Tomi Ahonen, Alan Moore and me at Oxford Uni

It's not often you get the opportunity to see both of the authors of the seminal Communities Dominate Brands in the same place at the same time (Alan Moore and Tomi T Ahonen) - and even rarer that you'll find yours truly joining them in what promises to be an exciting exploration of Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media.

Not only is that the title of Tomi's latest book, it's also the title of a course at Oxford University on October 12-13 led by Tomi, Alan and myself.

We tried to run this course almost two years ago. Now that iPhones have become so ubiquitous, there may be more readiness for it.(image via w3.org)

Hope you'll know someone who ought to be there! Book Your Place

The following is from the University of Oxford's Continuing Education site.

About the Course

Mobile is emerging as the 7th mass media channel, whilst legacy mass media witnesses a decline. This course presents a journey through some of the most advanced content and media services deployed on mobile phones, in the most advanced mobile telecoms countries such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Finland.

Intending to build on the content of Tomi T. Ahonen’s sixth book ‘Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media’, the course provides a unique opportunity to explore the taxonomy of the seven mass media, with an emphasis on what lessons can be learned when newer media are introduced.

The course will begin by examining the overall industry and the consumers of mobile content, before moving on to explain how to build compelling content to mobile, and exploding the myths of the limitations of supposedly too small keypads and tiny screens. The most promising early media content types: music, gaming, TV, internet, advertising and social networking will also be discussed.
All delegates will receive a free copy of Tomi T. Ahonen's book Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media.

Tomi T. Ahonen speaks to CNN - watch the video here

Who is it for?

Anyone in the current legacy media space who wants to understand new media, thus digital media executives in television, print, radio, cinema, recordings industries and advertising; all in the internet businesses who are interested in the future of the web; and those within mobile who work with media and convergence. No prior knowledge of mobile telecoms or media is necessary.

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Lessons from the mass media wars

There are those in print media - newspapers/mags etc - who cling to the idea that they can 'do a cinema'.

When TV arrived as the latest mass media many predicted the demise of cinema.

They didn't count on its:

• Ability to adapt with experience-enhancing technology (colour, stereo, Dolby, 3d etc) 
• The power of that experience being shared.
  

If I was in a media company right now I'd be looking at how what cinema did could translate to shore up my properties. To start with. (image courtesy rivalee)

And then there's the elements that kept radio in the game when first cinema and then radio rocked up:

• Convenience

• Portability

• Currency.
  

Print shares convenience and portability - but scores zip for currency against anything post radio. It's ability to enhance shared experience ain't the greatest, either (though this can be enhanced through events and digital communities, of course)..

Media properties need to adapt. And the obsession with print has to be questioned long and hard.

Those cinematic and radio survivors of the mass media wars give a guide.

Cinema uses technology to enhance shared experiences, radio is convenient, portable and current.

Combine all these and you have a proposition to take you into the age of the eighth mass media - us.

From (We are the eighth mass media)

I don't just mean that we create the content in a UGC vs Professional Content Creators kind of way. I mean WE are the distribution, the content, the 'user journey', how messages are transmitted... WE are the medium and the media carried within it.

We are the connections. We are also how the connections are made.

In the age of the eighth mass media, organisations must understand that serving multiple and ever increasing numbers of niches is the route to sustainable scale.

Those who wish to remain part of our lives must provide value to the adhoc self-forming communities of purpose our digital selves can't help but participate in.

We have already adapted. We are creating a new landscape. Are you fit for it? Are you prepared to become so? I wonder how this 'Twitter: The newspaper of tomorrow? matches up.

Why we need an Adsense that values relationships

So why don't I have Adsense on my blog? Google keeps pushing it at me. Why don't I take this free money?

The first reason is simple and mercenary. The payment I may receive via Adsense is too low to tempt me. The return on my time not sufficiently rewarding. ( I know, I've tried in the past).

That may be because there are insufficient advertisers for the Adwords related to the stuff I blog about. And that means the ads served seem rather less like the helpful content that Adsense promises and more like the spam it seeks to avoid. (image courtesy)

And I don't want to put you off, dear reader. I value our relationship more than I value a few cents from Google.

A lot more actually, which is where RoI comes in. Or perhaps we should call it RoR - return on reputation and/or relationship?

By allowing advertising which could sell you something I have not tried myself, I can't give it my endorsement.

I can't recommend it to you. In fact an ad may pop up for a product or service I will actively recommend you do not use. Each time this happens our relationship is damaged and my reputation with you is diminished.

Adsense takes no account of the value we both place on this.

I'd like to think the niche nature of this community is such that should I recommend a product, service, event etc you will give it quite serious consideration.

Our conversations can be – and regularly are – one to one. And this is the reality of the future online as more and more we become The Eighth Mass Media - the publishers, advertisers, marketers, distributors, connectors.

You'll give me the time of day because over time you have come to learn from experience that we share the same thirst for knowledge about certain things, have similar problems to solve etc. We are one of my favourite things - a community of purpose.

In short, we have a relationship in which we exchange trust to build reputation.

I described a simple model previously which could value reputation using something like Adsense. It may be worth reviewing again.

I think if a model could be devised and implemented which raised the valuation of reputation and therefore of our recommendations, one to another, it would kill the incumbents.

Who would stick with the few cents of Adsense if instead you had a way of being rewarded for the recommendations you give freely to those you know will value them?

It’s a micro-relationships model, but not a micro-payment one. Car manufacturers have been know to pay up to £300 to large media outfits for a lead which results in a test drive. We as individuals will come to expect equal returns in our niches.

That’s mostly because our recommendations come with our reputations and micro-relationships tightly bundled to them.

We don’t give our recommendations lightly. False recommendations are taken personally. We lose friends. Your recommendations would become ultimately worthless. And we understand that recommendation is in the eye of the perceiver – and we don’t want to lose face by giving friends something they perceive as ill conceived. (Yes, I do think my recommendation to you is more valuable than a recommendation from some form of mass media broadcasting at the lowest common denominator of its audience.)

We know our friends (our communities of purpose) in ways advertisers – even Google – can’t touch.

The future is not in-context, related, targeted. It is in conversational flow (with all the real-time that suggests), peer-to-peer recommendation and consistently and constantly validated reputation - otherwise known as human relationships.

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Come on out, the land is lovely!

On Friday I was asked for my thoughts on the UK Government's appointment of Andrew Stott as its Digital Engagement Director.

The reporter who contacted me said there was some concern that this node-connecting role, this leader of democratizing democracy and breaking down internal and external silos, should have some form of social media creds.

The most critical factor in success in social media is not having been CEO of Facebook or similar. It is being human. Andrew Stott most assuredly ticks that box.

But then, so do we all. (Image courtesy Webecho)

So what else might be helpful for the Andrew Stott's of this world?

I take a Darwinian view about success in the networked world - it is dependant on your adaptation to the new environment. And one thing is certain about adapting to an environment; first you have to live in it.

You have to flip your fishy self out of the receding waters of traditonal media (and traditional non-networked approaches to comms and value-creation, full stop), and try gasping for air on the edge of this new land.

You have to start developing the rudimentary stubby legs required - and adapt to breathing air - if you want to start leading others into this new landscape.

So, I hope Andrew Stott has been blogging away for years, learning the new ways of distribution and the epic fail of total control when making widgets. I have fingers crossed that he is Mr Two-Way Comms on twitter, where he is joining in the adhoc forming and reforming of communities of purpose on a daily basis.

And I look forward to bumping into him because surely we'll be expressing similar metadata at some point...?

You have to experience the biggest shift in communication and value creation since the printing press for yourself to have any chance of adapting to it and leading others through that adaptation.

Now, I can hear the stubborn old-school business bosses even now making the argument that you didn't need to be a book printer to understand the impact the book would have on society. You could academically dissect what was going on and predict what was likely. You could buy in a management consultancy to advise and you could make the right business decisions as a result.

Perhaps you could with books.

But the revolution of the web of co-operation is more complex, and arguably even more seismic, than Gutenberg's contribution. It is less mass and more niche. Less supply chains - more adhoc communities of purpose.

Long tails reach everybody and everything, hits don't.

The web of co-operation empowers everyone it touches. Broadcast media informs everyone it touches - in one direction only. The power flows in similar ways. The network is different - a web, not a chain.

If you could have had a stab at post-printing press rules for business success by analysing the supply chain of book publishing then for our latest revolution you must look at the shifts in who produces content, who distributes it, who controls the user experience, who controls the way in which people organise - to achieve any and everything. You have to think about all the twists and turns of the coming Eighth Mass Media.

In the eighth mass media we are the connections and how the connections are made. If you are neither a node nor a connector and have not experienced the value in bringing one extra node to a network (to a community of purpose) then I fear you'll struggle to understand how different life is up here on the dry land.

Looking with your fish eye from below the surface of the water you're going to get a very distorted view of this emerging new land.

To try to direct activity on it from under the waves seems a little optimistic.

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Big questions for social media strategy

Tom's updated The Building Blocks of Social Media Strategy diagram after a first round of feedback.

It's getting nice and simple. You can judge if its getting clearer for that.

I've got a few broadbrush questions to throw into the pot. I have in mind some answers - but I'd rather raise them first before joining in with my own responses.

Here's some things we might consider:

• Let's think about the actions in each case. Perhaps this will help clarify the language? What is it that must be done to make the strategy reality - element by element?

• And to help that, let's maybe consider the Purpose of this project. Why are we doing this? What wrong are we trying to correct? Are we fed up of the smoke and mirrors and misdirection that many are using in the name of social media? Are we attempting to invent a language to describe a new set of actions?

• I thought it may be interesting to look at jobs, terms and processes which emerged as a result of the printing press (for a revolution of similar scale to the arrival of the networked world) and map that on to this project? (image courtesy)
  

For example there were scribes before and printers after. How would those people have started describing what they had to do to fulfil the strategic change? You'll be able to think of numerous other post-printing press roles and processesn - and results of these. How could that approach apply to mapping social media strategy?

Biggest question really is, 'the why,' though.

For example, if this is a project to reassure frightened people the result will be very different from one which is about evangelizing the truth - and different again from one driven by a desire to provide a toolkit for those ready to make fundamental change.

• And then there's the scope.

Is this a 6-24month transitional model (to help broadcast mindset businesses make their move to the networked world) or a 2-100 year transformational model taking account of the fact that the network will disrupt where-ever it touches and that the eighth mass media is upon us?

Big questions. And perhaps only answered by more than one model?

Tweetup! Social Media, Online PR, P2PR

If any of you are in Victoria, London tomorrow am (December 16, 2008), I'm free from just after 10am until noon and would love the opportunity to talk to you about some of the themes we've been discussing on this blog and on the p2pr community.

I'll have a video camera along for the ride to record your thoughts, too - if you're game.
Keep track of where and when via twitter!

Last time I did one of these we came up with the Eighth Mass Media. :-)

What's the opposite of email?

I'm a member of 100 or more online communities. Come to think of it, it has to be more.

I pretty much sign up for everything anyone recommends to me. Keeping abreast of the latest developments in the networked world is important in my job.

But it's also important for all of us as we become the eighth mass media.

We store some pictures here, others there. We find some music here, some there. Video likewise. There are our profiles in ecommerce to manage, multiple blogs, our bank accounts, competitions we enter, events we plan on attending...

That's before we get to our multiple profiles and interaction on social networks and through social media. Representations of our digital selves - with a heap of helpful meta data attached, are spread throughout the web. And we merrily distribute all this with no considerations for silos. We go beyond them without even acknowleding they are there.

So if I asked you to write a list detailing what and where, you wouldn't be able to complete one.
And if I asked you to confirm your username and password for each of these - you'd struggle even more.

Few of us are organised enough to keep lists in secure places and back up multiple versions.

So how is that our networks don't collapse out of simple forgetfulness - or even through our failure to personally persist?

How do we keep track of all this? How do we open the doors when we lose vital passwords?

There are two hubs right now which go beyond the silos: your email address and your mobile phone number.

It's clear to me that right now that email address remains the core one.

In my case, my gmail address is where the alerts and reminders arrive, where lost account details can be sent to. It's a sign-in for some functions, too. Gmail even has todo lists now. Without my gmail account my network would be at risk of collapse. Your phone number performs a similar function in the other digital world of peer-to-peer - sms text messaging and calls.

So for all the demand for our own portable id we can take from social network to social network, we already all have a simple, ubiquitous id which acts to collate our disparate identities and metadata - our email accounts.

Yes email has its problems, email has its spam, email has its overloads. But even if you ONLY use it for registering yourself throughout the web, you can't deny its fundamental importance in your digital life.

No wonder google came up with a rival for hotmail. Email is the place you are MOST locked into - beyond any individual social network and beyond even the widest reaching of the Open ID-Open Social-Friend Connect continuum.

What we need for the arrival of the eighth mass media is something which is as good at expressing our id and metadata outwardly just as broadly and effectively as your email account can collate it centrally.

What's the closest thing you've found so far?

What is the opposite of email?

Social Media Slideshare goodness

Delighted to say this slidedeck, which I shared in The More Digital We Become, The More Human We Become, yesterday, has been selected to be featured on the homepage of slideshare.
You can see it below. And in context, here.

Mobile's Role in Eighth Mass Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: mobile)

And while we're on the subject of sharing slides; here's a great deck from a regular member of the loosely connected community of purpose that is FasterFuture, Graeme Wood.

His slidedeck - which includes (with my whole-hearted blessing) a couple of slides from the deck above AND an investigation of the notion of The Eighth Mass Media, is a great synthesis of a lot of great social media thinking that's happening right now.

Graeme explains his deck here (which, again, will give you context).

I like the hint he gives us with his first slide. I've been saying as much myself: When we stop calling it social media and start just calling it media, then we'll know it's truly gone mainstream.

The Future Of Social Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: brands technology)

And finally, Neil Perkin - another of the loosely connected nodes of fasterfuture I'm happy to say, has recently shared this deck.

It's another fine piece of human-focused thinking from Neil and, as usual, beautifully presented.
Enjoy!

Don't say I never give you anything to do on a Friday!

Goodness And Happiness - Why Generosity Is The Future Of Marketing Strategy

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: digital planning)

By the way, if you feel you get value from FasterFuture, buy the book and pass it on :-)

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The more digital we become, the more human we become

The more digital we become the more connected we become, the more human we demand.

And the more human we become.

I spoke at Mobile Content 08 in London yesterday. It was a great event with a stella line-up: fjord's Christian Lindholm, flirtomatic's Mark Curtis (author of Distraction), msearchgroove's Peggy Salz, Sean Kane from Bebo, Melissa Goodwin from ITV, Ray de Silva from Vodafone and Graham Thomas from T-mobile. Not to mention Day One's chair JonathanMacdonald (ogilvyone and chief node in the Every Single One of Us project - which you MUST check out) Day Two's Tomi Ahonen (Communities Dominate Brands and mobile legend) and in attendance, Day Three's Andrew Grill (London Calling). And many more, of course.

I opened with a talk on mobile's role in the eighth mass media - which is why the line about the more digital we become the more human we become was so appropriate.

Here's the accompanying slide deck - though you won't find the line in it.

Mobile's Role in Eighth Mass Media

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own.

But the fact that The Power of The Network equates to the power of humanity is written through the idea of the eighth mass media.

As we become the connections and the way the connections are made we are reconnecting with our human selves.

We connect in a network - in adhoc self-forming communities of purpose. There is nothing from the centre. And the centre has a tendancy to dehumanise.

• The government line is very different from an MP's opinion.
• Company policy is very different from an employee doing what seems right and reasonable.
• Brand voice can't compare to a human conversation with someone who cares about what they are doing.
• Search engine optimisation can't beat my friends' recommendation (and of course their friends' recommendations)?

Now that we have the ability to organize ourselves through the tools to connect, what we are demanding is more human interaction.

Our connectedness in, through and beyond silos is tearing off the hard corporate masks and revealing the soft human faces. And we're ready to reach out and touch that warm flesh.

The digital future is a very human place to be. And for this, it is ever truer to who we are.

ThinkTank makes it easier to connect people who care

Delighted to say this post, which includes my user-is-the-destination now slidedeck and a video of me presenting it at widget web expo (London) has been short-listed for post of the month in Neil Perkins ThinkTank.

I hope you'll spare the time to go cast a vote for any of the very worthy candidates.

Neil's ThinkTank is a great way of connecting communities of purpose: People who care enough about something to make change happen.

The first step is discovering and connecting with people who share your purpose: People you didn't know you needed or needed to know.

Blogrolls (which in a disaggregated one-post-only kind of way is what ThinkTank is) perform this introduction extremely effectively.

It works as a distributed network of trust. Trust me and it's likely you'll trust my advice to check out ThinkTank.

Trust what you find there - and who knows how much value you will find in the new connections that leads you to.

You are on a journey to seek others who  have the same issues and challenges to solve.
If I can be part of that journey, great. If we join together on that journey, even better.
We are the eighth mass media.

Bonus link: Alan Moore on why brands need people and people need brands.

Alan Moore, Tomi Ahonen and me! At Oxford University; Dec 3-4

It's not often you get the opportunity to see both of the authors of the seminal Communities Dominate Brands in the same place at the same time (Alan Moore and Tomi T Ahonen) - and even rarer that you'll find yours truly joining them in what promises to be an exciting exploration of Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media.
Not only is that the title of Tomi's latest book, it's also the title of a course at Oxford University on December 3-4 led by Tomi, Alan and myself.

Hope you'll know someone who ought to be there! Book Your Place

The following is from the University of Oxford's Continuing Education site. 

About the Course

Mobile is emerging as the 7th mass media channel, whilst legacy mass media witnesses a decline. This course presents a journey through some of the most advanced content and media services deployed on mobile phones, in the most advanced mobile telecoms countries such as Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong and Finland.

Intending to build on the content of Tomi T. Ahonen’s sixth book ‘Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media’, the course provides a unique opportunity to explore the taxonomy of the seven mass media, with an emphasis on what lessons can be learned when newer media are introduced.

The course will begin by examining the overall industry and the consumers of mobile content, before moving on to explain how to build compelling content to mobile, and exploding the myths of the limitations of supposedly too small keypads and tiny screens. The most promising early media content types: music, gaming, TV, internet, advertising and social networking will also be discussed.
All delegates will receive a free copy of Tomi T. Ahonen's book Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media.

Tomi T. Ahonen speaks to CNN - watch the video here

Who is it for?

Anyone in the current legacy media space who wants to understand new media, thus digital media executives in television, print, radio, cinema, recordings industries and advertising; all in the internet businesses who are interested in the future of the web; and those within mobile who work with media and convergence. No prior knowledge of mobile telecoms or media is necessary.

Course Presenters

• Tomi T. Ahonen MBA, Independent 3G Strategy Consultant and Author
• Alan Moore, Author and CEO of SMLXL
• David Cushman, Director of Social Media, Brando Digital

Course Content

The environment of mobile
• Mobile industry ecosystem
• Digital convergence and mobile, 5 industries
• Customer of Mobile - Gen C

The 7 Media
• Legacy mass media Print, Recordings, Cinema, Radio, TV
• Internet as first interactive media
• Communities of Purpose and Long tail

Mobile as 7th of the Mass Media
• Inherently threatening
• interactive
• Seven Unique benefits of Mobile

Clash of the Media
• Print, Recordings, Cinema vs Mobile
• Radio vs Mobile
• TV vs Mobile
• Internet vs Mobile

Mobile Services and Applications
• Evolution of handset - 8 C's
• The Six M's service creation theory
• Widgets

Community and Mobile
• Group forming theory
• Mobile social networks

Marketing and Advertising
• Social Advertising Intelligence
• and mobile advertising

Making it magical
• beyond the obvious with some case examples
• Shazam, AQA, Blyk, Tohato, Flirtomatic, Cameraphone Dictionary
• Summaries, conclusions, Q and A

Venue

Department for Continuing Education, Rewley House, Oxford
First day registration from 8.30am when course materials will be distributed.
Refreshments from 8.30am on the first day plus two 30 minute breaks during the day and a one-hour lunch break.
The course will begin at 9.00am and end at approximately 5.00pm on each day.

• Book Your Place
  

Measure your change-readiness; find your leaders

The core competency of any business today is its readiness to adapt to the networked world.
How much is your business, not just preparing for change, but change-ready?

Measuring your level of change-readiness is the first step. Acting on what you learn from this excercise is the next. So, quite simply measure, the percentage of your people who are living in the network.

They are already adapting to survive. Follow them, encourage them, incentivize them and JOIN them.

What does that mean in real terms?

How many are active users of social networks (score higher for members of total communities - in which to take part you have to create part. Examples include facebook, myspace, bebo, twitter where the minimum requirement for involvement is that you create a profile).

They are learning the simple and powerful disruption of self-forming adhoc communities of purpose - the business units of the 21st century).

How many are creating blogs; with words, pictures, video or audio?
They are learning all about the disruption that we are all publishers now, all advertisers and all marketers now. They are learning how content connects people and people connect content. They are learning how to pool and share and create new value in value webs they control. They are creating networks of trust superceding anything the mass-focused centre can muster. And they are doing it inspite of, despite of, audience and for and with community.

How many have built and deployed their own widget? They have learned the user is the destination now, that it is more important to be taken with the user on their journey than to lead their horse to your chosen water.

Those who make widgets understand the content isn't theirs it is owned by the person who adopts it, who adapts it, who will pass it on with the same understanding to the next adhoc community of purpose they converse with.

So score your business for your social networkers, your bloggers and your widget makers.
You need to be beating the global averages - around 8% of internet users blog, more than 40% use social networks. The number of widgetisers can be lower - at present. We'll let you off with 5%.

Anything less and you need to take urgent action. Organise workshops, call in the experts but critically - listen to the people who are already doing it within your organisation. They are your keys to indiginous change - the most powerful kind. Listen and learn. This is an an important element of the next step: identifying your leaders.

So now get your venn diagram out.

Where those who blog, those who use social networks, and those who create widgets intersect, there you'll find those refusing to sheepwalk. They will be challenging your status quo and beating a path to success in the networked world.

These are the heretics. These are the people ready and willing to create and to be the eighth mass media. They understand WE are the distribution, the content, the 'user journey', how messages are transmitted... WE are the medium and the media carried within it.

We are the connections. We are also how the connections are made.

Support them, encourage them, incentivize them. They get the disruption - and what to do about it.

Be led by them.




As always, this is a work in progress, some thoughts in beta. Your adaptions welcome.

Zemanta: One great way to kick down the silo walls

Image of Jure CuhalevImage of Jure CuhalevI came across Zemanta some time ago. Probably via Fred Wilson, who I spoke alongside at Widget Web Expo in New York in the summer.
And Widget Web Expo in London last week closed the circle. Because I met one of the Zemanta crew. Jure Cuhalev came up to me after seeing me present on 'The User is the Destination Now - Widgets role in the Eighth Mass Media'.
No surprise given my central theme - my vision of where the networked world takes us, if you like.
In a nutshell, if you can connect in real time with people who share your purpose, globally, you get to solve more problems and create more value. One extra node on your network doubles its value, as Reed's Law would have it. People and what they say to each other are the way those connections are made.
But, the thing that restricts this exponential growth explosion is silos. In twitter I can only connect with people in twitter, who have already connected with me etc. Facebook is worse still.
Blogs are good, blogs and rss feeds and readers etc.
Zemanta does what BlogFriends tried. It introduces you to stuff and people you didn't know you need to know. And that's how adhoc communities of purpose form.
Zemanta takes this beyond silos by introducing me to things beyond my current network. It's an ambitious grab at creating that global hotdesk I've written about before.
They are still stuck in one crucial silo: language - it's primarily an English language tool. But Jure tells me they are working on that.
Wishing you luck guys - and from today, running it on this blog.
Zemanta (in their own words) delivers: "relevant content from all over the web... instantly as you blog.Builds traffic with immediate tagged links created between your posts and others sharing related conversations on all popular browsers and blogging platforms.
In short it connects people who share the same concerns. A great enabler for Communities of Purpose.

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The User is the Destination Now

I was lucky enough to present at Widget Web Expo in London earlier this week (which ran on October 6-7).
It gave me an opportunity to speak about the eighth mass media for the first time. The title of my talk was The User Is The Destination Now: Widgets' Role in the Eighth Mass Media.
In the usual manner, I've made the slidedeck available via slideshare. And I was also recorded on a Flip Mino, so you can see and hear me talk about the topics on the slides, while you view them.
Some credit where due: The eighth mass media builds on Tomi Ahonen and Alan Moore's concept of mobile as the seventh mass media. Find their work at Communities Dominate Brands. It's an idea in prototype and one I've been working on with Jonathan Macdonald.
The notion of widgets as great enablers of emulation is inspired by the ideas of Mark Earls' Herd (and particularly the Homo Mimicus reference).
The video is hosted by google, which means (unlike youtube) you can download it AND it can be more than 100mb and 10 mins (it's actually about 35 mins and 120+mb).

It's all below. Hope you'll enjoy.
It's messy at the edges - so do pick up the tools and join in.

By the way, I'm in Amsterdam today. Drop me a tweet if you are too.

The User Is The Destination Now

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: cushman david)

The eighth mass media: live and in person

I'm speaking at Widget Web Expo in London next week (Oct 6-7) on: The User is the Destination Now - Widgets Role in the Eighth Mass Media.
It's the first time I'll have rolled out the whole Eighth Mass Media thing to a live, in-your-face audience. So that'll be interesting.
Ivan Pope has organised a great line-up of speakers, so I hope you'll join me there. If it's anywhere near as good as Widget Web Expo New York it'll be a cracker.

That's next week. Today I'm in London to meet and interview Clay Shirky (with my copy of Here Comes Everybody in hand for him to sign!)

A big thank you to those of you who contributed questions here and on twitter. You'll see the results - thanks the Flip Mino I'm testing, on this blog later this week

Best Practice in Social Media? Best practice being human

The estimable Neil Perkin just tagged me as part of a 'Best Practice in Social Media' meme.
Trouble is Neil has said much of what I would have.

Actually, that's not a problem - it's a great thing that so many of us are converging around similar conclusions: Seth Godin, David Armano, Mark Earls, Jackie Danicki, Alan Moore, Euan Semple and seminally Doc Searls and the rest of the Cluetrain gang, to name but a few...

So yes I'll agree with Neil, once again, that human interactions are critical. (Image by dotbenjamin via flickr)

They are exemplified in notions such as P2PR, Lean-Too Marketing, The Intention Economy (which Doc was referring to more than two years ago, so I'm a late comer on that!) and summed up as best as I know how in this slidedeck:

Adapting Brands To The Networked World

View SlideShare presentation or Upload your own. (tags: internet network)

If you want a case study; try this. The slidedeck above also refers to some great examples of the use of social media.

Quick guide? Well I wrote this for 'how to blog'. Seems much of it is appropriate to all social media.


Time to tag: I nominate: Neville, Christopher, David, Mark and Jonathan
Dan was already tagged by Neil! This meme was started by Mitch.