Archive for the 'MyWeek' Category

This is a cross-post from my social media blog ZenGuide

I set up my International Public Relations bookproject wiki a few weeks back but I’ve been hesitating about announcing it on my blogs. I finally blogged about it a few days ago and invited comments and input - and I hope very much that you will help me with my research by getting involved in this project. But the reason I hesitated is that having set up the wiki online, I found that I have a strong streak of “command and control” in my character.

I wrote my two novels all by myself and did not show them to anyone until I had finished typing “The End” on the last page. I did invite input from experts on some of the background information that I needed to create a real world for my characters to inhabit and I did occasionally discuss motivation and plot points with my writer friends. But I kept the bulk of the story and text to myself during the 18 months or so that each book took to write. And I felt very much in control as the author and creator.

So while the “social media”, open and transparent part of me is all for having a go with writing a book via a wiki online, the old-fashioned author in me has been feeling somewhat uncomfortable about this new way of doing things. Will people nick my ideas/ thesis? Will people give me unsupportive criticism? Will I feel pushed and pulled by others’ input? Will I no longer feel like the author of the work?

My worries took me by surprise as I had always considered myself an open and trusting sort of person. (Though perhaps my years of training as a lawyer has overlayed that with an armoury of suspicion…?) Friends and colleagues gave me differing views. Some advised, no way should I put it up online as people might steal my work. Others were more of the attitude: well, try it and see. The advantage is that I can invite the help of others who may have more expertise of a particular issue than I have and I always liked the saying, “two (or more) heads are better than one”. And since I may be approaching experts with whom I have no personal connection, I can refer them to the work online for them to get a sense of what the book is about and whether they feel comfortable contributing to it. Also, as I would like to include a strong cross-cultural focus, having an online presence accessible from all over the world can only be a good thing.

A number of much more well-known authors than me have shared their books online while they’ve been work in progress. Chris Anderson blogged his book The Long Tail and developed it with readers’ input. Marc Wright over at simply-communicate.com is also using a wiki for his book Handbook for Internal Communication, due for publication in March 2008. So I reckon, if it’s good enough for them, it’s good enough for me.

So far, I’ve put out a few feelers to a number of experts and I hope to have spoken to an Italian writer this week and also a Korean social media / tech CEO based in Japan.

Do go and check out the bookproject wiki - and let me know if you have any thoughts on any of the issues I’m researching. Drop me an email via the Contact form above or add a comment.

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

As I’ve blogged about before, I am co-authoring the social media sections of a book on New Trends in International PR to be published internationally by UK publishers Kogan Page in early 2009. I am trying a social media experiment as part of the book - I am posting my research online on a wiki and inviting readers to add comments and share their knowledge with me. I hope that you or your contacts may be able to help with this project.

Many books on social media as well as books on public relations have tended to focus on the West, and in particular the US and UK markets. But globalisation and social media, as you know, are rapidly changing the landscape of communications. Influence is shifting from organisations to individuals and the voices of Asia, Africa and non-Western cultures are becoming increasingly significant on the world stage.

Our book aims to explore the landscape of new communications from a cross-cultural perspective with special focus on Asia as well as other non-Anglo-Saxon cultures.

Would you - or someone you know - be able to give me an cross cultural perspective around how social media is used in Asia, Africa or South America? For example:

# What businesses in those regions/ cultures blog or podcast? What about not-for-profit organisations, politicians, campaigners, activists, solo professionals - do they use social media to help their enterprise?

# What is the impact of social media and networks like Facebook on business, culture, politics, relationships etc in those cultures/ regions?

I would like to share a strong cross-cultural perspective in the book, so I hope very much that you can help.

You can find out more about the book and follow my research at http://new-trends-in-international-pr.pbwiki.com/.

For others who have already contributed to the project, please see http://new-trends-in-international-pr.pbwiki.com/Acknowledgements+to+Contributors

If you’re able to share our views with me, you can contact me via the book wiki at http://new-trends-in-international-pr.pbwiki.com/contact.php or via the Contact link at the top of this page.

bkprj

In the last few months, I’ve been involved in the preparations for the EuroComm Conference in Barcelona coming up early next year and I’m pleased to report that we have just launched the website and blog for the Conference.

The IABC EuroComm Conference in Barcelona will take place on 4-5 Feb 2008. The website is at http://www.salle.url.edu/EuroComm/.

The blog will feature articles and posts on the theme of Innovation through Communication, which is the theme of the conference. We would very much like to engage in discussions and shares view around this theme even before the conference starts so we hope that you’ll come along to visit the blog at http://www.salle.url.edu/EuroComm/blog/.

Guest-bloggers include business communicators who will be speaking at the conference - they will be sharing their personal views on the blog in advance of the conference. There is also a core team of bloggers, including IABC members Marc Wright of simply-communicate.com, the online communications magazine, Kevin Keohane of SAS, the branding agency and Yang-May Ooi of ZenGuide, the social media consultancy as well as web usability expert, Giles Colborne of cxpartners, the usability professionals.

We are also inviting business and communications professionals to submit articles around the theme of the conference, Innovation through Communication. You do not have to be a member of IABC and you do not need to be going to the conference to submit an article. We’d just like to hear your views if you have a story or opinion piece that is relevant to our theme. You can find out more through our Article Submission Guidelines

The programme for EuroComm Conference is available at http://www.salle.url.edu/EuroComm/programme.html

Registration for the Conference is now open - find out how to register at http://www.salle.url.edu/EuroComm/registration.php

For information about discounted accommodation during the Conference, go to http://www.salle.url.edu/EuroComm/hotel.html

I came across an article by Marina Mahathir, the daughter of former Malaysian Prime Minister Dr Mahathir, writing about a dinner she had with her family. She said, “In my family I have relatives who are Chinese, American, French, Irish, Javanese and I don’t know what else. But we don’t spend a lot of time thinking about race and nationality. I never thought of my aunt as Chinese until her party, at which time I felt proud.”

It struck me that many Malaysians I know have families made up of this kind of eclectic demographic, my own included. My sister-in-law is Dutch and my partner is South African. My cousin is half-South African and another cousin is married to an Australian. There are Kiwis, Brits, Americans, Indonesians all coming into the clan.

There’s still some resistance amongst the more traditional older folk, I think, to their children marrying “outside” what they are used to. I remember years ago an elderly relative asking me if my parents minded that my brother was marrying a Dutch girl, saying, “Their children will only be half yours, you know.” Well, genetically, whoever my brother married, their off-spring would only be half Ooi…! My parents laughed when I told them this exchange - for them, the only thing that matters is that whoever we are with, we are happy. And my sense is that most Malaysian families these days have attitudes more similar to my parents than my elderly relative.

What’s your family like? Are you a United Nations like mine? I’d love to hear your story - please add a comment!

Pic: thanks to en.wikipedia.org

Say Lee added a comment to my post about his blog last week, mentioning old fashioned games that he used to play as a child like spinning tops and collecting bottle caps. It started me thinking back to all the home-made games we used to play as kids in Malaysia. We had our share of Action Man and Barbie doll toys, Lego and toy cars etc so we were fortunate kids in that respect. However, we also had fun playing with home-made gadgets and toys, especially with other kids at school or cousins we visited in my mother’s hometown in Taiping.

Recently, my mum was clearing out our cupboards at home in KL and found a packet of “five stones” right at the back. “Five stones” is a picking up game rather like jacks but instead of a bouncy ball and plastic bits to pick up, you play with cloth-sewn packets of dried rice the size of marbles. You scatter them on the floor, pick one up and throw that into the air - while it’s in the air, you pick up each of the remaining four packets in different sequences, catching the flying one at the end of each move. These ones that my mum found were made out of cloth from old pyjamas and must be over 30 years old! They are rather manky and I’m a bit nervous about picking them up in case they crumble to dust in my hands. She had brought them over instead of chucking them straight in the bin because it was amazing that they had survived all these years and it was fun for us all to look back at those days together.

I would play “five stones” with my friends in break time at school in KL, sitting in a circle on the cement floor. We also used to play a skipping game with a “rope” made out of rubber bands woven together - I was never very good at that, not being terribly well co-ordinated, but I remember enjoying stringing the rubber bands together and marvelling at how a cluster of these little things could become a long rope.

When we were a bit older, there was that paper game where you folded a piece of paper into an opening and closing flower and wrote a “prediction” in different quadrants. Holding it in your two hands, you’d ask someone to pick one of the four colours you had coloured in on the top and then spell the colour out as you opened and closed the “flower”. They would then un-leaf a petal where the last word landed and find their future “predicted” underneath. I have no idea what the paper thingy game is called but I loved creating different flowers with different predictions and colours.

I guess these are all girly games. I wonder if they are still played in my old school back in KL (Bukit Bintang Girls Shool 2). Or perhaps other home-made games have been invented since then. Can anyone tell me?

UPDATE: Oh wow, I was just searching the internet to find a picture of “five stones” and the Singapore Museum shop is selling a set (with pouch) as “traditional toys” for S$8.00! The online store description says: “Five stones (or four, if you prefer) would be played by a group of children sitting in a circle in the hot afternoons and taking turns to throw the stones in the air, catching them with one hand, in a variety of patterns.”

I wonder if they’d like to receive my historic, genuine antique “five stones” to display in the museum?

My 13-year-old nephew emailed me a story he has been writing and asked for my feedback last week. I was very touched that he asked me and I wanted to give him pointers that were going to be practical and useful.

The thing is, though, I have no idea what standard one should expect from a teenager as I have only ever considered writing by adults. I didn’t want to patronise him in the way that adults can patronise teens so I decided that I would give him advice as one writer to another, regardless of his age.

I was looking over my email to him just now and it struck me that some of the tips I gave could actually be helpful to any aspiring writer so I thought I’d share some of them here:

1. Show not tell. This is what all writers must learn to do. Show us the scene and the surroundings so we can infer what is happening and you don’t have to tell us. For example*, “Dan waited outside the maternity ward. His palms were sweaty and he couldn’t stop fiddling with the lighter. He kept looking up expecting to see the doctor come through the surgery doors. What was taking so long?” We know he is anxious and impatient by seeing his actions. We can infer that his wife is through those doors undergoing surgery - probably because there is a problem with the pregnancy. That is “showing”.

Compare “Dan waited anxiously and impatiently outside the surgery doors of the maternity ward where he had brought his wife an hour ago because there was a problem with the pregnancy”. That is “telling” - it gives you all the information but it’s not as exciting. You’re not in there with Dan.

Look through your manuscript and see where you can change “telling” to “showing”.

2. Minimise the use of adverbs. This is what my editor at Hodder & Stoughton told me. If you are showing not telling, then you don’t need adverbs because your reader will know if your character is angry or timid and you don’t have to say “angrily” or “timidly”. Go through your story and strike out 95% of the adverbs. Keep only a handful and they will be even more powerful.

3. Minimise subordinate clauses. Subordinate clauses can work to give explanations or provide additional information. But they can also distract from the main action. For an action story especially, what you want to convey is a sense of immediacy.

For example*, “Some might have considered Anna a timid girl but on this dark night, for the sun had set some hours before, as she strolled slowly home from work, feeling tired, for it had been a long and difficult day in the office, when Anna was suddenly and brutally attacked, she felt it within her heart that now was the time to be strong and fight back with all her might.” This gives you a lot of information about Anna and her day at work and what her friends think of her. But it loses immediacy because we are not there with her in the attack.

Compare: “Anna was tired. It had been a long and difficult day at the office. On her usual route back from work, she walked more slowly that usual even though it was already dark. Suddenly, someone grabbed her from behind. …..” And then you can describe the scene where she fights back. We do not need to know yet that her friends think her timid. You can always include that later, perhaps in a scene with her friends talking about how brave she was and how that was unexpected for them. The main point in this particular scene is the attack and her fighting back.

Go through your story and see where you can cut out subordinate clauses that are not relevant for that scene right now.

So, whatever age you may be, if you’re working to improve your writing, I hope these few pointers help you, too.

If you have any tips that you’d like to share with other writers, please do add them as a comment or email me, using the Contact link above.

*These examples are NOT taken from my nephew’s story - they are invented by me as illustrations.

Photo: thanks to this is your brain on… on flickr.com

This is a cross-post from my communications and social media blog, ZenGuide

Last week, I gave a presentation at the Copyright Licensing Agency’s annual open meeting about The Impact of Web 2.0 on copyright issues. It was a packed hall with over 180 people, many of them standing. The delegates ranged from authors and content producers to publishers and librarians and knowledge management professionals in education and business organisations. Althought I couldn’t make it for the whole of the round table discussion on digital information and copyright chaired by Chris Bryant, MP, I managed to catch the tail end of it. I also had the chance after the event to speak to a few of the delegates, including representatives from the BBC, a photographic rights agency, a publisher and a corporate knowledge management professional.

I’m jotting down here some of my impressions of the issues from the conference - these are no more than impressions and vignettes of the discussions as they were aired and raise more questions for debate rather than giving firm answers.

• The government is making funding available for schools to help students become more internet- and social media- literate but there are apparently delays due to concerns about schools using materials off the internet in breach of copyright. However, there are apparently special sites offering copyright-free material for schools and educational establishment for just this purpose. But, overall, can the government with all its unwieldy bureaucratic machinery be the right instrument for change is the fast moving area of online technology and networked communication and enterprise?

• Is digital rights management here to stay? Or will content producers like the BBC have to accept the fact that they will have to let go off their rights to a product some time after it’s been produced?

• At the moment, the likes of the BBC can still find a market to sell its high quality products like its natural world series etc due to the fact that pirated versions on the internet are of low quality. It is probably not long before the technology will be freely available to upload high quality pirated versions online. What then for the original content producers?

• Is there a future for book writers when digital readers become more widely available? At the moment, book lovers are still attached to the physical book but as the young techno-loving iPod wearing millenials and their children start to outnumber us oldies, will they adapt more enthusiastically to electronic book readers? If so, will that be an opportunity for “bijou” writers who don’t produce blockbusters to gain a wider readership through digital distribution because they won’t be at the mercy of the bookshops for distribution? Or will it be a threat because their work can now be easily copied and freely distributed illegally?

• Chris Bryant mentioned the estate of German playwright Bertolt Brecht. The estate were apparently restrictive for a long time in granting rights for Brecht’s works to be used, quoted, performed or edited. For example, his plays in their original would run for over 3.5 hours which is difficult to market to today’s theatre-going audiences. However, they have recently been more open in rights granting and the result has been that more Brecht plays are being performed and the increased exposure generally from the dissemination of his works through freer rights has resulted in greater revenue returns for the estate.

• The panellists in the main discussion all called for flexibility in managing copyright - yes, it is important to protect and value the products of creativity and hard work but in this digital age, it’s important to be flexible to enable the sharing of information and knowledge.

• I was struck by the comment of a university representative about the difficulties of printing off 50 copies of an online article to include in a student pack for discussion on one of the university’s courses. It’s ironic in that the founding principle of the World Wide Web was that the technology was meant to make information freely available for all…

What do you think? Have you had experiences around copyright issues and social media or online digital technologies? I’d love to hear your views - please add a comment or email me.

Photo: of Sony Digital Reader thanks to askdavetaylor.com

During my few weeks away from blogging over August, I spent some relaxing and delightful days with my family in Delft, Holland. Every time I go to the Continent, I am always struck by how civilised and stylish many of the cities there are - a great contrast to the chaotic, sprawling, hectic and stressful metropolis that is London.

Delft is tiny - the centre is probably not much bigger in than my South London suburb. Like many Dutch cities, it is the canals that dominate. The streets alongside are too narrow for more than the occasional car so pedestrians and cyclists are king. Unlike the cyclists in London who are all decked out in Lycra, helmets and goggles and who will find any excuse to pick a fight with cars, trucks and pedestrians, routinely swearing, shouting and waving fists, the cyclists in Delft are in their ordinary clothes, the breeze blowing through their hair and give pedestrians right of way, stopping to help lost tourists and generally, taking the time to stop and chat with friends they meet on their way.

It was delightful to sit at canalside cafes and chat without having to shout above the sound of traffic and breathe in fresh, cool air (in London, sitting at a streetside cafe gets you lungs full of CO and you can barely hear yourself think from the noise). It was a joy to hear the sound of church bells wafting over the city (in London, they are drowned out by traffic noise). It was relaxing to stroll along the streets while cyclists wove around you (instead of being shouted and cursed at as per London).

We took a cycle ride ourselves out to a farm which had a restaurant and cafe. Outside of the centre, the roads and streets are specially adapted for cyclists with cycle lanes and special traffic lights at major intersections. In the country roads, there are much fewer cars than in the UK, with most people preferring to hop on their bicycles for errands. We saw older ladies in smart skirts and high heeled shoes pottering along country lanes on their bikes with their groceries in one arm.

The one weird thing about Dutch cycling for us is the brakes - they are in the pedals and not on the handlebars so you have to back-pedal to stop. Eeks! It takes some getting used to and is particularly nerve wracking as you wobble towards a canal and are trying frantically to brake with non-existent levers on your handlebars…. I’m relieved to report that none of us fell in though we had a close shave one time!

Last Sunday morning, I had a conference call with my sister (in London) and my parents (in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia) using Skype. My sister and I were using Skype on our computers on the voice call, occassionally exchanging short chat messages when the sound quality warped. My parents were on speakerphone in KL and I had conferenced them in using SkypeOut (they don’t have a computer). The sound quality was patchy at times and the whole conversation took a longer because we had to repeat ourselves from time to time.

But it was brilliant to be able to have all of us on the call at the same time. And it cost be about 30-40p altogether for the SkypeOut part of the call.

It made me think about how difficult it used to be to speak to my family from England when I first came over. Mobile phones had not been invented yet and all we had at school was a call box in the cold, dark cubby hole under the stairs. The school discouraged us from calling home more than once a week - in case the contact with home made us more homesick and unhappy with our lot at school. So once a week, the girls would queue up on the stairs to call home.

I don’t think I called home once a week because of the cost of the call. It was a coin-operated phone which we had to feed with a ton of coins. The only way to do it was to call reverse-charge and back in those days, reverse charge calls were even more expensive. I’d queue up and call my uncle in London instead. It was nice to chat to him as a family contact but it wasn’t the same as speaking to my mummy. (I was 12.)

Later on, after I went to university, I think overseas calls got a bit cheaper and I’d call once a month or something like that - reverse charge - from my digs in Oxford. We had one payphone that we all shared. I don’t remember using the phone much with my friends - we used the “pigeon post” system where we could send written notes on bits of paper to students in other colleges via the University’s internal mail system, or we would just turn up at someone’s room or at their digs and hope they’d be in. (The mobile phone still hadn’t been invented then).

When I started work and had my own place, I remember being careful about making non-essential calls after lunch or in the evenings as calls in the morning were more expensive. I was the first among my friends, being a techhy type even then, to get an answering machine. It was at least a year or more before some of my friends could even get over the strangeness of it and leave a message. And when I got a fax machine, I’d say, “Fax me the directions of how to get to your place” and they’d just laugh at me. (And yes, we were still waiting for the mobile phone to be invented).

I went off on a cycling holiday in Spain in the late 1980s with a three other friends - back in those days without mobile phones - and at one stage, we had to split into two pairs because of illness and bicycle problems. One friend and I would cycle the rest of the way and the other two would take the train. We pulled out our maps and poring over the route, we agreed that we’d meet again at our end destination, Santiago de Compostela. I made a list of the three hotels in our guidebook and we would aim to meet at the one at the top of the list first. If the other pair was not there, we’d work our way down to the other two. And if we came to the end of the list and we couldn’t find each other? That option never crossed our minds. I can’t imagine doing that trip now without at least texting or Twittering each other every hour!

These days, we text and Twitter and Skype and chat online and call without a second thought. I’ve got my mum signed up to receive my tweets on her mobile phone and she’s getting the hang of texting. On some call plans, it’s actually now cheaper to call her in Malaysia than to call a UK landline. I’m now looking into signing us all up on Jajah.com to get free landline conference calling this coming Sunday - hey, why spend 30-40p if we can do it for nothing…

Photo: thanks to porticus.org

I discovered A Whiff of Lemongrass, a Malaysian food blog via my cousin Pey. Lyrical Lemongrass, the food blogger, is an accountant who seems to travel the length and breadth of Malaysia eating divine food, which she photographs first in exquisite detail! I am drooling already.

When Pey came to stay last weekend, we thought we’d try to emulate the food bloggers of Malaysia who all seem to carry huge cameras around with them to photograph food. But we ate the food before we managed to take a photo of it. We were happy and stuffed but would never make great food bloggers…

Some food posts on Fusion View and food blogs I like to whet your appetite on Friday:

Global Cakes

Lemon Meringue Pie

The Cooking Diva Blog

If you can recommend any great food blogs from Malaysia or anywhere around the world, please do add a link via the comments to this post.