Along with Jake McKee, I was one of the official conference bloggers. Being a designated blogger is a very different experience that being a regular attendee or even a speaker, and having now worked in that capacity, I have a much deeper respect for what goes into such a seemingly easy task. Aside from the typical challenges of racing from one session to the next, making sure your computer battery doesn’t run out of juice when there is no available plug, being flexible with program and panelist changes, and writing without the luxury of reviewing and editing what you’ve written, there is the responsibility of trying to record the highlights of the covered sessions in such a way that readers are able to get value from what you’ve posted.

Without questions, for me one of the highlights of the conference were the research and measurement sessions. Not necessarily because they were the most entertaining (I’d put the lunch keynote by Richard Tait, Grand Poo Bah of Cranium Inc., the keynote by Andy Sernovitz, author of Word of Mouth Marketing: How Smart Companies Get People Talking or the session “No Fans, No Band” in that category), but because they provided the oh-so-important hard data validating the effectiveness of word of mouth.

Between the Research Symposium and the Summit, there were over twenty sessions on research and measurement. Additionally, attendees received the excellent Measuring Word of Mouth: Current Thinking on Research and Measurement of Word of Mouth Marketing, WOMMA’s third annual research volume (available for purchase as well) that contains over twenty papers covering a wide range of topics with a particular emphasis on the influencer model.

What’s also useful within the research volume is the section on WOMMA terminology, which aims to “provide a unified framework for describing and measuring word of mouth marketing.” It provides definitions of word of mouth (”the act of a consumer creating and/or distributing marketing-relevant information to another consumer”), work of mouth marketing (”en effort by an organization to affect how consumers create and/or distribute marketing-relevant information to other consumers”) and WOM Episode (”a single occurrence of word of mouth communication, which includes Participants, Actions, WOMUnits, Venues, and Outcomes”), among other things. There is also an excellent visual summary of what happens during a WOM Episode, along with the associated qualities thereof — namely a participant taking an action on a WOMUnit in a particular venue that then results in an outcome.

What’s particularly interesting, though, is social media’s broader ability to quickly share and disseminate critical information when things go wrong, wrong as in threatening, dangerous, and frequently life-altering, which we’re seeing right now with the California wildfires. CenterNetworks points to some of the recent coverage of the fires on sites such as Flickr (see the search term “california fires” for recent images), YouTube ( see the 2000+ results for “california fires”) and Wikipedia (see “California Wildfires of October 2007″) among others. CNET reports how microblogging site Twitter is being used by news organizations such as KPBS and L.A. Times and individuals Nate Ritter to give updates. And Ustream.tv is showing live coverage of the fires.

Meanwhile, on-the-ball international organizations such as the American Red Cross are using social media tools to help serve as vital and up-to-date information sources — see the  Online Disaster News Portal, as well as the Red Cross and the Safe and Well Twitter accounts.

My prediction is that within a relatively short time frame, say perhaps three years, the majority of disaster relief organizations, both government and private, will fully implement real-time information dissemination  via text messaging, microblogging and an assortment of additional tools and social networking sites.

Today is Blog Action Day, where thousands of bloggers — over fifteen thousand and counting, with millions of combined readers — write about a single important topic: the environment.

Well, "protecting the environment" has been a buzz phrase for a very long time now, and just as there are many people and organizations who understand that environmental protection isn’t antithetical to business and can go hand-in-hand with it, there unfortunately are detractors who are more comfortable being cynics than taking steps that, on a combined scale, will make positive long-term change. Fortunately, important events such as Al Gore’s winning of the Nobel Peace Prize along with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, lend great credibility to the importance of environmental causes and place them on the global stage.

Ultimately every action starts with an idea, though. And so, I’d like to share, in his own words, what a very special young boy, with the wide-eyed innocence of youth, suggested we can all do to "help the earth." 

• Watering your lawn and watering your garden.
• Feeding wild birds in the winter.
• Cleaning up your toys.
• Picking up garbage outside.
• Don’t burn tires, or don’t use your car too much since that can pollute the air.
• Keeping the lakes and rivers and oceans clean.

If a six-year old can come up with ideas and get excited about how he can contribute, surely the rest of us can too. 

Aimed towards photojournalists, corporate photographers, marketers who purchase photography as part of their work, as well as others interested in learning more about the photography industry, the blog’s goal is to educate readers and serve as a venue to share ideas and best practices.

Columnists and contributors include stock-photography expert Jim Pickerell, photojournalist Dennis Brack, Black Star executive vice president John Chapnick, and other noted photographers and industry experts (stay tuned for those announcements). Idea Grove president Scott Baradell is Black Star Rising’s editor, and both Scott and I will serve as contributors as well. 

Scott explains in greater detail the idea behind the new photography blog, and provides a history of Black Star, from the early days in 1935 when its founders fled the Nazi regime in Europe to its plans for new initiatives in the photography business.

So have a look around (you can subscribe to the main blog here and the photoblog here) and let us know what you think. And of course, if you have any suggestions or comments, please feel free to get in touch. We welcome your participation and look forward to hearing from you.

Tags: Black Star, Black Star Rising, photography, photojournalism

One development that gained traction last year and will become even stronger in ‘07 is the development and growth of local information and sites. As Mike Driehorst says in the aptly named post Localize. Localize. Localize., “if newspapers can involve their readers in their revived local focus, newspapers will again become communities’ mainstay for news and information.”

Last November, Fast Company published an excellent article, Hyper-Local Hero, about the approach Rob Curley, now Vice President of Product Development for Washingtonpost.Newsweek Interactive, took in making newspapers and newspaper sites more valuable to their readers. Curley expanded on some points within the article in this blog post, in which he wrote:

“Anyone who has worked with me for even an hour knows how much I *love* huge enterprise stories….

…if you were to ask a roomful of editors or reporters if they would rather work on a huge enterprise series or a big package that gave a nice overview of one of the big events that happen in most people’s lives (such as the prom), my guess is that the majority of those journalists would say they would much rather do the big investigative piece. And that’s not a sin, or even a wrong response as I see it.

But to me, there also is nothing more honorable than documenting the living history of a community and that’s one of the things I strongly feel a local newspaper should do. People turn to their local newspaper for so many reasons, and I don’t think as an industry we should overlook that many of our readers look to us for a sense of community.”

Another development that I’ve been eagerly watching is Placeblogger, which just officially launched. As the site explains,

“Placeblogs are sometimes called ‘hyperlocal sites’ because some of them focus on news events and items that cover a particular neighborhood in great detail — and in particular, places that might be too physically small or sparsely populated to attract much traditional media coverage. Because of this, many people have associated them with the term “citizen journalism,” or journalism done by non-journalists.

Placeblogs, however, are about something broader than news alone. They’re about the lived experience of a place. That experience may be news, or it may simply be about that part of our lives that isn’t news but creates the texture of our daily lives…”

What’s exciting is that the site lists not only blogs from within the United States (although that’s the largest group to date), but also ones from around the world. Check out what others are saying. And if you’re curious what the Top Ten Placeblogs in America are, have a look here.

Tags: Mike Driehorst , Fast Company, Rob Curley, Placeblogger

Many thanks to Sam Smith, Head of Online Corporate Content at the university, for making all the arrangements, and to Liz Murphy, Director of Student Recruitment, and Ian Upton, for asking me to present the two sessions, one on blogs and social media, and the other on Second Life (which was held in the magnificent HP Visual and Spatial Technology Centre, making the SL demo even more life-like).   

At the end of the day, Sam gave me a brief tour of the beautiful campus. Here are a few pictures.

Tags: University of Birmingham, Sam Smith

I did succeed in fulfilling one of my goals, however, namely to memorialize my trip by taking lots of pictures. If you’re interested, have a look at my Flickr photostream here (as well as The Adventures of Telly for kids).

There are a few people I want to thank for making my trip really enjoyable and giving me the benefit of having someone locally show me around. There are Claudia Troescher and Robert Szasz of Augsburg, Germany (as well as Matthias Troescher and his lovely family who invited me over for Advents tea); Edgar and Inge Guenter and their dog Emma of Hannover, Germany; and Sam Smith of Birmingham, U.K., who arranged for me to give two presentations at the University of Birmingham.  A big thanks also to Serge Cornelus of Belgium who traveled to Paris to spend the afternoon taking in the sights with me.      

Tags: Europe, Sam Smith, Serge Cornelus

"If someone we know were to be attacked we’d all want to do what we could to help. We might think that a reasonably well read weblog offered a useful platform for doing so. But would it be ethical?….

… as the CIPR [see the Chartered Institute of Public Relation's Social Media Guidelines -- Consultation here] thinks about a social media code of conduct which includes issues of competence, I wonder if this incident highlights an important distinction between citizen journalism and its more established equivalent?"

(A quick point: Please read Jackie’s disturbing story, as well as the additional information she leaves in the comments on her post. Also note that I’m using the word "alleged" here not to question Jackie veracity, but as a legal term reflecting the status of her claim.)

Perhaps I’m mincing words, but I’m not sure the question is one of ethics as much as asking whether the republishing of the photograph of the individual in question is the right thing to do vs. whether it is legally sound to do.

If this man is the person who actually committed the assault (which is the issue here), then one could argue that finding him and bringing him to justice is a social responsibility, part of which is asking the public to help identify him. One could further argue that republishing his photograph on a private blog is not that different from publishing it through an official law enforcement site, at least conceptually, assuming the original source of the information is reliable. Furthermore, since the attack occurred in a public setting, an argument of invasion of privacy by the assailant could not be as easily made.

However, whether this is a legally sound action is another matter. Should any initially unknown facts or issues arise, anyone who has republished the photograph puts themselves at greater risk than simply having linked to the original post or Jacki’s Flickr picture (which, by the way, as of right now has been viewed 2,604 times). And should the assailant make any counterclaims of harm caused him by the publishing or republishing of the photograph (stranger things have happened), then anyone who has participated in this may be on the line as well. 

For what it’s worth, I commend Jackie for having handled the attack as she did — by filing an official report, by publicly sharing her story, and by having the wherewithal to take a photograph of the alleged assailant and posting it on her blog. Hopefully the perpetrator will be caught soon.

Tags: JackieDanicki, Ethics, Assault, CitizenJournalism,

For those to whom paying the conference fee has stretched or exceeded their allotted budget, wondering how to get to the conference is the next challenge, along with wondering where to stay.

For the adventurous — some might say risk-taking (as an adult, I now cringe at memories of me as a young teen hitchhiking from the boarding school I attended to the closest town, getting into the back seat of a 2-door vehicle driven by a complete stranger) — locating a ride-share via Craigslist is a possibility. In Hitchhiking in Cyberspace, Time lists other ride-shares sites as well, such as Carpoolworld.com, Ridester and sRideShare.com.

And if you’re a blogger needing an extra sofa to sleep on, maybe Can I Crash, "a blogger community for travelers," is just the site to check out (although I’m not sure whether it’s been recently updated).

Ride-sharing and bunking with people I don’t know isn’t something I’d choose to do anymore, but for the right person, this can be the difference between being able to go somewhere or staying at home.

Tags: unconference07, ride-sharing, Craigslist, Confabb, Upcoming, CanICrash,

John Swords (Johnny Ming in SL) of SecondCast recorded the entire session and hopes to have it up in a few days. It’ll definitely be worth a listen. But in the meantime, here are some main points to mention now.

• Sibley noted that although SL offers the fastest and cheapest ways to build 3D content, it’s hard-to-use technology for the mainstream audience. Also, since it’s completely self-directed, its harder for the MS to latch on to. He also pointed out that SL today is the way the Web was prior to the rise of Netscape and AOL.
• SL currently has the most successful microsystem digital payment system, and Linden Dollars is one of the most successful currencies not associated with a nation state. And, like any currency exchange, the LindeX, is completely market-driven and can fluctuate, although it’s presently at about 250 Linden Dollars (L$) to the US Dollar (USD).
• No surprise here, but the business momentum in SL right now is pretty much off the map. Aside from more product placements (think, for example, Nissan) and fundraisers like the American Cancer Society’s Second Life Relay for Life, SL is enabling some individuals and small businesses to make a living. Fashion is big, big, big. And skins are doing well too.
• Speaking of currency, Sibley believes that within 12 months or so the lines between real currency and Linden Dollars will really blur, with, for example, debit cards being used in SL. Reuters just reported that Australia is requiring that virtual income be reported as taxable. And the U.S. Congress is looking into this as well.
• Aside from the entertainment, and of course, business value, SL also hold great promise for other uses. For example, people with Asperger’s syndrome have found a new lease on life in SL. And individuals with other hurdles, such as social shyness, also find SL interaction less intimidating.
• Virtual Laguna Beach, in comparison to SL, is very easy to use, perhaps because, unlike SL, it’s not a user-generated world, but instead an interactive experience created by a media company for the sole purpose of entertainment. One interesting thing is that each Laguna Beach episode is broadcast in SL 24 hours before being shown on television. Sibley describes VLB as “perhaps the first model of interactive television that’s going to take off.”
• There’s interest out there in trying to have the various virtual worlds connect to each other  (instead of having to enter them separately, with different identities and avatars). One person  said that the really successful thing would be to make avatars portable between worlds. Yes!

And if you don’t know them already, here are some interesting sites to check out:

• 3pointD.com, Mark Wallace’s take on the Metaverse and 3D Web
• Second Style Magazine, “The best of Second Life clothing, hair, skins, accessories, and more”
• SLBoutique.com, a RL site where you can shop for your SL needs without having to actually go into SL.
• Destroy Television, a Sheep Labs experiment that aims to display and interact with SL in a 2D browser.

Tags: secondlife, electric, washingtondcfuturesalon