Paul's Web Space 2.1 - Politics, Culture, Technology

140-Character Book Review Contest

2008-07-22T07:00:00.001-04:00

I fortuitously followed a tweet from Cool Cat Teacher about a contest to write book reviews within the 140-character limitation imposed by Twitter. The deadline is this Wednesday, July 26, and there are prizes.

Here are my two entries, plus one for a movie that's technically not eligible (you could say my review is of the comic book, but it's really not):

1984 - Winston Smith tastes freedom and steamy sex. Big Brother comes crashing in. Status quo: perpetual war on terror; same war, new enemy.

Crime and Punishment - Raskolnikov plans and executes the "perfect crime." Guilt gnaws, he confesses, goes to jail, falls in love.

Iron Man - arrogant-jerk arms merchant Tony Stark: kidnapped by terrorists, turns peacenik, stomps baddies. He is Iron Man.

Internet for Everyone

2008-07-20T23:00:00.001-04:00

I recently received a Facebook Group invitation to join an important campaign - Internet for Everyone. It is essential that we provide high-speed Internet access to everyone in the U.S. — to enhance fairness and close the digital divide, to enhance learning and freedom to communicate, and to enable more innovation and more widespread participation in the global information economy.

Tim Karr's article on Huffington Post, "America's Next Moon Shot: Internet for Everyone," introduced the initiative, and the Internet for Everyone Brochure lays out the specific goals of the campaign and provides copious evidence of the shortcomings that exist in U.S. broadband implementation today.

The announcement at last month's Personal Democracy Forum featured (among others):

Jonathan Adelstein, FCC commissioner
Jonathan Zittrain, Berkman Center for Internet & Society
Tim Wu, Columbia Law School
Vint Cerf, Google (and author, RFC 3271)
Larry Lessig, Stanford Law School
Van Jones, Green For All

I've been following efforts like this for some time, in venues such as the Freedom to Connect conference. Other involved organizations have programs and information worth checking out. The New America Foundation's Wireless Future Program is working hard to free up underutilized wireless spectrum to enhance broadband opportunities. EDUCAUSE has proposed a Blueprint for Big Broadband. The technology CEOs of TechNet also call for rapidly accelerated broadband deployment.

If you believe in the importance of Internet freedom, equity, and innovation, I encourage you to join the Facebook group or sign up here.

Speaking at the Online Marketing Summit

2008-07-15T07:00:00.000-04:00

I thought I would drop a quick blog to let people know that I'm speaking at two stops of the Online Marketing Summit Summer Tour 2008 in the next nine days, this week in New Jersey (outside New York), and next week in Waltham, MA (outside Boston). Then I visit with parents and family in Connecticut for my only extended vacation this summer.

I'll be part of the Top Brands panel, and I'll be discussing how we're using social media at edweek.org to engage our readership and extend the reach of our message. I've been told that my panel is mostly Q&A, but if I do have time for remarks, I'll probably give an abbreviated and updated version of my talk at the Digital Velocity conference.

They might not be sold out, but I think they're close — check out the web site, and come on down if you can. It looks like a stellar cast of presenters and respondents; I'll definitely blog more about this after it's over.

Interactive Narratives 2.0 Launches

2008-07-11T19:31:00.002-04:00

The Online News Association (ONA) has just relaunched Interactive Narratives, a very cool showcase of multimedia storytelling, now with new contribution and rating functionality. Interactive Narratives was originally created by Andrew DiVigal to keep track of interesting multimedia storytelling examples for conference presentations and courses he taught at SFSU and for the Poynter Institute. He started out by creating a database to maintain a list of bookmarks he used in these presentations, then he made this database available to everyone through the original Interactive Narratives site.

When he was hired to be Multimedia Editor at the New York Times, he found he no longer had time to maintain the site all by himself, so he worked with ONA to relaunch Interactive Narratives 2.0. The site now relies on members of its community to both contribute new content, and also to rate, tag, and review all of the content it contains, to make it easier for people to locate what they are looking for, or just to find the best storytelling examples as chosen by the crowd. Site participation is open to all; ONA members are already registered, others need to sign up.

Read more:

ONA President's Letter - Interactive 2.0 Launches by Jonathan Dube
Interview on Poynter Online with site founder Andrew DiVigal
Guidelines for posting content

Additional tools and resources:

BlogPotomac - June 13, 2008

2008-07-06T08:00:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending BlogPotomac at the State Theater in Falls Church, VA, hosted by Geoff Livingston and Debbie Weil. I thought it was a great (un)conference, filled with interesting talks, lively Q&A, and great networking opportunities. On her blog, Debbie recapped the event, linking to varied social media coverage; she also highlighted two of my favorite talks (but all the presentations were interesting).

Dan Beyers, the Local Business Editor for the Washington Post, recently spearheaded the launch of the WashBiz blog. He spoke about local business blogging at a newspaper, and how social media is affecting the Post and the newspaper business in general. (Read the preconference interview with Dan.) Then Maggie Fox, founder and CEO of Social Media Group, one of the world's largest PR agencies helping business navigate the world of Web 2.0, spoke about the impact of social media on traditional PR.

Frank Gruber, gave the post-lunch keynote talk. Frank is principal product manager for AOL in the social networking & platforms group, and is responsible for the recently launched myAOL suite, and spoke about social media efforts underway at AOL. He then led a lively discussion on "Bright, Shiny Objects" — his favorite social media tools, ultimately a fairly comprehensive list of the most interesting and useful social tools available today.

KD Paine is author of "Measuring Public Relationships: The Data-Driven Communicator's Guide to Success" and is the publisher of KDPaine's Measurement Blog and The Measurement Standard. She presented a methodology of measuring engagement in social media, and later sent me numerous presentations and links, most of which are catalogued at her company web site, Measures of Success. In an interview conducted by conference co-chair Debbie Weil, Katie states that measuring engagement goes beyond counting clicks or visits, but rather should seek to determine the quality of the interaction.

Kami Huyse closed BlogPotomac by leading an interesting discussion of ethics in PR and marketing; she posed hypothetical cases involving creating fake campaigns, and discussed a real fake campaign by Coach, astroturf (fake grassroots political movements conducted by lobbyists and trade associations), and even mentioned The War of the Worlds (different media perhaps, but many of the same issues). They opened the State Theater bar for this last speaker, which may have enlivened the conversation.

I also met up with several people I know from the local social media marketing scene; for the first time in person: Chris Abraham, George Brett, Suki Fuller and Helen Mosher. Social Media Swami Shashi Bellamkonda was among a raft of Flickr shutterbugs, Shireen Mitchell, and Jill Foster bent my ear about the BlogHer conference and blogging the Democratic National Convention; Jill also captured many attendees using Utterz .

Social Rockstar/Now Is Gone/No Personality

2008-07-02T07:00:00.000-04:00

I've recently been at total slacker in writing up conferences and events, but I'm starting to make up for that. I'm blogging late Spring events now, and I have a few dusty drafts that I'll drop occasionally while I catch up — as I want endeavor to create a more complete record of interesting happenings I've stumbled upon. (Warning: shameless networking/blog-dropping to ensue.)
On May 16, I caught part of the Social Rockstar Workshop at Busboys & Poets in DC. I met Nick O'Neill, creator of AllFacebook.com and the recently launched Social Times, but unfortunately, I missed his talk; I met Frank Gruber – co-founder of TECH cocktail, a principal product manager for AOL in the social networking & platforms group, and is responsible for the recently launched myAOL suite – and heard him speak about ways organizations can effectively use social media technology; and I saw Justin Thorp, Developer Community Manager at Clearspring Technologies, speak about widgets (we had already met). I also ran into Jonny Goldstein of Jonny's Par-tay (shows on Wednesday's at 9PM ET), and workshop organizers Paul and Kady, who run the DC-area Social Web Meet-up.

Then June kicked off with a DC chapter of Social Media Club book discussion at Barnes & Noble in Clarendon, featuring the authors of Now is Gone, Geoff Livingston and Brian Solis. They spoke and answered questions about PR and blogs and social media, and had a lot to say about thoughtfully engaging the conversation on the Web, rather than indescriminately blasting your message, and how a lot of PR firms don't currently get it (Solis coined the phrase PR 2.0). I met the authors and got them to autograph a copy of their book. I also met Rohit Bhargava, Senior Vice President, Digital Strategy & Marketing at Ogilvy 360 Digital Influence, and had him autograph his new book Personality Not Included; I had missed a book event at Busboys & Poets the previous evening, but caught the webcast (archives are here, if hard to find).

After the event, at Tandoori dinner and drinks next door, I again ran into Frank Gruber and Nick O'Neill; reconnected with Jennifer Consalvo, Director of Personalization at AOL, and Shashi Bellamkonda, social Media Swami for Network Solutions; met Jared Goralnick of AwayFind and SET Consulting; and met Aaron Brazell of social media business blog TechnoSailor.

Paul's Web Space 2.1

2008-06-26T06:37:00.003-04:00

There, I've gone and done it. I just released the latest version of my blog. I thought I was going to use the new Blogger templates for this, but then I discovered that these only work on blogspot.com hosted blogs, because of some dynamic code behind them; since I host my blog on my own web site on a friend's server (thanks Alec!), this technology isn't available to me.

No worries. My main goal was to enable labels or tags on my blog posts. I found code to display all the label links on the sidebar, and also fixed some settings so that the label pages would display properly from those links and the ones in posts. (Thanks, phydeaux3!) Then I added labels to all my posts from this year, so that the label pages would be more complete. Maybe I'll get them into the meta keywords eventually too.

While I was at it, I tweaked a few things that had been nagging me about the layout, linked headlines to posts, etc. I tried to add backlink code, but I think the settings screwed me up again; I'll take it out if it refuses to work for new posts too.

Finally, I figure that numbering this 2.1 will dispel any notion that I'm riding on Web 2.0 coattails. I hope you like the changes; either way, leave me a comment or blog about them (then I can see if backlinks will work going forward). Peace.

Steve Cisler RIP

2008-05-17T01:57:00.006-04:00

Steve Cisler passed away this week. He was an early pioneer in the community networking movement, and our paths crossed in the early 1990s, while he was working at Apple Computer and collaborating with CPSR on its Local Civic Networks initiative, and I was on the CPSR Board of Directors, contributing what I could to the movement.

I found this page from our old web site, which contains pieces he wrote for CPSR. It was funny to see a grad school paper of mine appear beside two that Steve wrote for CPSR; may a small bit of his genius have rubbed off on me. Actually, the first is a very good overview of the space as of 1993, and the second is his report from a 1992 CPSR roundtable meeting. Reading that report really brought back memories - I was lucky enough to have been at the meeting Steve described and hung out with many of the people who's work he chronicled.

A true leading light has rambled on.

Paul Jones from ibiblio broke the news on Twitter, and posted a thoughtful tribute on his blog. Andy Carvin tweeted confirmation, and later posted a link to a condolences blog set up to commemorate Steve's life. I'm still trying to figure out the significance of the fact that I learned of this loss via my new community of social media geeks on Twitter, where Andy Carvin's tweets provided a vivid, real-time commentary on the unfolding story (and are the extent of his public posting on the topic that I've seen). Then, digging deeper, I found other fellow travelers using the Tweetscan search engine.

Community networking meets Web 2.0? The light burns on.

FCC Hearing on Internet Practices – April 17

2008-04-16T20:30:00.001-04:00

On Thursday afternoon, all five commissioners from the Federal Communications Commission will be attending a hearing at Stanford University on the future of the Internet, sponsored by the Stanford Law School Center on Internet and Society. This promises to be a very interesting meeting, especially considering the controversy surrounding a similar meeting they held at MIT a couple months ago.

The hearing is scheduled for 12-7 PM PT / 3-10 PM ET, on Thursday, April 17, and will physically take place at:

Stanford University

Dinkelspiel Auditorium

471 Lagunita Drive

Stanford, CA, 94305

United States

See map: Yahoo! Maps

With only 150 seats available to the public, you'd better get there early to get a seat. Luckily, there are a number of other ways that you can follow the event via the very same Internet:

VON TV will host a free video webcast of the entire proceedings.

The FCC Web site will stream live audio of the hearing as well.

The Free Press Action Network will host live blogging coverage for the duration of the event.

The Cairns blog posted a thoughtful piece explaining the background, with lots of references to the players and the history of this process — Can the FCC Fix the Internet? — so I don't need to repeat it here. I'm hoping to tune in myself, maybe blog some more; I hope you can join me.

Job: Online Community Intern at edweek.org

2008-04-09T06:00:00.006-04:00

Do you use multiple social networking services, write for a blog, or lead discussions on web forums? How would you like to apply those skills as an intern for an online journalism operation, and gain valuable job experience at the same time?

Edweek.org, a national non-profit news Web site covering K-12 education, seeks an online community intern to help manage our online community and contribute to viral marketing and social networking campaigns on behalf of the organization.

Responsibilities include:

monitoring comments and forum posts for inappropriate content;
managing one or more social network profiles or channels;
performing outreach to bloggers and social bookmarking sites;
promoting a sense of community through participation and feedback;
occasional web design or production tasks in support of these activities.

Qualifications: The position requires experience engaging with several social media applications and web communities, good writing and editing ability, basic HTML skill, a strong work ethic, and a highly developed sense of humor. Must be able to meet deadlines and work under pressure. Experience with CSS, graphic or multimedia editing, or blogging or content management system software a plus.

We welcome interns with an interest in social media, journalism/communications, education news and policy, and/or multimedia production. We are metro-accessible, a short walk from the red line in downtown Bethesda.

Please send resume, cover letter and samples/links via e-mail to: WebIntern@epe.org, and tell us where you saw the ad.

Spottiswoode Makes More Enemies on NPR

2008-03-29T11:58:00.007-04:00

I had the distinct pleasure of listening to my good friend and former band-mate Jonathan Spottiswoode on NPR's Weekend Edition this morning. It was an entertaining and thoughtful interview, conducted by Susan Stamberg, the original host of the weekend edition of the most popular show on radio. He sang and played two of his songs live in the studio, and they played cuts from the two CDs that his band Spottiswoode and his Enemies recently released as part of their 10th anniversary celebration — it was awesome exposure for Jonathan, his band, and his music. (All four songs are available on the NPR Web site.)

Jonathan is truly a gifted songwriter; he wrote all the songs on the first CD by my band, the Oxymorons ("Meet the Morons," which Jonathan also co-produced, was released in 1993). Around that time, he co-founded the Zimmermans, which shared two other members with the Oxymorons, but soon after split off in its own, more serious direction. (The first Zimmermans music video, "Portuguese Woman," also received its premiere at the "Meet the Morons" CD release party.)

The Enemies share most members with the final line-up of the Zimmermans, and have been together now for ten years. In the interview, Jonathan mentioned that he considers himself lucky to have been able to work with such good enemies over the last ten years, and to have been able to make a living writing, recording and performing his music, regardless of his spotty success with the so-called "music industry." To celebrate their ten years of existence, the Enemies recently released not one, but two new CDs: "That's What I Like" and "Salvation." Watch the video of the title track from the first CD, directed by Andrew Blackwell:

When Susan asked Jonathan how he managed to put out two CDs simultaneously – the band recorded 33 tracks in six days in the studio, of which 28 were included on the released CDs – he remarked that five CDs would be too little, were it not so difficult to press, package, and distribute the music once it was recorded. Several years ago, he remarked to me that he had five new fully-formed and sequenced CDs all worked out in his head; all he needed was the money, label, record deal, or whatever it would take to pay for it. The enemies are on a bit of a media roll these days: Paste Magazine gave them a rave review for a recent show in Atlanta as they worked their way back north from South by Southwest, and the New Yorker made their 10th Anniversary show last weekend at Joe's Pub the lead pick in last weeks listings.

F2C: Freedom to Connect

2008-03-28T13:07:00.004-04:00

I'm looking forward to attending F2C: Freedom to Connect 2008, next Monday and Tuesday, March 31 and April 1, 2008, at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring, MD (where I just happen to live). F2C always brings together the most interesting people and projects, all with one goal in mind, making the Internet more useful and powerful for everyone, making it a tool that people can use for whatever purpose, with the maximum capability, while not being limited by business rules set by telecommunications providers nor short-sighted government regulation.

I just received the last pitch email for this conference, so I want to pass along that after tonight, registration cost goes way up. So if you want to experience this stimulating and thought-provoking event in person, sign up today. They will have major WiFi capability, and a live chat online and on screen powered by 37 Signals CamfireNow.com, as well as a webcast for those who wish to simply watch remotely. (But then you also miss out on the truly killer networking that happens there as well.)

The names of the speakers this year are as good as ever, including Susan Crawford, Brad Templeton, Micah Sifry, Tim Wu, Bruce Schneier, Danny O'Brien, Gigi Sohn, Clay Shirky, and many others. As was the case last year, Howard Levy will provide the musical background to program breaks, this year accompanied by Chris Siebold. Should be fun AND informative.

Social Media Presentation at Digital Velocity

2008-03-26T00:00:00.001-04:00

On March 4, 2008, in New York City, I gave a presentation at the American Business Media conference DIGITAL VELOCITY 2008: Real Experts, Real Applications, Real Time. Here is the combined PowerPoint of my entire panel – Engaging Your Community in a Web 2.0 World (warning - large PDF download).

In my talk, I described social media efforts at edweek.org, including both community features that we are adding to our site, as well as Web 2.0 features that integrate our content more completely with the Web at large. Here is my favorite slide, which attempts to depict the feedback loop created by the social media "conversation":O'Reilly to the rescue (reprise) - the O'Reilly Digital Media Center page "Mac OS X Screenshot Secrets" helped me out when I was creating this presentation on the road, and it comes in handy again helping me to grab my favorite slide from the same presentation and save it as a GIF. Thank you O'Reilly!

Finally, in the Winter/Spring of endless conferences, I just returned from the NTEN Nonprofit Technology Conference in New Orleans, and next week I attend David Isenberg's Freedom to Connect a mile from my house at the AFI Silver Theater in Silver Spring MD. Look for blog posts covering each of these as soon as I can get them together.

Colbert Report on Protect America Act

2008-03-17T11:32:00.001-04:00

Stephen Colbert once again hits the nail on the head regarding the power of telecommunications companies. This time, he skewers their request for retroactive immunity from prosecution for illegally wiretapping an unknown number of Americans in the aftermath of 9/11.

The House Democratic leadership must stand firm on their commitment to leave this clause out of the renewal of the Protect America Act. This would set a bad precedent, by essentially letting the administration and telcos off the hook for widespread disregard of privacy rights. If we give up our rights in the name of security, we've lost the war on terror.

It looks like they are holding fast for now. Read more on FISA.

SEO Resources, Events, Consultants, Blogs, Etc.

2008-03-16T23:30:00.003-04:00

At edweek.org, we're fixin' to crank up our Search Engine Optimization (SEO) efforts, a roughly biennial effort, but always worthwhile, because best practices are always improving, and the search engines we're targeting also continually tweak their algorithms to prevent gaming and other distortions.

There are many blogs and other information resources available, often totally free (sometimes with a pay "premium" level of service as well). Anybody who understands the basics behind search engines, as well as concepts such as information architecture, taxonomy, and maybe a little semantic web, can get a good head start simply by consulting free resources and applying a handful of best practices to their site. One principle to keep in mind, though, is that applying SEO to a web site should not distort the presentation of information to make it less understandable by humans in the service of search engines — rather, you should only make changes that enable readers to understand and find information more easily as well.

A. Information Resources — the best news, tools, and information services, some free, some paid, and sometimes with consulting services also offered:

1. In 1996, Danny Sullivan founded the granddaddy of information services that track search engines, SearchEngineWatch.com. He sold it in 1997, but remained associated with it and the related conference series Search Engine Strategies, until 2006, through a couple more mergers and sales that left him with less of a stake in its success. It is still a major resource in the space, along with the affiliated interactive marketing service ClickZ.

2. Danny Sullivan has since started a new company, Third Door Media, which I believe has quickly become the premier resource, and certainly contains the most vibrant communities, in this space.

First there is the blog and information service Search Engine Land.
Then there is the growing series of SMX — Search Marketing Expo conferences.
It offers Search Marketing Now, a series of free webcasts and webinars.
And finally it operates Sphinn.com, a social news/discussion site for search engine marketers.

3. SEOmoz.org, founded by Rand Fishkin in 1994, provides many free and paid services. They have a daily blog and member blog; and publish more detailed articles (both free and paid/PRO), and provide an extensive set tools for free. Their PRO Membership includes more tools and more features in free tools, a dashboard, premium guides and paid articles. They also provide high-end consulting services.

4. Search Engine Roundtable is a group blog featuring forum leaders from many leading SEM forums around the web, a search engine that searches these selected forums in the aggregate, as well as its own Search Engine Roundtable Forums where anyone can contribute. The primary editors are Barry Schwartz and Tamar Weinberg of RustyBrick, a web design and SEO consultancy based in NYC. Their blog posts are very informative, but the forums covered seem slightly dated (Danny Sullivan is still listed with SearchEngineWatch, and his newer Sphinn forums are nowhere to be found.)

5. Check out this list of seven SEO News Aggregators from TopRank Online Marketing, who also maintain the much larger BIGLIST of SEM and SEO blogs

6. Then there's the mostly-paid SearchEngineNews.com service from Planet Ocean. The few select articles available for free are presented mostly to pitch the paid subscription service; I don't know what's behind the paid curtain, but other people at edweek.org have obtained useful information from this service.

B. Consulting Firms — firms that provide consulting, perhaps conferences, and some free information mostly to support their services business:

1. BusinessOnLine specializes in SEO, usability, and web strategy. Managing Partner Aaron Kahlow also chairs the Online Marketing Summit — I've seen him speak several times, and worked with him on social networks devoted to online marketing. I also attended a class on SEO taught by Ray "Catfish" Comstock, their Search Engine Optimization Manager — his fascinating lecture at a VisualSciences conference drove many of the changes we have made over the past couple years, giving us a great start that we're now looking to build upon.

2. Enquiro, founded by Gord Hotchikiss, specializes in B2B SEM/SEO, as well as testing/usability. They are located in British Columbia, and are said to be remarkably smart, easy to work with, passionate, and reasonably priced; they also publish articles, blogs, and case studies.

3. I've also seen Gary Angel, President and CTO of SEMPhonic, speak at a VisualSciences conference, and was suitably impressed. SEMPhonic offers various services related to Web analytics and SEM, and publish articles and blogs demonstrating their expertise, and describing their methodology known as Functionalism. They also sell a product to automate SEM tracking, and host conferences on analytics.

As with lists like this that attempt to be comprehensive, I will likely update this post from time to time; I will either repost it, or post an update notice with a link. I hope you find this helpful.

We Media Miami

2008-03-10T11:24:00.010-04:00

Two weeks ago I attended a pretty cool conference, We Media Miami, with Craig Stone, a colleague from work. There were plenty of interesting sessions, including preplanned large and small breakout sessions, and a closing unconference, but most importantly, there were also many good opportunities for networking. This meeting serves a relatively small group, maybe a couple hundred, but included senior executives from almost every major news media outlet in the US, as well as interesting thinkers in the fields of web technology, social media, social entrepreneurship, the future of media, and future in general.

At the final plenary session, they demonstrated a cool new technology (embedded below) which enables very interactive slide shows that appear like panoramas, courtesy of VUVOX - check their site for more examples. See this and more on the main We Media Miami page a smörgåsbord of event coverage via a dizzying array of social media windows and widgets, such as live on-site blogging and twitter hash tags I tweeted with.

The conference agenda included several panel sessions which were quite interesting, as well as an incomprehensible sidetrack into the area of medical informatics taking up a large chunk in the middle of day one. Highlights among the programmed presentations included: The Power to Change the World, and break-outs Search World, Nonprofit World and News World — I'm sure I missed as many good presentations as I caught.

Following the pre-set agenda was a self-organizing unconference, during which I attended two very interesting sessions - a presentation on the social cloud and OpenSocial by Google Developer Advocate Kevin Marks. The slides are great, but it's a big download; email me if you want the link. That was followed by NewsTrust salon, in which they first described the system (which is like a social bookmarking/tagging site with a serious news criticism component). We then spent several minutes dissecting and reviewing one article as a team on their site.

Finally, the networking opportunities were brilliant as usual, as I was able to connect with folks I was looking to meet, who were looking to meet me, or who just turned out to be cool people. The first night, Craig and I met Mark Blafkin from the Association for Competitive Technology, who travels in some of the same policy circles I do. Then as the conference progressed, I ran into David Cohn, whom I had known through NewAssignment.net; only later did I realize he also worked for NewsTrust. I later met Susan Mernit – recently of Yahoo! Personals, Blogher blogger, and connection via various social networks – who had pinged me on Facebook to meet. Finally, for lunch on the last day, I met Carlen Lea Lesser — who had connected with me via the conference social network. She was looking for insights and information about the education marketplace (arguably my domain, coming from Edweek), and could offer some expertise in social media metrics and ROI - my current obsession. A win-win.

Nonprofit Technology ConferenceApril 19-21, 2008, New Orleans, LA

2008-03-08T23:44:00.005-05:00

Check out the new widget for the Nonprofit Technology Network's annual Nonprofit Technology Conference, in less than two weeks, in New Orleans! I'm helping out with social events, and may help out on a panel too. You should go!

Recently I've also been to We Media Miami and American Business Media's Digital Velocity in New York, where I presented on social media at edweek.org Hopefully, I'll blog about all of these soon.

Blogging for Net Neutrality

2008-02-23T00:49:00.004-05:00

I recently signed up as a blogger for net neutrality with SaveTheInternet.com, so I might as well blog about it. I've long been a supporter of the concept, and signed CPSR on as a charter member of the coalition when it formed a couple years ago. Recently, People for Internet Responsibility has contributed a good technical foundation to the debate, offering a proposal to measure Internet traffic in order to settle debates on net neutrality, and creating a new discussion list covering technical issues, nn-squad.

Some recent developments: U2's manager Paul McGuinness wants ISPs to cut off file sharers, AT&T thinks file sharing is worse than child abuse or terrorism, and a major Canadian ISP tampers with packets to alter web pages delivered to its customers. These developments follow more infamous incidents like Comcast hindering Bittorrent, AT&T censoring anti-Bush lyrics at a Pearl Jam webcast, and Verizon blocked NARAL from using its SMS network to facilitate political organizing.

Stories such as these, combined with a strong bias toward freedom of expression and communication, lead me to my strong belief in the concept of net neutrality. Stay tuned, and consider attending Freedom to Connect in Silver Spring next month.

Social Media Measurement

2008-02-08T02:00:00.001-05:00

Social media applications are developing at such a rapid clip that measurement technologies haven't really kept pace. I have the daunting task of determining what success means for the social media efforts underway at edweek.org, and then even more challenging, how to measure it. In my mind, success in our community efforts can be envisioned following a continuum of goals:

Traffic. Since we're an advertising-supported media site, for various reasons, a simple increase in traffic represents perhaps the most basic target. More traffic means more ad inventory to sell, and increases our standing with both advertisers and funders. We hope that simply adding social media features such as comments and forums to our site would boost traffic, but the challenge will be to determine how to measure these results.

I intend to analyze our overall traffic to see if there is any increase in growth coincident with the introduction of comments, forums, blogs, etc. to our site. Since we've been introducing these changes over time, however, we'll also need to figure out a way to distinguish traffic trends on parts of our site that include opportunities for community participation from trends in areas little touched by these efforts. We could also hypothesize about how usage patterns might be altered by increasing use of social media, such as perhaps time spent on site, or differences in usage patterns exhibited by readers who have created social network profiles, or who have commented on the site, compared with less active users or simply average traffic patterns.
Engagement. The theory is that community media features and opportunities create more engaged readers, so measuring page views, time spent, and return visits per visitor among community participants would presumably indicate increased engagement with our site. We could also analyze the volume of participation — number of comments/forum posts, etc., both aggregate and per community member, and maybe even undertake to review a selection of the posts, trying to ascertain quality and appropriateness, even attempting to track trends in this area over time.
Impact. This gets even trickier. Our qualitative analysis of community contributions could perhaps demonstrate the effect that our journalism – and the conversations surrounding it – is having on people who care about education policy. We will also attempt to build in feedback systems, so that interesting or provocative comments – or suggestions, leads, and potential sources – would be passed back to reporters and editors. From there, we could try to track the number of times a comment led to a correction or a story idea, and thus actually informed our journalism.

We could also search through forums for people posting follow-up comments indicating that a particular bit of advice helped in the classroom or informed the policy process. This is trickiest, and perhaps least quantitative, but useful both to help us justify this work and demonstrate its impact on the educational enterprise. We intend to identify active participants from the community as well as staff to help us track and utilize quality contributions made by readers.

These ideas cover only the measurement of social media content contributed to our site by our readers. Left untouched (so far) is the impact that will be felt as we engage in the larger conversation on the World Wild Web, via RSS feeds, social networks, widgets, social bookmarks, tagging and the like. Look in a future post for my treatment of the measurement of and ROI related to these efforts, the effects of which are even less well understood at this point.

I realize that this is already way too long, but I also want to pass along quality reference and background material from some of my favorite thinkers in this space.

Beth Kanter has created numerous resource devoted to examining the subject. She hosts a wiki entitled "Social Media Metrics, Measurement, and ROI: A Cross-Disciplinary Approach" which contains numerous links to quality resources, and her presentation at Podcamp Boston:

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Beth's Blog also covers this topic extensively:
Why Your Social Media or Social Fundraising Plan Should Include Success Metrics

Jeremiah Owyang of Forrester Research frequently blogs about social media:
Why Your Social Media Plan should have Success Metrics

Finally, Peter Corbett of iStrategyLabs gave a great presentation at the WidgetDevCamp he helped organize and I attended a couple weeks ago, making a strong case for the growing importance of social media and of devising a strategy for utilizing it:

Lessig Final Free Culture Lecture Thursday

2008-01-30T10:00:00.001-05:00

This Thursday, January 31, Lawrence Lessig is delivering his final lecture on Free Culture, Copyright and the future of ideas at Stanford University's Memorial Auditorium. After ten years, numerous books, and the founding of Creative Commons (a practical, proactive attempt to free up some cultural content by enabling content creators to declare less restrictive licenses on their works than the default "All Rights Reserved"), Lessig is moving on to address the problem of government corruption. His talk will be filmed by Open Source Cinema, for inclusion in their upcoming feature film "Basement Tapes," an open source documentary. Those in attendance will also be treated to scenes from the film and re-mixed work from Open Source Cinema's web site.

The recently-released film "Good Copy Bad Copy" covers much of the same ground, and features Lessig, DC policymakers, and artists such as Girl Talk and Danger Mouse. The filmmakers seek further distribution and funding to support more similar efforts. I learned about Good Copy Bad Copy via the blog of Jake Shapiro, Executive Director of Public Radio Exchange and Fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard Law School. In a fascinating post describing a trip he took to Moscow last year, he turned me on to both that film and an organization based in London called the Freedom of Expression Project. This effort sounds remarkably like iCommons, which seems to involve everyone from Creative Commons to Wikipedia, to the Berkman Center; I wonder if they collaborate.

I have already mentioned "Before the Music Dies" in this space — another film that comes to mind. BFMD really focuses on numerous systemic problems with the music industry, but its attempts to control artists and creativity, and its inability to embrace new ways of dealing with and distributing content are related. Seth Godin recently wrote an insightful piece covering the same territory, reviewing lessons to learn from the challenges facing the music industry.

CPSR Technonogy in Wartime Conference

2008-01-25T01:07:00.000-05:00

If I were in California this weekend, I would definitely be going to the Technology in Wartime Conference at Stanford Law School, sponsored by Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility (CPSR). This conference hearkens back to the the founding of CPSR almost 30 years ago, as an organization concerned about the growing threat of nuclear war and how the application of computer technology increased this threat through battlefield automation and the flawed (and still under development) Star Wars missile defense system. CPSR has since broadened its portfolio of issues to include election systems, privacy, and freedom of expression, among other issues, but the excesses of the national security state continue to require our diligent attention.

Another highlight of the event is that CPSR will present its Norbert Wiener Award for Social and Professional Responsibility to Bruce Schneier, who will then give the conference keynote talk on dual-use technologies. Bruce is my favorite security expert, computer and otherwise, for both his wide-rangining knowledge and his ability to puncture security myths and facades; I'm a long-time subscriber to and avid reader of his e-newsletter CRYPTO-GRAM.

Instead of the CPSR conference at Stanford, this weekend I'm doing something cool in DC. I'm attending the WidgetDevCamp, a day-and-a-half BarCamp-style meeting at a downtown marketing firm. It looks like a really interesting time, lots of cool people, ideas, even some dirty hands. I'm hoping to come out of there with a widget for edweek.org, or maybe some better ideas for measuring social/web2.0 efforts like widgets. At any rate, I'm sure to learn something, meet some cool peeps, and blog about it here later.

Data Portability Movement Grows

2008-01-14T08:46:00.000-05:00

Big news in data portability - Facebook, Google, and Plaxo have joined the DataPortability Workgroup. Particularly in the case of Facebook, this is big news. Listen to Robert Scoble discuss his experience with Facebook and Plaxo, describing why he was temporarily kicked off of Facebook for automated importing of data to Plaxo. He points out that Facebook's policies in this area are hypocritical, that they are all about sucking up your data wherever they can find it, but prevent you from moving data out to other applications. Read more about this development and its importance in ReadWriteWeb and TechCrunch.

This is a fast-moving project, so early in the new year, as hot on the heals of that announcement we hear that individual members from the companies LinkedIn, Flickr, SixApart, and Twitter have also joined the Workgroup, a move LinkedIn touts in its own blog. (Read more analysis in ReadWriteWeb.) Following closely behind are individuals from Drupal, NetVibes and MyStrands. And to top it all off, Google, IBM, and Verisign are reportedly in talks to join the OpenID Foundation

What is Data Portability? According to Wikipedia, it is "Data portability is the capability to control, share, and move data from one system to another." OpenID (a founding partner in the Data Portability Workgroup) is a free and easy way to use a single digital identity across the Internet. A closely-allied concept from the world of MicroFormats is the idea of Social Network Portability, or the tools and interfaces that would allow users to easily move information about themselves and their contacts between different social networks.

The first I heard of these concepts was when I started reading about the Data Sharing Summit last fall in Richmond, CA. Jeremiah Owyang offers a very well defined set of goals for the data portability movement on his blog.

Here are some places to learn more about it and stay up-to-date on developments:

How can nonprofits use Twitter?Publication or Coordination!

2008-01-10T00:05:00.000-05:00

Net² wants to hear ideas for how nonprofits can use twitter, or if they should even bother. This query is part of the Netsquared Think Tank, a project seeking ideas on useful applications of the social web for nonprofits. This entire project is very self-referential, as it takes place on a blog (preferably via references to answering posts on other blogs), and I received my call to action via messages to members of their Facebook group.

Anyway, I can envision two easy ways for nonprofit organizations to take advantage of twitter. I work for a nonprofit publisher, so the first way, which could apply to edweek.org as well, would be this: create a Twitter user for edweek, or perhaps several for different news feeds or different publications (or blogs, the possibilities are endless:). Then you could use something like twitterfeed to direct the RSS feeds from those blogs or publications (or topics) straight into the twitter feed of that user. See c|net News.com or CNN Breaking News. If you don't want to automate this, assign a producer to post stories that are most interesting or controversial. We're planning to make several stories per day totally free, and thinking of ways to spread these around the web, so this idea might be put to the test.

The other application I envision is something a little more in the spirit of the service — use twitter to coordinate a group of people on the ground during an activist activity, such as a large demonstration in Washington DC, or a group out canvasing, or a lobby day on the hill. Make sure everyone has a twitter account a cell phone with adequate SMS capacity, and configure the twitter accounts to follow each other with SMS notification on. This would end up being almost like a cell phone SMS chat room, where you could coordinate locations, ask for help, etc. It seems like there would be a lot of set-up, and potential noise unless you turned everyone else's notification off, so may be impractical, but it could be cool if it worked. (Note: probably not appropriate for "actions" that would benefit from discretion ;-) ;-)

'Net Privacy for Children; 4-year-old Fashionistas!

2008-01-06T00:55:00.001-05:00

As I blog about my daughter, I'm suddenly thinking I shouldn't blog or tweet, etc. kids' names...so I'm going to stop naming any children in any of my public writing. Not that it will make a huge deal by itself, it's mostly the policy that's supposed to mean something. I'm a privacy advocate who lives my life on the 'net pretty much as an open book, both for professional reasons, and due to cynicism on my part regarding the privacy protections that remain (in tatters). However, I don't need to drag anyone else, especially kids, along with me into my public life on the web.

Henceforth, you'll more posts looking like this:

My daughter told me a story about her preschool class yesterday that I found surprising, and very funny. I don't know what we were talking about, but fairly unprompted, I found out that she suddenly wasn't the biggest fan of pink. Now to me, this was NEWS, so I explored the back-story behind this development, and discovered the following (pay attention if you want to stay abreast of the most avant garde fashion trends).

All of the girls in my daughter's class but two have left pink behind as last year's color; the current hot color among 4-year-old girls is purple. Likewise, for all the boys but two, black is the new brown. The exact wording was something like this (from a 4-year-old):

I used to like pink, but I don't any more. All of the girls, except for xxx and xxx, say pink is old, it's from last year. All the boys now like black except xxx and xxx; they still like brown, but all the other boys say brown is from last year.

From the mouths of babes...I mean the next generation of fashionistas.

Kids' Philanthropy, Evaluating Charities

2007-12-28T00:44:00.000-05:00

As the 2007 charitable contribution season draws to a close, I heard Katie Couric's Notebook: Giving Wisely on CBS Radio (video version is linked). Couric discussed the importance of knowing the charities to which you donate, and highlighted Charity Navigator as one resource that can help evaluate the effectiveness of particular charities.

Continuing on a theme from my last entry, I read in today's Washington Post that For Modern Kids, 'Philanthropy' Is No Grown-Up Word. The article mentioned Club Penguin's Coins for Change program and Global Giving as resources used by area students to become more involved in philanthropy. For my part, I gave my nieces and a nephew charitable contribution gift cards from MarkMakers, a cool site that provides a fun and safe giving environment for children, and includes some of my favorite charities.

Finally, I come to my own giving for the year. I plan to donate to my standard mix of local and international social services (including cyclone victims in Bangladesh), plus organizations pursuing my personal interest in promoting freedom of expression and access to the media, and fighting government and corporate infringements of our rights. I will likely donate via Global Giving and Network for Good — which also provides numerous resources to help you evaluate charities, including listings from Guidestar.org database of IRS 990 forms, links to resources like Charity Navigator, and other helpful tips.