First of all, if you’re American, and you’re reading this - I have to ask why? The web is like a ghost town today. There isn’t much going on via Twitter. FriendFeed is unusually slow, and about six or so of our two trillion readers showed up to leave a comment today. It’s July 4! Independence Day! Go out and have a brew and a hot dog!
For all our non-American friends and readers, and the six US readers who have nothing else better to do, Sean P. Aune and I have recorded a special episode of Mashable Conversations today. We scoured the web and couldn’t find a guest to come in today, so we reverted to a topic that had particularly irked us from the week past - the bizzarre assumption by some in the blogosphere that Identi.ca is the natural successor to Twitter.
I won’t steal the show’s thunder, but Sean and I puzzle over this idea and try to figure out exactly why this is being said. It’s a short episode, so go ahead and watch before you throw on your swimwear and jump in the pool this afternoon.
You can leave your comments on this topic in the comments for inclusion on future episodes.
04 Jul 2008 17:34:53 | Paul Glazowski | -local,Lists,Philadelphia,Washington DC,politics,social networking,web,youtube,bloggers,networking,politicians,social media | Comments
Place the words “blog” or “social media” and “politician” in the same line, and you almost invariably conjure images of a scandal. Or at least a messy exchange between writer/publisher and politician. Much less often are you likely to consider them a team. Politician bloggers? Turns out those terms are not mutually exclusive. They’re more prevalent than the average citizen might believe.
Of course, it would be naive to assume the full supply of politician bloggers past and present crafted that kind of output all by themselves. Aids certainly play key roles in those respects. But even taking the spokesmen and spokeswomen into account, the list of government officials on a global spectrum invested in social media to varying degrees is pretty remarkable.
Blogs of myriad stripes and sizes are more or less a natural addition to many political campaigns of our day. Barack Obama, who entered the national headlines in the last year and a half, has done his share of networking on the Web. The candidate has constructed a successful social network custom fit for maximum campaign effect. His Twitterhistory is something to note. The network-effect of some of his live and pre-produced videos has garnered north of a millions views each. Altogether, the Senator’s use of numerous Web-based services is no doubt unprecedented. His promise to appoint a “chief technology officer” for the Executive branch if he is elected has gone down well with the blogger class, too.
As for others in the political sphere in America? Former senator John Edwardsintroduced his bid for the 2008 Democratic nomination via YouTube, and during his campaign presented an official blog to visitors of his website. Others naturally followed suit.
Some elected officials in the US not seeking the seat in the Oval Office, but posting to the Web all the same:
John Conyers, House Representative from Michigan (D)
Internationally, activity has picked up among politicos in the last few years. Here are some folks making headlines beyond America’s borders:
The UK
Across the Atlantic, British MP Alan Johnson was known for Twittering feverishly while campaigning to be deputy leader of the Labour party. He now maintains a website for his position as MP for Kingston Upon Hull West and Hessle. It’s a bit of a bore, however, with basic information describing news and things from his constituency. Most visitors will tend to move on quickly.
David Cameron, the opposition leader looking to take Prime Minister Gordon Brown’s job, is known for putting out video clips in podcast form since about 2006. A Conservative Party member through and through, Cameron now offers a litany of campaign update and media uploads to satisfy the well-connected. Meaning Net-connected, not, you know, his real pals.
Scandinavia
There’s one high profile Danish politician who stands out as having embraced at least one Web-based medium. Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen is his name, and Facebook is his virtual platform of choice. You’ll see regular mini-feed posts affixed with the man’s byline, and he even occasions the odd get-together with “friends” to bridge the online world with the physical one. Some months ago, Rasmussen spent a day taking a casual jog with about 100 other runners.
Middle East
He’s drawn the ire of numerous officials in Europe. And he’s no golfing partner of the White House’s current chief occupant. His general fanbase among heads of state worldwide isn’t particularly long, really. But he’s a blogger. Yes, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad first optioned to put up a personal blog sometime in August 2006 - months after the Iranian government added a blog filter to the IT Ministry) - and has since posted numerous messages to be read (and replied to, with ample mediation and filtration) by a global audience. The feed has been idle for several months now, though, so a yearly visit would likely suffice.
South Asia:
Further east still, the ruling party in Malaysia had an abrupt change of heart about blogging. For a while it was quite opposed to the medium. This past April, however, the party began requiring that a number of its candidates establish blogs. This went for all party types seeking “youth posts” in government.
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We attend a lot of events here at Mashable, and we want to share what we learn there with you as quickly as possible. With lighter laptops and more people blogging, it’s fairly common to hear the clattering of keyboards during conferences and live events. As a result, the end-of-day recap post has been replaced by intermittent updates throughout the event. Enter live blogging, a fancy term for taking notes during an event and publishing them in real time.
Live blogging allows those that aren’t at the event to participate remotely, and it also helps facilitate a conversation among attendees by giving them access to content they might have missed as well as a place where they can discuss it.
If you’ve never actually live blogged before, then it might sound cumbersome or even distracting. In fact, live blogging provides a ton of value to your blogging community and allows you to affirm your commitment to fostering conversations in your industry. It’s also a fantastic opportunity to experiment with some new techniques.
To help expand your live blogging prowess, we pulled together some top tips to get you started:
Prepare Before You Go
Live blogging is easy, but you need to make sure you’re prepared ahead of time.
-Check Internet access: check to see whether the venue has Internet access. If it does, determine whether this is provided by the conference organizers or if you have to pay for it. Many convention centers and hotels still charge event organizers a hefty fee to for wireless Internet access, so organizers will often opt not to purchase it for attendees. If that’s the case, pick up a wireless aircard or modem from your mobile carrier. It’s an important tool in your blogging arsenal and a worthwhile investment if you spend a lot of time traveling, as it virtually guarantees wireless Internet access anywhere you go.
-Consult the event schedule: determine which sessions you’re going to attend, keeping your audience in mind. Decide which speakers will appeal to the people that read your blog and what session topics will provide a unique perspective they will appreciate.
-Post early: Inform your audience that you will be live blogging so they know to expect regular updates during the day, which will improve your site’s traffic, attract new readers and provide fresh content.
Choose Your Platform There are a few different ways you can live blog. You can draft a post in your blog editing software of choice and publish it as you normally do. You can also use software like CoverItLive. The benefit of CoverItLive is that it’s pretty intuitive and the robust feature set allows you to make your blog more interactive will polls, images and media in real time.
Another option is to stream live video segments from the event using your computer’s webcam. Both Seesmic and uStream.tv are good options here. Ian Lurie from Conversation Marketing has some great tips on how to stream video with ease.
During the Event Now that you’ve equipped yourself with the right tools and set the expectations of your readers, it’s time to get to work. But what the heck do you actually do? This is pretty subjective, but if you’re taking notes, only share the most interesting and relevant information. In most cases, this means avoiding the play-by-play (i.e. “Speaker X walks up to the podium, clears throat and opens with quip about your mom.”) in favor of more salient points (”Speaker X says trust is the most important factor in determining marketing success. Jack from Company Y challenges this.). Your readers really only want to hear the highlights. If there are case studies, try and document them as best you can. If statistics are shared, those are always of interest.
Live Blogging Alternative - Twitter Suppose you don’t have a blog or you don’t want to lug your computer from presentation to presentation. You can still participate in live event conversations using Twitter. Before you go, conduct a quick keyword search on Summize for the name of the conference (i.e. SummerMash Seattle). Find out who’s talking about it and who plans to attend. You can then follow their updates during the event via your mobile phone by sending a text message to 40404 in the US (21212 from Canada; +44 7624801423 everywhere else) with the message, “follow “[USERNAME]“.
You can also share your own updates from the event by setting up a Twitter account ahead of time. Next, find out what the hashtag is for the event. A hashtag is an agreed upon abbreviation that conference attendees use to denote which Twitter updates are related to a specific event.
Conclusion Live blogging isn’t hard, but it does take some thoughtful consideration to do it right and to do it well. If you have excellent examples of live blogging or additional tips from your own experience, please share them below.
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04 Jul 2008 02:08:18 | Mark 'Rizzn' Hopkins | Los Angeles,San Francisco-San Jose,live,eventvue,rob johnson | Comments
For today’s Mashable Conversations, we sat down with EventVue’s CEO Rob Johnson. They run a service that is used in connection with major meet-up and conference style events that allows you to actually know who you’ll meet before you meet them. Their service, at least the central part of it, reminds me of a project that Pete assigned to part of the staff shortly before he was on his way to San Francisco the first time.
He had been online as a moving force, as well as participant in the general discussion, with a wide cross-section of the Web 2.0 and social media industry. Having been based in Scotland up until that point, he only had a vague idea what most everyone looked like, and wanted the staff to put together a personal face book of sorts so that when he gallivanted across town, he would know who to look for.
Rob Johnson noticed this trend wasn’t isolated, as lots of folks tend to put these together before attending major industry events, and save them to their palmtop devices so that they may recognize key players while they socialize. This was the opportunity in the marketplace that EventVue exploits, amongst other things.
We here at Mashable are utilizing this technology for our Summer Mash events, as well. By registering for our events, you’ll recieve an invitation to learn more about your fellow attendees and see their shining faces before you attend.
Discussion In this episode, Sean, Rob and I also discuss the ICANN’s decision to open up TLD registration to all folks with 100k and an idea. You can leave your thoughts below for inclusion in future Mashable Conversations episodes.
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Place the words “blog” or “social media” and “politician” in the same line, and you almost invariably conjure images of a scandal. Or at least a messy exchange between writer/publisher and politician. Much less often are you likely to consider them a team. Politician bloggers? Turns out those terms are not mutually exclusive. They’re more prevalent than the average citizen might believe.
We attend a lot of events here at Mashable, and we want to share what we learn there with you as quickly as possible. With lighter laptops and more people blogging, it’s fairly common to hear the clattering of keyboards during conferences and live events. As a result, the end-of-day recap post has been replaced by intermittent updates throughout the event. Enter live blogging, a fancy term for taking notes during an event and publishing them in real time.
During the Event
