I had a great time presenting at OpenCamp this weekend. It was an amazing crowd for a first outing, numbering more than 600 registrants. And from where I sat, everything went without a hitch.
Below is my preso. For some reason, SlideShare isn’t picking up my notes, so I have them placed below. It’s not ideal, as the list doesn’t sync with the slides as well. I hope to get the version with notes on SS ASAP. Read the rest of this entry »
On Monday, I had the privilege of speaking to The Shorthorn (University of Texas – Arlington) newsroom and web staff as they kicked off the new school year.
Knowing how the kids are all digi-fied these days, I was at first surprised that I was asked to come talk to them about how to get more focused on their web presence. But, as I discovered, we may have erred in calling this generation “digital natives.” Instead, I might call them the “bridge generation.” For while their lives are imbued with technology in a way my parents will never understand, they have been raised in a world where the entrenched media business still operated on old-media models, even while experimenting in the New Media World.
While I was duly impressed with these students’ journalism chops and work ethic, I initially was surprised to find them, in some ways, to have more in common with the stereotypical ink-stained curmudgeons than with the bleeding edge digitalfolk. Then, on reflection, it made perfect sense: Read the rest of this entry »
Despite the heat, the summer doldrums must be giving way, as I’m staring down a really busy spate of talks and appearances:
* – Would-be burglars and harassers note that April will be home for most of that and my three big, toothy dogs will be home for all of it.
Like the groundhog crawling out from his hole, I seem to be doing a lot more public speaking / appearances in the last couple months. And I’ve got a slew of stuff coming up in the next week:
Saturday night at 8:00, I’m the guest monologuist for Dallas Comedy House’s Megaphone Show. I’ll be telling some seedy stories from my bachelor days in Dallas and then the pros will be improvising scenes inspired by them. It’ll be a great time. I’m also improvising in the 10:00 PM Maestro show. Both shows are $10– get your tickets here. I’m beyond excited about this — I’ll guarantee a good time.
On Monday at 1 PM, I’ll be guest-hosting the Innovation at Work Radio Show on CNN AM 1190. I met host Winston Edmondson as a result of my Ignite Dallas speaking gig. We hit it off and he’s since become a PegNews content partner and had me on the show to talk about our launch. We’d batted around the idea of me occasionally guest-hosting and he’s giving me my first shot Monday. I’ll be chatting with the folks from Dallas Startup Weekend about this year’s event. Tune in or catch the stream online.
Monday at 5 PM, I’ll be appearing on a panel for The Media Club of North Texas with a handful of other local mediati from The Dallas Morning News, D Magazine, KERA and the like trying to hash out what the future looks like…
It keeps getting smaller.
There’s a pissing match today among several InterWebs iconoclasts about Comscore‘s traffic counting methods and business models. Actually, to be more accurate, it’s a bunch of bitch-slapping about unrelated issues, but web traffic is the jumping-off point.
You can read it for yourself — be sure to follow the comment thread too, in which all the principals rebut. (Or, as one commenter deems it, “three poodles fighting over a piece of raw meat”).
But for me, the whole thing is sad because it reminds me of another “scandal” almost six years ago now. Several newspaper chains had been caught overstating their circulation. There was all sorts of hand-wringing over it, but in the midst of the mea culpas, I read one simple line in a column by Ed Wasserman that changed my way of thinking and in large part led me to create The Daily You as a major feature of Pegasus News:
“Still, there is an absurdity to the whole scam. Counting copies is a dopey way to gauge impact. The explosion of information channels necessarily means erosion of audience share held by dominant media. There is still nothing that can rivet the attention of a community the way its daily paper does.”
…
I know I tend to spend all my rant power on broken media models, but I’ve had reason lately to ponder the relationship between PR and advertising.
PR people wonder why there’s sometimes resentment towards them from media folk — I don’t think it is actually because of anything PR professionals do per se, but rather because of the utter disconnect between most businesses public relations and advertising. And I don’t think it is generally front-of-mind for most media companies because of the church-state separation. But as someone who lives in both worlds, I’ve found myself seething lately over repeated scenarios like this: Read the rest of this entry »
Saving the banking industry means saving banks.
Saving the auto industry means saving car makers.
Saving the free press does not mean saving newspapers.
For those who’ve asked about my Facebook icon:
As a new media guy, I suppose it’s heresy to say that I find some of the en vogue (or at least formerly en vogue) services to be utterly ridiculous. Twitter’s one example (but that’s another post).
I tried really hard to see Second Life as something more than a timesuck for gullible ex-dungeonmasters and marketing consultants with enough disposable time and income that they don’t mind slow, jerky, crashing animations of their alter-fauxegos. But I’ve come up empty. I mean at least WOW gives you the entertaiment value of killing stuff.
So I find news of a real estate crisis in SL beyond ridiculous. Read the rest of this entry »
