04.19.10
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Will Eyjafjallajökull force business change?

There can’t be anyone left who’s not aware of the Eyjafjallajökull eruption in Iceland. Activity started on 20 March with a ‘curtain of fire‘ fissure eruption at Fimmvörðuháls, which sits in between two glaciers, then entered a second phase on 14h April with what’s known as a phreatomagmatic eruption actually under the Eyjafjallajökull ice cap. A phreatomagmatic eruption is one where magma reacts explosively with a water source, be it ground water, snow or ice, resulting in a plume of ash and steam.

I’ve been following the eruption closely since 20th March, mainly because my degree was in geology and volcanoes have always fascinated me. I love a good Hawai’i style eruption! When it was just a fissure eruption at Fimmvörðuháls it was basically a neat little tourist attraction, but things are much more serious now. This new phreatomagmatic eruption is a different kettle of North Atlantic cod, primarily because of the airspace closures that the ash cloud is causing.

Ash advisory graphic

Met Office ash advisory graphic

 

Disrupted air travel is not just affecting tourists who are stuck abroad or whose holiday has been cancelled, it’s also affecting business travel and, much more importantly, airfreight movements. Airspace closure of a day or so is one thing, but it has been six days and that is going to cause some significant problems not just for the airlines who are currently haemorrhaging cash, but for any business relying on goods transported by air, whether as part of a just-in-time supply chain or not. We may soon start to notice this as perishables like fruit and veg become restricted to locally-available and in-season produce.

It seems unlikely to me that this current eruption is going to cease any time soon. It is, of course, impossible to predict with any certainty what is going to happen, but historically Eyjafjallajökull has shown itself capable of prolonged (two year) eruptions and we need to accept that we might just be at the beginning of such a period of volcanicity.

If that’s the case, then the main factor we need to keep an eye on is the weather. At the moment, the winds are bringing the ash right towards Europe, with Norway and the UK bearing the brunt of it. If the weather changes and a southerly starts to push the ash plume up towards polar regions, for example, then hopefully that’ll clear the air and we’ll be able to start flying. However, I think we should at the very least start to prepare for a future in which air travel is unreliable and where we suffer ongoing sporadic airspace closures. Even if the weather changes enough that we can start to fly again mid-week, there’s no guarantee that we’re not going to see more bans in future.

What does this have to do with social media? Well, if I were a CIO right now, I’d be looking at making sure that everyone in the company has access to video conferencing software such as iChat or Skype, particularly those who usually travel a lot. I’d also be looking at encouraging clients, partners and customers to ensure that they too have these tools installed. I would also provide everyone in my company with IM, would install one of the better wiki platforms and start encouraging people to ramp down their business travel and use social media and video calls instead.

Now, admittedly if I was a CIO I’d be doing that anyway. When people have a choice they tend to choice the status quo over change, but necessity is the mother of invention adoption. Continued sporadic air travel bans will take choice away, so it is in business’ best interests to prepare now for what could be a long period of unreliable travel.

Business travel – such as for meetings, conferences, training – is something we’ve taken for granted. But we haven’t always done business that way and there’s no reason why we have to rely on face-to-face meetings now. Social media can step in to fill the gap, providing a better solution than conference calls alone. I wonder if Eyjafjallajökull is going to force the wider adoption of social tools as air travel once again becomes rare.

04.17.10
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links for 2010-04-17

04.16.10
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links for 2010-04-16

  • March ABCs: Grim month sees year-on-year fall for all quality dailie
    Kevin: "A grim month for quality daily newspapers saw large across-the-board year-on-year circulation falls in March, although the comparisons with February were less dramatic." This is one of the major problems with the print business. Circulation is down, and at some point, the economics of the print business will shift, probably irreversibly. At the moment, the legacy of a monopoly has allowed major newspapers to set ad pricing to support the high capital costs of print. That is changing. The biggest problem is that the it's not just about jumping the chasm, it's that the chasm to transition from the current business to the business they need is growing bigger.
    (tags: UK newspaper circulation)
04.16.10
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How does the Digital Economy Act affect your business?

As a social media consultant and an occasional digital rights activist, I paid a lot of attention to the Digital Economy Bill as it was frogmarched through Parliament. Like many, I was disgusted by the ill-informed nature of the debate about key problems with the bill and frustrated at how the politicians seemed to have been entirely captured by the music industry lobbyists, particularly the BPI.

The Bill is now an Act and whilst there are many aspects which are appalling, such as the threats to disconnect accused copyright infringers without any recourse to a proper hearing, I am very concerned about the chilling effect that this legislation is going to have in industry. Not just the internet industry, but all industries that use the internet. If you have a marketing campaign that solicits contributions from your community, if your business model includes any kind of aggregation, if you provide a wifi connection free of charge to visitors or guests, you could be affected by the Act.

Indeed, I’ve already noticed the chilling effect on my own thoughts about social media. What would I advise a client to do to ensure they are as safe as they can be of the unintended consequences of this bill? Is that even possible? What role will encryption now play in day-to-day interactions with the internet? Should I be advising clients against using third party tools that could potentially get taken down because they might possibly be used by others for infringing acts?

I’d very much like to hear your thoughts about how you think the Digital Economy Act might affect your business. Please do leave a comment.

04.16.10
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XMediaLab Sounds Digital: Ken Hertz and the music industry

Here’s some live blogging I did on Twitter and ScribbleLive about the XMediaLab Sounds Digital event in London.

First I’ll give you the ‘raw’ feed from Twitter and then ScribbleLive. After that, I’ll briefly cover some of the major themes. If you want to jump directly to my summary and analysis, just go here.

From my updates on Twitter:

Ken Hertz: In a world of overwhelming choice (in content), filters become important #xmedialab << filters, discovery, relevance

Ken Hertz: Piracy didn’t cause problems in the music industry. Connectivity created problems. #xmedialab

@kenhertz says: Pad and iTunes same model as Sony, why didn’t they win, rather than Apple? Apple sells convenience.#xmedialab

@kenhertz: “Music is the best way to sell other shit.”#xmedialab eg ‘Using Dr Dre to sell headphones’

@kenhertz: Music industry never was good at marketing. In 1998, released 32,000 albums, only 250 sold 10,000 or more#xmedialab

@kenhertz: Copyright act was intended to incentivise access to content by enabling middle men. Artists never made any money. #xmedialab

@kenhertz didn’t know title of the UKDigital Economy Bill. He thought it was called the Digital Enforcement Act. #debill#xmedialab

@kenhertz: Record industry never sold music. Sold plastic discs because it was the most convenient way to sell music.#xmedialab

@kenhertz: People with no resources and no money can become important quickly. That’s never happened in the media industry. #xmedialab

@kenhertz: (Music industry) in a world of unlimited shelf space, marketing is everything.#xmedialab

From ScribbleLive:

  • 6:07 AM: kevglobal @kenhertz: Says that Jill Sobule raised $80k for her next record.
  • 6:07 AM: kevglobal jillsnextrecord.com
  • 6:08 AM: kevglobal Jill Sobule created different levels of support.
  • 6:09 AM: kevglobal The highest level of support for Jill Sobule: $10,000 – Weapons-Grade Plutonium Level: You get to come and sing on my CD. Don’t worry if you can’t sing – we can fix that on our end. Also, you can always play the cowbell.
  • 6:10 AM: kevglobal Ken Hertz mentioning over and over how discovery, filters and marketing are the future of music “in a world with unlimited shelf space”. However, it’s also about trust, emotion and connection.
  • 6:11 AM: kevglobal Ken Hertz says that the CD was “essentially bridge technology”. All the limitations made us think that we were charging for delivery of music.
  • 6:11 AM: kevglobal Ken Hertz commenting on the Digital Economy Bill. “Holding ISPs responsible for peer-to-peer file sharing will not result in a reduction of peer-to-peer file sharing.”
  • 6:13 AM: kevglobal “In a future of unlimited memory, unlimited connectivity, the internet creates a big jukebox in the sky.” Ken Hertz. You can’t build your future on a bridge technology.

(Sorry about the odd time stamps. I didn’t set it from where I was at. No, this isn’t happening at 6am.)
The Analysis:

On a number of instances, people have drawn parallels between the music industry and its struggles to adapt to digital and the news industry. The music industry has long been fighting against peer-to-peer file sharing and piracy. (Piracy is a very contentious term, but that’s the term the industry uses. It’s not only contentious as a term but also contentious in terms of the data, see a recent US government report asking questions about the data on piracy and its impact on the music industry.)
In the news industry, we have major figures in the industry calling Google and other aggregators parasites and trying to figure out ways to charge for content in a digital age.
Much of what the music has seen and has tried the news industry is now thinking about. Well, more accurately in the news industry the state of play is this: Thinking about, shouting at each other about, thinking some more about, shouting some more just in case one wasn’t understood during the first round of shouting, threatening in case the shouting wasn’t intimidating enough and then mostly waiting for someone else to try it first.
Ken Hertz showed the problem for the music industry switching from selling CDs for $16 to selling digital downloads for 99 cents. Anyone can see how this would affect revenues for the music industry. He quoted Jeff Zucker who said that the entertainment industry was trading analogue dollars for digital dimes. This is pretty well known territory for this discussion.

However, he took the discussion in a different direction. He pointed out that in 1998 (I believe that this is a US number not a global number), that the music industry released 32,000 albums but only 250 sold more than 10,000 copies. “The music industry was never good at marketing,” he said. Copyright is not about protecting content or paying artists but about incentivising access to content by encouraging middle men, he said. “The artists have never made money,” he said.
The CD was essentially a ‘bridge technology’. It was the most convenient way to deliver music up to that point, much more effective than LPs or tapes, which is why many people replaced their collections with this new format. “The music industry never sold music,” he said, adding, “we sold plastic discs because it was the most convenient way to sell music.”

However, the internet proved even more convenient. Asking a rhetorical question, he wondered why Apple with the iPod and iTunes managed to succeed with digital music instead of Sony, which had natural advantages. He said that Apple understood that it wasn’t selling music but rather convenience.
Fundamentally though, Ken talked about a music world with “unlimited shelf space”. This returns to one of the major themes of 2010. Smart content companies are realising that abundance causes more problems than scarcity. “Piracy didn’t cause problems in the music industry. Connectivity created problems,” he said. It created more choice than anyone could possibly handle, and it created an incredibly convenient distribution mechanism.
However, in a world of overwhelming choice, filters become important. Trust, emotional connection and marketing also become important. The future that he sees is one with unlimited storage and unlimited connectivity. That takes the convenience and choice that we have now and makes it look like scarcity. That’s the future that the music industry (and actually any content) industry needs to prepare for.

04.15.10
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Journalism’s loss might be an opportunity for other sectors

It’s no secret that media companies are shedding jobs left, right and centre and it’s unlikely that those jobs will ever be replaced, even once the recession is over. Conservative estimates say that the number of journalists employed by the industry will decrease by 40% – 50% compared to before the crash. Less conservative estimates put that figure at 80%. Journalism schools, on the other hand, are producing more graduates than ever before. So what is going to happen to all these journalists?

The obvious path would be for them to go into PR and certainly many ex-journalists do. But this is an amazing opportunity for businesses in every sector, as Adam Tinworth and David Meerman Scott point out. David says:

[M]any organizations — corporations, nonprofits, government agencies, and educational institutions — finally understand the value of what I call “brand journalism,” creating interesting information online that serves to educate and inform consumers. People in companies now realize web marketing success comes from creating content-rich web sites, videos, podcasts, photos, charts, ebooks, white papers and other valuable content.

However, many of the companies I speak with are trying to figure out who will create the content that they need for their online initiatives. Marketers, executives, and entrepreneurs say things like: “David, I need help. If I knew how to create great content, I’d already be doing it.”

At every speech I deliver I say to corporations one of the best ways to create great Web content is to actually hire a journalist, either full- or part-time, to create it. Journalists, both print and broadcast, are great at understanding an audience and creating content that buyers want to consume–it’s the bread and butter of their skill set.

The rise of social media as a community engagement tool – and blogging in particular as a tool for companies to get their own, unedited story out – means that there is an increasing need for talented storytellers and communicators. Writing full time is not as easy as it looks and the skills that journalists bring to the table are valuable and hard to acquire.

Businesses who want to really bump up their social media presence should seriously consider hiring dedicated writers in addition to any evangelist program. Of course, you still have to take care that you’re hiring someone with the right sort of social media nouse (or at least, the right attitude and a willingness to learn about social media), which is not something all journalists have. But nevertheless, there’s a huge pool of talent searching for work right now and businesses would be daft to ignore it.

04.15.10
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links for 2010-04-15

  • Teaching Online Journalism » What you should know about HTML5 today
    Kevin: Mindy McAdams, a journalism educator in the US who has done a lot of work with Flash, looks at HTML5, video and the Canvas javascript library. It's a good post looking at the how soon we can expect HTML5 to be fully implemented in mainstream browsers. I think that we'll see HTML5 move a bit more quickly seeing as it's implemented to some extent already in Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera. The implementation of video and friction not just over Flash versus H.264 but also with Ogg Theora will mean that agreement on video will take a little longer. Mindy's got a good, clear-headed post here especially from the standpoint of educators.
    (tags: html5 flash journalism webdesign apple html education)
04.14.10
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BBC Backstage five year retrospective

The BBC’s developer community, Backstage, is swiftly approaching five years old and I have been asked by Ian Forrester if I would put together a retrospective. We are, of course, going to do some mash-ups, but we’re not just interested in collecting data, we want people to share with us their stories and memories too.

I’ve got two proto-mash-ups in progress that I’d love anyone who took part in Backstage, even if only briefly, to consider contributing to. The first is image-based: We are looking for your favourite photos and images of Backstage and the stories behind them. The images might be a photo from a Backstage event that you really enjoyed, or a screenshot of a prototype you developed or a visualisation of BBC data that you put together. We don’t mind what type of image it is, just so long as it’s online and you can tell us a bit about it.

Our second project is map-based: We’d like you to tell us what your favourite experiences of Backstage were. Perhaps a prototype you put together, an event you went to, or something else completely. We’d also like to know where you are based (at whatever level of detail you feel comfortable) so that we can see how far Backstage reached.

Both mash-ups are based on Google Docs so the two forms are embedded below. In both cases, if you add info to the spreadsheets we take that to mean that you’re happy for us to reuse your contribution.

Right, here are the forms!

Or go here for the Images mash-up form!

Or go here for the Mapping Backstage form!

04.14.10
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Leopards don’t change their spots

Angela Connor points out that, just because you’ve built a lovely new community doesn’t mean that people will change their habits and visit yours over their existing networks:

Your new community, no matter how great will not change habits. What I mean by this is you will not be able to stop potential members from posting on Facebook or twitter or their favorite Ning community. If you are assuming that your new community will become the new gathering place for those belonging to the niche, I think you will be disappointed.

Whatever your community is, whether it’s a brand community or an internal social network, people will only create a new habit around your offering if it consistently gives them something really valuable. Communities take an awful long time to build. Like everything else in social media, there’s just no ‘quick win’.