Archive for the 'Social Media & Technology' Category

As some of you may know, I’ve been involved in a community blog, in my local area, Dulwich OnView, which is the blog of the Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery. We were invited to give a presentation on our strategy and volunteer strategy at a conference for the museums and heritage sector last week. This is my report from that event (which is also appearing on Dulwich OnView):

You may have caught The Virtual Revolution on BBC last Saturday night, which gave on overview of the way that social media has been changing our society and culture. According to the programme, 18 million people in the UK read blogs - that is about a third of the UK’s general population of 61 million. Blogs, social networks, Twitter and the like are now pretty much mainstream and and it’s not just businesses who need to adapt to these new ways of communicating. Museums, galleries, libraries and the heritage sector are more keen than ever to find out how to use these tools to engage with their visitors and users.

Which is where the Social Web Conference, organised by the UKOLN comes in. They are part of the University of Bath and are “A centre of excellence in digital information management, providing advice and services to the library, information and cultural heritage communities” and last Friday, they held a conference about Web 2.0 and social media for the heritage sector at Dulwich Picture Gallery. Marieke Guy, UKOLN’s research officer and organiser of this cutting edge conference invited our editorial team to give a presentation to the delegates about Dulwich OnView. It was a further opportunity to showcase our “online magazine” to the heritage sector as an example of how blogging is being used to raise the profile of the Gallery and build an online community around the Friends of Dulwich Picture Gallery, the charitable group that raises money and supports the work of the Gallery.

I was first up and outlined the strategy and context behind Dulwich OnView. One of the aims of the Friends is to invite more people to join as members and to encourage a diverse range of people to come along to Gallery and Friends events. The Friends put on a lot of events - films, talks, concerts and more - and the Gallery of course arranges many exhibitions with with associated art classes.

But Dulwich OnView, the Friends’ blog covers more than just these events and includes articles, videos and photo-stories about loads of arts, culture and music in Dulwich and South East London. Why? Well, we reckon that if you’re interested in all those things, you’re going to be the kind of person who’s going to enjoy Dulwich Picture Gallery - but you may not have initially thought of yourself as a “Gallery type” because, maybe, you’d never heard of the Gallery or it seems a bit too posh or stuffy and serious and is not for you. On Dulwich OnView, we hope that our readers can see that people involved in the Gallery and the Friends are just like anyone else who enjoys arts and culture in the local area and that you’ll be tempted to check out Gallery exhibitions and Friends’ events as a result.

We’ve been really lucky in attracting writers, photographers and filmmakers as well as wine experts, historians and just ordinary folk who love arts or the local area to contribute articles to the blog and to become part of the regular Dulwich OnView team - all on a voluntary basis. What this shows is that the Friends and Gallery are becoming more and more part of the local community through this blog as much as the local community becoming more aware of what the Gallery and Friends have to offer!

So how do we do it? How do we manage a team of volunteers on no budget at all and with no central office space? Next up was Angie Macdonald, web designer and Dulwich OnView trainer and editorial co-ordinator. She explained how we devised and set up a virtual system, working entirely online, to allow our bloggers and editorial team to be self-managed. There’s no “boss” although there are a handful of us who help co-ordinate the team. We all contribute a range of multimedia items about whatever we feel like (in keeping with the mission of the blog: “celebrating people and culture in the Dulwich area”). To avoid duplication of content and chaos, we note down what we’re going to post on the blog on an online editorial schedule hosted on Google Docs which our regular team can all have access to from any computer. There is a library of “how-to” online manuals which explain how to upload posts to the blog, how to add photos to our Flickr site and also sets out procedures and policies for our rota of editors. One of our team is in fact now in Belgium for her day job but can continue her role as one of our editors due to this virtual system we’ve set up! But we’re more than an online team - those of us who are around in South London meet up once every 4-6 weeks in the local pub for a drink and a catch up as well as to discuss future article ideas and plans for Dulwich OnView.

Freelance writer and museums consultant Steve Slack picked up on this theme and told the conference how his involvement in Dulwich OnView has led to some good friendships with people on the team, as well as offering opportunities to meet loads more locally through covering local events and interviewing people in the area for the blog. Articles on Dulwich OnView range from art to fitness, dancing to allotments, tattoos to wheelie bins - as well as events put on by the Friends and the Gallery. But being a blog, our posts publicising Gallery events don’t offer the usual PR blurb but we give them a quirky twist - for example, an opera themed event inspired a blog post with a special opera themed recipe for our readers.

Ingrid Beazley, former Chair of the Friends and e-learning project developer at Dulwich Picture Gallery, acts as our liaison with the Gallery and Friends. She rounded off our session with some stats that show how Dulwich OnView is having an impact on drawing more people online to the Gallery. Most of the organisations we have written about link to us from their websites. 53% of our incoming traffic comes from these local supporters. Although 98% of people visiting DOV are not searching for Dulwich Picture Gallery, 33% of onward clicks go to the DPG website, mainly to exhibitions and events pages. The Gallery links to DOV in places and 14% of our incoming traffic comes from mainly their events pages as people click through to find out more from the enhancing articles written by locals. DOV is the 9th largest driver of web traffic to the DPG website.

As to how much of that translates measurably to new Friends memberships or extra tickets bought for events and exhibitions is difficult to say at this stage as there is no system in place as yet that specifically tots that up. However, we reckon that increased web traffic to the Gallery’s main website via Dulwich OnView can only mean increased awareness of the Gallery within the local community and that can only be a good thing.

One last thing I should stress. Blogging and social media may be making headlines right now but they in no way supercede traditional marketing, which continues to play a key role for heritage organisations. Kate Knowles and her marketing team at the Gallery reach a very wide range of people through traditional media such as the BBC, broadsheets and other national and international outlets. Dulwich OnView complements their activities by making connections with a different community, especially those people who might not initially think of themselves as Gallery going types.

We are all thrilled that this blog that began as an idea over drinks among local neighbours has managed to have this small but significant impact for the Gallery and the Friends - and continues to impress the heritage sector: Dulwich OnView has been showcased at conferences in Iceland, Montreal and London and will also be featured later this year at the Museums and the Web 2010 conference in Denver, Colorado.

If you’d like to find out more or to join our team of regular contributors and editors, or if you just have the occasional article or multimedia story you’d like to submit, please email our Acting Editor via dulwichonview[at]googlemail.com (substituting @ for [at]). We’d love you to become part of our community!

Further articles about DOV:

Dulwich OnView in Iceland

Dulwich OnView in Montreal

A Museum Blog By The Community For The Community

The British Malaysian Society put on a great event the other evening at Jom Makan, just off Trafalgar Square, for the talk that I gave with my co-author Silvia Cambie on using social media for business. There was a good crowd there - a mix of Malaysians and British folk ranging from representatives from the Malaysian High Commission, Malaysian students and British and Malaysian business owners and solo professionals. Silvia spoke about the use of social media by global business, giving examples from multinational companies and also international associations. Changing gear, I focused on small business and solo professionals who use blogging and social networks, throwing in a mix of Malaysian and British case studies.

Here are some pics from the evening:

There were some interesting questions and also a good discussion after our formal presentation. To give you a flavour of the issues of interest, here are my notes on two of the questions that people wanted to discuss further:

How useful is Twitter for business use?

In Silvia’s response to this question, she gave some examples of how Twitter can be used to encourage delegates at a conference to participate in the discussions through Twitter - she is implementing this strategy for one of her clients, the European Commission, at an event coming up soon. The Twitter comments and conversations can be collected through tactical use of hashtags (a way of attributing a common keyword to a Twitter conversation eg including “#leweb” in your “tweet” to reference the Le Web conference will enable it to be collated via a search of that hashtag) after the event and analysed/ reviewed by European Commission ministers.

For small businesses or individuals, I suggested that Twitter is also a good way in every day usage to make an initial contact with people who may be tweeting on topics you are interested in and this contact can then be followed up by email, for example. It’s a good way as well to ask questions and invite opinions, especially if you are researching an issue eg for an article or a book. You can also raise your profile and expertise if you tweet about your speaking engagements and projects you may be working on as well as engaging in discussions on topics of relevance for your industry.

Can you make money using social media?

Silvia highlighted that sales of virtual items on the Chinese social network QQ brought in revenue for the owners of that network. There are ways to monetize social media through such innovations but it is a matter of identifying the right market and products that can be sold in this way.

I offered the counter view that the value of social media is not necessarily in direct sales but rather in creating networking opportunities. It falls in the ball park of sending out mail shots and newsletter or taking clients out to lunch or coming along to networking events such as that night’s events where you might learn something useful for your business and also meet some interesting contacts. There may not be direct monetary value but the value comes through making contacts and building relationships with them.

Thanks …..

And as a last word, Silvia and I would like to thank Haliza, Louise and Zehan as well as the other committee members of the BMS for inviting us and for organising such a pleasant evening!

I’ve been invited to speak at the British Malaysian Society on Thursday 21 January, along with my co-author Silvia Cambie, on how to use social media to boost your business and networking. We’ll be discussing some Malaysian, UK and other international case studies showing how businesses are currently using blogging, social networks and Twitter for their business purposes.

If you’re interested in finding out more about social media for business - or would just like to meet up with some cross-cultural British and Malaysians, please do come along. There’ll be some Malaysian food, too, as it’s held at a Malaysian restaurant!

The details are below:

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Youtube can help you hit the big time. It’s official.

I blogged awhile back about Malaysian singer songwriter Zee Avi, who was discovered by an L.A. music agent, after she uploaded a video of herself performing a song in her bedroom and now has a record deal and is touring music festivals around the world.

Now, a commercial director from Uruguay Fede Alvarez has been offered a US$30million deal from Hollywood after uploading a short sci-fi video “Ataque de Panico!” (Panic Attack!) onto Youtube:

And the short apparently only cost him around US$300…

Too good to be true?

Well, apparently, global blockbuster District 9 director Neill Blomkamp (also a commercial director) got his big break after his viral short Alive in Joburg got him the chance to work with Peter Jackson (The Lord of the Rings). That partnership eventually led to Blomkamp’s chance to make the feature length version of Alive in Joburg, which became District 9.

You can watch the short below:

The magic seems to work for videos that have a scifi theme or lots of special effects/ explosions. However, I wonder if any budding Woody Allen’s have had their Youtube flicks picked up by the big studios….?

The other evening, my co-author Silvia Cambie and I, along with corporate communicator Marc Wright, gave a talk at the Asia Pacific Technology Network (APTN) on Asia and the Interactive Web, at the invitation of Louis Turner, APTN’s chief executive. (Thanks, Louis, for inviting us!) APTN is a group for people interested in Asian technology and the evening’s guest included technology and patent lawyers, telecommunications entreprenuers and Asian affairs specialists.

Silvia spoke on the shift of economic power from the West to Asia and presented some case studies on use of social media in China by companies such as Toyota. I discussed the use of social media by the Asian diaspora and how the internet is helping an emerging class of affluent, influential and articulate Asians network around the globe. In counterpoint to the two of us, Marc gave the view from the West, highlighting that businesses no longer controlled their messages and the importance of engaging in social media with an authentic voice.

One of the things I enjoy about blogging and social media is how it has enabled me to connect with a range of talented and creative people whom I would never have met otherwise. As I went through my slides, I was struck that two of the three case studies I presented were due to Malaysians I had met via blogging:

• Photographer Steven Lee first approached me via my blog to ask if he could photograph me for his book on prominent Malaysians (as it turned out, I couldn’t participate in the end because, technically, I’m now British, but we’ve remained friends and hook on on Facebook, via our blogs and also in the real world). He was my first case study that evening - an example of how an Asian living in London networks globally through social media to raise the profile of his photography business.

• I learnt about Rantauan.com, the Malay social network, through journalist Zaharah Othman, aka blogger Kak Teh. I left a comment on her blog once and she then came along to read my blog. We corresponded via our respective comments pages and then by email and then finally met up in London for coffee. I’ve since interviewed her about political blogging in Malaysia for my book and she’s written a number of articles about my books for papers in Malaysia.

To top it all, I was really pleased to finally meet in person Chinese-English translator Nicky Harman who has written for this blog. She contacted me a few years ago out of the blue asking if I knew how she might find a publisher for her translation of Striking Root. Directly as a result of her blog post about the translation, a publisher got in touch and was interested to publish the book. As it turned out, Nicky went with another publisher in the end but there’s the power of blogging for you. Anyway, unknown to me, Nicky is a member of APTN and so the other evening, we were able to meet for the first time in real life!

Here are some pics of the evening, including one of me with Nicky:

These days we grumble if our digital camera doesn’t quite fit into our pocket. And that the camera bundled with our mobile phone produces blurry pictures. We take cameras so much for granted and expect so much of the technology.

So it was great to be reminded how far we’ve come since the first cameras were invented in the 1830s at the Points of View exhibition at the British Library (it’s free and on until Sunday 07 March 2010). The history of photography began with the camera obscura, a darkened room with a pinhole allowing light from a scene outside to be projected onto the wall through the hole and the exhibition starts with a box sized one through which you can see a ghostly image of a statue. You’re then led through to the two competing technologies that battled it out in the early days of photography (the VHS and Betamax struggle of its day, I suppose) - the daguerrotype and the calotype. The dageurrotype (named for Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre) could produce only one perfect, crisp and clear printed image and you had to have a camera the size of the print you wanted to create. The calotype, created by Henry Fox Talbot, could reproduce a number of printed images from a negative but the quality was more smudgy. For awhile the daguerrotype was more popular, especially for portraits commissioned by the wealthy, but we all know which technology won out and dominated for most of the next 150 or so years…

The British Library exhibition has a number of those original Victorian cameras on display along with the boxes of chemicals needed to develop and print the images. They are huge wooden contraptions and the whole process of taking a photo and printing copies took an inordinate amount of time. But the challenge was on to make them more portable and to speed up exposure times as well as the whole process - at one time, the fact that they could snap a picture with a 30 second exposure time was a huge achievement!

I was also fascinated by the photos of the far flung corners of the world taken by energetic and driven Victorian photographers, showing places like Cambodia, India and Africa before the influence of the West took hold. They had to lug all that equipment around and often had to develop and print the pictures in the field so they also had to carry tents and tables etc along with them - via camels or other beasts of burden through the wild places of the world.

There are also photos of Victorian celebrities, ordinary people, street scenes and labourers in the English countryside - wonderful evocations of the past. I was particularly struck by the picture of Nelson’s column in Trafalgar Square under construction - again, we take that landmark so much for granted: it was strange to see it as it was being put up.

I’m not going to moan so much now that my little digital camera is a little bit too boxy for my jacket pocket. It fits easily into my briefcase and day bag and that’s handy enough for split second snapshots!

(You can also check out the Points of View blog which has some fun past and present views of London.)

Photo: from Points of View exhibition website, with thanks

I’ve been invited to join a panel discussion on Asia and the Interactive Web at the Asia Pacific Technology Network on Wednesday. It’s open to the member of the public as well as to members of the network, so if you can make it, it would be great to see you.

Here are the details:

Speakers:

• Silvia Cambié, Director, Chanda Communications - co-author ” International Communications Strategies - Developments in cross-cultural communications, PR and social media”
• Yang-May Ooi, Writer, blogger & Podcaster, FusionView.co.uk - co-author ” International Communications Strategies - Developments in cross-cultural communications, PR and social media”
• Marc Wright, Chairman of simplygroup
• Speaker to be announced

Asia and the Interactive Web:

The world is undergoing a major economic and political power shift. China and other Asian countries are moving beyond their previous roles of ‘workshops of the world‘ to become key players in the international business arena.

Internet communication and social media are at the very core of this transformation. India is home to a number of innovative social networks. China has the world’s largest internet population and ranks number one in terms of online content creation. Nearly 60% of the country‘s purchase decisions are influenced by user-generated content like blogs and discussion boards.

This presentation will provide participants with:

* Overview of the social media behind Asia‘s internet world of mouth revolution
* Lessons from China and other countries on how to connect with empowered Web 2.0 consumers
* Examples of how Asia is using the internet community to gain consumer insight
* Insight into how social media is affecting corporate dynamics inside UK enterprises

Location: Kilburn & Strode, 20 Red Lion Street London WC1R 4P
Nearest Tube Station: Holborn

Time: 5.30 - 7.30 pm - followed by refreshments

Pricing:
* Free to APTN annual subscribers
* £40 + VAT (Executives)
* £20 + VAT (Asian citizens/institutions, officials, executives from Small Companies)
* £10 + VAT (Academics),
* Free for the Media.

To Register your interest: please send your details (name, institutional affiliation, email address, phone number) to biz@aptn.org

Silvia Cambié is a cross-cultural communicator and a journalist. Her career includes reporting from Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union for major British and German print media as well as managing communications for Brussels-based international trade associations. Silvia runs Chanda Communications and monitors global internet trends for clients, advising them on the integration of social media with conventional communication channels. She consults for organisations such as the European Parliament, the USAID, the Chilean Economic Development Agency and the Aga Khan University. Silvia is fluent in five languages and blogs about the cross-cultural communication challenges facing the business world at XCulture (www.chandacom-xculture.com), which is read by 10,000 each month. Silvia serves as a Director on the International Executive Board of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC), a worldwide network of public relations and communications professionals. She is a recognised public speaker and has addressed audiences around the world, including Malaysia, Russia, South Africa, Dubai, US, France, UK and Spain. She is the author ( together with Yang-May Ooi) of International Communications Strategy - Developments in Cross-Cultural Communication, PR and Social Media, published by Kogan Page and nominated for the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award.

Yang-May Ooi is a business writer and social media specialist. She has worked with solo professionals, small businesses and non-profits in the UK to develop and implement their social media strategies. She is co-author, with Silvia Cambie, of “International Communications Strategy”, published by Kogan Page and nominated for the FT Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award 2009. With a background in law, Yang-May also works part-time at a financial institution in the City of London, where she manages the company’s blog, aimed at the financial sector. She speaks regularly on social media and has addressed audiences at the Copyright Licensing Agency, London College of Communications, Institute of Directors, London Metropolitan University and also in the museums and heritage sector. Â She is a member of the International Association of Business Communicators, Pan Asian Women’s Association and the Society of Authors. She blogs on culture, writing and social media at Fusion View (www.fusionview.co.uk). She is currently working on her second business book which focuses on social media strategies for small businesses and non-profits.

Marc Wright is one of the UK’s leading speakers on social media and what it means for large businesses. Marc Wright is an expert in corporate communications who has been following worldwide trends in Web 2.0 and setting the pace of social media in the UK. He is founder and publisher of www.simply-communicate.com the website used by 15,000 communicators each month to keep up to date with developments in the fast-changing world of internal communications. He advises on the implementation of social media inside organisations through his seminars and annual conference attended by companies such as Unilever, Barclays, Standard Chartered Bank, ING and Ofcom. Â He is the writer and director of the BBC TV series 20 Steps to Better Business and editor of the Gower Handbook of Internal Communications. Â He is in demand around the world presenting on latest developments in the US, the UK, France, the Netherlands,Russia, Bulgaria. He consults for companies such as Tetrapak, Vodafone, Lloyds Banking Group and EUROCONTROL, Europe’s Air Traffic Control organisation. Marc is Chairman of the simplygroup, a former Chair of the International Visual Communications Association and is currently Vice-Chair of the International Association of Business Communicators for Europe and the Middle East.

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

There’s been a lot of focus on blogging for business recently on this blog, largely due to the research I’ve been doing in the last couple of years for my business book, International Communications Strategy, so it’s nice to be reminded that most of the 170 million blogs out there are by ordinary people writing about their daily lives and personal feelings. It was the We Feel Fine project that was the big reminder - it’s a project led by computer scientist, Jonathan Harris, that explores “human emotion on a global scale” by harvesting emotions expressed on blogs whenever the words “I feel…” are found.

The emotions are gathered and sorted in different ways and shown in six “movements” - madness, murmurs, montage, mobs, metrics and mounds - which are essentially different visualisations of the data. You can see good feelings and bad feelings as well as the geographic location, age and gender of the person expressing those feelings. The project’s website suggests that this living artwork can offer specific answers to questions like: “Do Europeans feel sad more often than Americans? Do women feel fat more often than men? Does rainy weather affect how we feel? What are the most representative feelings of female New Yorkers in their 20s? What do people feel right now in Baghdad? What were people feeling on Valentine’s Day? Which are the happiest cities in the world? The saddest?”

You need to launch an applet - which can take up to 20 seconds to load - in order to experience this amazing artwork. Click on the image below and it should take you to the We Feel Fine page: to launch the applet from there, click on the last sentence of the first paragraph (”We Feel Fine is divided into six discrete movements, each illuminating a different aspect of the chosen population. These movements are represented in the We Feel Fine applet.”)

I love the way the bubble of feelings cluster round the mouse cursor when you click on the screen in Madness - if you hover it over one of the bubbles, it will show you the location of the feeling and a brief idea of what the feeling is.

Then in Murmurs, you can see each latest feeling expressed somewhere out there in the world appear on the screen and if you click on the phrase, you’ll be taken to the blog. So “i feel so detached from everything i used to stand for” takes me to a blog post You Are My Brand Of Heroin - tonight is the night to let it go by xshadowsoflovex.

So how does this artwork make me feel? I feel more connected with the millions of people out there in the world.

These are the slides for my talk at London Metropolitan University, Business School on Thursday evening 15 October:

… together with the full length email interview I conducted with Martin Smit, host of The NBT Podcast:

If you’re doing something remarkable to become a “Social Media Idol”, I’d love to hear about it - I am researching a book by that same title and I’m looking for great case studies. Leave me a comment or email me via the Contact page.

I’d like to thank Milan Todorovic, Senior Lecturer/Course Leader for Music and Media Management at LMU for inviting my co-author Silvia Cambie and me to speak at the University. You can follow us on Twitter.com - Milan = @LondonMetUni), Silvia = @xculture and I am @fusionview .

Online bookseller, Amazon, has got the bibliophiles all a-quiver with excitement with its announcement that the Kindle will be sold internationally from mid-October. For those of you who haven’t heard of it yet, the Kindle is a digital book reading device, rather like the clay tablets of ancient times in size and look but electronic and able to store over a thousand books plus mp3s as well as blogs and digital newspapers and magazines. So far, it’s only been available in the US so this next phase is very exciting for book lovers all over the world.

I use the term “book” loosely, of course. Those book lovers who love physical books will not be excited at all by the Kindle on the basis that it lacks all the tactile qualities they love about “real” books - paper, page turning etc. But those who love the content of books and love the idea of being able to carry a thousand books in their pocket, the Kindle is the next big thing.

I fall into the latter group for various reasons:

• I’m lazy and feeble and I like the idea of holding one compact tablet that I can read lying down as well as sitting up.

• I like the idea of being able to carry a range of books around with me but without the weight of the physical books to give me backache and arm ache.

• I like the idea of the text-to-speech facility so that I can load the full text of a book and have it read to me while I sit on the bus. The digital voice might be quite irritating, however - so it will all depend on how life-like it sounds

However, I’m not going to jump in with my credit card immediately as I have some reservations:

• I believe the Kindle ties you to buying all your ebooks from Amazon, in a Kindle-specific format. What happens when my Kindle dies - as inevitably it will, like all electronic devices? I guess I’ll have to shell out for another one - we’ll all start having to think of books like music: but with mp3s or CDS, I can buy my player from any supplier, not just the one company. With the Kindle, am I now stuck forever having to buy it from Amazon?

• I still need to be convinced by the screen quality and how quickly it refreshes when you turn the page - I had a look at the Sony Reader and what put me off is that the screen turns black for a second before it opens onto the next page: ugh.

• It’s a pretty steep price at US$279.

• I remain to be convinced about it’s usefulness outside the US. At the moment, a huge number of e-books from other ebook sites which are available to US buyers are not available to non-US customers due to geographical rights restrictions. Also, if you look at US Audible.com compared to UK Audible.co.uk, the number of audiobooks available in the UK is a lot less than those available in the US - and in particular, major latest releases in the US are glaringly missing from the UK list. I haven’t been able to find anything definitive on the Amazon.com site that gives me any clarity either way about geographical rights restrictions - can anyone help me with this question?

Speaking of geographical rights restrictions, the Kindle will not be available in some countries, including Malaysia - see the list of no-Kindle countries. So my litblogger, book loving friends there are still stuck with the tree-pulp versions of books - although Amazon did reply to blogger Sharon Bakar’s email query to them to say that maybe, perhaps, sometime in the future, the Kindle might become available there…

What about you? Are you going to get a Kindle? Or are you a hard and fast paperbook person?

Photo: thanks to jink (Derek) on Flickr.com (CCL)