few extensions towards user engagement and social media tracking tools.

Technology actually comes last
I kicked off the session by showing an explosion of social web services out there. While there are @#^$-tons of social networking platforms already available, I reinforced the idea that that strategy should always come before tools. A better way to understand this, would be to see Forrester’s POST (People, Objectives, Strategy, Technology) method where, ironic to many, the technology component comes last in the online social engagement effort.

Listening actually comes first
For organization embarking on the social web journey, there’s the temptation to broadcast and focus on getting as much eyeballs as possible. I’d argue that this method simply bootstraps traditional communication limitations onto the new media of social networks, which actually offers us new ways of engaging individuals. Instead, I’d recommend listening as the primary method of engagement. It’s the most natural (and respectful) way to start a conversation, create strong relationships and build advocacy. Particularly since we live in a much noisier online environment today, someone who actually takes the time to listen becomes a big deal. We’re more receptive of people who empathize with us.

For instance: For the past week, I’ve been trying to resolve a “delivered” package via UPS… the problem being, I never received it. Checking between the shipper and UPS, it seems that someone “took” the package left at my door. It’s strange since I usually get InfoNotices whenever I miss a delivery.

While I might have to file a police report, along comes @ThomasAtUPS offering an ear. It’s obvious that he watches “UPS” related tweets. While he couldn’t do anything to help me then, it’s nice to know that I have a real person inside UPS to rely on, instead of talking to random service reps over the phone. Think about it: Never before in communication history have organizations ever been afforded such precise omniscience and omnipresence over their namesake as today.

Media Monitoring the Social Web
From my previous internship with PR agency, Weber Shandwick Worldwide, I had first-hand experience with the tedious aspect of mass media monitoring. Add the surveillance of social networks, and what could be relatively interesting can quickly turn into pure drudgery. Thankfully, with more news and conversations being shared online, I showed that it is getting easier for us to track what mainstream media as well as individual users are saying about particular ideas. At the basic level, there are free tracking tools on the web such as Google Alerts and SocialMention. On the higher level, there are intelligence gathering services which would index the raw keyword search results into measures of online sentiment (e.g. ScoutLabs, JamiQ).

Taking online tracking even further, the ability to predict future events might no longer be stuck in the realm of science fiction. Horizon scanning, as defined by UK government scientific advisors, involves “the systematic examination of potential threats, opportunities and likely future developments, which are at the margins of current thinking and planning. Horizon scanning may explore novel and unexpected issues, as well as persistent problems or trends” (Sept 2004). While governments have long realized the value of horizon scanning, a recent example included the fairly accurate prediction of the H1N1 flu epidemic by Northwestern University and Indiana University (New York Times, May 2009). Imagine if we had such predictive powers to watch over our interests.

History of Individual-Authority Relationships
Beyond listening, organizations can also engage and enlist users/fans in a more proactive way. I shared a historic overview of the stages of relationships and interactions individuals have had with organizations, going from Ladder of Citizen Participation (Sherry Arnstein, 1969), to Forrester Research’s Social Technographics reports (Charlene Li, 2008). I also highlighted Mike Arauz’s infamous “Spectrum of Online Friendship” to illustrate the idea of friending in the online space, and how such friends could be measured in terms of personal investment.

Where do we find the time?
Towards the end of my presentation, most of the questions pertained to finding the time for social media. There might never be enough time, let alone people, to manage multiple client accounts and their relevant social media endeavors. The short answer is that we should come upon the social web as natural extensions for our cause. Once again, the technology should come last, as it should aid, not detract from, the larger strategy of our cause.

One possible and quite commonly cited workaround which participants suggested included paying bloggers to write about their clients. First and foremost, there’s the danger of turning blog campaigns into nothing more than the act of shilling, or worst case scenario, astroturfing. I warned that with so many pairs of eyes on the Internet, it would almost be unavoidable for someone spot or even whistle-blow such an affair online, thereby damaging the client’s reputation.

I suggested looking for alternative ways to encouraging participation. This includes looking for the experts or influencers in fields relevant to the campaign, then approaching them with information which would be of interest to them. If it’s worthwhile, sponsoring bloggers for a period of time would be a better idea than simply paying for blog posts (e.g. PayPerPost), so long as bloggers know to be honest by disclosing their sponsorship in the post. A good example given by Courtney Quattrini (correct me if I’m wrong) was how she noticed that rapper 50 Cent had his ghost-twitterers sign off with initials, so fans wouldn’t feel short-changed thinking that it’s actually him tweeting. For most fans, it’s simply about the principle of showing respect.

From Communicating to Socializing
Finally, I got to sit-down with TC&C’s social media team, consisting of Kathy Burns, Alyssa Mayer, Caitlin Waas, and Courtney Quattrini. This four-woman team manages TC&C’s blog and twitter account. They are also responsible for advising colleagues and clients on the inclusion of social media practices into their communication mix. They wanted me to be brutally honest with how they could improve in the social web front. For new entrants to social media, I could think of three quick points for them to consider:

1. Link, and Link Widely
While TC&C’s company blog was professionally written, with individual writers’ personality showing through, I noted that great content might not be enough to be noticed. I believe that being on the web, we would really have to link and cite others as widely as possible, not simply to make an educated case, but to recognize other personalities online. Done modestly, most professional bloggers would see inbound links to their site, and might even reciprocate with a comment or a link back as well. It’s a conversation starter.

2. Riding the Brain Waves
As Malcolm Gladwell once noted, there are essentially two kinds of geniuses out there: The Precocious (or born genius) and the Late Bloomer. He noted that while being born genius is amazing in itself, it is far more efficient to consider developing many more late bloomers. In effect, not all of us might be able to create a sensation on our own, but many more of us know how to ride it and hopefully learn from it. Done in moderation, understanding the ebb and flow of conversations online and participating in them would be a way for new comers be introduced in new social circles. The idea is not to write simply in void, but to situation our own personality and creations in a common space with others. It’s a give and take situations, and humility can be a powerful, recognizable virtue. Zappos CEO Tony Hsieh made sense when he said that “People relate to people, not companies“.

3. The Perpetual Beta
Most organizations might get hooked on the idea that they have to look perfect right from the start. Those of us in the web world know that unlike the mainstream media where you publish once and disseminate, the web is more like an organic space where ideas survive by being continuously adaptive. Unlike traditional media, the web is a space where you can actually hold multiple conversations. Understanding this means shifting the paradigm of communications towards the idea where speed and humility rules over perfectionism and authority. I’d even argue that imperfection gives people the sense that you’re as human as them, which is why some of the more interesting bloggers are those who share their best and worst of times. It’s the journey tells the story, not simply the success. On a related note, there’s an interesting documentary being produced by Melissa Pierce called “Life in Perpetual Beta” which I hope to catch.

Telling it like it is…
I don’t profess to be a social media expert, so these are brief heartfelt thoughts I have to share. There are many more developed ideas worth exploring from many others worth following, but I do hope these points provide a rough guide on how to think about the social web. The bottomline is that we can’t simply bootstrap traditional communication practices onto the social web if we wish to make the best from it. We’re going back to basics, working with real people who share our interests, so we ought to make our adventures a mutual investment.

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Cross-Ideological Discussions among Conservative and Liberal Bloggers

Kevin — Mon, 04 May 2009 21:04:06 +0000

Authors: Jason Gallo, Matthew Kane, Eszter Hargittai

Citation Hargittai, E., Gallo, J., & Kane, M. (2008). Cross-Ideological Discussions among Conservative and Liberal Bloggers. Public Choice. 134:67-86.

Abstract: With the increasing spread of information technologies and their potential to filter content, some have argued that people will abandon the reading of dissenting political opinions in favor of material that is closely aligned with their own ideological position. We test this theory empirically by analyzing—both quantitatively and qualitatively—Web links among the writings of top conservative and liberal bloggers. Given our use of novel methods, we discuss in detail our sampling and data collection methodologies. We find that widely read political bloggers are much more likely to link to others who share their political views. However, we find no increase in this pattern over time. We also analyze the content of the links and find that while many of the links are based on straw-man arguments, bloggers across the political spectrum also address each others’ writing substantively, both in agreement and disagreement.

Link: Web Use Project web site

Keywords: Blogs - Bloggers - Communication - Fragmentation - Ideology - Internet - Polarization - Political communication - Web

Posted via web from Cyberwar

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Presentation: The Obama Way - Using Online Social Networks to Promote Your Cause

Kevin — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 16:11:24 +0000

For Fundraising Day 2009 (which coincides with Earth Day), I gave a primer on how President Obama used online social networks (among many communication tools) to empower supporters and raise an incredible amount of public funding for his 2008 election campaign.

In particular, I focused on the idea of producing remixable media, so fans/supporters can produce their own variations, take ownership of the idea and ultimately help spread the cause.

Click to see high-res panorama of our fundraising through social media session @ Statler Tower

KaraKane of Medaille College kicked things off with some social media definitions and concepts (see her slides), while AJ, founder of BuffaloMe.com, talked about how organizations could establish presence online and integrate social media practices with their marketing communication mix. I’ve put some of the audience questions at the end of my Slideshare presentation for future reference.

This event was kindly hosted by the Association of Fundraising Professional (WNY Chapter).

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theorycast.56 :: Is “MINE” the future of magazines?

Kevin — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:43:35 +0000

Watch on Blip.tv or download the iPhone version (12min/80mb).
Check out previous episodes on Blip.tv or subscribe to theorycast via iTunes.

Thanks to @JessManocchio and @joonian, I’ve got my first issue of MINE. It’s an experimental, personalized magazine from Time Warner Inc. Is it a worthy mashup or a frankenstein of a magazine? See what I’ve to say.

What is Mine magazine?

A free five-issue, 10-week, experimental magazine
User-mashup of five Time Warner/American Express Co. magazines
Personalized magazines end up with 56 possible combinations
MINE has been compared to a printed, expanded RSS feed
36-page print edition for first 31,000 respondents
Online version goes to remaining 200,000 respondents
MINE magazine has mobile reader version, including a Blackberry app
Features four single-page ads for the Lexus 2010 RX
Lexus ads personalized based on subscriber’s geography and taste (see video)
Probably environmentally friendlier than traditional distribution
Magazine personalization isn’t new: Xerox helped subscribers put their own photo on the cover of WIRED (March-July, 2007)

References
USA Today: Made-to-order magazine lets readers choose by Ryan Nakashima (March 18, 2009)
Fast Company: Time Inc.’s Mine Magazine is a Printed RSS Feed by Ariel Schwartz (March 18, 2009)
Will Time’s Customized “Mine” Magazine Be a Print Success Story? by Leah Southers #PublicRelations (March 26, 2009)

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UB tweetup #1: University at Buffalo folks on Twitter

Kevin — Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:32:45 +0000

With more of us from the University at Buffalo now on twitter, a UB tweetup was in order. Everyone met each other for the first time, and we exchanged ideas on how we used it for our various causes.

There are currently about 10 twitter accounts affiliated to the University at Buffalo. After our tweetup, these accounts were aggregated via CrowdStatus. This is the official list of UB faculty/staff on twitter, so feel free to follow them!

Folks present at our first UB tweetup included:
@UBcfa - Joanne from UB Center for the Arts
@UBcommunity - Jessica from UB Community Relations
@UB_Alumni - Barbara & Gina from UB Alumni Relations
@UBLaw + @UBLawLib - Jim Milles & Kristina from UB Law Library
As well as Bridget (@bschu1022) from UB Libraries whose official twitter presence should be coming soon.

Those who couldn’t make it included:
@UB_SAS - UB Student advising services
@UBAcademies - Undergrad development beyond the university
@BuffaloBulls - our UB sports teams
@UBGreen - UB’s Green Initiative
@UBCitAlerts - @jhsu’s CIT computing network alerts

Watch our self-introduction video, as well as notes after the jump…

Over here we have Gina’s notes from our first UB tweetup:

Don’t forget, you can easily follow our new UB twitter collective at via CrowdStatus.

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Notice to all employees (memo)

Kevin — Tue, 24 Mar 2009 18:10:03 +0000

I’ve been stressed at work while my dissertation progress lingered back home. Supervisor Robin sends out the following email…

- - - - -
Notice to all employees:

Workloads getting to you?
Feeling stressed?
Too many priorities and assignments?

Due to the hard economic times and otherwise depressing state of the world today, all personnel will now be required to at least look happy while working.

Company-approved supplies will be provided to each employee at little or no cost. Here is the new low-cost, company-approved solution to cope with multiple priorities and assignments!

Each employee will be supplied 2 paper clips and rubber bands as shown in Fig 1 below:

Figure 1. Company-issued smiling contraption
- - - - -

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Japan’s cyber homeless living on the net

Kevin — Fri, 20 Mar 2009 00:21:12 +0000

BBC’s Matt Frei visits a cyber cafe just outside Tokyo, where some homeless young people are choosing to live in the tiny cubicles. Some take-aways from this short, depressing BCC report:

60 x “coffin-sized” cubicles for rent at around US$500/month in Tokyo
No windows to the outside world, except for computer
Cubicle residents mostly young, intelligent, retrenched
Cubicle neighbors rarely talk to one another, no friendships
Sense of sadness and lifelessness. Respectful = silent?

Reviewing similar cyber-drifter reports from other news agencies:

Cyber-homeless are nicknamed “freeters” - a compound of “free” and “Arbeiter” (German for “worker”)
“Freeters” are a by-product of the economic crisis that hit Japan and its lifelong employment guarantees in the 1990s
“Freeters” drift between odd jobs, earning around US$8/hour (1,000 yen)
A modest 30 square metre (320 square foot) flat in Tokyo easily cost US$1,250/month
Living in such Internet cafes costs $12-$20 a night. Residents get free soft drinks, TV, comics and Internet access. This prices even beat those of Japan’s famous “capsule hotels”, where guests sleep in plastic cells.
Living in cybercafes also grants an official registered address to many laid-off contract workers. Critical for job hunting.

I’ve seen similar partitioned cubicles in cybercafes in parts of China, though I must say that the ones in Japan seem to have the most privacy.

I’d appreciate any photos / videos you might have taken or found of cybercafes around the world. I’d like to compare social conditions.

Here are more reports about Japan’s cyber homeless…
Reuters: Japanese find sleep, shelter in cyber cafes (Text / May 7, 2007)
Roadjunky: The Cyber-Homeless of Japan (Video / Dec 22, 2008)
Reuters: Japan’s Internet address (Video / Dec 24, 2008)

Update: BoingBoing mentions the exploitation aspect. Cybercafe owner makes a tidy sum from their plight: 60 cubicles x $500 rent = $30,000. The polar ends of socio-economics, aka the poor get poorer, vice versa. The inescapable, perpetual dilemma.

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The DIY Phuket Simulator

Kevin — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 20:51:20 +0000

I’m strolling along sunny Phuket beach in Thailand remotely from Buffalo, New York. Approximately 8651 true miles away, my holiday experience is mediated via Mapjack.com

I asked friends to come along, by twittering where I was (via URL). @Prissyhan sent me a coconut to drink, but since it was viscerally lacking, I closed the loop by picking up a can of coconut juice for that buttery liquid flavor.

All I’m missing now is the feeling of warm sand and sea water flowing between my toes. Perhaps I should get a wash tub from Walmart…

Aside: “The simulacrum is never that which conceals the truth–it is the truth which conceals that there is none. The simulacrum is true.” - Poster, Mark; Baudrillard, Jean (1988)

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Mapjack.com wearable street-view rig found…

Kevin — Wed, 18 Mar 2009 21:01:39 +0000

I recently discovered the high-quality street view experience of Mapjack.com, and learned that their virtual experience extended beyond the roads, and onto narrow alleys as well as even indoors.

That beats Google Street View which has so far been limited to vehicle-mounted panorama cameras as seen here.

Having heard that Mapjack’s street-view rig was wearable, I was determined to find pictures of their setup. After a bit of flickr diving, I hit the jackpot…

On the left is a photograph of whom I believe to be the “mapjacker” (hat tip warzauwynn). You see him complete with his wearable computer setup, overhead panoramic camera, video monocle, and a Playstation controller at his waist. Recently the military mentioned that game controllers make for ergonomic input devices. Here’s a closer image of the “mapjacker” captured by davidyuweb.

The capture even shows the junction he was at, so I went on Mapjack to find the actual panorama captured by him. Aside from a time difference between both images, I believe what you see on the right is exactly what was being captured by him that day.

As expected, Mapjack experienced the same ethical and privacy issues as Google. Just check out the images they had to remove from their trip in sin city Pattaya, Thailand.

If they ever need more cyborgs to capture the lay of the land, I’d gladly help! Definitely wish I could build one.

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theorycast.55 :: Touring the Retro-Media exhibit @ UB

Kevin — Sun, 15 Mar 2009 02:36:37 +0000

Talk about Geek Nostalgia! Walk with us in this 20 minute historic journey into memory devices lost and found.

Science librarian Ben Wagner gives us a tour of their new Retro-Media exhibit which features all kinds of recordable media over the past century.

Everything from computer punch cards, to floppy disks, to magnetic tape for data storage, to vinyl, 8-track, CDs for music recordings, to 8mm film, U-matic, laserdiscs for video media, and so much more.

The UB Libraries have put together a wonderfully comprehensive history of recordable media on the Retro-Media web site.

Watch HD version on Facebook or download the iPhone version (20min/140mb).
Check out previous episodes on Blip.tv or subscribe to theorycast via iTunes.

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Twitter + Augmented Reality + Facial Recognition = Nineteen Eighty-Four?

Kevin — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 18:25:46 +0000

While @briancaldwell of Squidder thinks that their latest creation reeks of “Big Brother / 1984” overtones, I beg to differ… it looks incredibly useful (and fun)!
Last month, they created these Augmented Reality Twitter Shirts…

It clearly combines twitter, augmented reality (Papervision) and of course, t-shirts. But it didn’t stop there… Brian once showed me their work in facial recognition through this Youtube “Video Faces” webapp.

So what they’ve done now is to use their face detection technique as a replacement for FLAR markers (those square tags), resulting in something that requires folks to bring nothing more than their faces… should we call this facetweets?

Would you be concerned by such technology?
While there may be privacy concerns, it could be useful in deliberate social settings. For instance, add a DIY photo registration component to this and you’ll have something fun to deploy at conferences, especially to show contextual information on speakers and participants over the camera/projector setup found at these places. It’s participatory too since participants could tweet whatever they wish to appear in their speech bubbles.

Another means would be to turn this into a camera/smart phone app so participants could bring up their cellphones as portable data HUDs (Heads-Up Display) whenever they come across someone they’re unfamiliar with. The key for me is to make the whole information sharing process opt-in and verifiable. What do you think?

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GE’s “augmented reality” campaign

Kevin — Sat, 07 Mar 2009 20:52:32 +0000

I know GE’s augmented reality marketing gimmick works because I’m seeing at least 35 Youtube video submissions from folks amazed by it (many more blogging / tweeting). Here’s a great video demo from DoobyBrain.

Try it with your webcam at ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/#/augmented_reality.
Tip: Try blowing into your webcam and see what happens…

Augmented Reality has been used in a number of places, but is particularly seen in marketing campaigns (Nissan Cube 3D Reality brochure, Volvo Ocean Race 3D Yachts), as well as video games (Sony PS3’s Eye of Judgement, and a bunch more).

I’m more interested in how it would allow us to merge both online and real-world environments in the same place, through the use of location-aware smartphones and video goggles. Applications would include the ability to recognize people and objects, help us find our way around and to help us make highly informed decisions based on our current situation. How Stuff Works has some examples.

Update 1: New York Times today features the release of Topps 3D Live baseball card. Put the card in front of a webcam and collectors will see a three-dimensional avatar of the player on the computer screen.

Update 2: Trying to figure out the magic? GE Smart Grid Augmented Reality makes use of FLARToolKit and PV3D to create a digital hologram of Smart Grid technology in your hands [via Papervision3D].

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BarcampBuffalo: How it went… a narrated slideshow (voicethread)

Kevin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 22:57:23 +0000

Thanks to the WNYmedia folks, I totally enjoyed Barcamp Buffalo. You’ll see and hear why from my voicethread above.

I decided to use Voicethread to show Buffalo News journalist, Michelle Kearns, how she could take her trans-media story DVD project a step further. Voicethread makes multimedia storyboards accessible (embed anywhere) and collaborative (allow viewers to add audio/visual comments).

Barcamp Buffalo panorama captured using the iPhone

If you prefer, higher resolution photos are available in my BarcampBuffalo flickr set. Also, WNYmedia has produced a promotional video with clips from this Barcamp.

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BarcampBuffalo: @jhsu’s LiveStreamMonitoring + @MikeCanz’s Codeswarm (Visualization)

Kevin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:53:02 +0000

As a sneak peek at BarcampBuffalo, UB undergrad and web developer Joseph Hsu of josephhsu.com demos his prototype Live Stream Monitoring webapp written with Ruby on Rails. Yes, he says it’s an untitled work.

It’s very alpha right now, merely aggregating information streams (kinda like RSSfeed.me). His next phase would be to process these streams in order to abstract our personal social web behavior / trends. Ultimately, it’s to become a form of social intelligence dashboard.

As you can tell by now, there’s a small visualization trend going at this Barcamp. Kicking things off was @MikeCanz’s Codeswarm demo as shown above (it’s open source). Since the crowd consisted of business folks as well, much of the conversations highlighted concerns about these tools being more frivolous than functional. Often heard was “what’s the point of this?”.

I argue that if we frame ideas in terms of monetization, we’d be extremely short-sighted. By the time an idea becomes obviously millable, it would be way too late. Instead, I believe that visualization tools provide a crucial way for to us humanly graze from the increasingly denser information environment we live in today.

Historically speaking, lots of popular web services we use today came by accident, including blogger, twitter, Youtube, flickr, just to name a few! Just look up their origins on Wikipedia.

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BarcampBuffalo: Lifehacker.com’s Kevin Purdy on “How to write smarter & faster for the web” (Texter)

Kevin — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 17:38:37 +0000

Nice to see Senior Editor of Lifehacker.com, Kevin Purdy, make a trip back to Buffalo to join in our first ever Barcamp Buffalo.

Kevin tells us how he transitioned from a newspaper journalist to a Lifehacker editor. Waking up 5am every morning, I overheard that he reads about 1,000 feeds a day. As part of his transition to the online realm, he shows us the way he writes smarter and faster for the web by using Texter.

Watch carefully… Texter’s ability to correct your “fuck you boss” statement is god-sent! [skip frame to 03:30]

You can download texter here.

Update: This video is now featured on Lifehacker.com!

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BarCamp Singapore 3: a truly socially constructed experience

Kevin — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 23:45:39 +0000

Photo by the incredibly ramblinglibrarian

Inspired by the ramblinglibrarian, I’d like to share my experience in virtual attendance of my first BarCamp, namely BarCamp Singapore 3.

Organized by Preetam Rai (who also shares his experience), and helped by many others including @claudia10, @shenheng, @cneil, the event had over 200 registrations, with just over 150 participants by lunch time. Many of my friends presented, including the ramblinglibrarian on “Publishing your music online“.

How #BarCampSG3 took off…
Most participants posted updates on twitter, and while we used an array of tools to keep track of BarCamp related conversations, Ben Koe reminded us about TwitterFall. Of all the ways to display twitter hastags, I’d recommend this for future conferences. Searching through flickr, sadly not many made the effort to upload photos; hopefully we’ll see more appear tomorrow. Aaron Koh conducted video interviews via Qik, while Brian Koh liveblogged Coleman Yee’s talk on Information Architecture (I heard was damn good!). Being far away from home, these folks offered the cognitive window (or wormhole) through which my synaptic tendrils could extend.

Although I’ve been a fan of BarCamps, the funny thing is that I’ve never had the opportunity to join one. BarCamps consist of open, participatory workshop-events, whose content would typically be provided by participants. In other words, the BarCamp idea is to have participants not simply listen, but contribute as well.

Despite being in Buffalo, I felt the call to support the BarCamp back home, so Preetam helped hook me up via Skype to deliver my talk. I had a bunch of topics prepared for different audiences (from education to public relations), so I decided to go with the simplest one for my first run:

Even my muppet “Prof Cheeko” couldn’t save the day… presenting over Skype is hard!

Now this BarCampSG3 presentation was adapted from my earlier PRSA talk where I introduced public relations professionals to the world of social media. The gist of my talk was to give them an idea on how to honestly get started, immediately after my session.

While the PRSA folks loved it, participants at BarCamp Singapore didn’t seem as enthused. Just listen to the difference between the above BarCampSG3 video and this PRSA presentation’s audio (play slideshow for crowd audio).

What went wrong?
Despite delivering several talks via Skype before, I actually felt that this might have been my worst performance ever, thus a veil of guilt fell upon me this once:

Easiest Assumption: I suck. Self-doubt followed by a quick dive out the window from the top floor.
Wrong topic for the crowd: I should have upped the ante and shared something more challenging.
It’s just Skype: WIth the hisses and pops, I had a hard time figuring out if people heard me, or if I got any reaction from them. In fact, I had the sensation that I was flying blind. It didn’t feel good at all, especially since I couldn’t interact with participants as much as I wanted to. It’s like trying to tell a joke through sign language. Tough.

Aside from my sobering Skype experience, it was clear how enjoyable the rest of BarCamp was. From the tweets, the attendees clearly loved it, citing #BarCampSG3 as the best event they’ve attended in a long time. Understandably so… it was a buffet for the mind, from folks of equal standing, taking turns to show one another remarkable things. In essence, five simultaneous tracks of philanthropic yet delicious braindroppings.

I can’t wait for the next Barcamp to redeem myself. If you like to see the BarCampSG3 presentations, some of the slideshows are now up on Slideshare.net

| Get your Presentation Pack

UPDATE: While #BarCampSG3 was trending to the number one spot on twitter last Saturday, creeping up behind was #fisting. I didn’t think much about it at first until a fellow academic pointed me to the #fisting instigator. Kinda funny, kinda insidious.

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SOLsummit2009: Mindmelding with fellow edu-digeratis…

Kevin — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 09:00:09 +0000

I’ll probably share the audio or video after I’ve actually presented this…

Thanks to Alexandra Pickett, Associate Director at SUNY Learning Network, I’ve been sponsored to speak at SLN SOLsummit 2009 held in Syracuse, NY (a good 2hr 21mins drive).

What’s SOLsummit about?
The SLN SOLSummit, sponsored by the SUNY Learning Network (SLN), is an annual SUNY-wide conference specifically for online instructional designers, directors of online learning, and those interested in online learning environment support, services, and best practices.

What will I be doing?
Besides listening to edu-digeratis including Alex Reid, Shannon Ritter, and George Siemens, I’ll be giving a visual journey through “Leveling Up Students with Blogs: Engineering Active Learning through Game Mechanics”, which I’ve previously only written about. Here’s my talk’s abstract:

Feb 26th, 2:30 - 3:30 SUNY Campus Showcase III:
Kevin Lim, Cyberculturalist, doctoral student in Communication at the University at Buffalo

Leveling Up Students With Blogs: Motivating Active Learning Through Game Mechanics
One challenge of using blogs as educational tools is encouraging students to engage in these public forms of active participation. For students to receive the full benefits of the class blogging experience, they must internalize the goal of intellectual interaction.

To encourage these social interactions, an innovative pedagogical approach in the form of Amy Jo Kim’s game mechanics (2006) can be applied as a viable framework to student blogging communities. This framework also allows educators to achieve both specific and emergent learning outcomes.

This presentation presents the authors’ implementation of gaming mechanics with blogging pedagogy, and will allow educators to observe how learning outcomes were met.

As both authors (Derek Lackaff and I) were each instructors of similar introductory Communication courses (COM125) held on different continents within the same semester, this experience provided for a unique opportunity to compare the adoption of blogs and game mechanics under different cultural contexts.

But wait, there’s something for you…
It’s obvious that not everyone who’s interested in online learning design can be here, so Alexandra has made it a point to be very visible with our pedagogical exchanges.

First, there’s the agenda online, then there’s the @SLNSOLsummit on twitter, photos on flickr tagged summit2009, and best of all… our presentations will all be shared online via this public SOLsummit2009 Slideshare group. Enjoy!

Update: Alexandra is also streaming live video from SOLsummit 2009 via Mogulus.

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Bar-Bar-Barcamp, have you any tools? (Singapore + Buffalo)

Kevin — Wed, 25 Feb 2009 06:46:18 +0000

There seems to be undying affection for the upcoming Dragonball movie, which might explain the whooshing stars and Buffalos I’ve been seeing of late (j/k).

BarCamp Singapore III
Date: Sat, February 28, 2009
Time: 9:15am to 6.30pm
Location: Ngee Ann Polytechnic Blk 27, Level 2, 535 Clementi Road, Singapore 599489

I’ll be joining my fellow Singaporean netizens in diffusing (not so) life-changing knowledge on life online and off. Through the satanic magic of Skype, I’ll give you “Aiyoh… if only you listened!”.

In this tragically funny and environmentally low-cost presentation intended for small businesses and non-profits, I talk about the importance of listening in an increasing louder social web. I’ll chat about the philosophy behind why sharing online seems essential to us as humans being.

Not unlike the recent PRSA panel I participated in (See Part 1 + Part 2), I’ll use the recent Michael Phelps vs. Kelloggs meme to demonstrate the basics of using social media search tools to give users the ability to be omnipresent online.

Be sure to check out the full line-up of presentations in this day-long multi-track mental floss. If you’re new to the social web scene, see if you recognize anyone from this long attendance list.

BarCamp Buffalo I
Date: Tues, March 3, 2009
Time: 7:30pm to 10:30pm (3hrs)
Location: Pearl Street Brewery (See Google map)

Glad to see Buffalonians organizing their first ever Barcamp! On Tuesday evening, Pearl Street Grill will play host to three hours of tech and social media sharing. Given that are already 18 folks presenting, each presentation has been planned go between 5 to 15mins. Think of it as speed braindroppings!

The Who’s Who of Buffalo’s tech activism scene will be there, and I’m particularly interested in the hyperlocal services which might help propel Buffalo out of its economic death march.

By hyperlocal, I mean news coverage of community-level events that’s beyond the lens of mainstream media, yet afforded by the web’s low-cost distribution of geographically niche information. Granted, this hyperlocal idea could be nothing more than hype, but it is worth drinking in a mental desert. If I were a local philanthropist or even a venture capitalist, this event could be a great opportunity to find great tech ideas worth investing in.

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Meet Yongfook, Joel Postman, and Melvin Yuan @ BlogOut 2009

Kevin — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 23:24:03 +0000

Ah yes… I happened to be in Singapore for the first BlogOut back in 2007 (humor), so it’s nice to see this social media event running along for 2009.

What the heck is a BlogOut?
According to The Digital Movement, “Blogout’09 aims to help make sense of the social media landscape in Singapore. Essentially an event to celebrate bloggers’ independent voices, emergent forms of social, web technology and to create change for their organizations, communities and society”.

Whew, a mouthful I know, but I guess the point to give a bang for your buck. Unlike the upcoming Singapore Barcamp 3 (which I’ll talk about soon), this event has a more professional vibe to it, and it consists a corporate (i.e. March 6th for S$120) and public track (i.e. March 7th for S$0). BlogOut’09 will be held at the Singapore Art Museum, 8 Queen Street, Singapore 188535 (See Google Map)

How I know each of these fellas…
Jon Yongfook: I’ve been following this handsome lad’s blog/lifestream for a long time, and I recall his personal story of how he came to be (I need lessons from this guy). Being half-Singaporean Chinese and Half-British, it’s fun to watch his life in Chuo-ku, Tokyo… even when he blabbers about in his Youtube videos like this one:

Joel Postman: I remember my friend @KeithBurtis telling me how he was trying to help BestBuy (@BestBuyRemix) get onboard the social media train, so I went in search of a book that covered all that. I think it was the Russian socialist typeface on Joel’s blog which drew me in to buy SocialCorp off Amazon. Keith probably knows most of the stuff in there, but it helps provide a framework for corporations to integrate social media into their communication mix. At BlogOut’09, Joel will be talking about “Communications Inside Out”, which is based on the final chapter of his book. He’ll explain how there are five key shifts in perceptions about what social media is, and how it behaves:
* Speed–>Brevity
* Managed Participation–>Chaos
* Letting Go–>Taking Back
* Engagement–>Doing Business
* Wild Wild West–>Civilized World

Melvin Yuan: Got to know Melvin Yuan as a ridiculously thoughful public relations gentleman in Singapore. Together with Ben Koe, they ran ScoopAsia, a journalist’s online wire for all things press releases in Asia. He’s now the director of the Digital Strategies Group (Asia) at Waggener Edstrom Worldwide. If you ever see him, he enjoys talking about this word he coined up called Omnifluence. Also, I apologize on his behalf: It’s been exactly one year since he updated his blog! Oh, a real record breaker he is! ;P

Too Much Information… just how do I get to BlogOut’09?
Just register here for details!

UPDATE: Looks like Joel Postman had to share a word or two as well… ;D

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Online Video Sharing for UB Educators

Kevin — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 00:38:28 +0000

This is a 30min narrated version of the workshop

This morning at UB’s Teaching & Learning Center (TLC), I gave a 2 hour workshop introducing faculty and staff to online video sharing resources offered officially by various UB tech services, as well as unofficially by online video services such as Youtube and Viddler.

Here’s the workshop description:
Video is a visceral media for sharing knowledge and experience. While it can be exciting to produce and share videos with your class and fellow researchers, the process tends to be more time consuming compared to other media.

This introductory workshop takes you through the techniques of video sharing for UB instructors. Various forms of video formats and delivery systems will be discussed. Learn about shooting, editing and video output and sharing, be it on the web, in a presentation or on a DVD.

UPDATE: Joe Hsu pointed out a truly comprehensive article entitled “6 Things To Know About Video For The Web” by Viget Labs. Here’s Part 1 and Part 2.

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Despite the Internet, geography still rules…

Kevin — Sun, 15 Feb 2009 00:28:06 +0000

Click image to enlarge

As seen in my Facebook social graph, my online relationships tend to be clustered more by geography than shared interests.

To clarify, these shared interests would include events or communities, since all of this can take place in either virtual (e.g. hobbyist forum) or physical (e.g. community center) locations.

In the 90s, Barry Wellman did a related study on one of the world’s first “always-on” Internet suburbs called “Netville“. During his early visit to UB, I recalled him relating an irony of how we communicate predominantly with our physical neighbors, despite us being afforded the ability to base our communication on mutual interests with anyone in the world.

I would surmise that physical proximity still has a higher significance on our communication due to the increased potential impact (threat) it could have on our well being (survival).

See if this is true for you. Try generating your own social graph, then label your clusters. The denser cluster should be ones that are geographically centered. If you can, upload your screenshot to Flickr, then tag it: facebookclusters

UPDATE 1:
Okay so this might not be the most valid test, but it gets us thinking. Chris Lott pointed out how…

The choice of Facebook for experiment skews the results, making them narrowly applicable to FB not one’s actual social network
not to mention the obviousness of geographical proximity as a major force in friendships which reflect on SNs…

I would half-agree.
For the first point on the disassociation of online vs. real-life networks, I believe that given sufficient friend connections on Facebook, it would still serve as a decent sample/proxy of our real-life relationships. I did consider factors such as the digital divide, but with an increasingly broader demographic of Facebook participants, this might not impact the test as much as we might imagine. Having chatted/interviewed with a small number of new and senior Facebook users, most are amazed at how many of their friends are already there.

On the second point of obviousness of geography as cause for friendship, I relate back to the idea of the test: To see if the Internet truly encourages us to communicate (including relationship formation) on shared interests regardless of proximity. In essence, the online space would allow for geographic friendships to compete with shared interest friendships, yet geographic ones still appear as denser clusters.

A caveat for using Facebook to test how we center our communication online, would be that friending on social networking services are single-action triggers, and are unrepresentative of longer-term communication. For a more accurate test, I’d need to be able to measure who we tend to talk to (nodes), how often we do (frequency), and where that person resides (location).

I’m still trying to find a better way to conduct this Facebook test, so lets consider this a pilot. Now if we take that the average no. of Facebook friendships to be about 164, then a friendship corpus of about 200 or more should suffice for this test.

Do note that I find friendship counting irrelevant, because our current architecture of social networking services naturally grows our connections. That is, it’s easier to make connections, yet more work to break them. We’re never going to stop meeting new people throughout our lives. Interestingly, while I consider myself an active friender online (currently 620 FB friends) , my geocentric network clusters still hold true!

Here are submissions from my friends…

Joe Hsu / @jhsu / 491 Facebook friends

Denice Szafra / @denidzo / 123 Facebook friends

@denidzo said “yes, but while problematic, it does indicate that I don’t randomly friend people- that I mostly talk to people I already know.”

November Tan / @micamonkey / 836 Facebook friends / 4yrs of Facebook use

Among her thoughts, November said “I find it interesting that my family network runs in parallel clusters. One for each side of the family!”

Jeremy Foo / @echoz / 308 Facebook friends / 2yrs of Facebook use

Jeremy said “I would think that my clusters are based upon events in life rather than location. Its more often than not a classification system that is familiar to you.”

I did consider whether the classification of shared interest and location was arbitrary, since both could be mutually inclusive. An event would be an example of a situation where both coincide. However, since shared interest could exist in physical and virtual place, it’s still fair game.

As iffy as this sounds, I’ll need to compare more social graphs out there, so do contribute your annotated screenshots:
1. Generate your own social graph.
2. Label your clusters by shared interest and location.
3. Upload your screenshot to Flickr, then tag it: facebookclusters.
4. Include your friend count and how long you’ve been using Facebook.

Finally, let me know how you’d improve the test. Also let me know if you’ve found any network tool that lets me get at the data points I’ve mentioned. Thanks!

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Speaking @ PRSA Buffalo: Getting started with social media for PR practitioners (Pt.2)

Kevin — Thu, 12 Feb 2009 03:14:23 +0000

Kara Kane, Anthony Dicembre of BuffaloMe.com and me after our PRSA panel

A nice turnout of about 80 public relations professionals showed up for our PRSA panel on social media today (see Part 1)! While we were each given 15min to infuse our knowledge and experience into the thirsty crowd, we ultimately took up 30min each. That left a mere 10min for Q&A. What can I say… Oops! ;D

Sorry no one took videos, but I did an audio recording of our presentations. To top it off, I’ve synchronized the audio with the Slideshare presentation below so you can now laugh along with the audience. Yes, apparently they found us funny. Only catch, syncing audio with the Shareshare presentation takes up a lot of my time (thus I only did mine), so I’ll only be linking to Kara’s and Anthony’s audio recording.

Art of Listening 2.0 by Kevin Lim

View more presentations from Kevin Lim. (tags: listening publicrelations)

The diligent citizen journalists at WNYmedia have written up about our talk, with some pointed insights on the state of our local PR industry. Do read the comments for their article entitled “PR Professionals Have a Lot to Learn“.

Finally, to keep the conversation going, we’ve created a PR + Social Media learning group on BuffaloMe.com. Join Buffalo’s very own social networking service while finding peers from the PR industry.

While Anthony has made his slides downloadable, here are audio recordings of our three presentations shared via my favorite Soundcloud widget. You get to jump and comment on the parts you like:

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Speaking @ PRSA Buffalo: Getting started with social media for PR practitioners (Pt.1)

Kevin — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 20:50:25 +0000

I’ll attempt to explain the addictive qualities of twitter, blog, facebook, etc…

Early tomorrow from 8am to 10.30am, Kara Kane, Anthony Dicembre of BuffaloMe.com and I will be giving a panel presentation to the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) entitled “Facebook, Twitter, YouTube & More: A Guide to Social Media & How It Applies to PR Practitioners“ (Insert TV slogan: Long Name, Amazing Results!)

With 15 minutes each, Kara will kick it off with an overview of popular social media platforms and provide tips on how PR practitioners can use these platforms to their advantage.

I’ll follow up by focusing on the importance of listening in an ever-louder social media environment. By telling the Michael Phelps vs. Kelloggs meme, I’ll demonstrate the basics of using social media search tools to give practitioners the ability to be omnipresent online as a brand, and gain leverage by responding to community issues in a timely and personal manner.

Anthony will provide step-by-step instructions to take control of brands online using social media. Go from having little to no social media presence to a sustainable long-term strategy.

Trend tracking the Kelloggs vs. Phelps meme-quake (Feb 2009)

~~We’ll share our presentations after the show.~~
The presentation slides are now up on Part 2 of this article.

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