Video Clip of the Month: University ‘The Office’ Spoof

March 1, 2010 by

My March 2010 video clip of the month is a spoof of the NBC sitcom “The Office” that students at the University of Denver produced to show their frustrations with technology in the classroom.

The video features “Michael,” a technology professor who hasn’t kept up with the latest technology and is trying to wing his technology lectures. At one point, he hands out floppy disks so outdated his students’ laptops don’t even have drives to read them. Later, he tries to be more state-of-the-art and uses the video conferencing tool Skype, except he’s in the classroom simply projecting his face on a giant screen.

One of his students appears to be sleeping during his lectures. Another goofs around on Facebook. Another keeps sending text messages with his phone and complains about being required to buy an expensive laptop and other technologies when the devices are being used for assignments.

In my view, the video illustrates the growing gap between “luddites” and those keeping up with technology. This problem is not necessarily generational and definitely not limited to the field of education! Here’s the YouTube video below. Enjoy!

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Pentagon Uses Twitter to Announce Policy Change

February 28, 2010 by

Breaking with tradition, the Pentagon used Twitter Friday to announce major changes in its social media policy.

Under the new policy, military personnel can Tweet, blog, and update their Facebook pages on the U.S. military’s non-classified computer networks. More than a dozen social media sites the Pentagon blocked in May 2007 will now be unblocked.

Price Floyd, the Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, broke the news of the policy change on his Twitter feed (@pricefloyd), instead of issuing a press release to the media or holding a press conference as the Pentagon has typically done for major announcements in the past.

A few hours before the announcement, Floyd sent out a tweet: “Alert. New Social Media policy to be announced at 1pm. Will allow access to SM sites but balance it with the need to be secure.”  Afterwards, he used Twitter to seek feedback about the new policy and retweeted some positive comments he’d received. 

“As a soldier who served abroad, I think the new social media policy is awesome,” Twitter user @NickM84 commented. “What a great way for troops to stay connected.”

Twitter user @jessicadeva agreed: “Living 3000 miles away fm my family, I saw my niece’s 1st bike ride on FB – thrilled that military families can now do the same.”

The Pentagon’s social media policy change came after a seven-month review ended with senior officials concluding that the benefits of social media outweighed potential security risks. Under the policy, Commanders can also block access to social networking sites if necessary to protect a mission or protect sufficient bandwidth—but only on a temporary basis.

“We need to take advantage of these capabilities that are out there—this Web 2.0 phenomena,” said David M. Wennergren, deputy assistant secretary of defense for information technology in the press release Floyd released through his Twitter feed. “The idea is be responsible and use these tools to help get the job done.”

It’s interesting the seven-month review also apparently resulted in the new Pentagon tactic of using Twitter to communicate directly with the public—and bypass the media—to get the major announcement job done.  Journalists and public relations practitioners should take note!

What do you think this means for the future of journalism and public relations? Share your thought here.

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Off to My Satellite Office: Panera Bread

February 27, 2010 by

NOTE: This post is out of date. “Alice” starts Extended Day, the Montessori equivalent of full-day Kindergarten, in September 2011, which will make me available for semi full-time work.

A client recently asked me to redo a company website in WordPress in five weeks. That means I may be spending a few evenings next month at my satellite office: Panera Bread.

As I mentioned in my “My Life as a Communications Consultant” post, thanks to the Internet, I work from home when “Alice” is at Montessori school and napping or sleeping. That means I can easily work 25 to 30 hours a week and, with Jim’s childcare help, up to 40 hours in a pinch.

The problem is “Alice” doesn’t always cooperate when Jim is watching her in the evening to let me work. When I try to work in my office and close the door, she often feels compelled to come in and try to sit on my lap saying “I miss mommy” or “read me a story.”

So, as a work from home mommy (WAHM), mompreneur, communications consultant, or whatever you want to call me, not only am I thankful for the Internet, I am thankful for Panera Bread (no, I’m not getting paid to say this). With good food, a free wireless Internet connection, and a warm fireplace, it’s the perfect place to go to plunk down with my laptop and get creatively inspired!

Do you have a satellite office?

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Twitter Code Swarm: A Mesmerizing Video

February 8, 2010 by

One of the things I love about Web 2.0 is all the creativity and collaboration it creates in the high tech community.

Today, I want to share with you a Vimeo video from Ben Sandofsky, a team member of the new Twitter Engineering blog, which visualises Twitter’s commits history in a beautiful and mesmerizing way. A commit happens when a developer makes changes to a software’s code or documents and transfers them into the central project repository.

The video was made using Code Swarm, an open source software tool used to visualize data. In the video, both developers (depicted as their Twitter avatars) and files are represented as moving elements. When a developer commits a file, it lights up and flies towards that developer. Files are colored according to their purpose, such as whether they are source code or a document. If files or developers are inactive for a while, they fade away.

As Sandofsky notes, “it isn’t exactly scientific, but it still goes to show Twitter’s explosive growth mirrored in engineering.”

Check it out below.

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Are Blogs King and Press Releases Obsolete?

February 6, 2010 by

Arianna Huffington says blogs are better than obsolete press releasesUPDATE: As noted in my Is Twitter King and the Press Release Obsolete? post, Brokaw: ‘I Don’t Get Twitter…Just Stuff That Fills Air’ post, and Video Clip of the Month: Conan’s YouTube Choice post, social media has the future of press releases in a flux. Stay tuned!

Blogs are more effective than press releases, Arianna Huffington, cofounder and editor-in-chief of The Huffington Post, said during a Q&A interview in the February 2010 issue of PR Week.

“I think a lot of [PR pros] are recognizing that it is more effective now to blog about something, to have the principals blog about something, rather than send press releases,” she said. “The world of the press release is dramatically changing.”

Huffington also said that press releases are becoming obsolete during a speech last November at the Public Relations Society of America (PRSA) International Conference in San Diego, Calif.

“We increasingly know that it’s more effective to give the information to someone with a [Web] site or a blog or another way that is going to immediately get it out into the world that we want to communicate with,” Huffington said.

Are press releases obsolete? In some ways they are. Thanks to the Internet, attracting the media’s attention is no longer the only way people can learn about your press release’s content. Today’s Web. 2.0 world doesn’t mean, however, that you should stop issuing press releases and replace them with business announcements on your blog. Blogs and press releases are not interchangeable.

Blogs
  • Blogging is a two-way conversation in a casual voice offering your readers a chance to comment (replying to their comments keeps the conversation going).
  • Blogs should offer vital analysis or valuable insights into your core business or niche topic and should not be all about you. If you use your blog to republish press releases, you’ll likely lose your readers’ interest and their trust in your content.
  • Your blog can help you establish yourself as an expert in your field (much more so than press releases).
  • Blogs generally get better search engine ranking than press releases.
Press Releases
  • Press releases are impersonal (written in a more formal third-person news style) one-way conversations designed to communicate information about an event, product, company, etc.
  • The intent is to give the editor, reporter, producer, potential customer or client, etc. enough information to get them interested in you (i.e., press releases are purely self-promotional).
  • Journalists still use and ask for them because they are generally written in a format that makes it easy for journalists to simply cut and paste.
  • Even though press releases generally do not get as good search engine rankings as blogs, you can use them to build Search Engine Optimization (SEO). To do this, you optimize them for search engines (please see my Jan. 30, 2010, Post on “How to Arm a Press Release with Magic Magnets”; disseminate them through free press release distribution sites or paid distribution services, such as PRWeb.com, PR Newswire,or Marketwire; and then link to the releases from a blog post and your online press room. Many press release distribution sites and services also offer Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds of their press releases, which they make available to other sites, blogs, and individuals.

What do you think? Are press releases obsolete? Should you be blogging instead?

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