Community Mobilization

NVHA Innovations

Running the NVAH innovation meeting right now and all is going well. Christopher Allen is doing a great job of explaining the history of Socail Software and is doing a bang-up job.  Super excited about the rest of the allstarr folks that are up and going to present over then enxt few days.

Go and read about the event at the NVHA Innovation conference blog.

John Stewart Daily Show Blog piece

John Stewart has a fantastic piece on the power of blogers to self police, and even police big media, and traditional media sources.  Here is a link to the clip of John Stewart Show. Thanks to danah.

What it takes to be a Great Podcaster

The divide between good and bad Podcasts will be far greater than the divide between good and bad blogs. I use the words good and bad loosely … we all know it when we read it, or hear it. The reason I am so convinced that podcasts / audioblogs will quickly separate like oil and water is because good podcasters will have something interesting to say and they will say it well.

Writing out a posting demands that bloggers take the time to craft their words, drafting short and relevant pieces. When speaking, we have a tendency to side-track, and loose the point, or just say too much. Garrison Keillor was a great writer before he was a great orator. It is not enough to do one well. That small intersection, where word craft and deliver meet, is where the great audioblogers lay. 

 

Garret the Ferret: Ripped of from "Chip n' Dale Rescue Rangers"

I am reading about the virtues of Garrett the Ferret on Get Real and I am not going to take a side on the copyright issue. I understand the value of ownership of creative work, and I can not agree more that our copyright system is poorly designed and could be restricting creativity. Instead I want to point out the fact that the Garrett the Ferret "Copyright Crusader to the Rescue." Reminds me all too much of an old Disney cartoon ‘Rescue Rangers’. I can just imagine some bored twenty-something in a cramped cube trying to come up with an original idea and then blamo! He remembers the ‘Chip n’ Dale Rescue Rangers’. He turns the chipmunks into ferrets, and changes Range to Crusader. 

So Garret himself is born out of ‘sampling’. How ironic.

Oh No Ogo!

ATT/Cingular has recently announced the release of the Ogo, which is an all tect communication handheld retailing at about $80.00.  This is something I expected from ATT, a slow, poorly adapting company that deserved to be bought-out!

1. Although a Blackberry is 3x more expensive it is often used by people who NEED to always be on, and not by people who WANT to always be on. Its different!

2. The Ogo packs almost all of the same features I can get in a high end cell phone, but with the phone I can shoot photos and TALK WITH IT! 

3. Danger SIdekick II has 1st mover advantage,and it is a much more robust product.

4. You can get a Danger Sidekick II FREE! An $80.00 Ogo is not equal to the $100.00 ATT termination fee + a free Sidekick II.

Once Again ATT Wireless shows that they  are so amazing far behind the business cycle of handheld products. Iit is no wonder they were consumed by Cingular.  I  hope Cingular customers do not become victims of ATT's poor business evolution and innovation practices!

To add futher insult, the release was in September 04 and I just now found about the product.

Last.FM as a Community

I just started using Last.FM to expose myself to new music and broaden my horizons.  I have heard a great things about Last from a number of my favorite inhabitants of the blogosphere, and I have to say it is pretty interesting and there is an abundance of media to be accessed if you 'get' the interface. 

More importantly I went looking for the community construction elements and am having a bit a of a time making 'friends' and 'neighbors'.  It is odd approaching strangers to be a digital friend when all you know about them is their musical tastes.  It is more of a starting point than other methods of meeting people.  As an exposure to new media Last is fantastic, for new people it is so-so.

St. Singles Day

In Europe millions of singles will take to the streets in the major metro areas to celebrate ST. Singles Day.  This is an event organized by the largest online dating site meetic.com.  European dataing sites are taking off in popularity as referenced by this Businessweek article.  As the market grows US companies are eager to get in on the market.  However European dating habits differ from American's and so their site are designed with different empahsis on different criteria ... such as language.

A neat application would be a MOSOSO since the contintent is so small, and travel and public transportation is so simple and easy to use.  The interesting challenges lie in the cross boarder and culture dating, althousg hthe article references a number of sucessfull international relationships.

Is Ogilvy & Mather testing Bullshit Marketing for American Express?

Joi Ito alerts me to the second instacne of poor decission making by a comany in the way they conduct their marketing efforts online.  I read through a number of the other trackabcks and am dismayed that the concept of 'Old Media' is still being thrown at the oppinionmakers of 'New Media'.  The initiative to get blogers to comment about Aerican Express ontheir blogs to boos the web presence of AMEX is proposterous.  It is the mentality of 'old media' and it is plum insulting that the A list blogers would be contacted to actively participate in this type of marketing scheme.

Ogilvy and Mather should be ashamed at their utter ignorance of blogs as a media outlet and their belief tha tgthey can buy influence and web presence from the trend setter, movers and shakers of the blogoshpere.

Virtual Worlds end up in Real Courts

MSNBC has an article today on the intersection of virtual games and the real world.  This intersection is sadly where I thought it would at the point of maturation ... in the courts.  The challenges of the virtual world have not inspired a creation of virtual law, or virtual ramifications, or virtual protection from such behaviors.  This absense is the tenet of a far nobler group of users.

The early adopters of virtual worlds,  in particular massive multiplayer online games, we happy to have the systens up and functioning.  The ability to express creativity was paramount, and nw the second wave of users is finding the MMOG as a captive audience, or a target market, or even as a group of consumers.  Thee MMOG has been comoditized and one the not-so-invisible hand of economics is introduced the rules change.

Actually the rules used to be just play nice.  Now, in the absence regulations, the MMOG scene has turned into a capitalistic free-for-all.  Jerry Paffendorf has a great blogpost on just this very topic!

NVHAInnovations.org Launched!

I am please to announce the launch of our conference website for National Voluntary Health Agency Innovations Conference.  This year I am putting together the conference and the focus is on Social Network Media, and how it will impact the way that we do business as a health nonprofit.  There are a twenty plus speakers coming from the blogosphere, VCs, and the Academic world.  You Go look at the website and check out the materials there. WWW.nvhainnovations.org