Archive for February, 2008

My review of Oovoo.com, a Skype-like tool that allows you to video chat with up to six people at a time:

Last week the IABC’s* EuroComm Conference 2008 took place in Barcelona, where I chaired the plenary panel discussion on social media. I was joined by co-panellists Giles Colborne of cxpartners, a web usability expert, and Marc Wright of simply-communicate.com, an internal communications specialist. We had a really good session, which was primarily the result of great comments and challenges from the 80 or so business communicators taking part in the session. I just want to focus here on one issue that emerged from the discussions, which I think reflects the main concern of businesses around social media: control.

When we asked the delegates what was preventing their businesses engaging in the social media, the main reason appeared to be an anxiety about losing control. If you have a blog or social network space, people can come and leave negative comments. If you allow your employees to use social media for internal communications, they could spread seeds of discontent internally. Social media tools also make it easier for staff to leak your internal discussions externally. If you offer spaces for user-generated content, you can lose control of the content and message.

But we also discussed how control is an illusion in the brave new world of social media. There could be people out there already expressing negative views about your business or brand on other social media spaces even if you don’t have a business presence on the blogosphere. Your staff are already able to sign up to Facebook or set up their own blogs at home, even if you block them at work. Leaks occur with email as easily as via any other internet or intranet tool. Someone could be filming you or any of your executives with their mobile phone camera even now, capturing your pratfall or offguard comment to be served up on YouTube for the world to see. Employers are doing internet searches of potential recruits as an add-on to the traditional ways of doing background checks - will they find that photo of you taken by a friend at your cousin’s wedding with someone’s knickers on your head?

For businesses who are worried about controlling the message about their product or services, the least you can do is monitor what the online is saying about you even if you decide never to engage in social media. And if you do engage with a blog or other social media tool, that can actually help enhance your reputation especially if you engage in an authentic way. The community you build around your blog will come to trust, respect and like you and loyalty can count for a great deal in times of crisis.

For individuals, the question is: will we always have to be “on” not just when we engage online but wherever we are because we never know when someone may capture us unawares on digital media? This is a much more challenging issue. It is impossible to be perfectly behaved all the time - that’s just a fact of being human. And perhaps we have to trust that people know that - and that in the long term, people seeing someone’s mistake displayed on YouTube will recognise that it’s just a very human momentary lapse, especially if there are other images of that person online that counter lapse. Perhaps in this early period of the mobile phone video, there’s a lot of press and publicity about this issue because it’s novel but that in the long term, there won’t be such a hoo-ha because there’ll be so many unremarkable human failings available to view online. Or perhaps we will all have to hire public relations consultants to help us with reputation management in the future, whether we are Britney Spears or just an ordinary non-celebrity…

We did not reach any solid conclusions during the discussion, only that this is one debate that is going to contine.

What are your thoughts?

Photo: of car wreck thanks to OpenSkyMedia from flickr.com (CCL)

*International Association of Business Commuicators

I’ve just spent a week in Barcelona, partly attending the IABC EuroComm Conference 2008 where I chaired a panel discussion on social media and partly for a holiday. I’ll be blogging about the conference and the issues that came out of the panel discussion separately. But being a foodie, my first post about the trip has to be about the food we had there!

They call it tapas, the tid-bits of food that the Spanish serve in the early evening before the main meal. It’s very civilised compared to the UK where you generally gobble a packet of crisps and some peanuts with your pint at the pub. The Spanish lay out fried potatoes, spicy morsels of chorizo, sliced octopus, fried calamari and cuttlefish, fried aubergines - the list goes on. Over a long drink and great conversation, it’s just the best way to unwind after a hard day’s sightseeing or shopping. But I have to say, it makes me think of dim sum, the Chinese tid-bits that you generally have for Sunday lunch - in Australia, they call it “yum chah”, I think. My contention is that the Spanish got the idea from the Asia-Pacific region via the likes of Marco Polo, Vasco de Gama etc.

And it’s not just tapas. In Barcelona, there’s a speciality dish which is stir-fried seafood vermicelli - which looks and tastes exactly like the Chinese “chow mai fan” that you get in Malaysia. We would eat it with chilli sauce but they serve it with a daub of garlic butter - equally yummy!

We also came across a fried springroll thing but instead of veg and pork, it is stuffed with chorizo and onions.

And we were struck by the word for butter “mantega”, which is the same word for butter used in Malay. Staying with linguistics, the Spanish word “nona” means woman - I wonder if it is related to the Malaysian word “nonya” which refers to a Straits Chinese woman?

I’m pretty sure these are not merely fanciful connections on my part. Malacca and the Straits of Malacca were critical in the spice trade between West and East during the 1400s so I’m sure words, food and ideas travelled with the sailing ships between the Spanish ports and Malaya. In particular, I was struck by the Arabic influence in Spanish due to the many centuries of Moorish occupation and of course, Arabic continues to be a strong influence in Malay language and culture.

What do you think? If you have any other examples of linguistic or culinary connections between East and West, please do share your thoughts!

Photo: thanks to Gbworx from flickr.com (CCL)

I featured unicycle rambling awhile back as part of my Extreme Sports series. Here are some people playing hockey on unicycles - in Hong Kong of all places..

I am chuffed that highly-respected UK editor turned writing coach, Kathy Gale, has written a guest piece for Fusion View - a personal account of her experience of working with writers while an editor at the top London publishing companies and as an independent writing mentor.

Kathy Gale has been Senior Editor of Pan Books, Macmillan and Hodder & Stoughton; Editorial Director at Pan Macmillan; Marketing Director of Simon & Schuster; and Joint Managing Director of The Women’s Press. She currently heads her own writing consultancy, KG Publishing Services.

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Kathy writes:

Flair

As an editor and publisher for over twenty years, I’ve worked with many writers and I’ve always shared the common publishing view that you’ve either got writing talent or you haven’t. If the flair’s there, it’s worth honing, nurturing and developing. If it isn’t, don’t encourage the writer.

I held this view steadfastly during my time as Senior Editor at Pan Books, Macmillan and Hodder & Stoughton, and when I became Editorial Director of Pan Macmillan and Joint Managing Director of The Women’s Press. But in 2005, I decided to go it alone and set up my own business as a publishing consultant and writing coach.

Breaking down the barriers

I began working with writers who were just starting out - reading their work, meeting them, talking to them on the telephone, helping them to understand the bewildering world of publishing and what publishers and agents actually want. When I started, I thought I would mostly be telling writers, gently and clearly, that they hadn’t got what it takes. And then I noticed a remarkable thing. As I worked with authors, and as I talked to them about the difficulties they were experiencing, the challenges they faced, the reasons their work wasn’t having enough of an emotional impact on the reader, often something was unlocked. Often, draft two or draft three was suddenly remarkably different. At that point, I began to change my mind about the whole talent question. Perhaps, in reality, we all have talent, but there are barriers – lack of knowledge of the publishing world, fear of exposure or failure, the ability to create the time and space to write – that hold us back.

It’s a tough world out there

This isn’t to say that I’m not realistic. I still give writers clear and honest feedback about their potential to be published and that’s often not the feedback the writer wants to hear. And I alert writers to the realities of the publishing world – it is extremely and increasingly tough to get a publishing deal. But I have been surprised by the amount of talent that is out there, just needing some encouragement and support to flourish.

Our beloved babies

For some of my writers, publication is the aim and nothing else will do. Others want to write the best book they can possibly write for the satisfaction that gives them. That changes the advice I give and the way I work. Some writers will come to me for initial feedback on their work and then go away for months as they rewrite. Others come regularly for detailed editing and support throughout the writing process. All of them come to accept that writing a good book takes months, often years, of sustained, hard, committed work. But most find it a highly satisfying and rewarding process. Alice Walker once said that having a child was like letting your heart walk around outside your body – a graphic picture of the vulnerability motherhood creates. And I think writing is a little like that – something internal and personal is being put out in the world for other people to look at and comment on. This can be a delicate, painful process. But most mothers would say that they wouldn’t be without their children. And I bet most writers wouldn’t be without their books.

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To contact Kathy Gale about her work as a writing coach:
Kathy.gale@kgpublishingservices.co.uk
www.kgpublishingservices.co.uk

Photo: thanks to bookseller.com

Now this is just what you need on your Monday morning commute to work - some noisy young people dancing to Michael Jackson’s “Thriller” on the London tube…

It’s the passengers’ reaction (or non-reaction) that really capturers the London experience.

One of my favourite radio podcasts is Thinking Allowed on the BBC, hosted by sociologist Laurie Taylor. A recent programme discussed the sociological implications of the British Sandwich - whether cutting it in triangles shows middle class pretensions whereas cutting it into oblongs demonstrates working class earthiness. I had no idea there was so much that could be read into a couple of slices of bread.

I’ve never been keen on sandwiches. I tend to prefer the Asian way of eating - Asian meals do not involve much wheat or gluten or cold food so the sandwich is a strange concoction from that perspective. But in the UK for many years, the sandwich has been the staple of quick lunches so I tolerate it and have had my fair share of lunchtime sarnies. I’m glad to see, though, that more and more Asian style fast food lunching is becoming available - you can buy a nice hot meal with spicy chicken and rice for around £5 and take it away to eat back at the office, just like in Kuala Lumpur (though the price is probably 3 times more than Asian prices!).

The one kind of sandwich that I did love as a kid in Malaysia was a chicken sandwich with lots of butter and white pepper on soft white bread. Chicken sandwiches were a treat that we had when we went “out station” - meant to sustain us on the long drive to my grandparents’ in Taiping, but often devoured within the first hour or so of getting into the car! Their novelty lay in their being, well, Western but they also tasted great because the chicken was prepared with Chinese style ingredients and included the dark meat and the crunchy skin. (In the UK, shop bought chicken sandwiches are made from the bland skinless white meat so can be dry and tasteless, unfortunately.)

For pure evil indulgence, we tried a fried peanut butter and banana sandwich once - said to be Elvis Presley’s favourite. You butter the white bread on the outside and pile the inside high with the squishy ingredients, then deep fry the oozing slab. Yummy and gruesome all at the same time. I’m not sure what the sociological implications of this type of sandwich would be….

Photo: thanks to sheilaz413 from flickr.com (CCL)