Meeting in the aisle: meet the future

Showing posts with label meet the future. Show all posts

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Digital Citizens “Social media for social good”

Things I wrote down from the Digital Citizens “Social media for social good” event in Sydney, 13 April, 2009.

Disclaimer – these are my rough notes, and there was wine.

“The average blog is read by six people,” “the future will be angry with us for demonetization,” and foursquare has some secondary uses which could be interesting i.e. urban planning and health scares– Kim McKay [@redshoes on twitter] (who heard these at South by Southwest this year).

Alan Jones [@bigyahu] (who mediated) made the point that “people are the media” which is in line with what I’ve been reading by Jim Macnamara [@jimmacnamara] who says we are living “in the media” in his book “The 21st Century Media (R)evolution.”

Karalee Evans [@Karalee_] from Headspace had some interesting things to say about:
• reaching the youth demographic who don’t read papers or watch TV. She talked about the need for a strategy around social media, and also about the importance of getting the whole organization on board from Board and CEO level to clinicians etc.
• They only have 300 followers on twitter, and are more interested in the quality engagement in this forum than numbers
• Facebook acts as a solid referral page to their website, which acts as their main call to action.
• “Social media is a long term investment”

Web 2.0 in 5 mins

(via Literary Minded via Meanland)

Thursday, October 8, 2009

Information wants to be free

I agree with Malcolm Gladwell that information doesn’t want to be anything. It just is. We want it to be things: free, interesting, exclusive, real-time, nostalgic, informative, historical, interpretable, entertaining, useful etc.

I also agree with Seth Godin that:

“People will pay for content if it is so unique they can't get it anywhere else, so fast they benefit from getting it before anyone else, or so related to their tribe that paying for it brings them closer to other people. We'll always be willing to pay for souvenirs of news, as well, things to go on a shelf or badges of honor to share.”

At the heart of the matter is the panic traditional media outlets are having over their content becoming available in ways they do not control, much the way the audio-visual industry has been dealing with since the introduction of recording technologies from way back when (Sousa’s argument used by Lawrence Lessig in Remix is an early example of this panic in action).

I think that the creators (and sellers) of information are foolish to try and stop the availability of their information for free. The future lies in their ability to adapt their business models to package their information in ways people are willing to pay for.

Friday, October 2, 2009

Speaking of social capital, I've been reading The Rumpus a lot lately, and am thus aware of its money woes. This makes me sad. I like The Rumpus. It's funny and subversive and different and hosts a bunch of good writers. Something this good should have no problem making money.

So it was with interest I read Amanda Palmer's (of Dresden Dolls fame) blog post on Why I am not afraid to take your money:

i would hate to see my fans turn on me once i actually have money in the bank with a “well, i would support you if you were starving, but now that you’re eating, no way.”
fuck that.
accept a new system.
feel ok about giving your money directly to paul mccartney. he may be rich, but he still rocks. show you care.
feel ok about giving it to fucking lady gaga if you’ve been guiltily downloading her dance tracks for free.
rejoice in the fact that you are directly responsible for several threads in her new spandex spacesuit.
it shouldn’t matter.
it’s about empowerment and it’s about SIMPLICITY: fan loves art, artist needs money, fan gives artist money, artist says thank you.

That pretty much sums up how I feel about the whole issue really. If you like it, pay for it.