Cultural diversities [sic], isn’t it implicit?
As early as my teenage years, I claimed that every family is a kingdom with its own culture and language. It only took the annual debates over which grandmother’s stuffing recipe should be used for the Thanksgiving turkey to convince me. For this reason, I’ve always thought that intercultural relationships have one important, yet terribly [...]
Test of the Twitter Broadcasting System
One of the arguments of the proponents of social media is that the audience reigns, choosing which content it wants to consume. Broadcasting is bad, the logic goes, because it doesn’t target messages to specific audiences and doesn’t allow them to choose the desired content.
On that basis, my admittedly limited experience with Twitter makes me [...]
Commodity blogging
In an article about Mommy Bloggers on her Greenbanana blog, Heather Yaxley evokes the law of supply and demand, noting that “there are too many motoring writers and too few outlets for their words”. She raises a key issue that I don’t think anyone has discussed yet. Will the much heralded rise of the citizen [...]
Authentic CEOs
I like the approach Marc Wright from Simply Communicate and Vice Chair of the IABC Europe and Middle East Region takes to discussing authenticity and corporate leadership. First he provides three sets of CEOs that he compares and contrasts (although it’s not always clear to me why those particular people are paired). And then he [...]
Lessons on targetting audiences from Iran
One of the things that has struck me in the coverage of events in Iran is how well protestors there seem to have grasped a basic point of effective communications that bizarrely seems to elude many organizations: you need to talk to the audience in terms they understand and in terms that will resonate with [...]
Lies, Damn Lies and Twitter
When used properly, statistics can be very informative. However, some statistics are meaningless, and some are dishonest. Interpreting statistics requires some technical knowledge, and most people do not have the basic training to know how to read statistics and to take them with a grain of salt. Statistics are particularly misleading with regard to the [...]
How the auto club can protect you on social media
If you can tell a phenomenon has gone mainstream by the fact that everyone wants to be involved, then social media has arrived. When glancing at the content of the e-newsletter of the American Automobile Association (AAA) this morning, I was surprised to see headlines asking if I have coverage for saying stupid things on [...]
Are We Losing Our Cathedrals of Knowledge to Web-based Information?
Many thanks to Judy Gombita for recently sharing the blogpost “Librophiliac Love Letter: A Compendium of Beautiful Libraries“.
As I was perusing the photos, it struck me that these libraries make a profound statement about how we value books, knowledge and learning. These rooms are temples and cathedrals.
As information has multiplied in recent decades and access to it [...]
150-year-old newspaper blogs its own demise
The Rocky Mountain News (Denver CO, USA) will appear for the last time today, just short of its 150th birthday. And the staff has been chronicling the closure in real time through social media.
One of the paper’s official blogs discusses it. Staff members have been posting their feelings, pictures, etc. on Facebook.
There is something extremely [...]
Live at the Inauguration with 3000 “Friends” per Minute
I had a new experience yesterday that helped me understand the “social” in social media a little better. I use Facebook to maintain with far-distant friends and to get back in touch. So, contrary to today’s teens who chat with each other online, I am more likely to talk to my current, nearby friends on the [...]