Twitter - friend or stranger?

I suspect like many people, whilst I recognise the popularity of twitter and the role it is playing both in the social media arena, and in the personal and business lives of its users; I struggle to engage with it personally as much as I might. Like Robbin at Brains on Fire I have a bit of a love/hate thing going on.
In their blog she draws an interesting analogy with sitting in a cafe.

"It’s additive. It’s fun. It opens my eyes to the good in humanity and at times the bad. But the big take away for me is this. Geno Church never, ever meets a stranger. He sees everyone as possibility. I adore that about him. Makes it fun to travel with him".

"My intent with Twitter is to have my eyes opened to that way of thinking both in my online and offline world. It reminds me in a very real way that there are no strangers. Just people we don’t know YET. It’s kinda like constantly being in a cafe and instead of quietly eating your morning muffin you decide to reach out and introduce yourself to someone in hopes of learning something new or simply enjoying their company".

Now as one, who likes nothing better than sitting in a cafe and reading a newspaper, this is both inspiring and challenging.

Social Objects - Rubbish!

Long weekends give me a chance to catch up on some of the podcasts I subscribe to. Today I heard a piece on the Beeb's Digital Planet from March 3rd about the lovecleanstreets scheme launched by Lewisham Council. Whilst this has now evolved into a community wide crowdsourcing initiative, whereby anyone can report fly tipping, graffiti etc.

What interested me were the comments of the guy in charge of refuse collection.

It seems that the scheme was first introduced via the refuse collection teams, and from the outset the Council recognised the difficulty they might have in making the reporting of problems by their teams a compulsory duty, on top of emptying the bins. Cleverly they started with a few volunteers from within the teams who were given web enabled phones with the reporting app preloaded. Whilst the fact that they could also use the phones outside of work to access the web, was obviously an additional attraction, the phones and the app became social objects (which Hugh Macleod explains well here) amongst the teams, with the early users showing off and stimulating interest an ultimately adoption amongst their colleagues.

Another interesting feature of the scheme is its attempts to demonstrate transparency and accountability. The site not only allows people to report issues; they can also check progress, see who, in the department, has been assigned responsibility, and even vote on which incidents are seen as the highest priority.

It seems this scheme has not only caught the attention of and been adopted by other councils, it looks like being adopted as far away as Jamaica. From little (social object) acorns....

Baby Steps

My first rule for a blog. As with most things digital, everything is "forever beta" so we'll make improvements along the way. So lets just dive right in and see where we get to. Despite (or because of) the fact that I have worked in advertising almost 30 years (with time off for being a tad disillusioned, and doing my own thing for a few years in the '90's) I've found the last couple of years the most exciting and interesting. It could be that I've been walking around with my eyes closed before then or that my memory is not what it was, but I prefer to think that with the advent of all things Web 2.0+ and the "social" revolution, the world of advertising and marketing has got a whole lot more interesting and stimulating, whatever age you are!

There's so much great stuff to be devoured, so many opinions, ideas, theories and innovation to get you thinking, and its changing so quickly. And probably the best thing is that there are few if any definitive answers or solutions. We seem to be living in a time when much of what is written and practiced (in both senses) is almost a (collaborative) "work in progress"; We are developing new ways of doing things, but before these are committed to marketing textbooks and theory the speed of technological development is challenging us to re-think and adapt.
A good illustration of this is the recent work done through the IPA on Social Media. (I do hate that term. As has been pointed out by many, it makes some just think in terms of media channels - Facebook, Twitter etc. I'll call it "Social" from hereon - unless of course I'm referring to Facebook and other applications). October last year saw the publishing of 10 points of view, each by an individual planner, on what they had jointly agreed as 10 of the key principles around (so called) Social Media. As Neil Perkin indicates in his summary presentation, these are not meant to be the 10 commandments, but rather the beginnings of ongoing conversations and idea development. You can join the conversation on Facebook.
For those of us that also need to have a practical view on Social Media, this cheat sheet from Drew McLellan looks like a good reference.

And finally, just because I love it and so want one, here's the ad for the iPad - do you think they are targeting current Apple Passionistas?

Well alright, finally finally, I aspire to write a blog as entertaining as this. I wonder if Elika started with baby steps or just hob nobs?