Reading, wRiting, aRithmetic and RSS - The 4 R’s

We don’t always need to reinvent the wheel, sometimes we just need to give it a fresh coat of paint and a new story. The other day while trying to answer the question of what was the most important skills that a Social Media Literate person should have, I saw the traditional 3 R’s in a new light. Rather than thinking of just the simple definition that each word represented (ala the act of writing, being able to read and undersand basic math), I realized the depth of meaning behind each word.

The 3 R’s are inherently necessary for basic media literacy, but I think the addition of RSS as the 4th R is what is really required for Social Media Literacy. By this I mean to say that an understanding of the nature of RSS is important, not the technical nuances. Rather than pontificating endlessly on this, let me briefly explain how I see the 4 R’s and ask you for some feedback to see what sticks.

• Reading - While a modern update to this would also take into account reading, listening, viewing and perhaps even researching, the important skill here is understanding what other people are trying to communicate - the comprehension of what is experienced.
• Writing - Here of course we can move beyond the act of writing and include speaking, shooting video and other forms of self expression, what we are really talking about is the ability to communicate effectively so that others can understand what we are thinking.
• Arithmetic - While you could argue that the math is an interesting aspect of good design (how many pixels wide can it be?), it seems the simplest understanding here is best - from my perspective this just means being able to add up the score on a given issue and understand which choice is better - objective decision making.
• RSS - This is one of the key elements that makes Social Media literacy different. I could describe it in many other ways, but within this context the important aspect for me is that understanding how RSS and by extension tags, work. It enables any individual to step into the conversational flow - to not only follow what other people are communicating, but ensuring what the individual has to communicate is heard by other people who care about the topic.

I like thinking about what is old being new again - I think it makes it easier for a wider variety of people to grasp what we are discussing. Greg Narain suggested that ‘Reach’ might be a better term for the 4th R and while I am inclined to agree with the idea of making it a simple, more common word, I dont think it has the impact it should as a fundamental skill. Maybe we need a different metaphor? So am I off base here or is this an interesting (and simple) way of explaining Social Media Literacy?

Rent an Expert Event Wednesday in San Francisco

I am excited and a iittle nervous about the Rent an Expert event this Wednesday July 19th starting at 530pm over at CNet headquarters (235 2nd Street, San Francisco).  It still seems that a lot of people have expressed interest in coming that are not on the Wiki - I don’t know if it is because they don’t have the password “yeswecan” or because they don’t know how to edit a Wiki or because they are not really coming but are being nice to me Whatever, the reason, I will be there along with at least a couple dozen other good folks who want to share their expertise with others so it looks like this will be a very interesting experiment.The brief overview of the night is that people like you will be able to set up shop at one of the tables in the room offering your expertise in 15 or 30 minute appointments, helping people learn or do anything that you want to offer.  Sessions can be one on one or perhaps even done in a small group setting if appropriate.  People will pay a minimum of $1 per 15 minute sessions but are encouraged to spend more if the value they received was high.  Throughout the evening, everyone in attendace will vote on which charity will receive the donation of all the money collected.  At the end of the night, all the money and votes will be tallied and we will announce which charity is the big winner.  Also, the person who collected the most money will win a copy of MindManager Pro from Mindjet!

So now we need a few volunteers and could really use one more last minute sponsor since the company we had hoped to donate additional wine fell through (or rather, we never heard back from them after initial interest).  Volunteers will help with signage, managing the appointments, helping people get oriented when they arrive, setting up the room and a little bit of the cleanup.  Those of you who can volunteer, please show up around 5pm.

We will mix and mingle from about 530-6pm.  At 6pm we will do a little kickoff and the first appointments/sessions will begin at 615pm, continuing through till about 8 at which time we will collect all the monies and tally up the winners.  Make sense?  Do you have an idea that will make it better?  Want to sponsor or volunteer?  email Kristie [at] brainjams.org

Much love and thanks to our sponsors, CNet, MindJet, Rate It All, Stormhoek and Social Media Club.  We are hoping to do future events such as this on an ongoing basis as part of Social Media Club - this is just the first trial run of the experiment - we hope to learn a lot and are looking forward to seeing you there!

Related Links:  Original Blog Post | Wiki | Offer your Expertise |  Request some Expertise | Help us Organize | RSVP on the Wiki

New Media Release Podcast

The New Media Release Podcast, episode 1, is being distributed as part of the “For Immediate Release” everything feed in order to introduce the podcast—and the NMR working group—to FIR listeners. After this first episode, if you want to keep getting the podcast as a regular subscription, you’ll need to subscribe separately to the NMRCast feed. Note, the Apple iTunes subscription will be active shortly.

Content summary: Chris Heuer and Shel Holtz introduce NMRCast and explain the NMR working group; discussion of microformats and their role in the NMR; where we plan to go from here

Show notes for July 13, 2006

Welcome to NMRCast episode #1, a 35-minute podcast recorded live from the San Francisco Bay Area.

Download the file here (MP3, 14.2MB), or sign up for the RSS feed to get it and future shows automatically. (For automatic synchronization with your iPod or other digital player, you’ll also need a podcatcher such as Juice, DopplerRadio, iTunes or Yahoo! Podcasts, or an RSS aggregator that supports podcasts such as FeedDemon).

Listen to this podcast now:

In This Edition:

• Google Groups mailing list for New Media Release discussion (please join!)
• NMR wiki (going live very soon)
• PDF of SHIFT Communication’s new media release template (opens in new window)
• SHIFT Communications’ PR Newswire release announcing the new media release template, produced as a new media release
• Todd Defren’s post about SHIFT’s new media release template
• Neville Hobson’s post about PR community action on the new meda press release
• Tom Foremski’s original post, “Die, Press Release, Die! Die! Die!
• About the Social Media Club
• Chris Heuer’s website (learn more about him)
• Wikipedia listing on the press release
• Ivy Lee’s quote on the ethics of the press release

Building the Social Media Clubhouse

Now that we are ready to blow the roof off this joint and actually start promoting what we are doing to the world (instead of talking to a small audience of friends and colleagues), it is time to talk about our vision for how we will build Social Media Club from a discussion into a loosely joined association of passionate people. As I explained in the first post on this blog, “we wish to build a community that is truly of, by, and for the people it serves - people from all walks of life who care about, benefit from and create Social Media.” The question is how do we make this well intentioned idealism real?

The answer is first we need to turn the lights on. Then we start talking about our vision. We see who shows up. We listen. We embrace the ideas that are aligned with our values. We adapt our plans according to the needs and wishes of the community. We build a truly democratic process that encourages participation by respecting the value and contributions of every individual. We believe that smart, passionate leaders will emerge and step up to the challenge. They will be the ones who make Social Media Club a reality - all we have done is gather the firewood and and hand over the match.

The conversations about the future of Social Media Club will happen online though Social Media like Blogs, via our email discussion list on Yahoo Groups, within other ad-hoc group discussions, and most importantly through a series of BrainJams styled events we are organizing around the country over the next several months. These conversations will hopefully culminate with the formal Social Media Club launch at our Web 2point2 BrainJam in November 2006. So the next few months will be spent figuring out what we all collectively want from a group like Social Media Club, identifying who will be leading the organization, refining the values we want to encourage as a community, and working together on projects we want to support - whether our own or other’s that exist such as Creative Commons, Internet Archive and MicroFormats.

Over the next few weeks we will schedule a series of Social Media Club “Founder’s Circle” events around the country, and hopefully around the world, to discuss the future of social media in society. These half day and full day unconferences will bring together communications professionals, bloggers, podcasters, journalists, tool makers, service providers, teachers, artists, and others who are passionate about social media for the purpose of making connections and reinforcing local communities around our shared interests. The events will be slightly more structured than a typical Open Space, but will fully embody shared leadership and encourage active participation - with some sessions being very short monologues or demonstrations (no powerpoint), more sessions embracing Dave Winer’s principles for Discussion Leaders and others using the World Cafe format.

While the exact format of the Founder’s Circle events are still being determined, we have four outcomes we will seek from each event, with the final outcome being the formal launch of the organization.

1. Bringing people together in the local community to discover each other and share your understanding of Social Media. In essence, we hope to draw out the people who ‘get it’ to share what they know with others, so that more and more people eventually understand why Social Media is so powerful.

2. To discuss the operational plans for Social Media Club, improving upon them by brainstorming ideas for projects while engaging people more fully in the projects we are already undertaking, such as the New Media Release (hRelease) and local Social Media Club unconferences.

3. To identify local chapter leaders who are interested in making the vision for Social Media Club a reality where it really matters - within each community.

4. Finally, and most importantly, we will take this opportunity to collaborate with each other like paramedia around important areas of interest, organizing educational resources so that people who are trying to learn about Social Media can easily get involved and start creating.

In case it is not clear at this point, the primary focus we have for the organization is to help more people and organizations understand and fully utilize the potential of Social Media such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, vlogs, tagging, and peer to peer unconferences. The technology is important, and will play a big part in our work, but only as a tool that makes the world a better place for the people that use them. This principle is first and foremost in our thinking about the Social Media Club organization and applies equally to independents, small businesses, large corporations, artists, government entities, not for profits, for profits, educational institutions, communications firms - whether professional or amateur, from all walks of life.

Over the past several months with BrainJams, we have explored the world of ad-hoc collaboration, social learning, leadership, large group dialogue and what many people still refer to as Web 2.0. Through this process we have learned much about what works and what does not. Admittedly, I personally still have a lot to learn in this regards, but we have all come far in a short period of time. One area of particular concern is the delicate balance between too little structure and too much, and how the nature of the tools shapes the nature of participation. We hope to achieve this balance for the majority of everyday people and professionals who care about Social Media, but I expect we will make some mistakes along the way, so I am asking for some forgiveness for some of the screw ups I will make along the way.

This is where you can really help a great deal - besides joining the discussion on our Yahoo Group, volunteering to help, sponsoring one of our many Social Media Club Founder’s Circle Unconferences, or financially supporting us through a Membership, what we really need from you is your ideas, your feedback, your leadership and your complete honesty.

As Howard Rheingold says (and I often quote) “What it is –> is up to you.”

Technorati Tags: ad-hoc+collaboration, barcamp, brainjams, fillingthefunnel, heartofbusiness, hRelease, newmedia, newmediarelease, pr2.0, smc:founderscircle, socialconference, socialmediaclub, Web2.0, Web2.1

New Media Release: Important Collaboration Update

So it has been about a week since I posted to the New Media Release discussion list on Google Groups about “How we Collaborate“, specifically requesting everyone’s feedback on which tools we use. Since Constantin Basturea and myself were the only respondents as of this morning, we decided to get on Skype to talk through the issues and together have made a few decisions on behalf of the group.

The short list of key decisions is:

• The tag we are using is hRelease
• We are sticking with Google Groups
• We are moving to a SocialText Wiki - thank you Ross Mayfield
• We will focus on sharing resources through The NewPR Crispy News service
• While I would like to continue to use the Haystack for our members directory, this could work better within the Social Text Wiki so we don’t have so many different tools to use.
• There will be a weekly Skypecast for the Discussion Leaders, Monthly Skypecast for general updates and questions
• This is an open community project that I will be promoting as part of the standards efforts of Social Media Club, which is where all of my future posts on this subject will be published.

Ok, that is the concise list for those of you without time to get into the details. If you are interested in knowing why though, here is some background about the what’s and why’s of these decisions. We had hoped to consider more voices in this process, but hearing none, needed to make these decisions to move forward. I am very glad to have the input and advice from Constantin on this process - after reading through some of his writing and talking to him personally, I am very impressed with his perspective on these matters.

So earlier today, we decided that we would use hRelease as the tag for all our posts, shared bookmarks and relevant media that is related to this discussion. It is simply the shortest and most descriptive tag we could choose for identifying this project - it also has the benefit of longevity, since it is also gfing to be the final name of the Microformat standard that we produce as an outcome of this discussion. That said, this discussion among professionals will not require specific technical work on that standard for some time, so do not worry about things getting too technical - your professional expertise is extremely valuable here and all we require at this point is your participation.

We also discussed that Yahoo! Groups may have been a better choice because of simpler URL’s to share with others, but that Google Groups was really just fine for meeting our requirements. Besides, it is already well promoted into the community so we do not want to make it more difficult for people to join. The important thing is that we have an email based discussion list for conversations that will be archived and available on the Web for the foreseeable future.

The other important decision was to use SocialText as our Wiki since it has automated account management and many other pluses that would not be easily implemented in the New PR Wiki, nor anything we could get running ourselves quickly. This is also a good choice because Ross Mayfield, SocialText’s CEO had already offered a free account to Tom Foremski. This is actually the toughest decision for me, because I like Jot a lot, Wetpaint has a lot of promise, i use PBWiki for other projects and GoingOn has some other neat features that would be beneficial. In the end though, SocialText is seemingly the best fit for our audience of communications professionals and we don’t want to waste a lot of time on splitting hairs with regards to collaboration tool choices. It is amazing though that none of them actually has all the features we really need - not even SocialText.

Last but not least, to keep things moving forward and stay connected with the global community of practicioners who are passionate about this effort, we will hold weekly Skypecasts including discussion leaders which will be released as a Podcast through the Social Media Club site. We will also hold open Skypecasts once per month for the entire group to join. Call times are still to be decided, but I would prefer it to be the latter part of the week typically, alternating between times that are good for the Western United States and Central Europe (where key people are located).

There is more that we discussed, but those are the highlights as they relate to decisions on collaboration tools. Should anyone have any questions or wish to discuss further, please do comment and make suggestions here, but do realize we are proceeding forward down this path because no one bothered to object or respond to prior requests of the group. The good news is that there are 44 members of the New Media Release Google Group, including some of the best and brightest minds in contemporary Communications and Public Relations.

Not a bad place to start…

Technorati Tags: hRelease, newmediarelease, newpr, pr2.0, smpr, smpr, socialmediaclub

The First Rule of Social Media Club is…

The first rule of Social Media Club is to talk with us about what Social Media Club should be - please tag it SMCfeedback, join our Google Group or leave comments here. As you might expect, we have lots of ideas for projects and have a great sense of the core values at the heart of the organization, but the plan is intended to be an open one, driven by the community members. The ideas you will read about here are starting points for conversations - ultimately we wish to build a community that is truly of, by and for the people it serves - people from all walks of life who care about, benefit from and create Social Media.

We imagine that the activities of the community will include both for profit and not for profit endeavours - you never know what will happen when bringing smart, creative and open minded people together. We can’t really imagine what this will look like a year from now - all we know is that by coming together we can be more effective than we can be alone. Cooperation and collaboration are the order of the day - not just across departments within your organization, but across organizations and particularly across traditional disciplines. So as we explained with the temporary home page, we want Social Media Club to be:

“A loosely joined association for open conversations on the future of media for: Artists, Students, Educators, Tool Makers, Media Creators, Citizen Journalist, Professional Journalists, Communications Professionals, Open Minded Collaborators.”

As I have said before, we are living in the Knowledge Economy and on our way to a Wisdom Economy. With value being determined on bytes rater than bits, the biggest factor in creating value is the ability of people to collaborate with one another in an open and honest way, focusing their attention on the better interest of all and bringing a diverse set of experiences to bear. This is exactly what I hope to accomplish with you through Social Media Club - to collaborate on building a community of Social Media practitioners for the purpose of establishing ethics and standards, sharing best practices and promoting media literacy.

For a little more background on some of the values at the heart of the organization, you can read my blog post explaining the thinking behind Social Media Club as the focus for our work - but also be sure to check out the About section, our thinking on other Groups, how we want to work with Schools and most importantly, the types of Projects we are pursuing and considering.

We need your help in many ways large and small - there will be more details to come in the morning after some much needed rest.