I am on a small propeller plane flying from the lovely hills of Donegal, Ireland to the hustle and bustle of Amsterdam for a tradeshow. I started my vacation nearly 11 days ago with a week in Dublin, followed by a long weekend in Donegal. Dublin, as many of you probably know, is like many big cities. There are restaurants and stores and lovely hotels for tea…and occasionally you’ll find a Wi-Fi hotspot.
The later part of my vacation however, was very different. You see, Donegal is the home of my grandfather. Instead of spending my time searching for a Wi-Fi hotspot, I sat with my great aunt and great uncle and heard stories about the birth of my grandfather and his 8 siblings and what life was like 70 and 80 years ago. We sat at her kitchen table, drinking tea and eating scones and virtual time stood still.
During my time there, we visited relatives. They all live within a few kilometers of each other – aunts and uncles, 2nd and 3rd cousins….all sharing the common bond of our family matriarch – Granny. I had tea, ate biscuits and took pictures.
The second day of my visit, we woke to a strong frost and a light snow. There were no cars on the road so it was in our best interest to wait until the afternoon to drive, when the frost would melt. In the meantime, I sat in the kitchen with my Great Aunt and worked on the family tree for my generation – all of my 3rd cousins (all 118 of them!) their ages and the number in each limb in the family. My aunt would talk and she would bake. Then, she would talk some more and she would bake some more. In all the hours that we sat there, my cell phone never rang and the beep of an email never interrupted…you see…I was unplugged.
In the precious moments of the last few days, I learned an important lesson that you can not come across easily. As hard as we work most of the year, it is vital that we sit back and take time to get back to our roots. For me, that meant unplugging. My time of being unplugged has come to an end as I head to the ISE tradeshow in Amsterdam. And as irony would have it, I will continue to stay in connection with a handful of my cousins…through Facebook.
Well, we made it! We’re in Phoenix for Greenbuild 2009, and we’ve already seen some exciting new companies and products on the show floor. Plus we shot some great videos for our clients, CALMAC and IES. Here is a video of our first day at the show:
We’ve got two days packed full of meetings and additional video shoots with Serious Materials and YKK AP, and somewhere in there we will head over to see Al Gore deliver the Keynote and Opening Celebration tomorrow night with Sheryl Crow. (And just in case you aren’t here in AZ, you can check out live streams on Greenbuild’s website.)
We are looking forward to meeting green building professionals sharing their visions for the future of the industry, as well as the editors and bloggers who write about it along the way. Melissa Hincha-Ownby of Mother Nature Network has already blogged about the event. Lloyd Alter of Treehugger is here, too. Along with 24,000 registered attendees, according to the records when the show floor opened at 5:30 this evening.
Check back here daily for a round-up of news and views from the show. Next week, we will do a show wrap up. And we’ll be Tweeting live from #Greenbuild09 the rest of the week – follow @catrionaharris, @mariegoltara and @toryk for your green building fix this week.
New technologies are always evolving and changing the way we communicate. According to research from IPG’s Universal McCann and AOL, “One out of every seven minutes of media consumption today takes place via mobile devices…That’s expected to grow by 60 percent over the next two years.” Many of our clients are looking into website redesigns in order to make them more mobile-friendly. It’s interesting to see this shift. No longer is just having a blog good enough. Now it must be mobilized. And in doing so, we are finding that content must be refreshed more frequently, so as not to get lost in the shuffle
MediaPost recently reported on a new survey by Princeton Survey Research International, which found that 90 percent of Internet users between 18 – 29 use video sharing sites, up from 72 percent one year ago. But that’s not all. Online adults ages 30 – 49 also showed big gains over the past year; 67 percent now use video-sharing sites, up from 57 percent in 2008. So we now work with our clients to produce more video content and add pictures and videos to press releases.
Additionally, how we get news and information is changing on a regular (dare I say, daily?) basis. As PR professionals, we focus on people who are influencers. Traditionally, this has been the media or industry analysts. While these folks remain influential, there is a new group of influencers. There are blogs that comment on or repackage the news, some of whom have larger followings than the original content (e.g. Gawker). People now regularly forward news to their friends and colleagues via social networks and Twitter.
PR is also an ever-evolving game. Not so long ago, press releases went out via fax. You read that right, fax. That little machine in the corner of the copy room that the interns look at in bewilderment. That was cutting edge. Then came e-mail. Now, as how people get their news is in a state of constant change, we are continually adapting to make sure that we are getting the word out to the right people in the way they want to receive it. I guess it is not surprising that change has come to news, which after all, is the business of reporting on change.
Popular social networks, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter seem to think that they would be better if they more like one of the other social networks. Instead, they really should follow the advice of Popeye whose motto was “I yam what I yam, and that’s all that I yam.”
LinkedIn: LinkedIn has developed a case of Facebook envy. Each person’s page now has a Facebook-like status box at the top asking “What are you working on now?”. I can’t recall anyone actually using this box (other than reposts from Twitter or Facebook).
Attaching a social element to LinkedIn is the equivalent of a three piece suit with a backwards baseball cap. People use LinkedIn because it is all business. This means there is no risk of an embarrassing photo turning up in a search by a potential employer or customer.
Facebook: Facebook is turning itself into Twitter with pictures. A person’s home page is now dominated by Twitter-like status updates, accompanied by photos and attachments. Welcome to the slide show from Hell. Facebook now puts pictures of kids, pets, and vacations front and center on a daily basis. As much I like keeping up with friends and family, I prefer the ability to decide when and if I want to see another cute cat picture or a 2×3 picture of someone’s dinner.
Once popular Facebook applications have been moved to the four corners of the site. Once popular applications like Superpoke (thowing sheep!) , Funwall and “Cities I Have Visited” now are the Web 2.0 equivalents of Golden Oldies that evoke nostalgia for a bygone era. While many of these applications were time wasters, Facebook is draining the social part that makes it unique.
People who are power status updaters eventualy move to Twitterand and make Facebook a secondary source via an application that posts their tweets on Facebook. Take a look at your Facebook news stream and you will likely see many standard Twitter abbreviations and hashtags. More and more, Facebook is making it seem like all of the action is on Twitter.
Twitter: Twitter’s identity crisis revolves around what is wants to be when it grows up. Twitter still does not have a viable revenue model. In a recent blog post, Twitter co-founder Biz Stone said that it is looking at account authentication, management tools, and discovery mechanisms. Twitter has done some preliminary experiments with advertising on user’s profile page.
But I think that they will look to follow Google and monetize on search. By virtue of Twitter posts mostly being public, a company can search Twitter to find out what people are saying about them, their competitors, and the hot issues in the markets in near real-time. Twitter can derive revenue from selling ads on search pages, premium search tools, or making a deal with with one of the large search companies.
Sticking to short communications in real time and monetizing like Google should be a personality that wears well for Twitter.
On our drive home from the office the other night, while driving through a residential neighborhood in the pouring rain, I came to the embarrassing and distressing realization that we were completely out of gas. I hurried to try to reach the gas station that was less than a mile away when the car began to sputter and we were left motionless on the side of the road. I used my GPS-enabled iPhone to call AAA and give them the exact location of our car. They informed me that the wait would be about 45 minutes and my wife, my 7-month old daughter, and my 3-year old daughter began a long, uncomfortable wait with me.
My wife and I both knew that there was a gas station less than a ½ mile away. She quickly pointed out to me that before technology, I would have gotten out of the car and walked in the rain to be a “knight in shining armor” to her and our two daughters. Instead, there I sat, breathing the stale air of a disabled automobile, ashamed for not checking the gas and leaving my family stranded for 45 minutes while we wait on a tow truck driver to be the hero for my family.
This got me thinking. Has technology killed the chivalrous man?
I asked some female friends and colleagues if they felt the same way, and got some interesting stories:
Rather than a card and flowers, my friend Amanda recently got a simple text message from her boyfriend that read, “Happy Valentine’s Day!”
Rachel noted that since buying a car with remote door locks six years ago, her husband has not opened the car door for her even once.
Ashley recently went on a first date with a guy who “poked” her on an Internet dating site. When he arrived at her apartment he called from his cell phone to let her know he was downstairs waiting for her in his car.
Melanie says that she and her husband had a long standing tradition of going out to dinner and a movie every Friday night, but in the 6-months since her husband discovered On-Demand movies on cable, the routine has turned into leftovers and a movie on the couch much to her dismay.
For the record, I don’t think I was non-chivalrous by not walking ½ mile in the rain. I think I made the smart and logical choice. Personally, I’m not sure that technology has killed chivalry; I think that technology just gives some men an excuse to let it fade away.
Update: Thanks to everyone who participated and viewed our speaker panel discussing “Sustainable Innovation in a Recession” via our Live Stream and at our San Francisco Earth Day event on April 16, 2009 . We will be posting videos of the panel discussion here on Vantage Points. So please bookmark and check back.
Attention all folks attending CTIA in Las Vegas. Our friends at Qik will be hosting a Tweet Up on Wednesday, April 1, at 7-10 pm. The location is at the Las Vegas Hilton, the Pool Area on the Third Floor. The Hilton is connected to the North Hall of the Convention Center.
This is a great opportunity to connect with people interested in the intersection of social media and the mobile industry. This also is a great opportunity to build on the success of the Tweet Up at Mobile World Congress.
You can sign up and get more information at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=69119667494. If you are not on Facebook, feel free to post in the comments section if you are interested in attending. I will pass the information to the folks at Qik.We will post updates here on Vantage Points and on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Check for hash tag #CTIA on Twitter.
For more information about networking events at CTIA, check out the awesome list from Mobilslate and the Mobile Monday events:
Nine months and two Facebook redesigns ago, Jennifer Kutz wrote a post about the Wisdom of the Crowd Goes to a Trade Show. She discussed the trend of trade shows opening the show agenda selection process to their audience. She mentioned one proposed panel in particular: Privacy and Personalization – Oxymoron or the Perfect Match?, for the SXSW Interactive show in Austin, and invited people to vote for that panel.
As SXSWi just completed, I thought it would be fun to fill you in on how things turned out. Our efforts to get the word out about the panel was successful. Privacy and Personalization – Oxymoron or the Perfect Match? received enough support that it was selected. The Guardian featured the panel in an article: @SWSXi: The impossible balance between privacy and personalisation?, and called the topic: “one of SXSWi’s core conversations.” The picture on the top left of this post is from the panel courtesy of the Guardian.
The experience also gave us an insight into the power of blogs and social media to create conversation about key issues. We used Facebook and Twitter to point people to Vantage Points to get the word out. Rather than asking or pitching people to vote for our client, all we did was to discuss the topic and offer people a link to vote. This was a departure from the traditional PR model. But we believed facilitating conversation was more appropriate for topic and the SXSWi show audience.
The wisdom of the crowd approach has extended to voting for awards. This year, CTIA is allowing people to vote for its Emerging Technology Awards and Best of Show. One of our clients, Ditech Networks is nominated for its cool mStage platform which allows people to use their voice to access web applications in the middle of a mobile phone call. You can read more about it in Technology Review. If you would like to vote for mStage for Best of Show, follow this link and choose mStage (third from left on the third line) as one of your favorites. Feel free to check out and vote some of the other great nominated products too. It is good to part of the crowd that leads.
Update: Tweet Up location: The Las Vegas Hilton, the Pool Area on the Third Floor. The Hilton is connected to the North Hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center.
Attention all folks attending CTIA in Las Vegas. Our friends at Qik will be hosting a Tweet Up on Wednesday, April 1, at 7-10 pm. This is a great opportunity to connect with people interested in the intersection of social media and the mobile industry. This also is a great opportunity to build on the success of the Tweet Up at Mobile World Congress.
The location is still being determined. You can sign up and get more information at http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=69119667494. If you are not on Facebook, feel free to post in the comments section if you are interested in attending. I will pass the information to the folks at Qik.We will post updates here on Vantage Points and on Twitter, Facebook, etc. Check for hash tag #CTIA on Twitter. For more information about networking events at CTIA, check out the awesome list from:
As you probably already know, last week was the first week of the new show “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon.”While I don’t watch many late night shows myself, his is truly one that I have come to enjoy. He brings geeky to a whole new level. Not only is he on Twiter, but he recently attended this year’s CES show.
On Monday night, Jimmy brought on Engadget’s Joshua Topolsky to talk about the new Palm Pre. Not very familar with the other two guests, I quickly jumped to the end of the show to catch this hilarious, but awesome interview. Acting like good ol’ buddies, Jimmy and Josh discussed the new Palm Pre and how it competes with the iPhone.
What really gets me is the fact that so many of my friends don’t know about Twitter or Engadget for that matter! A fellow geek, Jimmy is pushing all of the blogs, articles, social media, etc. that we deal with on an everyday basis into the view of others. Not only that, but he COMMUNICATES to the rest of the world. Commenting on other tech blogs, getting interview questions from Twitter, regularly updating his show’s blog - these are all actions that I find really impressive.
Want to satisfy your inner-geekiness too? Catch Late Night with Jimmy Fallon each weeknight at 12:35E/11:35c (or DVR it!). If not for the geek factor, then at least for the Like it for $10 and other fun segments! Follow @jimmyfallon and @joshuatopolsky for some additional entertainment.
I am on a small propeller plane flying from the lovely hills of Donegal, Ireland to the hustle and bustle of Amsterdam for a tradeshow. I started my vacation nearly 11 days ago with a week in Dublin, followed by a long weekend in Donegal. Dublin, as many of you probably know, is like many big cities. There are restaurants and stores and lovely hotels for tea…and occasionally you’ll find a Wi-Fi hotspot.
Well, we made it! We’re in Phoenix for
New technologies are always evolving and changing the way we communicate. According to 
Popular social networks, ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=40e35be2-3b10-482f-a4e4-d09d9cba8b0b)
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Nine months and two Facebook redesigns ago, ![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=5689b774-4d12-4d9d-b5a9-486d970ce2a3)
As you probably already know, last week was the first week of the new show “