I've been asked to become a contributor to a new local Vermont blog about Vermont 3.0 Tech Careers. It's a website devoted to a Career Jam (one of the sponsors is Champlain) event that began last year and will be held again this year on October 25th, and to the use of "3.0" technology here in Vermont. All of it pulled together by SevenDays. (By the way, I'll be on an Internet Marketing panel at the Career Jam this year which will also feature colleagues, Amanda Crispel on gaming and Frank Canovatchel on web development).
Yes...Vermont.
Land of Cows and crazy politics.
We got tech. Oh yeah baby, we got real tech.
So I'll be blogging periodically over there, and over here I'll blog about what I blogged about over there...and so on. Should be grand fun.
In honor of Blog World Expo...which I am NOT attending (follow the Tweet Stream here) I thought it would be fun to add another in my series on Social Media and the Presidential Campaign and how they are using their "official" blogs to communicate with you and I -- the people of this great nation.
First and foremost let's get really clear on what a BLOG is.
According to Knol (Googles response to the academic backlash against Wikipedia) poster Duncan Riley,
A Blog is a website that consists of text, images, media objects and data, arranged chronologically and underpinned with a content delivery system which provides the ability to deliver content frequently and with little skill. Blogs have a strong focus on building meaningful social connections or virtual communities on any and all subject matters.
This works pretty well for my purpose today, which is to examine the blogs of Barack Obama and John McCain. That last sentence, in particular about "building meaningful social connections" is pretty key.
How are the campaigns using their blogs? How are they using technology to "build meaningful social connections"? Well in past posts I've highlighted how both campaigns are tossing out the MySpace and Facebook links and creating social spaces within their own sites. I've show how the campaigns are fumbling (like the text message VP announcement of Obama) and how they've nailed it such as McCain's site redesign or Obama's fun ring tones. It leaves the sense that the campaigns are innovative and are using technology to leverage their messages in new and engaging ways.
Or not.
First of all staffers are doing the blogging. Ok. I get it. Barack and John are busy guys. They have TV appearances and the same speech to deliver in every "battleground" city all over the country (well, not here in Vermont). They have snarky ads to approve (snarky, my new word of the day...had to work it in here), and fingers to point (ok, now that's me being snarky). There's no time to draft a blog post that personally reaches out to your constituents and the voting public. Those ads are just plain good enough. Um. Yeah.
I've been subscribed to the Obama Twitter for some time and I get a tweet every time there's a speech in some town (usually in Michigan) directing me to their site to watch the live speech. Ohhh Ahhh.
So why am I being so cranky about this? It's because it drives me crazy that they aren't using their blogs in a way that bypasses all the traditional political idiocy. Want some examples? Of course you do!
Obama
Voices for Change: Teresa in Michigan. A political sob-story about a troubled American. Nice touch at the end of the post -- a big red DONATE button.
Barack Obama on the Terrorist Attack in Pakistan. Copy of their official statement. Same thing I'll hear on the news channels and at those speeches.
Democratic Radio Address: Senator Obama on the Current Financial Crisis with a link to the radio address (wonder why this one didn't come through on my Twitter!).
McCain
Weekly Radio Address with link to the audio file.
Report on a McCain-Palin Event in Minnesota. Yeah. Picture of a big crowd. Update urges me to go to the action center to "take action".
Report from a McCain-Palin Event in Iowa. No pictures of this one.
Not one of these things brings me closer to understanding either candidate. I'm being refed and recycled the same stuff I can get anywhere else.
So what SHOULD they do?
Leverage the technology of course. Write something PERSONAL and PERSONABLE and not handled. For example wouldn't it be nice to go to the blog and see that Barack has written something like this:
Between speech stops and trying to figure out how to best address the folks in *insert struggling town here* as we watch the financial crisis unfold. This isn't about fluff like "from wallstreet to mainstreet". This is a financial crisis unlike any we've seen and it will be my job to take the reigns and make a difference. How will I do that? We need to protect the taxpayer and the homeowner. We need to make sure retirement plans are strong. I plan to examine.....insert actual stuff here... Well...times up. The bus has just pulled in to *insert town here*.
So that just took me about 2 minutes.
Imagine going to the McCain blog and reading something like this:
And you folks don't think I know how to use a computer! I'm very troubled by the economic issues we are facing. Just a few days ago, I said the fundamentals of our economy were strong. And then overnight we face perhaps the biggest financial crisis of our country. Like you I am saddened and more than a little frustrated. I believe in free markets and do not like to have too much regulation, and yet, there are times when we have to step in and now is clearly one of those times. In my speech in *insert town here* in the next hour, I'll be outlining what I think should be done. Yes there will need to be regulation and yes there will need to oversight but at the same time it is vital we strike a balance.
But I don't think I will ever see any of this.
Why?
Because they are afraid. All of them -- you know the them I reference. The handlers and advisers and dare I say PR and Marketing folks (shame on you!) who want to control everything. Script it all. Avoid room for mistakes.
Blogs are there to build connection and what these campaigns are doing is just using a space on their website to allow a group of people to write stuff that is all about give me money and here's my new attack ad and here's this sob story so you should vote for us...
Sigh.
No innovation here.
Of course, perhaps there's nothing wrong with this at all and I'm just a naive, out of touch academic who has no real understanding of the political process.
It's a record. Really. Less than ONE FULL WEEK OF CLASSES and I'm already sick. Really really really sick. Been down for the count for five days so far and it's getting old. Really really really old (see, I'm so sick I'm channeling my 11 year old daugher...Really!).
So why blog today?
Convergent forces.
Great NYTimes Magazine article about "Ambient Awareness" and Facebook and Twitter. I can't say anything that really makes sense at the moment about it other than it's really really really good ... and stuff.
Secondly, our own local Burlington Free Press which has been playing with the Twitter thing has made a welcome change to their process! Woot!
Here's the Tweet I received today: @dliloia @PMGCreative @ejyoung67 Made changes to BFP's twitter channels. Now separated by topic. This is to reduce the major tweet dumps. about 3 hours ago from web
So now there is actually a "news" feed that has already alerted me to a moose on the loose and ballots missing at a local poling station. Not just the articles that are in the paper. Yeah BABY! That's the way to use the Twitter! But wait...it looks like I can also subscribe to:
So I'll be sending bfp_alert directly to my mobile phone because I'm going to assume that it will alert me to the critical news like major catastrophies and shootings etc. and the others I'll just add to my twitter stream.
Good conversations going on out there folks. Join the "ambient awareness" and the local news alerts, stay informed and...stay well. *cough* I'm off to bed.
It started roughly about six hours ago give or take. It was shortly after the McCain announcement of his VP pick: Sarah Palin.
As far as I can tell from the tweets, it was a lark. Yeah. That's it! A lark (love that word!). Anyway, a website was created called "Palin Facts". And then the tweets got started. Viral is NOT the word for this one.
Now you can add to the meme yourself with your "little known fact" about Sarah Palin. Some of my favorites so far are:
Sarah Palin is Spartacus.
Sarah Palin can win the VP nomination using nothing but a piece of gum and a paperclip.
Sarah Palin shot J.R.
Sarah Palin taught MacGuyver everything he knows.
Sarah Palin can catch salmon swimming upstream with her teeth
There is now someone on Twitter calling themselves "thefakesarahpalin" and there is also already a facebook application that you can add to your facebook.
Today we welcomed the freshmen class of 2012 here at Champlain.
For those of you who do the college thing, you'll understand what it is like to go from the sleepy summer campus to, in one day, a vibe that is all excitement, fear, anxiety, thrill and well...just fresh and new. Every year at this time you can feel the excitement in the air. You can touch the excitement.
It's in all the faces around you.
And I'm not talking about the freshmen!
Our current students who are Resident Assistants, Orientation Leaders and Peer Advisors put themselves out there today. They were full of energy, enthusiasim and downright silliness as they pulled out all the stops.
This year in particular is a new beginning for me as well. Having resigned as program director of the e-business and marketing programs, this is my first year at Champlain (and I've been here since 2000) that I will be 100% full time faculty. No administrative contract. No running any programs. Just focusing on the part of my job I love the most. Teaching.
The students, staff and faculty from Champlain College who left for South Africa on their research project have arrived. According to a very short note on the Games Take on Violence Against Women blog:
Long 24 hours of flights. Jet lag hasn't had a chance to hit yet. BUT we are here. Internet is spotty, weather is early spring - cold, damp. 40 Winks is a bed and breakfast establishment we are staying at. Yogurt and muesli for breakfast. Now we are off to the township. 40% of the Cape Town residents live in these. We saw them through our airport transportation. Little tin "rooms" with electricity strung high. That was brought in 8 years ago. Cape Town looks to be a city of diversity in many ways.
By now they have probably completed the tour -- they are 6 or 7 hours ahead of us. I wonder how they are doing. To be able to go on a trip like this when you are 19, 20 or 21. Can you imagine how it opens your eyes to a new world view? Shocks your norms? Shakes you up?
Here I sit, wondering. Here I sit in my old house, typing on my high-powered computer, wondering what they are seeing, wondering what they are doing and above all hoping they are coping and relying on one another during this profound time of growth.
The real work begins when they get back -- sifting through the interviews, the photos, the drawings and helping them to make sense of it all so everything they learned, everything they internalized can help them to create a game. A game like no other. An impossible game. And yet, if anyone can do it, this group of outstanding individuals will make it happen.
Meanwhile, I'll watch the blogs and the facebook and keep my skype open...just in case they reach out with some little bit of news.
Updated as of 11:30 a.m. : I finally received my e-mail from the campaign at 10:19 a.m. while I was eating breakfast at Maxi's (a wonderful local restaurant in Waterbury, VT) and watching CNN Headline News talk about it. Local blogger and newsperson Cathy Resmer has also commented on the a.m. wake-up call from the Obama Campaign over at Blurt, as has my sister in the comments below.
If the goal of the Obama campaign was to whip people into a frenzy via social media, (and in the process get way more email addresses and txt contact to mine for money) they did that. If the goal of the Obama campaign was to actually reach out to people directly to inform them of the VP choice, well in "professorial talk", they failed. They failed big time.
As we all know the frenzy has been building. About two weeks ago, the campaign announced that they would alert people through email and txt messaging so they would be "the first to know" who the VP was. Yesterday speculation was rampant. Traditional media outlets, especially CNN, were conducting interviews and stalking potentials. Everything they reported was echoed in the Twitter-verse where individuals were tweeting all day about waiting for their cell phones to go off.
Anticipation was high.
And then...
Well, here is how it went for me, an individual who signed up for the email, the text and the twitter.
12:55 a.m.: Breaking alert from CNN: CNN confirms Sen. Barack Obama has chosen Delaware Sen. Joe Biden to be his vice-presidential running mate.
3:27 a.m.: Text Alert from Obama 62262: Barack has chosen Senator Joe Biden to be our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3 p.m. ET on http://www.barackobaman.com/. Spread the word!
5:25 a.m.: Twitter Alert from BarackObama: Announcing Senator Joe Biden as our VP nominee. Watch the first Obama-Biden rally live at 3 p.m. ET on http://barackobaman.com/
I never received an email.
So, after all the hype and all the hoopla, at the end of the day CNN was the winner. The campaign did not reach me first. Media did. The conversation over at the twitter-verse, is as always diverse, interesting, silly and downright um...whatever. Check that out here: http://tinyurl.com/5ucaot.
What was the point anyway? An Agence France-Presse article headline reads: Obama's VP alerts trumped by media leaks. Others are writing about the frenzy and how it captured many news cycles. Regardless I have to admit to being disappointed. While a realist I do still have pockets of idealism hidden away and this one got me. We all know I dig the social media. I really see it as a sea change for how we get our information. So when a presidential candidate "looks" like they are going to side step the mainstream and go directly to the people, I get very excited. Even though, in the back of my marketing mind, I know, deep down inside it's all about hype. It's about data mining. And well, it's politics and the Obama Campaign is clearly a political machine.
The campaign website is updated with a new big donate splash page -- very inspiring picture of Obama and Biden together (got to LOVE Photoshop):
Bypassing the splash screen we now see on the website this banner first (don't they know that red is subconsciously a "stop" color ... a warning...a don't go there. They should pick a different color for their buttons. Seriously ... like green which is go):
However, the Obama store isn't ready yet (smile). No Obama-Biden merchandise...as of the writing of this post.
My final question is with all the hype about change and doing things differently, the only different thing that was done here was the campaign expertly manipulated the media AND the people who "wanted to know first" so they got the maximum news coverage. How is that change? Seems like the same old thing to me.
As the Olympics come to a close we are on the threshold of two vital events in the election of our next President -- the national conventions of the Democratic and Republican parties.
In just four days, the DNC Convention opens up with much pomp and circumstance in Colorado at the Pepsi Center in Denver. Here's their logo, which I was able to download from their website:
In 11 days, the RNC opens its convention doors in Minneapolis, St. Paul at the Xcel Energy Center in downtown Saint Paul, Minnesota. Here's their banner which I was able to get the code for from their website:
In preparation for my convention watching I decided to take a pre-look at the two sites to find out how I can stay connected with social media.
One has a page that shows all the different ways you can connect (with links) including: Blogging, Ustream.tv, YouTube, Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, LinkedIn and Digg. I can get banners for my website, and wallpaper for my computer. On the site I can sign up to to be a "digital delegate" and get updates via email so I'm "in the know". I can subscribe to the blog, news releases, general news of note, videos and convention updates with RSS. It's easy to navigate and follow and quite usable overall.
The other site has a blog that I can subscribe to and is using YouTube (actually had a contest using YouTube), and FlickR. I can sign up for an email newsletter. And well...that's it. As far as I can tell with a quick visit -- the amount of time a normal person would take to nose around a site like this to find things. It's a little challenging to navigate, the type is really small (I know...I'm old) and I'm not sure I have found everything that is available.
So which do I think is the better social media site?
Well as of right now, the RNC gets my vote. They have all the links to the different sites. The site is easy to navigate and they are providing me with many different ways to connect. The RSS feeds from the media page are particularly nice as is the banner code which I can add to my site. I really like the "Digital Delegate" feature. I know it's not much more than an email alert system, but the name and the focus on being part of the convention even if you can't be there is sweet.
The DNC has the FlickR thing going on, but they aren't linking me out to much of anything and aren't using any social presence (like Twitter or Plurk) to keep me up to date. Odd coming from the party of the candidate who plans on alerting us to the VP nomination via email. Hmmm....however, the YouTube contest was very good and the winner was picked well -- betcha a lot of people will want HIS contact info (grin). (note, on the home page the contest is still going on...but on the blog they have announced the winner.)
Ok...I like this video so much I'm gonna embed it here:
Both the DNC and RNC have focused a great deal more on Bloggers -- what a difference four years make, eh? Now there are "Blogger Credentialing" processes and at the RNC there is even a distinction between Bloggers affiliated with Traditional Media Outlets and Independent Bloggers.
So what more could they all do?
Start by setting up a formal Twitter Stream such as #RNC08 or #DNC08 and get people to know it is there and to use it as they watch. Point them to Twitter search so they can follow the tweets as they come in. Make sure that there are some big names that are using twitter.
Point me to the bloggers. Who is blogging? Give me a synopsis so I can find them easily and tell me why you selected them. Make it easy for me to read and more importantly connect with them. Give me information on the main blog that I can't get on TV or anywhere else. Right now you are unveiling images of the locations and concentrating on videos from supporters. Give me some behind the scenes -- tell me whats coming up, who is talking to who, and post exclusive entries from the "stars" like our own Sen. Pat Leahy!
For video compress the speeches into highlight reels that get dumped to YouTube quickly, and then highlight them on your site and your RSS so I can see the synopsis and highlights. Remember I'm busy and I'm going to check things out throughout the day. I might not be able to watch the Prime Time. Give me some preview sneak peaks at the main candidate speeches as they practice -- that would be fun for sure.
Broadcast your twitter stream at the bottom of the big screen that everyone watches...now that would be fun!
Overall...take some risks. Remember you'll go off script a little (maybe a lot) with social media, but the rewards for engagement of voters who use a mix of traditional and non-traditional media may net big payoffs come November.
The students working on the South Africa project leave bright and early tomorrow morning from Burlington. They arrive Saturday afternoon in Cape Town and their itinerary includes many opportunities to learn and observe the South African culture in many different ways.
I'm excited for them.
I'm jealous that I'm not going ... but ... this is not my time, it is their time.
But, they are in good hands and they are very ready for this work.
Read their blog posts here: emc-gamestakeonvaw.blogspot.com. It's a community blog set up by the Emergent Media Center to allow all the individuals who are part of the project to post their thoughts. I'll be making periodic posts as well.
But for now, my job is to sit and wait and look forward to helping them sort out everything they learn when they get back.
I signed up to be part of a "social media experiment" kicked off by Marketing Guru Rohit Bhargava on August 6th with a post he wrote calling on volunteers to re-post, re-purpose and link to his Olympic postings.
The goal is not really to promote the games...really (smile). It's a sponsorship gig with Lenovo who has created a site called The Voices of the Olympic Games. It's an international blogging community that is writing about all the different events. Who are these bloggers? Well they are the athletes themselves!
I LOVE THIS. Really. It so changes the event which has for so long been tied to TV, quick interviews after the contest/competition and then odd sportscaster commentary (ick). Although thanks to NBC at their Olympics site I can still watch Bela Karolyi "go wild" for Liukin. Anyway to get the full voices and experiences of different athletes is really great and it's what social media has brought us. No longer do sponsors provide on-site shwag -- they can now create a full online community where the athletes themselves provide the content. Nice.
So I have been lax in my postings to Rohit's information as part of the social experiment. Today I make up for that. Here's a quick synopsis of the things you can read about if you want more depth and more diversity in your Olympic Coverage.
Kleenex premiering an Olympic Documentary -- this one is cool because it will be release as a trailer in theaters as Rohit wrote, "Check out the trailer for "Let It Out" below - its actually really good and will be premiering for a limited engagement in theaters in 25 cities starting August 13th across the US. It will also be available on www.letitout.com from August 14th. To read more real athlete's stories, visit Lenovo's Voices of the Olympic Games (link to http://summergames.lenovo.com)!"
Anyway, that it for another post on the Olympics and Social Media. Oh wait...one more thing...
If you are a facebook user, you should check out the "Bumper Sticker" application. Whole lots of people have created bumper stickers that include Olympic Athletes -- several nice ones of Michael Phelps. Now that's viral eh?
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