Archive for the 'New Trends in International PR' Category

The following forms part of the book I am co-authoring with Silvia Cambie on New Trends in International Public Relations. This follows on from the sections on the Commercialization of the Web and Computers Get Personal, which I have also posted on this blog and my social media blog ZenGuide.co.uk.

The text is a verbatim section from the book and the links are set out at the bottom of this post as footnotes rather than embedded links. The text is copyrighted and all rights are reserved.

Connection speed is the other significant factor in the online revolution. Connecting to the internet from the mid-1990s to around 2003 was generally via a dial-up modem and a telephone line. Connection speed was slow and the cost meant that most people used it for email primarily and only surfed during off-peak periods. For the average user, sustained video and audio interaction was practically impossible.

And then along came broadband.

The broadband story is similar across the globe, with the amount of take-up by consumers being directly linked to availability and cost. In 2002, broadband connection in the UK promising 40 times the connection speed of regular dial-up cost £55 a month, plus an additional set up fee and the cost of a broadband modem. By 2007, it was down to around £18 a month and became available nationally. By 2005, broadband connections outstripped dial-up and by 2007, 60% of UK households had broadband[i].

Across the European Union. 25% of all households were connected to the internet via broadband by 2006[ii]. In Asia (excluding Japan), a survey of internet usage in 2006 revealed that “broadband access continues to have a major impact on consumers lives” with the highest broadband usage being in Korea, closely followed by Taiwan, Hong Kong, Singapore, Th iland and China[iii].

In 2007, Hong Kong came top in a survey of the best cities in Asia for getting a broadband connection due to robust competition and web-enabled mobile phones[iv]. In India, the home broadband market is growing while internet café access is slowing, with 23 million home users accessing the internet via broadband during 2007[v]. In South Africa, business leaders and communicators there have indicated to us that the lack of cheap, universal broadband is a factor in the slow growth of online engagement.

When considering your web strategy across borders, it is crucial to assess the range and cost of internet connectivity not just for businesses but for personal users. But there are also other factors which are likely to be relevant, such as language and literacy. Take India, for example. We think of it as a country where English is universally spoken. It is often referred to as the Silicon Valley of the East, especially with tech-savvy, internationally well-known entrepreneurs like Sabeer Bhatia[vi] returning home to develop internet-based businesses over there. As we mentioned, growing personal affluence is enabling 23 million Indians to purchase computers for the home. But dig a little deeper and there are other factors in play that will be relevant for your communications strategy there. There are still just over 18 million internet café users, indicating that cost remains an issue. Also, for every Sabeer Bhatia, out of India’s of over 1 billion people, only 52 % are literate. And for those who can read, there is little online content available in India’s many local languages[vii].

It may be that you are only aiming to reach the population who can read and write English in their own homes, as they will be the most affluent and attractive target demographic. If so, then your web strategy may not look all that different from one for any other affluent, literate, English speaking market. But if you are aiming to reach those beyond that group, you may need to think beyond English or even text-based content – and perhaps beyond online communications to mobile outreach or you may have to stick to good old-fashioned travelling roadshows[viii].

In general across the globe, however, cheap, universal broadband has been a significant factor in evolving our relationship with the internet from the specialised domain of geeks to an always open window in our households that lets us reach out to the world out there. As we will see, in particular, there is a close correlation between the growth of broadband in the Asia-Pacific and the rise of social media engagement in that region, with a number of countries such as South Korea, China, Singapore and Malaysia topping the charts of worldwide blog readers and blog creators[ix].

Photo: thanks to Edward B. from flickr.com (CCL)

Following my post about the Commercialization of the Web on my social media blog ZenGuide.co.uk, which forms part of the book I am co-authoring with Silvia Cambie on New Trends in International Public Relations, here is the section from the book that outlines the rise of the personal computer. What fascinates me about the history of the Personal Computer (PC) is how it developed from a military machine to something that most of us need to function in the modern world today - and how that evolution has changed society and human culture across the world.

The text is a verbatim section from the book and the links are set out at the bottom of this post as footnotes rather than embedded links. The text is copyrighted and all rights are reserved.

Computers Get Personal

The evolution of technology is a mega-trend today that no business can ignore. A brief tour of the evolution of computers illustrates the importance of keeping your eye on technological developments.

In 1948, IBM´s Selective Sequence Electronic Calculator, which was to calculate the position of the moon for the 1969 Apollo mission to the moon, took up floor space of 25 feet by 40 feet. In 1951, the computer for the US Census Bureau was one of the early commercial computers and it took up 943 cubic feet, selling at US $1million each plus US $185,000 for a high speed printer. By 1968, the cost of a computer was down to US $8,000 with Data General Corp’s Nova which was the size of small writing bureau.[i]

In 1975, the MITS Altair 8800 could be bought by computer hobbyists from Popular Electronics magazine for US $395 as a kit or US $495 pre-assembled[ii]. The next year, Steve Wozniak and Steve Jobs created Apple 1, which sold at just over US $600[iii]. In 1981, Radio Shack’s TRS-82 Model III retailed for US $699. By now, computers were housed in boxes that could be used on a normal office desk and had the shape and set up that we are familiar with today. There is a screen and keyboard and a joystick for navigation. Software came via cassette tape, which was beginning to be replaced by the floppy drive. The data appeared as text or figures and there were no graphics. While available for consumer purchase, it was still the math and science geeks who were the main market demographic for these personal computers.

In 1984, the first Apple Macintosh appeared, with a graphical interface – ie the data could be accessed by activating icons on the screen and navigation was by way of a device called a “mouse”[iv]. At around the same time, Microsoft released the first version of Windows, its own graphical interface sitting on top of MS-DOS, the text-based version of Microsoft software used by most computer manufacturing companies at that time, including IBM and Compaq[v].

By the mid-1990s, you were also getting more bang for your buck when it came to computer processing chips with Intel unveiling its Pentium chip at under US $1,000[vi]. While business and industry had been using computers for decades, plummeting costs, greater processing power and increased ease of use meant that for the first time, it made sense for the public to buy a computer for personal use. People were becoming used to computers from their work environment. It was a natural transition to getting a computer for home use. PCs, as personal computers soon came to be called, were also fun – computer games loaded by CD-ROM became a serious contender to TV-based consoles in 1994[vii]. With PCs arriving in many homes bundled with Internet Explorer for access to the internet, Outlook Express for email and a host of other useful (eg Calendar, Paint and CD-ROMs packed with dictionaries and encyclopedias) and not-so-useful applications (eg Minesweeper and Solitaire games), our personal relationship with our home computers as a source of productivity, fun, information and communication truly began.

In 1995, there were 50 million personal computers sold globally.[viii] By 2000, computer sales in China alone were growing faster than any market in the world, with 4.1 million PCs bought in that one country during the second quarter[ix]. Now in the first decade of the 21^st century, there are over 257 million personal computers sold worldwide[x] and sales are likely to increase over the next few years, in particular of laptops and other mobile computing equipment as affordability, performance and wireless access improve. Gartner, the IT consultants, calculate that emerging markets made up 70% of the growth in overall computer sales and projected that laptop sales during 2008 would grow by 11%. They are confident that a looming global recession would not slow sales[xi]. Experts elsewhere in the industry also seem to agree that mobile computing will bring the next wave of growth for the sector. Loren Loverde, the Director of data firm IDC’s PC Tracker, says, “It will be increasingly important for PC vendors to have a strong portable offering to stay competitive as the market continues its rapid shift to mobile computing.”[xii]

It took 30 years for computers to evolve from military and government use via business and industry to become affordable for a limited geek market, with prices dropping from US $1,000,000 to stabilise around US $700. But from the 1970s onwards, major developments in processing power, size and ease of use surged ahead in leaps and bounds. And with each technological leap and bound, we adapted the way we communicate, relate and work. Even as some businesses are only now thinking about getting their first website (and there are quite a few of those still around), the market is already surging ahead towards online social media and mobile communications. For anyone engaged in business nowadays, it is critical to keep one eye on the latest technological and communications advances if you don’t want to be left behind.

I will be posting to Fusion View once a week for the next little while, usually on a Wednesday. I am focusing my writing energies on my latest book project, New Trends in International Public Relations, during this time. I am working on the social media aspects while my co-author Silvia Cambie is writing the main sections on international PR. You can check out my online wiki for the book project where I’ve been collating my research. I’ll also be writing about my research and reporting on progress on the book on my communications and social media blog, ZenGuide.co.uk - and also here on Fusion View.

Wishing everyone a great New Year’s Eve and a successful 2008!

The Australians are not known for their reticence or their polite turns of phrases. With the Australian General Elections coming up, the Ozzies have taken their outspoken and vigorous style of public debate online. Videos on YouTube and other platforms have been the media of choice with shows by established satirical magazines like The Daily Grind and The Ministry of Truth alongside clips by outspoken individuals. The political parties have also taken to the e-waves with their own channels on YouTube.

Here is a quick romp through the Ozzie political videoscape:

Government supported satire

The satirical The Ministry of Truth has uploaded an episode on their Ning-based online platform. The video features sketches laughing at the obsession with Australianness. The sketch about the Australian barbie made me laugh out loud (possible because I’d make a good Ozzie carnivore if I weren’t already British).

It’s striking that the show is sponsored by the Queensland Government Arts Board. I can’t imagine an Asian government sponsoring this kind of satirical show on their national channels.

Party Political Broadcasts

The Australian Labor Party has its own YouTube channel. The only problem with their very slick videos is that - well, they are very slick. They feature actors playing “ordinary” Australians talking about their “lives” and negative “responses” to John Howard’s statement that “Australians have never been better off”. The series of videos are all typical party political broadcast style ads that don’t sit very well on YouTube where the millions of other user-generated videos are have more quirky, spontaneous content. Take a look at this one featuring a “housewife”:

I reckon they would be more credible interviewing a few real people with all the “ums” and “ers” and a less slick presentation.

Amateurs join the fray

This one is a satirical song featuring Elvis and animated collages of the main electoral candidates John Howard and Kevin Rudd by someone(s?) called Captain Rant and the Knee Jerk Reactions. I couldn’t find out much more about them on the net - so if you know who they are and what else they’ve done, let me know by adding a comment.

There are plenty more satirical videos of this nature on YouTube - try typing in the candidates names in the search box and then follow links and related videos to explore them for yourself.

What is impressive is the standard of the animation and satire - although many are made by amateur film-makers they are pretty watchable and also clever and funny. They seem to be made by people who are older than the usual teenagers who populate user-generated spaces like these and who have a message they want to get across. The tone is also particularly Australian, I think - there’s no earnestness in these videos though clearly many of the creators feel strongly about their nation and the issues being debated and their irreverent humour and wit is what really comes across. In contrast, the American presidential debate currently taking place online is much more serious and earnest with bloggers - rather than film-makers - taking the lead.

The year of social media

2007 seems to be the year for social media to be taken seriously in the political arena, from what we’ve seen in America and now in Australia. This will be increasingly common around the world and will no longer be “news” in itself. I think that social media has the potential to engage populations in political debate in a fresh way and hopefully, this will mean less apathy and more involvement in the electoral process. In particular, peer-to-peer discussion and debate may prove to be a very powerful way for drawing otherwise uninterested citizens into the issues.

I am also currently exploring the use of social media for political debate in Asia and Africa and will be blogging about that in the future.

What do you think? If you’re an Australian, have these videos made you more interested in the elections and/ or politics?

Share your thoughts and add a comment.

Other resources

For a great review of other satiricial videos about the Australian elections, you can check out Australia’s ABC Radio National’s Street Stories podcast. Their show notes page also gives a list of links to various film-makers featured in their programme such as Shan Jayaweera who uses John Howard and Kevin Rudd puppets.

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This post and others in the category New Trends in International Public Relations is part of my research project for the book of the same name that I am co-authoring with business communications expert, Silvia Cambie. I am focusing on the social media aspects while she is working on the wider public relations issues.

To find out more about my research for this book, see my book wiki.

To see who has contributed to my research for the book, take a look at my Contributors List.

If you can help with my research for the book, please contact me via the book wiki contact link or email me via this blog.

This is a cross post from my social media blog ZenGuide

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)

The article I was researching and writing earlier this year about blogging in Malaysia has now been published in Communication World, the journal of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC). It is featured in a special Asia-Pacific supplement under the title “Blogging Thrives in Malaysia.” The article examines the tension between political bloggers and the authorities as well as highlighting the success of non-political personal and business blogs in the country.

It has come together with the help of various journalists and bloggers who generously shared their views and experiences - thanks, guys! Much of the information they have given with me will also be useful for the book that I am working on about New Trends in International Public Relations.

Please feel free download the pdf of the article Blogging Thrives in Malaysia. By all means forward it to anyone who may be interested, with a link back to this post.

You can also download the article plus other articles I’ve written about social media from the box below.

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.

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I’ve just started work on my new book project New Trends in International Public Relations. As you can guess from the title, it’s not a thriller or a novel. It’s a non-fiction book aimed at business communicators, PR practitioners and marketeers.

This is my first non-fiction book and it’s an exciting challenge - but also a little daunting.

As with my two novels, my co-author Silvia Cambie and I started with putting together an outline. We then sent this to our commissioning publisher Kogan Page for them to approve it before we started any other work. Now that they’ve given us the go-ahead, stage two is the research.

I also started the writing process for my novels with research.

For The Flame Tree, I learnt all about geology and construction to make the central development project in the story - and the ultimate disaster at the heart of the book - as believable as possible. For Mindgame, I researched mind manipulation techniques and Creutzfeld-Jakob disease (the brain disease that is generally known as “mad cow”).

But the great thing about fiction is that you can take the key elements of your research and blend it with your imagination to re-create hard facts and reality into the fictional world that you’re imagining. You can bend the scientific facts so long as the outcome is within the realms of possibility. You can also use verbal sleight-of-hand - for example, in The Flame Tree I needed the hero Luke to discover a fatal flaw in the construction project that would mean that it is unstable and likely to collapse. In a short paragraph, Luke works on the data he has found and through clever calculations, he finds discrepancies and realises that the foundations are too shallow and the blueprints for the building have been falsified. That’s all I need to say - I don’t need to prove to you his calculations.

In a non-fiction book, I have to prove everything. Every statement I make has to be based on some authority and I need to cite the source. Yikes.

So my research process for this new book project is much more meticulous and I am careful to keep a note of the web link, the name and contact details of anyone I have approached for their input, the name and page number of any book I refer to. Interestingly, blogging has really helped me in this process - without thinking about it, when I blog, I always add links to sources where I’ve derived some information or to other websites where you could find further writing on a particular subject. Non-fiction citations are similar, I guess - the main difference is that instead of a link, I would add a footnote.

If you’re interested to see how the book is going, I’ve posted my first bit of research for the book on my communications and social media blog, ZenGuide - it’s part of the introductory chapter and tells you all about the world’s first website.

Related posts

Nicola Stevens on Writing Business Books

Photo: thanks to lancs.ac.uk

We see news items about politics and military operations in Iraq almost daily but sometimes, it can all seem very far removed from our daily lives.

The Alive in Baghdad project shows the ordinary lives of Iraqis affected by the conflict there. Their mission statement says:

“Alive in Baghdad is empowering Iraqis to share their stories with the world, and provides a place of education and interaction for global citizens interested in the real life political, military, economic and social situation in Iraq.”

This video features child artist, Sameer Muhammad and is father, Muhammad Rubaie, who are now refugees living in Damascus. “They, like many Iraqis, have been forced to flee their country and taken refugee in Syria. They talk about their lives as artists, and how they are continuing their work despite the circumstances.”

You can support this important project by donating via PayPal - go to their site at www.aliveinbaghdad.org to find out more.

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This is a powerful example of the use of social media to spread a message. These stories and narratives would not be so easily available a few years ago before YouTube and user-generated technology, when we were all more dependent on conventional news media as conduits for telling our stories.

This project is going to form part of my research for the book that I am co-authoring on New Trends in International Public Relations.

If you know of any other similar projects where people have come together to share their stories in this way through social media, please email me or leave a comment. I’ll credit you, of course, if your contribution is used directly in the book - you can check out my ongoing list of acknowledgements online.

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

I am delighted to report that my associate Silvia Cambie and I have been commissioned by business book publishers Kogan Page to write a book on New Trends in International Public Relations, aimed at business communicators, PR professionals and marketeers.

I will be focusing on the impact of social media on business communications and how PR practitioners can incorporate social media into their communications and marketing strategies. Silvia will be focusing on all the other key issues for practitioners such as corporate social responsibility, crisis communications and current hot topics and trends affecting international public relations.

We both have a strong interest in cross-cultural issues. Silvia is Italian and has lived and worked across Europe, speaking several European languages fluently. As for me, I have links with Malaysia and the Far East as well as being now based in London, UK. In today’s globalised world, PR practitioners are increasingly needing to work from a cross-cultural perspective so Silvia and I will be exploring the relevance and impact of cross-cultural issues for business communicators online and also offline.

I’ll be letting you know more details about the social media and cross-cultural issues I’ll be researching in the next few weeks. Silvia and I will both be blogging about our research and the progress of the book on our respective blogs and we hope very much that you will all be able to help us by adding your comments or sharing your experiences and thoughts with us. I will certainly give credit in the book to anyone whose contribution I use in the book.

My dilemma is whether I should blog about this book primarily on my social media blog ZenGuide, because obviously, it’s all about social media - or, on my cross-cultural blog Fusion View, because obviously, it’s also all about cross-culture. If I blog about the book on both of them, will it get confusing if different people comment on one or other of the blogs? Would it be better to choose one of them and then stick to it? But Fusion View has a great international, cross-cultural community there already and I really would love to hear what everyone has to say there. But my cross-cultural readers may not be so interested in social media as such? But if I blog about the book on ZenGuide only, will I lose the cross-cultural dimension by focusing on my social media readers? You see my dilemma. What do you think?

For those of you waiting for my third novel…. hmmm, it looks like that is going to be delayed while I try my hand at non-fiction with this new book project!

Further information

Silvia’s blog X-Culture is at www.chandacom-xculture.com.

Pic: thanks to health.state.ny.us

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