I first heard about nonprofit Worldreader—which gives Kindles to students with little access to printed books in rural sub-Saharan Africa—last January on the Build It Kenny They Will Come Blog.... The following line in the post really wowed me: "Imagine, all the books a child would ever need to see them through their basic education, all packed into a ~$100 device." It turns out WorldReader is taking its idea of bringing free digital books to the developing world … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Women Who Tech Promo
April 22, 2012 by
I apologize to my regular readers for the lack of posts the last few weeks. I've been busy visiting my family out of state for Easter, had some unexpected Internet connectivity problems, and then was busy with client catchup. So my monthly video clip of the month post, usually posted around the first of the month, is way, way overdue. So without futher ado, here's my April 2012 video clip of the month: a video excerpt from the Women Who Tech TeleSummit after … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Precise Strategies Liberate
March 2, 2012 by
A sound communications strategy or creative brief is the most important part of a successful communications campaign or product. It is the firm foundation determining how your communications mix (i.e., public relations, advertising, promotion, and direct marketing) will work together to achieve your communications objectives. It is the genesis of every word you write, every product you produce, every conversation you start. All too often, however, communicators … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Leading Online Communities
January 1, 2012 by
How can you turn a leaderless communications swarm into a collaborative online community that achieves results? That's the zillion dollar question for 2012. As my runner up for January 2012 video clip of the month below shows (and anybody who has been following the news knows), self-directed communications swarms fueled many of the top news events of 2011. While my runner up for video clip of the month above is inspiring, especially on the New Year, my main … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Do Aid Workers Need PR 101?
October 2, 2011 by
I ran across a first this week. A video of a TED Talk I didn't find remotely jaw-dropping, informative, or inspiring. The video, my October 2011 video clip of the month, features Amy Lockwood, deputy director of Stanford's Center for Innovation in Global Health talking about promoting condoms in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) to stop the spread of HIV/AIDS. Her ingenuous idea? Something "perhaps the donor agencies had just missed out on... … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Drought & Filter Bubbles
August 1, 2011 by
With East Africa facing its worst drought in 60 years, I wince more than ever at a quote by Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg: “A squirrel dying in your front yard may be more relevant to your interests right now than people dying in Africa.” What Zuckerberg's assertion means on a societal level—such as during a regional famine overseas—is the topic of my August 2011 video clip of the month. It features Eli Pariser, author of The Filter Bubble: What the Internet Is … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Context, Not Content, is King
July 1, 2011 by
My July 2011 video clip of the month takes on the Web 2.0 cliché that “content is king.” It features Ben Watson, Adobe principal customer experience strategist, explaining that content is not king, context is. By context Watson means a brand's ability to connect with customers and filter information for them in a way they find useful and enjoyable. I picked the video because it illustrates an important point. Today, context drives relevancy, efficacy, and … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Google Goo Goo for Gaga
June 1, 2011 by
My June 2011 video clip of the month—a commercial for the Google Chrome web browser and Lady Gaga's new "Born This Way" album—was part of an unprecedented social media campaign that propelled the album to more than 1.1 million sales during its first week of release. I picked the viral video because it's an amazing example of how digital is changing marketing. Today's superstars don't buy attention. They earn it, and Lady Gaga is the queen of earned … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Fast & Easy Story Curation
May 1, 2011 by
UPDATE: About 45 minutes after posting this article, I (like a million other people around the world) learned via Twitter that Osama bin Laden had been killed. That was about 45 minutes ahead of President Obama’s official announcement. Compare The New York Times' writeup on how the news leaked out with Australian Broadcasting Corp's Storify version to get a feel for the curation tool’s ability to provide context in an entertaining way and help readers make sense out … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Treesaver & Accessibility
April 1, 2011 by
My April 2011 video clip of the month features a pre-release demonstration of the free open source dynamic publishing platform Treesaver. Online publications created with Treesaver automatically adjust to the size of any screen (you've got to see it in action). Treesaver is a lot like the Flipboard iPad app except it's built with web standards—HTML, CSS, and Javascript. That means you can just design a publication once and the same code will work on any device … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Andy Carvin & News Curation
March 1, 2011 by
My March 2011 video clip of the month is a PBS News Hour interview of Andy Carvin, (@acarvin), National Public Radio's social media guru, on how he used Twitter to curate social media to turn himself into a "real time wire service" for the protests in Egypt and Tunisia. I chose the video because Carvin’s work curating the news provides a hint of what news and information management can look like in an increasingly networked world. From a cubicle in Washington, … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Creating a New Narrative
February 1, 2011 by
My February 2011 video clip of the month features the founders of the nonprofit Ushahidi (Swahili for "testimony" or "witness") discussing the revolutionary free and open source software they created for crowdsourcing and democratising information. If you haven't been following Ushahidi and crisis mapping, you've got to check the video out. The Ushahidi story is amazing. Ushahidi collects eyewitness reports sent in by e-mail and SMS/cellphone, allowing "everyone … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Anti-Genocide ‘Paparazzi’
January 1, 2011 by
My January 2011 video clip of the month is a MSNBC news report about an unprecedented plan to use crowdsourcing to stop war and war crimes in their bloody tracks. The plan, the brainchild of American actor George Clooney, is using commercial satellite images and the Internet to monitor the border between northern and southern Sudan. Oil-rich South Sudan is set to vote Jan. 9 on a proposal to become independent from North Sudan, a move the former U.S. Director of … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: Christmas Flash Mob
December 1, 2010 by
My December 2010 video clip of the month is a flash mob surprising dinners in a mall food court with a breathtaking rendition of Handel's "Hallelujah Chorus." Regardless of your religious preference, you've got to love the great performance and the reaction of the people around them. I picked the video because it's a wonderful holiday example of how two relatively small organizations in Welland—a town of about 50,000 in Canada near Niagara Falls—hit a home run … [Read more...]
Video Clip of the Month: KFC Pinkwashing Parody
November 1, 2010 by
My November 2010 video clip of the month is an oldie but goodie. It's a parody of last spring's “Buckets for the Cure” fundraising partnership between KFC and Susan G. Komen for the Cure. The low-tech, cheaply produced parody video, by Greg and Lou, a New York City comedy duo, received 10,795 hits on YouTube as of Nov. 1, 2010. This is more than both of KFC's high-tech and presumably expensive-to-produce "Buckets for the Cure" campaign videos: KFC Employees Do the … [Read more...]
Follow me on Twitter
Subscribe via RSS feed