‘TMI’ may stand for Too Many Infographics

For a recent article in  CW magazine I interviewed Alberto Cairo of who teaches at the University of Miami, FL.

One of the questions I asked him was if infographics was being over-used today.  His answer was an unconditional yes! Tons of substandard projects, in fact.

There are “dozens of dubious graphics and “infoposters” that were not designed as tools to aid cognition and understanding,” he said. The problem? People think that by just compressing numbers side by side with ‘cute illustrations’ they could come up with an infographic.

If you like to read more about from Cairo, who’s the director for infographics and multimedia, here’s a link to my article. He’s also got a great blog, a companion to his upcoming book, Functional Art.

He refers to my interview with him in a post, A conversation on marketing, PR and infographics. He makes a great point there. That all this massaging of information is not bringing out the clarity we need. Especially when infographics are being “designed to attract eyeballs with bells-and-whistles.” In my interview he put it another way. “Infographics’ first goal is not to be cool, but to be understandable, readable, useful, and deep.”

I just came across one of these bells-and-whistles infographics. It is on the Kony 2012. I’m not sure what the purpose is and how it really helps us to know how the Kony interest stacks up with other, trivial YouTube videos. Here’s the link to that.

Compare that to this, below, posted by Cairo. It’s a work in progress, by students at a workshop. But you get the drift.

 

Human Microphones thwart heavy-handed bans

I’ve always been tempted to play with IABC‘s tagline, ”Be Heard.” Do we business communicators really want to be the noise makers and talking heads? Or do we rather want to be the ‘inside voice’ of business strategy?

That’s why when I first began paying attention to the ’Occupy” movement (OWS and its franchises  Occupy Oakland, Occupy Denver, Occupy Phoenix etc) I argued that we shouldn’t be too hasty to think of them as a fringe movement craving  just to be heard. Hard to pigeon hole, it was too easy to dismiss them because they didn’t fit the model of activist movements. I was reminded of  something innovators have reminded us from time to time. Disruptive ideas do not stem from existing templates. Marshall McLuhan put it well when he observed “I don’t know who discovered water, but it wasn’t a fish.”

Watching OWS evolve, it is interesting to see how they are inventing a  new template for being heard. Make that being taken seriously. They may be leaderless, but have found ways to have their own media team, financial system, and trademark bids. And I don’t mean media in the way we tend to think of it -the kind that come with a lens, a ‘like’ button, or segmented followers.

Much of the media we see being used in these movements are crude hand written signs.

When OWS group figured out that since electronic speakers and microphones are banned in public places (or require special permits) they created what’s known as the ‘Human Microphone’ –basically humans, en mass, repeating something a speaker says so that the sentences get carried across vast spaces of crowds. It sounds like a messy echo, but it is richer than the echo-chamber.

They have also begun another remarkable project in amplification: they are printing their own newspaper. Ok, that’s not new media. But it’s old media in a brand new way. (The fact that it is called, provocatively, the ’Occupy Wall Street Journal’ may be a brilliant stroke of creativity.) But what really interests me is how they could do it with no real editorial hub, no newsroom, heck, no editor! (CORRECTION: See comment from Jen Sacks, below.)

There’s a livestream, of course, and someone who amounts to a news anchor.

How will this change media? Even if you’re not directly working in the media how this movement works with the groundswell will become one of the most lasting tutorials for anyone wanting to be heard.

 

Messing around in class

Where is the classroom headed?

Having spent the past 20 some years around practitioners of the Montessori method (my wife runs a school) it has been interesting to observe how the ‘revolutionary’ advances in education today borrow heavily from the principles established by Maria Montessori.

So when I approached the topic for a long feature on how progressive educational institutions are planning to better engage students, I had this at the back of my mind. Moves to increase student engagement, and attempts to nudge the ‘sage off the stage,’ and student directed teaching appear to fit well with how Maria Montessori envisioned education. It’s also why some colleges and schools are quietly incorporating social media.

According to a 2010 survey from the Educause Center for Applied Research, 40 percent of undergraduates report updating wikis, and 25 percent use social bookmarking.

The article, titled “Messing around in class”  was published in Communication World magazine. I am truly grateful to three people I interviewed.

• Hans Aagard of Purdue University
• Michael Netzley of Singapore Management University
• Lisa Young of Scottsdale Community College

You can find a PDF of the article here. http://bit.ly/AFedu1

 

Tablets, digital media coming to a school near you

I have been covering the intersection of technology and education recently, and have interviewed some amazing people at the forefront of the changing classroom.

One of them was Hans Aagard, senior technologist at Purdue University, Indiana. I was intrigued by that university’s approach –plunging in with a social networking application called Hot Seat. It is being used not just on campus, but in the classroom, while the lecture is in progress.

But yes, we are running into mixed signals.

• While some teachers get their students to create content for topics that have been poorly covered or badly written in Wikipedia, many schools ban on students using Wikipedia.
• A 2010 survey found that 62.7 percent of US undergraduates surveyed say they owned an Internet-capable handheld device, but many universities have signs posted outside lecture halls about turning off cell phones and electronic devices.
• Faculty worry that too many screens in class could be distracting to the student and to others, while some high schools have made tablets and laptops integral to the learning experience.

More on this soon. My article was just published in a Sept-Oct issue of Communication World magazine.

So it was a pleasant surprise to see the subject “What Will School Look Like in 10 Years?” taken up in the New York Times  last week. I was particularly interested in the comment by David Silvernail, dir. at the Center for Education Policy, Applied Research and Education. He would rather schools invest in small amounts of technology …to teach students process skills, not just plunking shiny objects in their backpack and expecting them to automatically become smarter. Is he swimming upstream?

• Also just recently South Korea announced it would swap paperbacks for tablets by 2014.
• My son’s former high school introduced tablets last year.

I have to admit I have mixed feelings on this.

I teach a robotics class in elementary school. For the past few classes I have been driving  home the importance of research. Finding solutions to problems they never knew existed.  I send them off to encyclopedias, dictionaries and other print material -on purpose. I could easily get them to log on to computers and search –there are more than 20 PCs in the room! But that would be too easy. I don’t want to hold up a think-outside-the-box mantra for problem solving and stick them in front of a… box!

 

Are you surfing the web or swimming in print?

My recent column in CW (Communication World) magazine is the beginning of what has become an introspective view of where we are headed with all this digital content seeping out of every pore. I borrowed the headline from a campaign for the magazine industry that uses the word ‘swimming’ (in print) to compare it to what they suggest is a less engaging online experience of surfing.

The point I suggest is that we are creatures (and should be connoisseurs) of both worlds.

Download the article here.

The follow up to it will take it further – dealing with ‘Content Snacking!’

If you think that’s a fascinating phrase, consider the phrase ‘Micro Boredom.’ I had not heard of it before. Apparently it had been used by Motorola a few years back. 

 

Juggling radio and webinars –a lesson in distraction

I had as a guest in the studio Bart Butler, an IABC member ho wanted to do a  story of my radio show. So it was really flattering to see what came of it –an article in EDIT EXPRESS, the online newsletter for members bt members.

Bart came at  good time. Bad really because this was a week during which I was sandwiching in one of my webinars and the show, among other things. So the point he picked up,(that  radio is non distracting medium) has been on my mind a lot. Here’s why: As we put on our hats as content creators, it could be very annoying to deal with the glue and tape (and that conduits and access points) of media distribution. I find this point being driven home by a book i am not reading, Cognitive Surplus, by Clay Shirky, who talks of the fragmentation of the concept of ‘media’ today. It used to be a word that bundled process, product and  output. But I digress.

Here is his article: Social Media Guru Goes Retro…with Radio

I like to add one thing, Bart: The only reason we seem ‘relaxed’ on radio is that conversations are relaxing. Whether they happen on-air, online or offline. The moment you remove the talk-back button, that’s when sweat breaks out for me!

OK, two things. Please don’t use the word guru!

 

Should BP spin its wheels on its pesky little PR problem?

I bet this will be question that many presenters on crisis communications and PR turn to –at the IABC World Conference in Toronto this week, and many other events.

Variations of this question could come range from “can social media rescue a company’s reputation,” to “Is this a warning shot for corporations dabbling in social media?”

You could say BP which has the  nation’s largest environmental crisis on its hands should ignore the PR disaster they have inherited (as Len Gutman at ValleyPRBlog noted, “There are some things PR can’t fix”) and stick to fixing what it has wrought. It’s near impossible for them to address the ‘wisdom’ of the passionate crowd leveraging new media.

Take these responses to the oil spill:

• The BP Logo Redesign Contest. I’ll don’t need to tell you what this means in a Web 2.0 world where images are shared, commented on and archived forever.

• Fake Twitter Account for ‘BPGlobalPR’: With 129,000 followers and counting, it shows how seemingly powerless Goliath is when David’s got the slingshot. The tweets themselves are entertaining.

• Facebook Protests, including this one calling for a Worldwide BP Protest Day in the coming week -12 June 2010

• More logo attacks on Flickr - Behind the logo group

• Wikipedia edits. Lots of activity on the discussion pages of BP’s Wikipedia page, where editors this week seem to be dredging up –still unpublished– unsavory details of cancer etc.

In the face of all this, what in the name of crisis communications is the value of the full page ad in the New York Times, and some of those TV spots? Is there any value in using old media Tylenol-type tactics to fix the situation BP is in? I recall BP used to run a great series of ads, when it was re-branding, that said things like “It’s time to go on a low carbon diet.”

I think its time for BP to go on a low PR diet!

 

Still thumbing your nose at Wikipedia?

Cross posting this from the IABC Blog.

I’m not sure what you think of Wikipedia, but there are many people -communicators and business people – who are still deeply suspicious of it, even though they continue to dip in and out of it to ‘check on something.’Students use it but sparingly, it seems. Most people I asked said they use it a lot. I was curious about this ambivalence, and wanted to find out how distrust can work alongside usefulness. But the more I looked, the more I became convinced that it’s time for serious communicators to put those early notions aside and take a second look at something that has changed knowledge sharing in a remarkable way. This is the topic of my article in the upcoming July-August CW magazine, but before it hits your mailbox, here’s something that might whet your appetite.

• Did you know that over 50 percent of edits are made by less than one percent of Wikipedia users?
• Did you know that there are hundreds of articles waiting in a queue to be edited, completed, fact-checked, etc.?

If you’ve been one of those people who have complained loudly that some of the articles are patently written by some 14-year old, then here’s your chance to do something about it. If you’re one of those folks who proudly inserts the term ‘crowd-sourcing’ into a PowerPoint presentation or discussion on social media, then here’s a great opportunity to get some dirt under your fingernails and see how it really happens.

I love the idea of crowd-sourcing myself, and quite frankly, I had stayed off the Wikipedia edit pages for awhile -after some very simple edits many years ago. The coding (wiki syntax) is not easy to remember unless you dabble in some HTML. But you don’t need to know a lot to start. When I got back to it, what I found was fascinating. Even outside the realm of serious ‘collective intelligence,’ one of the great side effects of Wikipedia is that it has turned into a site to go to for event coverage. Like a global team of citizen journalists, passionate editors quickly add detail to a breaking story like some back-room iReporters. Their bylines are cryptic usernames, and they don’t seek recognition. Some news tidbits don’t always show up in the main article –until the edit wars and discussions are settled– but they are a rich source of information. Maybe you could be one of those contributors as well!

But as I explain in the article, there is a lot of serious content you may be able to contribute to. Wikipedia needs more editors, writers, and good content specialists. Even persnickety fact-checkers, punctuation freaks and content curators. In other words, people like you who yearn to inform and are natural collaborators.

If you like to get an idea of where you could start, Wikipedia has some areas for you waiting to be worked on. Check these out:

Requested Articles: these are internal links (known as, and seen as, ‘red links’) that go nowhere, so basically they are articles waiting to be created.  Type WP:RA into the search box to find them. Plenty of topics to choose from.

Articles for Creation: Type in WP:AFC to get started on an article. It takes you thgrough the basic steps and policies, and points to an article wizard.

There’s work to be done in updating small things, if not writing full-blown articles. Consider your local IABC chapter perspective. Of the 100 or so IABC chapters, only 13 have been listed here, with external links, that is. This is up from 10 chapters when my article went to print.

Go for it!

 

Community as fire pit?

So what’s your definition of a community?

Members of your Facebok fan page? Those hundred-something peeps who follow you on Twitter? How about the ex colleagues of a former workplace in a large, unwieldly Google Group?  You probably have a stake in all or most of these right?

Building a community is one part of the equation. Nurturing one –being the ‘community organizer’ — is something else.  My latest column in CW, the magazine of IABC talks of some easy ways to build an online community.

I think we often get distracted by the word media, and pay lip service to the word social. My definition of a community is a fire pit. It can be small, it is noisy, always generates some sparks, but it draws people together.

• If you’re an IABC member, here is the page and article. (Sign in required.)

• If you’re not, here is a link to a PDF –no sign-in, but do give me some feedback

Enjoy!

 

Opt-in meets experience using QR Codes

Anyone dabbling in communication tends to stoop at the altar of speed and instant gratification. They seem similar, but they are not. Speed of response or implementation is a critical component for some organizations, some industries.

Speed, in today’s world, is a given. If you’re in customer service and you don’t respond fast to an inquiry, you lose a lead. If you don’t respond to a complaint, you risk turning a small hiccup into a major snafu.

Instant gratification is a different animal. We gloss over what it really involves by regarding it with such clicles about ‘delighting the customer’ etc.

But what I am interested in is a hybrid of speed and instant grat. Especially the ability to deliver targeted information to mobile devices, since we are beginning to use our phones not just as lap-top replacements, but as a means to interact with content related to our professional and personal lives.

Custom QR code I created for Public Radius

That’s why I like the idea of Quick Response Codes – QR Codes. I covered it in a recent column for a magazine (IABC’s Communication World).

If it sounds too geeky, it’s not. Actually it’s more user-friendly than a typical bar code. Unlike a bar code you embed it with information that is linked to content you point it to somewhere on a server or blog. That content could be any digital file, such as a PDF, podcast, video or photo album.

If you like to read the article, here’s a link to a PDF

Updated: The QR code on the left is something I created for my company, Public Radius. Many of these codes can be photographed by a cell phone that seamlessly connects the device to content.  Some of  them require an initial download of an app. Some work without it –like a short code.