Just gave a talk about grassroots video and social media at a session at the third New Communications Forum put on by the Society for New Communications Research.
Showed a whole bunch of videos, including political mash-ups, the SXSW Interactive mash-up we did last year with Josh Leo, Steve Garfield and others, and the JetBlue CEO apology on YouTube. Wide range of views about that, though most of the audience members (marketing managers, new media execs, et al.) seemed to think it was a net positive. Mentioned PodTech as a good way to check in on what’s happening with video in the enterprise.
Tried to cover a lot of ground, including video hosting options like Blip.tv and Ourmedia, pointing out new technologies like SpinXpress and SplashCast, different forms of grassroots video — webisodes like AskaNinja and Goodnight Burbank, mashups, stop-motion photography, citizen journalism, animation, music videos, screencasts, digital storytelling and more. Also showed off Ourmedia’s Personal Media Learning Center, the podsafe music resource the Open Media Directory, and Freevlog.
Zane Safrit blogged about the session here. One fellow, a frequent conference-goer, came up to me afterward and said, "That was the best presentation I’ve ever seen at a conference," so I think the interactivity with the audience members was valuable. Someone else asked about the software I used for the presentation. (Keynote, available on an Apple — much slicker than PowerPoint.) Alas, the presentation is far too big and was too long to put online.
A lot of great people here: David Parmet, Josh Hallett, Elisa Camahort, Chris Heuer, Howard Greenstein, Tom Foremski, Sandra Fransen of Intel, Leah Patten of the Century Council, and other interesting folks.
A few highlights:
A rep from Conduit showed off the free service, which has 6 million users and "lets you connect, engage and bond with employees or customers persistently via the browser."
David Weinberger gave a great keynote about Conversations, Blogs, Wikipedia and Authority. I did a quick video interview with him about his new book coming out in May, which I’ll post soon.
Paul Gillin, a consultant and former computer magazine editor, gave a talk on the New Influencers. He offered a dire forecast for most newspapers. "In 10-25 years you’ll see the collapse of most metropolitan newspapers in the United States. … I don’t think small metro papers have any future." But he sees hope for smaller papers. "I think this will be a great time for small newspapers. There will be a boon in community publishing."
One key slide:
The new journalism
• Based on aggregation, iteration
• Ditched the archival model; disruptive change of approach
• Facts are a commodity, many voices
• Editor becomes aggregator
• News contributed by network of freelancers, citizens.
"You don’t need a staff," he said at one point, which is an exaggeration of what’s happening here. In the future, "the editor will be an aggregator."
He pointed out that USA Today is one of the few major newspaper sites that links offsite and may well be the first publication to incorporate reader comments on articles.
Some mind-blowing factoids from Gillin:
– Craigslist, with 23 staffers, is the fifth most trafficked site on the web.
– Digg, which launched in Dec. 2004 and now has 15 staffers, is the 74th most popular site on the Web and recently passed the New York Times in traffic.
David Strom said Bloglines and My Yahoo were better RSS readers than Google Reader. Flurry sends you SMS alerts on your phone. Other snippets: A podcast site like Slapcast.com can create RSS feeds for you … there’s DIY software like FeedforAll … the iTunes feed you create is read by iTunes only (in case you didn’t know that).
I created a delicious page of links about social media and grassroots media at del.icio.us/newcomm.
Later: The conference was held at the Venetian, an amazing venue, though could have done without the half-mile trek from my room to the meeting rooms. The layout of the place is so convoluted — not unlike the puzzling walkways of Venice — that I had to ask directions to my room twice, and couldn’t get there without taking two elevators. David Weinberger relates his experience here.
JD Lasica, founder of Inside Social Media, is also a fiction author and the co-founder of the cruise discovery engine Cruiseable. See his About page, contact JD or follow him on Twitter.
JD…the talk was really good, generated a lot of discussion. I’m encouraged to see the interest in social media and looking forward to a time when internal and external communicators work together as a coordinated group, use more employee-generated podcasts, blogs, etc. I think the time’s coming. If any of your readers are looking for information on using social media in internal communications, check out my blog at: http://www.sandradee.wordpress.com
Thanks, Sandra, great blog!
Beth, not sure. I know there’s an app that lets you record presentations with audio added to your slides, so I’ll have to look into that (saw it at macworld). My presentations are so video-heavy that finding a way to post them online isn’t easy. At least not yet. :)
“USA Today may well be the first publication to incorporate reader comments on articles.”
Just as a fact-check, the above statement by Bob Gillan is flat out wrong. There are already dozens of newspapers allowing reader comments on individual stories.
Here’s one: http://www.pilotonline.com
It’s within the realm of possibility that I misinterpreted Paul Gillin, who may have said the first national newspaper rather than the first major newspaper. In any event, your point is well taken.