thegoodseed

We've Moved!

2006-09-09T21:47:00.000-07:00

thegoodseed is now at hubbub. Hope to see you soon.

Corporate Blogs Unplugged

2006-05-19T10:09:00.000-07:00

Third Thursday -- a Silicon Valley monthly meet-up on social media -- kicked into high gear last night with a panel talk on corporate blogging. PR reps from Cisco, Network Appliance and Ingres spoke what it takes to run a successful blog program inside a corporation today.

We knew this already from our own experience with SV clients, but last night provided ample evidence: smart businesses are not only blogging, but are already innovating. No way to learn but to do, and these three companies among many others are doing it.

We're co-organizers of this meetup, and next month it's our turn to play host. The theme is still under construction, but the general focus is a subject that's near and dear to the Eastwick practice: community.

Wik-Ed: Teach the World to Wik

2006-05-03T15:38:00.000-07:00

As promised, we've launched a new wiki to continue our exploration on best-practices in wiki-based collaboration. Like most wikis, this is a WorkInProgress, and we are starting small, and we are advancing incrementally. The first "project" is "33 Wikis" -- we're asking people to visit these pages, comment/edit/add, and list and describe wikis that we missed in our 33-day survey. We'll be adding many new wikis ourselves, but we're hoping the community of wiki watchers will help to build the content on this site, a new venue for people and businesses interested in educating themselves on how to build and maintain vibrant communities.

33 Wikis: #33 -- Wikipedia -- Making the Case for Wikis

2006-05-03T15:36:00.000-07:00

This is the thirty-third installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. Tomorrow, we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: by far the most popular and populated wiki community, Wikipedia is the world's largest online encyclopedia, with more than 1,000, 000 articles in circulation. But it is so much more. Wikipedia has spawned all sorts of related wiki projects including Wikinews, one of the earliest and most vibrant citizen journalism sites; Wikimedia Commons, an open repository of graphic images; and MediaWiki, a free wiki platform that many of the best public-interest wikis are built on today (just look at the other 32 wikis featured in this series, and you will see).

Why we like it: Projects like Meatball and WikiWikiWeb have taught many net-savvy folks about the why and how of constructing wikis. Wikipedia extends the classroom to a much larger world. We spoke this morning to Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales, and he told us about the early days. His original idea, Nupedia, was a "Web-based encyclopedia whose articles were written by experts and licensed as free content." But they soon ran into content-management problems. After experimenting with a wiki tool, they quickly saw they light. "In two weeks, we were able to do more than what we accomplished in two years." But we also like Wikipedia because of the principles they have held since the beginning of the project. The organization has has steadfastly held true to the wiki way -- open, free, and easy-use. BTW -- Wales didn't meet Ward Cunningham, "father" of the wiki, until 2005. Still, if Cunningham is the promethean teacher of the wiki, Wales is his most prodigious student. By staying true to basic wiki principles, Wales has evolved the site from an odd-but-interesting project to a serious rival to not only Encyclopedia Britannica, but to other online news sources as well. Organically and naturally optimized for the post-Google world, Wikipedia is now the default reference for many consumers and professionals who spend most of their days on the Web.

What we all can learn from it: If all Wales and company did was to make the world's most popular online reference, that would be no mean feat. In many ways, the encyclopedia -- a selective yet exhaustive compedium of all we know -- historically has always represented the ultimate "knowledge management" project. So if Wikipedia can manage an encyclopedia better -- more posts, more current information, and just as reliable as other sources -- what could be a better way of proving the usefulness of this new approach called wiki. Never mind that Wikpedia can often be wrong; other references are wrong nearly as often, and at least you can correct Wikipedia. And never mind that Wikipedia is not the most beautiful thing to read (as more than one cranky blogger has complained, pining, we suppose, for the days when most of the literate the world read Diderot -- sure); Wikipedia's commitment to fairness and "neutral point of view" more than compensates. And with the monumental achievement of Wikipedia under his belt, Wales is looking to enable people -- the wise crowd that has made Wikipedia such a success -- to extend the power of wiki to capture other "varieties of human experience" with free tools such as MediaWiki, and with community platforms like Wikia, the first commercial (ad-supported) venture to emerge from the Wikipedia world. Beyond that, Wales is working with a number of industry leaders (including Eastwick-client Socialtext), to make wikis easier to use for general consumers. It's an appropriate note with which to end this series, our best-faith attempt to show you what works in the world of wiki. Tomorrow we'll post a new wiki to continue the conversation, and on Monday we will post a paper entitled, "Three Things We Learned About 33 Wikis."

So long ... for now. As the original wiki people like to say, this is a WorkInProgress.

33 Wikis: #32 -- WikiWikiWeb -- A Walk Down "The Wiki Way"

2006-05-03T15:35:00.000-07:00

This is the thirty-second installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: WikiWikiWeb is the first wiki forum ever, and the current name of the first wiki engine.

But it's more than just a couple of cultural artifacts. The brainchild of software innovator/wiki inventor Ward Cunningham, WikiWikiWeb is a virtual repository of many of the ideas and discusssions that shaped the approach and indentity of wikis. The aggregate is an approach that many people in the wiki world now call "The Wiki Way."

Why we like it: So what is the wiki way? I met Ward Cunningham at a now-infamous night of parties at Web 2.0 2005. I was struck by how shy, humble but friendly was the father of wikis at a gathering of software honchos often known for other qualities on the human spectrum. I felt like I was meeting a gentle wizard. I say this with great respect: Cunningham represents a middle-earth of software development known for a more enlightened approach to the craft. Turns out that Cunningham and his brood were influenced by the deep and intuitive thinking of architect (buildings not software) Christopher Alexander, whose teachings I was introduced to years ago (1978) by another gentle wizard, a close friend of mine at Princeton (an architecture student) who was struggling to commit to a career he was certain he would hate. Alexander, then Cunningham, and then others, taught many people to find a higher purpose in their craft. For Cunningham, it has always been about "creating technologies that connect people."

Here's one thing you will learn on WikiWikiWeb: the utter simplicity of a good wiki. That's one of the early, controlling concepts that Cunningham helped to advance. Possibly his most famous quote, "what is the simplest thing that could possibly work?" A great question for a movement that would later take this technology to the masses.

What we all can learn from it: if you are truly committed to building a wiki, and are looking to understand the first philosophical impulses that brought this form into being, WikiWikiWeb is worth a visit. The conversation has evolved over the years -- most recently into the world of "extreme programming." Still, there's enough here to satisfy the curiosity of the most wiki-committed but technologically-challenged. It's a great walk for anyone, along the wiki way.

33 Wikis: #31 -- WikiIndex: The First "One Stop-Sign Town" in the Land of Wiki

2006-05-03T15:33:00.000-07:00

This is the thirty-first installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: From the homepage: WikiIndex is "a wiki of wiki, wiki people and wiki ideas, a WorkInProgress. This is part of a continued effort to self-organize information collaboratively, started by WardCunningham a decade ago." In an email exchange with eastwikkers, organizer Mark Dilley noted, "my main goal is to have this be the first one stop sign town for wiki. People come here and add their wiki, tag it, maintain it like a front lawn and ask wiki related questions."

Why we like it: there are other indexes and lists that purport to do the same thing -- or similar things -- but WikiIndex is the best of its kind. The "33 Wikis" project is all about finding best-practices in wiki-based collaboration, and we couldn't have managed this project without the timely info that WikiIndex maintains. Among many of the useful pages on this site: wikis arranged by category, wikis that are vibrant (subjective judgment -- a wiki is vibrant if it "has significant content, or is very interesting, or has a high volume of traffic, or is valuable in some way to the Internet community"), and wiki noding, a "project that will ultimately allow users to discover entire wiki worlds by traversing the node network."

What we all can learn from it: Like Meatball, WikiIndex is a valuable resource for all citizens in wikidom. Lesson is not so much how to replicate what it does well; it's more about becoming knowledgeable in how wikis are being used, what works and what doesn't, and what's new from a use-case perspective. Oh, yeah -- be sure to add your own wiki, and, as Dilley recommends, maintain it nicely for all the folks who pass through town (the traffic is heavy).

33 Wikis: #30 -- Les Wikis -- From Book to Wiki

2006-05-03T15:32:00.000-07:00

This is the thirtieth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: Les Wikis is a bilingual wiki devoted to educating general audiences on all things wiki. With this broad focus, the wiki reads somewhat like a zine, with news, features and interviews with people in the wiki business. Still, one might ask -- how vibrant is the French wiki scene? Check this out.

Why we like it: With a version in French and another in English (the new lingua franca), Les Wikis can reach out to a broad European audience, and it appears to have done so. We are also impressed that "Les Wikis" originated as an online companion to a book ("Wikis: Zone of Collective Intelligence.") In its current, collaborative form, the project is better suited to the "Les Wikis" mission -- "tout sur les wikis."

What we all can learn from it: The evolution of this site -- from book to wiki -- might inspire others to think of ways to extend the life of a publishing project. If that means turning more books into wiki-based zines, we may someday see a new wave of innovation in publishing.

33 Wikis: #29 -- Meatball Wiki

2006-05-03T15:23:00.000-07:00

This is the twenty-ninth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: for the next four days we will be looking at meta-wikis -- i.e., wikis about wikis. Meatball Wiki, one of the most influential wikis in wikidom describes itself as a "learning community" comprised of the leaders of online communities. Their mission is to bring together all "proprietors, developers, mentors, samaritans" of wiki-based communities to share what they know and propagate a better understanding of the Wiki Way -- the philosophy of wiki-based communities first articulated by the inventor of the wiki, Ward Cunningham.

Why we like it: during my first real visit to Meatball, I fell in love. This is a treasure trove of technology, philosophy, sociology, anthropology, and common-sense wisdom of the do's and dont's of online communities. But it is even more than that. As one of the older and wiser wiki communities, Meatball has helped to introduce and evangelize BarnRaising, SoftSecurity, RealNames, NonViolence, "playful wisdom," and other concepts that are helping community leaders in both the online and offline worlds. Spend enough time on this wiki, and you will get a very stong vibe: this community is in fact dedicated to making a better world -- online and offline. It reminds me of an article we posted last year, where we put forth the idea that the online world is like the New World of the colonial era -- a breeding ground for ideas from the Old World that eventually would go back to the Old World ... but only after the New World tested them.

FYI: meatball refers to a picture of the Web as a big plate of spaghetti and meatballs, where spaghetti are the links, and meatballs are the content. This wiki is a mighty big meatball, and it has spawned all sorts of projects. But Meatball follows the principle of CommunityOverContent: in the end, it's all about relationships, and the ethic of community predominates over everything -- even the meatballs -- on Meatball.

What we all can learn from it: for what it does -- and it does a lot -- it would be hard to top Meatball. But the members of this community have been gracious enough to link to similar sites, directly from the home page. But what can we all learn from it? Recommendation: join this community, contribute to it, and learn. If you have been following this series for all 29 days to date, you actually might be ready for the experience.

33 Wikis: #28 -- DrKW -- the Wikipedia of the Enterprise

2006-05-03T15:19:00.000-07:00

This is the twenty-eighth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein (DrKW), the international investment bank, is operating what we believe is the largest internal corporate wiki in existence. [Disclosure: Eastwick-client Socialtext provided the wiki platform]. As the Financial Times recently reported, with more than 2,000 pages edited by more than a quarter of its workforce, the DrKW wiki has traffic well exceeding the company's intranet. Employees today are using the wiki for a wide variety of activities, including training, project management, and sales support. With this wide and far-reaching agenda -- driven only by the imagination of employees -- this wiki has been dubbed the DrKWpedia, a nod to the largest wiki of all, Wikipedia.

Why we like it: The scope of this project -- and the reputation of the company -- should help to evangelize the way wikis can be used to make businesses more efficient, nimble, and creative. It helps that one of the leading proponents of the DrKW wiki is CIO JP Rangaswami. But as Socialtext-consultant Suw Charman observes, the widespread adoption of the DrKW wiki also has a lot to do with folks at lower tiers -- the "supernodes" who are so well connected and so influential among their peers.

What we all can learn from it: There are other corporate "pedias" in the works, but to date this is the leading case study. If an organization wants to explore the business benefits of launching a wiki, the public documentation of this wiki project can be a great help.
Related link: "Enterprise 2.0: The Dawn of Emergent Collaboration," by Harvard professor Andrew P. McAfee.

33 Wikis: #27 -- The SAP Apollo Wiki

2006-04-19T20:08:00.000-07:00

This is the twenty-seventh installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: Jeff Nolan leads the Apollo Group, a strategy and communications org within SAP, the enterprise software giant. Nolan, one of Silicon Valley's top bloggers, is using a number of social media tools -- blogs, RSS, and of course, a wiki -- to better compete with Oracle, SAP's chief rival. The Apollo wiki is mostly used for extended project management. [Note: this is a private wiki].

Why we like it: this is one use of wiki technology that we are certain will gain wide adoption in the future. The gathering of competitive intelligence, and the management of that intelligence, are two of the most critical areas of activity for the strategy, marketing, and sales functions of an enterprise. Nolan's group has found a way to approach these activities in ways that are better suited to how employees actually work. The result? In addition to helping SAP with the overall effort to transform its culture -- and with helping the SAP in its effort to compete with Oracle -- the Apollo Wiki is eliminating the need for superfluous email, never-to-be-read status reports, and unneccessary paperwork.

What we all can learn from it: as we said above, the wiki -- in tandem with other social-media technologies -- could very well emerge as the competitive tool of the future.

33 Wikis: #26 -- The Vyatta Community Wiki

2006-04-19T20:06:00.000-07:00

This is the twenty-sixth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: Vyatta, an Eastwick client, aims to develop an open source alternative to commercial routing software (think Cisco, Juniper), and the Vyatta Community Wiki is the place where it is all happening. [For an excellent overview of the company and its mission, see Om Malik's feature in Business 2.0.] Note: four weeks after Vyatta flipped the switch on this community -- turning it from a private to public community -- membership grew by more than 2000%.

Why we like it: Yes, we are Vyatta's agency, but we believe this is a great example of how a wiki can be used for the purposes of organizing a motivated community. Like the Mozilla Developer Center, which we covered yesterday, the Vyatta Community Wiki began with a singular purpose, with a direct appeal to members of the community. It's this kind of focus that can transform an ordinary collaborative project into a mission. FYI, Vyatta means "open" in sanskrit.

What we all can learn from it: As we said above, singularity of purpose may be the biggest takeaway for general audiences. But inside the technology world, it is yet another example of the wikis are so well suited to developer projects.

33 Wikis: #25 -- Mozilla Developer Center

2006-04-19T20:05:00.000-07:00

This is the twenty-fifth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: Today and tomorrow, we will look at two wikis for software developers. Our pick today is the Mozilla Developer Center which serves as "a central nexus for all developer documentation related to the Mozilla Project and Mozilla technologies. In time, it is hoped that the Mozilla Developer Center will become a resource that web designers, application developers, and extension and theme writers visit on a daily basis." For those of you outside the technology world, Mozilla is the open source project that organized the creation of the popular Firefox browser.

Why we like it: This is an example of a medium (a wiki) almost perfectly suited to the demographic (developer) and purpose (the creation of an open source alternative) of a community. The development of any open source service or product requires a select but sizeable developer community, and the wiki --- a tool that many developers understand -- is a great environment for building such a community. It also helps that wikis function in an open source manner -- tapping the collective wisdom and contributions of the many.

What we all can learn from it: There are a number of developer communities like this; tomorrow we will look at another. But the visibility of the Mozilla Project should help publicize the viability of this approach among many other software companies that are looking for purposeful ways to engage with developers in their markets.

33 Wikis -- #24 -- SmallBusiness.com -- Experts in Charge

2006-04-19T20:04:00.000-07:00

This is the twenty-fourth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: OK, if you are through working on the Millenium Problems and need to get back to business -- a small business -- then this might be the wiki for you. The elegantly and simply-named Smallbusiness.com provides a "variety of services and resources being created every day by a community of small business owners and managers sharing their personal knowledge about starting and running a small business."

Why we like it: Great name, great look (dead simple), and a great number of resources (volume is sometimes important). There are a number of commercial sites that target the huge and amorphous small-business market, but this is the only site doing this in a truly collaborative fashion. The value to this approach? As a partner at an independent PR agency, I can tell you: there's no substitute for knowledge that comes from people who have actually "been there, done that." This site taps the collective wisdom of an expert group and serves up useful, practical information in areas such as law, management, finance, marketing, HR, state-by-state resources, and much more.

What we all can learn from it: Smallbusiness.com does a lot of things well, but its biggest gift to the community is a lesson on expert-based services. In some market segments -- and this is one of them -- the most sought-after expert is the practitioner. We'll post a few other examples of this kind of service when we conclude the "33 Wikis" project.

33 Wikis: #23 -- The QEDen "Millenium Problems" Project -- the seven million dollar wiki

2006-04-15T22:48:00.000-07:00

This is the twenty-third installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

We thank the folks at Slashdot for introducing us to today's wiki.

What this wiki is about: We interrupt our coverage on business wikis (we began our run just yesterday) to tell you about a wiki that means business. A group called QEDen has launched a wiki that hopes to solve the notorious Millenium Problems, which the Clay Mathematics Institute calls "classic questions that have resisted solution over the years." The Institute has promised a $1 million dollar reward for the solution to each problem. The QEDen wiki hopes to accelerate the problem solving by "assembling an army of nerds."

Why we like it: Whether or not you think this project is naive (more than a few folks at Slashdot think so), the QEDen wiki is one of the most radical expressions of "wisdom of crowds" that we've seen throughout this entire survey. And we like that the organizers are looking at the big picture, beyond the Millenium Problems. "QEDen is looking to change the very nature of mathematical and scientific research. Internet collaboration has been used to successfully build state of the art products ranging from software to encyclopedias. Why not see if it can be used to advance human knowledge?" Oh, and if you're wondering about how QEDen is planning to divvy up the bounty -- they're not. If a member of the community solves the problem, he or she gets to keep the whole thing. "QEDen itself will not try to lay any claim to the prize money (although a generous donation from the winner back to the community would certainly be in good taste.)"

What we all can learn from it: Again, this is "wisdom of crowds" in the extreme, and we will be very curious to see how the project progresses. For now, it should encourage other groups or organizations who might benefit from the use of a wiki environment for problem solving. A short while back, it was becoming fashionable for businesses to invite students and inventors to submit their best ideas, with the faint promise that a winning notion might result in a substantial reward. Why would a business do this? It can save a lot of money in R&D, and the pool of talent, theoretically, is limitless. The QEDen project suggests that there's an easy tool for organizing experiments like this.

33 Wikis: #22 -- Lucky Number Slevin Wiki -- Managing the Administrative Beast

2006-04-14T21:57:00.000-07:00

This is the twenty-second installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: As Heather Green at BusinessWeek recently noted, the producers for the film "Lucky Number Slevin" used a wiki to track production and financing. I wish we could show you the wiki, but this one is private.

Why we like it: Well, as a former independent theater producer, I can tell you: managing production and budget can be an awful burden because there are so many players, so many moving pieces, and so many potential crises. I haven't seen the Slevin wiki, but if it made life easier for the producers I am impressed.

What we all can learn from it: There are many collaborative tasks in the business world that can be better managed on a wiki. If you have a project that generally requires updates and signoffs from multiple people, at multiple locations, we strongly recommend you go the wiki way.

33 Wikis: #21 -- WikixBox360 -- Another kind of Product Wiki

2006-04-13T16:24:00.000-07:00

This is the twenty-first installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is about: wikiXbox360 is a collaborative site for fans of the Xbox platform. From the about page: "wikiXbox360 brings together gamers who share a passion for gaming and the Xbox 360. This site is a communal dashboard that enables like-minded gamers to connect, share, and build a knowledge base from their individual experiences, expertise, and perspectives -- a community by gamers for gamers."

What we like about it: We spoke a few days ago about ProductWiki, the first wiki-based product catalog. wikiXbox360 points the way where many product manufacturers may go: the creation of their own product communities, driven largely by the passion of their fans. The look-and-feel, and special features -- like "watch this page" -- seem to suit the audience.

What we all can learn from it: As we said above, wikiXbox360 might pave the way for other product-fan sites. The big question: do you have a product that has a community of users/fans who care so much that they need to speak with one another? There have got to be lots of companies who'd answer yes to that question -- for a few examples, take a look at the excellent Brand Hijack, by Alex Wipperfurth. Another takeaway: the snazzy look and special features demonstrate the adaptability of wikis (a theme that has been building in this series over the last few days). That will matter to companies who are focused on their brands, even those that are willing to allow their customers to create their brands (again, see Brand Hijack).

33 Wikis: # 20 -- The TV IV -- Survival by Wiki

2006-04-12T19:09:00.000-07:00

This is the twentieth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is about: Yesterday we asked you to sit in an armchair, and to consider the possibilities for leveraging your sports addiction on a wiki. You can stay in that armchair, because today we want to tell you about an opportunity for all TV lovers: The TV IV, the most complete collaborative Web site dedicated to our favorite medium (evidence of our feelings here and here). From the "about" page: "The TV IV seeks to give you current, up-to-date information on your favorite shows, both current and old. This is an open encyclopedia of television shows, which means that anyone can edit the information at will. We urge you to go to your favorite television show and help contribute, as this website can only grow with your contributions. The TV IV aims to include information about every television show and is not limited to American or British television. "

Why we like it: Where else can you go to get the Fall network schedule for 1963, and correct it if it is wrong? And The TV IV caters not only to nostalgia but also any variety of contemporary programming. The only requirement is that you care so much about your shows that you'd want to visit this site and perhaps contribute to it. There's got to be a pretty big audience. At last count, this wiki logged 73, 148 articles. But what we really like about this wiki is that it's a survivor (pun intended). It has a rather complex history:

In the summer of 2005, TV Tome became TV.com following its buyout by CNET. Several people who frequent The TV IV forum in the Something Awful Forums were unhappy about that. The new site was filled with Flash and ads, and some of the content from TV Tome was missing. It was decided that, like The Six Million Dollar Man, "we can rebuild him," er, I mean, it. The TV IV wiki was born.

By the way, don't feel bad if you love TV so much that you'd want to write about it. Steven Johnson says TV is good for us. We agree, though we wish there were fewer commercials (we're working on that).

What we all can learn from it: This is another great fan site -- but for all fans of an entire medium, not just a specific artist, entertainer, or work. But there's a bigger lesson here: to repeat what we said above, the fact that this project has survived by changing its format (from static Web site to vibrant wiki) is impressive. If your Web site is failing, ask if there's an easy way to make it more interactive.

33 Wikis: # 19 -- ArmchairGM -- Channeling Your Inner Oscar Madison

2006-04-11T16:33:00.000-07:00

This is the nineteenth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: ArmchairGM is a collaborative site for sports enthusiasts who believe that blogging is not enough. From the "about" page: "Most fans don't have the time to commit to running a blog nor the inclination to promote, design, and manage it, and these are the minimums needed for an effective web presence. You have to write well, write often, promote yourself, have an effective and pleasing aesthetic, and manage criticism and technical difficulties well. And you have to do this constantly: It takes a long, long time to build a readership. But it takes only a few days of idleness and disrepair (or one day of idiocy!) for it to crumble."

Why we like it: All good wikis have motivated, opinionated communities. We can think of no community as opinionated and as motivated -- e.g., to share their opinions -- than the millions of armchair coaches, general managers, and would-be Oscar Madisons of this world. This new site -- with has logged close to half a million page views in less than two months -- enables sports fans to post news, opinions, and, of course comments. Because it's a wiki, almost anything can be edited. You can't edit comments, of course; and we wonder how participants will feel that their opinions -- as opposed to news -- can be edited. But what we like most about this site is the Digg-like "voting" feature which determines the rank of an article based on reader ratings.

What we all can learn from it: Two things: first, the voting feature is something that we expect many other media sites -- traditional media and new media -- to follow. Not only does this democratize the process of placing stories -- an approach that communities respect -- but it also makes good business sense (think of the implications for advertising). But another lesson for all: there are other worlds where fans enjoy talking/arguing with each other at least as much as they enjoy talking/arguing with professional commentators. There are other markets for this kind of approach.

33 Wikis: #18 -- ProductWiki

2006-04-10T17:31:00.000-07:00

This is the eighteenth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: The first product catalog powered by wiki technology, ProductWiki is "a community of people sharing their knowledge and experience about the consumer products and services."

Why we like it: Three Canadian engineers (Amanie Ismail, Omar Ismail, and Erik Kalviainen) found inspiration in Wikipedia to build their own platform, and one that's tailored to meet the demands of a robust online catalog. The result is a well-designed, ad-supported, one-of-a-kind service that's targeting a very large and competitive market sector (by the way, ProductWiki is in no way affiliated with an Amazon project with a similar name). One critic recently noted that ProductWiki it does not differ in any significant way services like Epinions, except for the dubious capability that it offers its users to edit the contributions of others. Our take: the risks are greater, but the open-edit capability is a good differentiator for ProductWiki, which has the agenda of "keeping the information honest." We also like the look and feel of the site -- clean, elegant, functional, with a few light Web 2.0-ish features built in.

What we all can learn from it: We believe that ProductWiki points the way that many consumer-facing sites will go, integrating wiki technology into their services. While the DIY nature of pre-built wiki platforms will continue to appeal to most people, a number of businesses will build their own tools, or -- as the emerging Amazon wiki story foretells -- build wiki technology into current Web-based offerings.

33 Wikis: #17 -- Wikitravel -- A Trusted Community for "Consumers Like You"

2006-04-10T17:29:00.000-07:00

This is the seventeenth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: We are shifting our focus these next few days to consumer sites, beginning with a collaborative project called Wikitravel. From the home page: "Wikitravel is a project to create a free, complete, up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide. So far we have 8,293 destination guides and other articles written and edited by Wikitravellers from around the globe."

What we like about it: When I was younger -- and far more restless, but far less able financially -- I depended on budget travel guides to help me plan and navigate trips to Europe. My favorite was the Let's Go series, which were written mostly for people generally like me: recent college grads, budget-conscious, and open to a more-than-occasional detour -- a relaxed if superior attitude that viewed traditional travel guides as silly, irrelevant, and, most important, untrustworthy. In short, the Let's Go series played well to a large population of consumers who shared a common ethos -- "smart and adventurous travel ... on a shoestring." The community was very loosely defined, but it was real enough and big enough that it worked.

The world of travel has changed a lot since those days, in large part because the first Let's Go generations have grown up (looking back on old itineraries, many of us are saying "let's not"). But even younger travelers today are a lot more sophisticated. Along comes Wikitravel, a collaborative site that seems well-suited to the needs of any informed traveler, young or old, rich or poor ... provided you accept the new ethos: that the new community of travelers -- Wikitravellers -- can all get smarter by sharing what they know. In a sense, this site does for smart travelers today what Let's Go first did for young travelers a few generations ago -- make the world a little smaller by bringing together like-minded people. It reminds us of the Edelman Trust Barometer -- we tend to trust people who are most like us. In the world of travel guides -- there are so many -- Wikitravel may have found a great way for like-minded people to share info on all sorts of topics, including traveling with families, info on airfare, hotels, itineraries, dining, health, and safety.

What we all can learn from it: This is another example of how a distributed, volunteer online community might do a better job than a publisher in documenting the intricacies of a complex market. But the "trust" factor (discussed above) is another big takeaway. Private and public organizations can learn a lot from this wiki, which demonstrates the role that trusted communities can play in helping consumers make important decisions.

Also worth noting: Can I Crash?, a wiki service that "lets you lend your sofa to travelling bloggers." Talk about trust.

33 Wikis: # 16 -- The Tax Almanac

2006-04-08T23:18:00.000-07:00

This is the sixteenth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: Finally, a wiki that even my mother would like. I'm serious -- my mother prepares taxes for consultants and small businesses. The Tax Almanac is "a free tax research resource brought to you by Intuit, the makers of the professional tax preparation products Lacerte and ProSeries .... Our goal is to transform tax research and to improve the effectiveness of tax professionals everywhere."

Why we like it: There are so many reasons we like this wiki, starting with the corporate sponsorship. As we note above, this is a project "brought to you by Intuit," the maker of many tax and accounting software products. The Tax Almanac is a smart use of a collaborative environment where everyone can benefit -- the professional community and the corporate sponsor alike -- while the burden of developing and maintaining the wiki is distributed. Second, this is a very good resource that taps the wisdom of a very sophisticated crowd that live and work across the country. And it's a nicely designed (organized) wiki, making it easier for participants to find what they need and contribute.

What we all can learn from it: Tax is clearly a subject where the wisdom of the crowd beats the intelligence of the individual. But perhaps the biggest takeaway is the nature of the corporate sponsorship, which not only keeps Intuit close to its customers -- in this case, professional consumers of its tax and accounting products -- but also helps with visibility and brand (BusinessWeek recently named The Tax Almanac a "pacesetter" in collaboration). But also note: you'll have a hard time finding the word wiki on the home page (scroll down ... way down). We love the word wiki, but we may need other words as the tool continues to migrate from the world of developers and to the bigger world of non-techy professionals and consumers (hi, Mom).

33 Wikis -- #15 -- The Library Success Wiki -- Wikis for Professional Development

2006-04-07T13:12:00.000-07:00

This is the fifteenth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: This week we looked at wikis for politics, and wikis for education. Big theme all week has been information, and today we turn to folks in the information sciences, namely librarians. One of the best specimens in this category is a wiki called Library Success that bills itself as follows: “… one-stop-shop for great ideas and information for all types of librarians. All over the world, librarians are developing successful programs and doing innovative things with technology that no one outside of their library knows about. There are lots of great blogs out there sharing information about the profession, but there is no one place where all of this information is collected and organized.”

Why we like it: Created by Meredith Farkas, a librarian in Vermont, the Library Success wiki serves as a collaborative site for librarians all over the world. As with many other professions, the teaching and practice of library sciences varies widely state to state and country to country. This wiki serves to raise the standard across all territories, with information on best practices in technology, training, programming, professional ethics, and other topics.

What we all can learn from it: the wiki as steward to a profession holds a lot of promise, and we believe that the Library Success wiki is a great example. We expect other professions to build out collaborative environments for their own folks, but as is true of all wikis, it takes the energy and dedication of an evangelist and gardener (in this case Farkas) to get anything meaningful going.

33 Wikis: #14 -- The Science of Spectroscopy Wiki -- The Long-Tail of Education

2006-04-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

This is the fourteenth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: The Science of Spectroscopy Wiki is a collaborative site for the teaching of spectroscopy to university-level and advanced high-school students. Definition (Wikipedia): "Spectroscopy is the study of spectra, that is, the dependence of physical quantities on frequency." It is often used in physical and analytical chemistry, and astronomy.

Why we like it: The evangelist and gardener of this wiki is Stewart Mader, an instructional technologist in math and sciences at Brown University. As we learned in a recent comment, Mader and his cohorts have created an environment that enables students "to learn about spectroscopy using a model that starts with real-world applications, gets them engaged and asking 'how does it work?' and then teaches techniques and theory." What we really like about this wiki is how it has attracted a global community of collaborators -- scientists, teachers and students -- to work on group projects. In effect, the wiki has created a global classroom.

What we all can learn from it: Just as wikis are enabling people to go beyond organizational boundaries, they can also enable groups to recruit the best participants across geographic boundaries. And while spectroscopy may constitute a small neighborhood in the larger world of education, the contribution that the wiki has made to the teaching of this subject might inspire folks from other fields to do the same. We will soon tire of using the phrase "long tail," but it is very appropriate here. Niche matters, and Internet tools can help people to find one another. [Note: Tomorrow, Mader will present a paper on the wiki, at the excellent HigherEd BlogCon.]

33 Wikis: #13 -- The Westwood Wiki -- Wikis in the Schools

2006-04-05T20:09:00.000-07:00

This is the thirteenth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: The Westwood Wiki is a collaborative workspace for the Westwood Schools (K-12) in Camilla, Georgia. The gardener and evangelist is computer science teacher Vicki A. Davis, AKA "Cool Cat Teacher." Davis and her students have created an highly interactive, vibrant workspace that supplement several parts of the Westwood curricula.

Why we like it: Wikis are getting lots of interest in the schools because the benefits of peer production and participation are becoming better known. But to really get a wiki going like Westwood has, you need an evangelist with Davis' stamina and character. She's encouraged her students to not only use the wiki, but to immerse themselves in all things Web 2.0. As a result, this is a pretty sophisticated site, with a few unexpected treats (check out the 4th grade podcast -- a big cute yes, but still impressive). We also like that Davis has shared so much about her experience. Her notes on the wiki and in her blog will help other teachers navigate their own entry into the world of tech-supported education.

What we all can learn from it: Like all the wikis in this series, the Westwood Wiki has lessons for people in markets outside its own. The way wikis encourage and reward collaboration and production should be of interest to any organization that has the mandate of developing its constituents, especially organizations -- commercial and public -- that have been forced to do more with less.

33 Wikis: #12 -- The ICANN Wiki -- Behold, The Event Wiki

2006-04-04T20:49:00.000-07:00

This is the tweflth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: The ICANN Wiki is a collaborative site for people who take part in conferences for ICANN, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers. Wikipedia says this about ICANN: "Headquartered in Marina Del Rey, ICANN is a California non-profit corporation that was created on September 18, 1998 in order to oversee a number of Internet-related tasks previously performed directly on behalf of the U.S. Government by other organizations, notably IANA." Not clear? In short, ICANN is one of the premier -- if not the premier -- organizations on Internet policy.

Why we like it: Creative, funny, and hyperactive, the ICANN wiki will emerge as a model collaborative site for any organization seeking to leverage the community that supports its events. But like many good event wikis, this wiki does not belong to the organization, ICANN, but to the ICANN community. Going well beyond what any organization can do alone, this wiki enables conference participants to share notes, plan get-togethers, meet people, and much more. And did we mention that the site is funny? We love how many of the participants are featured in photos and caricatures (click on the image to the left).

What we all can learn from it: Event wikis are gaining traction in the technology world, and we expect they will go mainstream very soon. There are so many benefits for participants. And organizers too are learning that a wiki is a great way to support participants, who often attend conferences for reasons only they know. Check out, for example, the official Web 2.0 2005 wiki, which helped attendees to organize several successful after-hour events.

33 Wikis: #11 -- The Politics.ie Wiki -- A Living Encyclopedia of Ireland

2006-04-03T18:34:00.000-07:00

This is the eleventh installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: The organizers of the "Politics.ie Wiki" describe their project as follows:

"Our aim is to create the largest online resource of Irish political information.... This is a member driven Irish political encyclopedia, so the more help you give us the better it will become. We're currently working on 3005 articles on Irish politics."

Why we like it: While dKosopedia attempts to educate U.S. progressives, the "Politics.ie Wiki" seeks to educate all Irish political watchers on the history, current events, and the inner workings of government. Because of the country's colorful, tumultuous history, this project has a lot of interesting material to work with; contributors are putting the wiki to good use in collecting, dissecting and managing that material.

What we all can learn from it: This is a good example of the wiki as reference, a category that Wikipedia has helped to popularize. But don't let the relative smallness of this project ("only" 3,000-plus articles) fool you -- it may still be one of the best, and most up-to-date references on Irish politics available. By combining historical and current information resources, the wiki blurs the lines between reference and news, just as Wikipedia has done on a larger scale. Think of this wiki as part of the long tail of worldwide, wiki-based publishing projects.

33 Wikis: #10 -- DoWire Wiki -- School for E-Democracy?

2006-04-02T17:58:00.000-07:00

This is the tenth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: "DoWire's E-Democracy Best Practices Wiki," a project of DoWire.org, is a "collaborative drafting environment" for people interested in e-democracy. DoWire founder Steven Clift defines e-democracy as follows:

E-democracy represents the use of information and communication technologies and strategies by democratic actors within political and governance processes of local communities, nations and on the international stage. Democratic actors/sectors include governments, elected officials, the media, political organizations, and citizen/voters.

To many, e-democracy suggests greater and more active citizen participation enabled by the Internet, mobile communications, and other technologies in today’s representative democracy as well as through more participatory or direct forms of citizen involvement in addressing public challenges.

The DoWire wiki provides a workspace on the Web for both practioners and students of e-democracy to share information on tools and best practices.

Why we like it: As a front-page article in today's New York Times notes, the Internet is fast becoming the preferred medium for political communication, and DoWire's commitment to promoting the use of the Internet for more representative government may soon start getting a bigger audience. The wiki looks at experiments inside and outside the U.S. (see the pages on projects in Canada and the U.K.), and features a well-written "Best Practices Guide" based on Clift's model for e-democracy. Participants can share info on how governments are using Internet tools to get closer to their constituents, involve them more in policy-making, and in making various processes more transparent.

What we all can learn from it: If dKosopedia is a virtual school for progressives, the DoWire wiki is a virtual school for anyone interested in learning how to make the Internet work better for government. Beyond the world of politics, it also shows how a wiki can be used to evolve the way we think about deeply-entrenched institutional processes. As we'll see in the latter part of "33 Wikis," collaborative technology has also generated great conversation about the evolution of governance in business, and a number of interesting experiments are already underway.

Related links:

--e-democracy wiki
--deliberative-democracy.net wiki
--The IBM Center for Business of Government: "A Manager's Guide to Civic Engagement"
--Corante's "Civic Minded" blog

33 Wikis: #9 -- dKosopedia -- School for Progressives?

2006-04-01T22:43:00.000-08:00

This is the ninth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: a wiki project by DailyKos, the most popular political blog in the world, dKosopedia describes itself as a "collaborative project of the DailyKos community to build a political encyclopedia. The dKosopedia is written from a left/progressive/liberal/Democratic point of view while also attempting to fairly acknowledge the other side's take. It was started in April of 2004, and currently consists of 5,494 articles."

Why we like it: Of all the political wikis we've visited, dKosopedia seems to have the greatest potential as a vehicle for bridging the camps that comprise the general progressive agenda. The wiki was born in the midst of widespread soul-searching in the Democratic party, many of whose leaders had begun to marvel over the Republican Party's ability to consistently stay on message. dKosopedia's architecture reveals an acute sensitivity to this issue, providing resources such as "frameshop" (nod to George Lakoff's now famous attempts to educate progressives to connect better with voters), a political "glossary," and a "meme tank" (instructing participants on ways to create better, persistent ideas and themes for discussion on the Internet).

What we all can learn from it: Politics aside, dKosopedia represents an interesting case study for any organization struggling to define itself and get consensus on mission, ideology, and direction. By taking both a bottoms up and top-down approach, this type of wiki may in fact help to create an emergent organization -- an organization where none truly existed before. Whether this works for the broad groups of people who identify themselves as progressive is another question. And as many a critic of Lakoff has said, it will take a lot more than PR lessons to win the hearts and minds of voters. Still, from our perspective, this wiki project is one worth watching as we move toward the next presidential election.

33 Wikis: # 8 -- TheNewPRWiki -- Reform and Renewal for the PR Industry?

2006-03-31T19:20:00.000-08:00

This is the eighth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: TheNewPRWiki, the brainchild of PR consultant/blogger Constantin Basturea, describes itself as:

*a repository of relevant information about how the PR practice is changing
*a collaboration tool for PR professionals and people interested in the practice of public relations
*an open space where anyone can ask questions, post ideas, or start a project.

Why we like it: At the end of a week when the PR blogosphere spent so much time anguishing over the musings of an anonymous blogger, TheNewPRWiki stands for the notion that there are better things to come ... or something else to talk about (we'll see). As we said yesterday in our discussion of SourceWatch, this is an industry that is undergoing major reform and renewal, and TheNewPRWiki, along with a couple of new industry groups (most notably NewCommForum) has done a lot to help PR folks educate themselves on both the theory and practice of new media. The wiki has good info, including case studies, corporate blogging policies, lists, and more.

What we all can learn from it: Bottom line: if SourceWatch is about getting rid of the old, TheNewPRWiki is about building the new. If you are in PR, this is a great resource. If you are not, this is a living case study on how to begin renewing an industry. It will surely take more than a wiki -- or a village -- but starting small, with a group of people who sometimes compete for business (because it's in their interests to collaborate) is a smart approach.

33 Wikis: #7 -- SourceWatch -- The Scourge of the PR Industry

2006-03-30T16:19:00.000-08:00

This is the seventh installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: Formerly known as Disinfopedia, SourceWatch describes itself as "a collaborative project of the Center for Media and Democracy to produce a directory of the people, organizations and issues shaping the public agenda. SourceWatch's primary focus is on documenting PR firms, think tanks, industry-funded organizations, and industry-friendly experts that work to influence public opinion and public policy on behalf of corporations, governments and special interests. Over time, SourceWatch has broadened to include others involved in public debates including media outlets, journalists and government agencies."

Why we like it: Wait ... a PR agency is promoting SourceWatch, the scourge of the PR industry? Precisely. As many of you know, our world is undergoing a major transformation, and the twin trends of openness and transparency are changing everything. It only makes sense to get completely behind the right side of this battle. We may not always like what Disinfopedia has to say about world, but we like that they have figured out a way to say it, using an innovative approach -- the wiki approach -- to gather information on activities that many of us in the industry would rather ignore. Right from the front page, you'll find resources on how to research front groups, how to study propaganda, and how to do research on the Web.

What we all can learn from it: Wikis are ideal for projects like this -- they can be used to gather and expose disinformation as well as information. It's an approach that can be used in industry -- think of corporate crisis campaigns, e.g., -- as well as in politics. We'll look at the latter in the next few days.

33 Wikis: # 6 -- The Start-up Exchange

2006-03-29T21:29:00.000-08:00

This is the sixth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we all can learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

Full disclosure -- today's wiki runs on the Socialtext platform. Socialtext is an Eastwick client.

What this wiki is for: "The Start-up Exchange" aims to provide a "renewable resource for those working with fewer resources." It's a wiki for entrepreneurs, with a special focus on folks trying to get started in the technology sector.

Why we like it: Of course, we have a lot of Socialtext-based wikis to choose from, but to be fair to other vendors we are limiting our selections to just a few. We are particularly impressed with this little wiki because it seeks to close the real-life business knowledge gap that makes life difficult for so many first-time entrepreneurs. We also like the small community look and feel. Check out the short list of contributors -- nay, become a contributor -- and you'll see you are in good company (pun intended).

What we all can learn from it: If you are looking to start a new company, but have no idea how to get started, this might be a good first stop. With a small community of contributors, the "Start-up Exchange" provides all sorts of info including a "start-up kit" (with info and forms on finance, law, HR, etc.), VC links and resources, an events calendar, and, yes, info on VCs and angel investors. By the way, the start-up kit is the brainchild of Andy Stack from Stata Labs, a start-up that Yahoo! acquired in 2004. As the kit notes, the "business integration into Yahoo! was one of the fastest completed integrations due in part to the procedures that were in place." The start-up kit captures what Stata learned from that experience.
But for folks outside the start-up world, the biggest takeaway is this: a wiki could be a good way to close information gaps that really do not need to exist. Projects like this can shift the focus from insider knowledge -- because it will become less precious -- to things that matter more (like a little something called innovation -- our wiki topic for tomorrow).

33 Wikis: #5 -- Davis Wiki

2006-03-28T20:26:00.000-08:00

This is the fifth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we can all learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

Thanks to Eastwick-client Ross Mayfield (CEO at Socialtext) for reminding us about this great wiki, which has a great recipe for the Wiki Waki Woo, the unofficial cocktail of wiki people.

What this wiki is for: "Davis Wiki" is a community site for Davis, California, the home of U.C. Davis, one of the top schools in the California university system. The organizers describe the wiki as an "interconnected community effort to explore, discuss and compile anything and everything about Davis — especially the little, enjoyable things."

Why we like it: There has been lots of talk about collaborative sites at the local community level, but the Davis folks actually appear to be doing it. And they've done such a good job building out the content that it is sometimes difficult to describe it without comparing it to other things. Citizen journalism, consumer information exchange, birds-of-a-feather discussion groups -- the "Davis Wiki" does all these things ... and more. Like other good wikis, it also has a super-simple users guide to drive use and adoption -- the two things that trip up so many wikis.

What we all can learn from it: The way this wiki blurs the lines between various categories should qualify this as an ongoing case study for various types of wiki watchers (e.g., newspapers, business directories, political organizers). But just as important are the numbers that this wiki openly provides around use and adoption. The user stats page -- which is often missing or buried on a wiki -- should be interesting to people who are trying to get big wiki projects going. If you were to take these numbers and build a graph -- where the y axis is number of edits, and where the x axis is the number of participants -- you'd get an expression resembling what the social network folks call a power-law distribution, where a small number of people are generating the most output. The lesson here would be what many of us in the wiki world already know -- that you need to identify people who both produce and can connect with lots of other people. [Suw Charman calls these people supernodes]. In the meantime, note that there are 122 people on "Davis Wiki" who have made more than 100 edits. How many wikis today can claim numbers like that? I expect we'll find out.

Is Phil Gomes Half Right?

2006-03-27T15:38:00.000-08:00

He says "h-o." We say h-o-a-x. A beautiful hoax.

Is this about the oldest profession, or the oldest Internet trick in the book?

33 Wikis: #4 -- The Flu Wiki

2006-03-27T13:01:00.000-08:00

This is the fourth installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we can all learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

Several readers of this blog have nominated "Flu Wiki" for the "33 Wikis" round-up. We thank Shaula Evans, Zoli Erdos, and others.

What this wiki is for: "The purpose of the Flu Wiki is to help local communities prepare for and perhaps cope with a possible influenza pandemic. This is a task previously ceded to local, state and national governmental public health agencies.... But no one, in any health department or government agency, knows all the things needed to cope with an influenza pandemic." "Flu Wiki" serves as a virtual clearinghouse of current information on the spread of flu strains, public policy, and legal issues. It also has a lively discussion forum, dealing with questions as small and specific as "recipes using can goods only." That's one of the beautiful things about a wiki -- the easy ability to support and archive micro-conversations.

Why we like it: Not only is this wiki timely; it also aims to fill the substantial gap that exists between community needs and institutional resources. As the organizers note, "Flu Wiki is not meant to be a substitute for planning, preparation and implementation by civil authorities, but instead is a parallel effort that complements, supports and extends those efforts." We also like it because it employs a similar "wisdom of the crowds" approach to information gathering that Healthline (Eastwick client) is using on "Flu Central."

What we can all learn from it: If wikis can be shown to be useful in bridging the gap between needs and existing services, we'll see many more projects like this. "Flu Wiki" is a wiki worth watching.

A Full-Service PR Business

2006-03-27T10:04:00.000-08:00

It was bound to happen. The PR blogging world was a big fat target for someone with, er, great social skills. Here's how Amanda Chapel (Strumpette) describes herself in her bio:

"Bottom line professionally speaking, I am 5’ 4” tall, athletic, Pantine shoulder-length black hair, perfect perky boobs. I present well and am most accomodating. I’ve slept with clients. I sleep with my boss. I am the consummate PR strumpette."

Welcome, Amanda. I think you are going to be plenty busy.

33 Wikis: #3 -- This Might Be a Wiki

2006-03-26T22:46:00.000-08:00

This is the third installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we can all learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: "This Might Be a Wiki" -- a collaborative Web site for the rock band, They Might Be Giants -- might be the best fan site ever. In fact, that's how we rewrote the tagline for this wonderful site, which anyone can edit (after all, this is a wiki). The creators of the wiki, Scott Redd and Brad Will, have provided a place where fans from all over the world can share info, upload files, post guitar lines, publish show dates, and intrepret the complex, inventive lyrics that have won over so many fans since the 1980's.

Why we like it: as the wiki creators note, "there are a zillion TMBG web sites on the internet, but we're pretty sure this is the only one that you (yes, you) can edit." "This Might Be a Wiki" demonstrates that a wiki might in fact be the best platform for a fan site, whose readers are motivated to provide updates on the most minute levels of detail. "This Might Be a Wiki" is also innovative on the technical side. Check out ThisMightBeABot, a tool for automating various "tedious tasks" such as site navigation, categorization, and archiving.

What we can all learn from it: This is "wisdom of crowds," pure and simple -- a super-motivated community that works hard to make the wiki complete and -- just as important -- to make it correct. A great example of this is the revision history for TMBG co-founder John Sidney Linnell's bio -- dozens of edits from multiple authors, working together to get things right. We can think of several types of communities that can learn from this experiment. [Think, for example, of wiki communities for Democratic or Republican nominees -- party fans and faithfuls can collect and vet all sorts of information.] But for now, this site should light a fire in the general marketing community. I can think of no better way of connecting with customers than to let them in, let them participate in the great information machine, and let them make their own birdhouse in their soul.

33 Wikis: #2 -- The Autism Spectrum Wiki

2006-03-25T13:41:00.000-08:00

This is the second installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and what we can all learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

What this wiki is for: As some of you know, there's someone very close to me who is on the autistic spectrum. For friends and family of the autistic, finding information and resources from kindred folks can be a frustrating, lonely experience. The Austistic Spectrum Wiki -- a project by Aspies for Freedom -- seeks to make life easier by tapping the collective knowledge of people around the globe.

Why we like it: Like many other disorders, autism has many different support groups working on similar and overlapping projects. The Autistic Spectrum Wiki seeks to bridge these efforts by providing a centralized clearinghouse of information and links.

What we can all learn from it: This is clear example of how a community can organize in an ad hoc fashion to respond to a challenge that institutional resources cannot meet. We expect to see many ad hoc communities like these, especially in areas where resources and learning are fragmented -- e.g., health, education and government.

33 Wikis: #1 -- WikiLaw

2006-03-24T14:26:00.000-08:00

from eastwikkers:

This is the first installment in "33 Wikis," a close look at best practices in wiki-based collaboration. Each day -- for 33 days -- we look at one wiki and briefly describe what the wiki is for, why we like it, and we can all learn from it. If you want to nominate a wiki, please let us know. On day 34 we will post a public wiki featuring info on all nominees.

Thanks to Jeff Nolan for nominating the first wiki in this series, Wikilaw, which describes itself as follows:

Wikilaw's goal is to build the largest open-content legal resource in the world. To accomplish this goal, Wikilaw needs your help! We encourage all law professors, practitioners, and students to share their knowledge. Currently, there are roughly 1,000,000 lawyers in the United States. If every lawyer in America contributed a fraction of their legal knowledge to this site, Wikilaw would become one of the largest libraries of legal information in the world.

What this wiki is for: this is an example of large-group collaboration, in which participants can tap the "wisdom of crowds" to get quality information at no cost. The fact that this experiment is happening in a market where there are commercial alternatives makes Wikilaw a lot like Wikipedia. In fact, we can think of it as a Wikipedia for law, for practitioners and laypeople alike.

We we like it: In a past life, I worked in the law and public policy, so personally I am thrilled to see a resource like this. But we also like it because the scale of its ambition. In addition to the legal reference portions of this site, there is a project called Democracy 2.0 that aims to develop consensus on law and legal principles, outside of any institutional structure. This is an interesting example of the kind of ad hoc political organization that we expect to see more of in the next few years.

What we can all learn from it: this is a new experiment in the making, but the Wikipedia-like approach might encourage other professions to attempt similar projects.

PR Case Study: Krugle

2006-03-22T08:24:00.000-08:00

If you are a PR person, and you are still not convinced that social media can make a big difference, you must read Don Thorsen's well-written case study on the Krugle launch. Don is an old friend of the agency, and we shared ideas with him when he was still Don Thorsen 1.0 -- oh, about a few months ago. His rapid transformation into a savvy practitioner of social media is thrilling.

Two big takeaways, from my side of the table. First, Don was mature enough to seek counsel from really knowledgeable people, including Doc Searls and Shel Israel. His beginner's-mind approach -- rare in someone as experienced as Don -- is refreshing. Second, he understood the relationship between big media and new media, and he didn't sacrifice one for the other. My favorite quote is about his experience at DEMO, a big show that continues to be relevant in the post-blogging world: "Much of the value of DEMO comes from the press. In Krugle's case it was the press that ignited the blog community, who in turn, spread the messages around the world."

New PR Jobs -- Part II

2006-03-18T23:41:00.000-08:00

from eastwikkers

The first post in this series generated great conversation on an important topic: that is, whether Neville Hobson's good looks and accent should earn him the title of "king" of new media.

That's an interesting job title, but we'll stay true to the non-monarchical spirit of this discussion by offering up five -- count 'em -- more PR jobs that non-royals can aspire to in the near future. In the first post, we credited three personality-profile models: Myers-Briggs, StrengthsFinder, and The Ten Faces of Innovation. For this post, we'll need to credit two more: the very popular-and-excellent The Tipping Point, and the not-so-popular-but-excellent Linked.

Some of you were probably wondering whether we forgot Jen McClure. You'll find her here --but like most of the others, she could have been named in several categories.

The Connector -- Anyone who has read Malcolm Gladwell -- or who is familiar with network theory -- will recognize the role of the "connector." The PR profession has always been able to attract people who are exceptionally gifted at creating and maintaining vast networks of contacts. In the new world, this skill is in larger demand because we now have the tools to make networks more efficient, intelligent, dynamic. Historical role model: Dwight D. Eisenhower, who rose to the presidency by maintaining one of the biggest and busiest Rolodexes in history. New-media role model: Renee Blodget (Renee: I hope you are OK that I am pairing you up with a Republican).

The Professor -- Hey, we are talking about a major transformation -- if not a revolution -- and no transformation is real without the help of people from academia. A number of college professors are literally breaking ranks from the "old school" and making great contributions to the knowledge base. But note: you don't have to be a teacher to be a teacher. We can all use a professor -- and MaryAnn -- in our lives. Historical role model: Horace Mann. New media: Robert French, David Phillips, and Philip Young.

The Social Reformer -- One of the most interesting things about social media is that they are, er, "social." And over the last year, we've noticed that some of the more ambitious social-media projects trend toward the promotion of social values. A few PR folks are taking this one step further and applying new media to promote social causes. This will benefit our world -- and the world -- in numerous ways. Historical role model: Eleanor Roosevelt. New media: Dan Forbush (for his work in education and Katrina), Brian Oberkirch (Katrina), and the gang at Eastwick for their work in 2004 on voting reform (they'll be doing more in the next few years).

The Critic -- Again, this is an industry transformation, and transformations always require people who are brave enough to do the job of destroying the old to make way for the new (reminds me of a friend of mine in college who studied architecture; he vowed to go into a related profession called "demolition"). This is a tough role, and you won't get much love for the work you do. But the role is critical, especially in the context of general reform. Historical/spiritual role model: Shiva, the Destroyer. New media: Shel Israel and B.L. Ochman.

The Hub -- And after we destroy what shouldn't survive, we must get into the business of repairing and building the industry. To describe what's involved here, we need to invoke another network metaphor, because the most important builders are "queen bees" in their networks (alas, we may in fact have a monarch). They are among the few people in our world who have met most of the researchers, anthropologists, gardeners, architects, impresarios, connectors, professors, idealists, and critics. In fact, two of our new-media hubs recently brought our world together, and for a brief moment we were all in one place. Let's see what the future will bring. Historical role model: Abraham Lincoln. New media: Jen McClure and Elizabeth Albrycht (Jen and Elizabeth: I hope you are OK that I am pairing you up with a Republican).

Five New Roles for PR People

2006-03-18T12:32:00.000-08:00

from eastwikkers:

Yes, we've been thinking a lot about the ways our profession is changing, and about the need to reimagine the role of the PR professional. Seems to us that there's more than just one role. No matter where you find yourself on the personality grid (think Myers-Briggs, or StrengthsFinder, or The Ten Faces of Innovation, the inspiration for this post), there's probably a good role for you in your organization.

To make things simple, here are five new roles for PR people that have already emerged in our profession. For each role, we name an historical role model (or "archetype," for the Jungians out there), and contemporary role models (PR people who are already doing great stuff in the industry today).

Note to the contemporary role models: no pressure. And you won't have to stand before classrooms urging kids to behave well (yet).

The Researcher -- This one is way obvious. In this age of conversational PR, which is largely happening in the digital world, research and measurement people have a privileged place. They've always understood the value of listening, as well as the value of numbers. But unlike the pollsters and researchers of old, the new leaders will not use what they find to respin the message, but rather to enable the teams they support to enter the conversation truthfully. Historical role model: George Gallup. New-media role models: Katie Paine and Tony Obregon.

The Anthropologist -- corporate communications will learn a lot from the world of design that companies like IDEO has helped to evolve. Like the product and experience designers, communications people will go into the field and observe how people are actually using the tools (and we thank IDEO's Tom Kelley for the anthropologist metaphor). We'll see a lot more of this as companies accelerate the adoption of DIY community tools such as wikis. It's the social rule, not the tool, that many new communications professionals bring to the table. Historical role models: Margaret Mead. New media: Elizabeth Albrycht and Dianna Miller, who are studying wikis for SNCR.

The Gardener -- to build and maintain communities, you need more than just anthropologists. You also need people who are talented in "caring and feeding" the community, and sustaining online environments that sometimes get fractious, unstructured, unproductive. This is a special talent, in rare supply, and the most enlightened members of this lot will always have work. Historical role model: Voltaire ("we must cultivate our garden"). New media: Constantin Basturea, Dan Forbush.

The Communications Architect -- Sometime the tools are just as important as the rules ... if you are smart enough to really know how to use them. A few folks in the PR world are way ahead of others on the technical side and are helping their clients to make sense of the technology tool kit so that they can actually do stuff, and build things (what a concept). Note: building is as much of an art as it is a science. The best folks in this group are creatives. Historical role model: Frank Lloyd Wright. New media: Phil Gomes, Mike Manuel, Jeremy Pepper.

The Impresario -- some PR people will lead by the sheer force of their personality, their work output, or the artistry/fun of their writing (after all, blogging is a writer's medium). For these folks, it's an opportunity to define and shape a new industry. We expect a number of people to emerge here, each with a different strength or style. Historical role models: Ivy Ledbetter Lee and Edward Bernays. New media: Richard Edelman, Steve Rubel, Scott Baradell, Neville Hobson.

Danah Boyd: It Ain't Easy

2006-03-14T12:09:00.000-08:00

So, David Callisch (Ruckus) and I will soon be behind the mics at Heather Gold's SxSW panel on "Open Source Management." In prepping for this, I remembered that there are basically three things that have happened to marketing, and online communication has been the catalyst: (1) marketing is getting more transparent, (2) it is becoming more collaborative, and (3) most interesting of all -- from my perspective -- it is becoming more ad hoc. Thus all the interest in DIY community tools which theoretically might help companies to more easily and more cost-effectively enlist the masses, tap the wisdom of crowds, and attempt big things in marketing that years ago would have required a massive budget. The idea is really appealling to small companies, of course, who will never have such a budget. But how easy is it to this? What's actually involved in getting a community up and running, and sustainable over time?

Check out Danah Boyd's recent article on the challenges of building heterogeneous communities. If you are thinking that your company can become the next Craig's List, Flickr or MySpace, you'll need to first understand the skills, stamina and creativity that are required of a good community manager.

These three sites have many attributes in common. They all grew organically. They each have public personalities that early adopters feel connected to. The early adopters really felt as though they were participating in and creating an intimate community, even as the community grew to millions. Users are passionate. Designers are passionate. They feel a responsibility to it and are deeply invested in making users happy. Character was not boiled out of the site; the text on the system is natural and goofy, reflecting the personality quirks of the developers rather than the formal speech of a corporation. Each site has a unique culture that was born early on and evolved through years of use and growth. The culture evolves with the designers and users working in tandem.

Customer service is not a segregated group who simply answers questions of a finalized product. They are completely integrated into the design system and the senior people are the most deeply embedded in user culture. There is a strong commitment to the needs and desires of the users.

Open Letter to PR Week: Join the "Conversation"

2006-03-14T08:59:00.000-08:00

I'm at SxSW Interactive today, prepping for a panel on Open Source Management -- a communications methodology invented by writer/provacateur/performer Heather Gold. The theory is that if you get one company and a bunch of folks together in one room, you can help the company shake free from bad (unchallenged) ideas that might be preventing it from connecting more directly with key constituencies (customers, partners, employees, etc.).

That idea was on my mind when I got together last night for beers with Keith O'Brien, the online guru for PR Week. It's rare I get QT with anyone at this increasingly important trade, so I took the opportunity to tell Keith that I really like how much the publication has "opened up" -- more free content, a more Web 2.0-y look and feel, and a more open approach generally -- but that I still felt frustated how much content was trapped behind the firewall. Two problems: if you are the kind of person who forgets or loses passwords (ahem), you're going to struggle keeping up with all the stuff in PR Week that only appears online (including most of what Keith writes, which, by the way, happens to be very good). Second, at a time when PR Week's coverage has begun to focus on new media and its effect on the PR profession, online writers/bloggers have no easy way to link to what PR Week has to say. In effect, they are shutting themselves out of the conversation.

I know it's tough to change a distribution model, and I've spent some time talking to other publishers who are scared. But there's a big opportunity here to become a more relevant publication with influence beyond the traditional reach. For better or for worse, the way organizations communicate and comport themselves online has become a matter of intense public scrutiny, and PR Week has the license and talent to educate and shape opinion. I urge Keith and his colleagues to keep pushing in the direction they are going. It feels right to me.

Fifteen Minutes of Shame

2006-03-11T13:05:00.000-08:00

from eastwikkers:

On the eve of the PRSA/Puget Sound event, I met with a few of the organizers for dinner. One of my dinner companions, a young PR pro, led a discussion about the recent Edelman/Wal-Mart blogger "scandal." She thought it was strange that the now infamous Edelman blogger had been doing outreach to the already converted -- a preaching-to-the-choir strategy. Wouldn't it be more effective, she argued, if Edelman/Wal-Mart tried reaching out to the unconverted. I quickly pointed to the elephant in the room. Sticking with the converted has worked very well for Republican political campaigns, given the Democrat's historic struggle to find a single voice. So practically speaking, wasn't the blogger's strategy smart if not ethical? The table sort of agreed, but I later realized why I was wrong and my younger colleague was right: Wal-Mart is not running for president. It is attempting to rehabilitate its image in a medium where there is hyper-transparency. How do you think the unconverted and the "MSM" (the mainstream media) felt reading the blogger's email, posted for everyone to read in The New York Times? I doubt Wal-Mart profited from last week's publicity.

A number of PR people appear to be OK with the Edelman/Wal-Mart team's approach (Shel Holtz is one), and it's because the debate has mostly revolved around whether what the team did was wrong or right. Putting aside ethics, we can still agree that what the team did, in retrospect, was counter-productive. I wouldn't call it a scandal (worse things have happened, and the Edelman agency has a well-deserved reputation for integrity), but I would call it a communications crisis, and it was caused in part by the people who are supposed to handle crisis communications. Lesson learned, I'll bet.

UPDATE: In another story this week (New York Observer), Richard Edelman talks about the shift of power from reporters to bloggers:

“It used to be I would schmooze you and I was your flack,” said Mr. Edelman, whose firm netted about $260 million in 2005. “Today, if we want to get a message into the public’s conversation, we just make a post on a blog. If The Wall Street Journal goes after a client, we don’t have to accept that anymore. Let’s post the documents we gave The Journal; let’s show the interviews the newspaper decided not to show.

“You’re not God anymore,” he said.

Tis true. Along with transparency comes the democratization of influence. Tough new world, and we applaud Richard Edelman for traversing it, and for taking a few of the bruises along the way as we figure things out.

We used to talk about 15 minutes of fame. In the new world we will all have 15 minutes of shame.

Are PR People "Challenged"

2006-03-10T21:17:00.000-08:00

As an agency principal (a new role for me), I am often preoccupied with two big HR challenges: attracting great people to the agency, then keeping them. In PR, as in other consulting businesses, it's all about the people. And if you look closely at the two most vexing challenges, it’s about (1) the younger folks who represent the future of the business, and (2) the somewhat older folks who are capable of defining the business today. Both are in short supply.

Let’s start with the younger folks. In a nutshell, here's the problem: no one ever grows up thinking, "I want to become a PR person."

There are several good reasons for this. First, the role that the profession plays in our society has never been well understood (case in point, my parents still struggle to understand how what I do meaningfully differs from what advertisers do).

Second, this is not a profession that gets much love from the world at large. Why expose yourself to the ridicule of your peers who are entering "real professions like journalism," as one communications student recently framed it to me.

Third -- if you're looking for role models, good luck. Unless you actually know someone in the profession, chances are you wouldn't know the attributes that define the ideal PR pro.

Hollywood is no help here. Future lawyers have "A Few Good Men." Budding journalists have "All the President's Men." I've searched far and wide, and the best I could come up with is a few hilarious scenes in "A Mighty Wind" (e.g., click on the clip called "He'll Make it a Fire.") The scenes are hilarious because they remind us of the public's dim view of our profession. In cinema, there are no inspirational role models for PR; instead we have clowns.

The PR pros in "A Mighty Wind" make us laugh because they are so "challenged" -- they are challenged professionally, ethically, and, most painful of all (the sharpest edge of the joke), intellectually. This problem -- the "dumb PR person" caricature -- has always plagued our profession.

But now we have an even greater challenge to deal with: the fear that new media signals the end to our profession, because PR people (duh) will have little to do. A number of prominent PR bloggers have been debating whether new media poses a real threat, which at first glance seems real enough. After all, new media provides business with DIY tools. Blogging, in essence, enables DIY publishing. Podcasting is DIY broadcasting (a reality so stark, it has to be sending shivers through the VNR community). And wikis, one of our favorite tools at Eastwick, enables DIY communities, markets, and, conceivably, social movements. Who needs PR people in this new world, unless you are going to keep them just to do traditional media relations?

But therein lies the biggest challenge for PR. For many years, particularly in technology, PR meant media relations, and little else. Now, many of us for the first time see there's an opportunity to assist our clients in doing what our profession professes we do: "relating to the public." And forward-l0oking PR people have already awakened to this reality, and are beginning to see how what we have always been good at may in fact command a premium in the new world. It's a little thing called "social intelligence."

In the old world, some of the best PR pros stood out for their extraordinary ability to connect their clients and socialize them into important communities. Today, that innate intelligence is in even greater demand as businesses realize that have the ability to create their own communities. But the social intelligence that has always rewarded the top professionals in our industry has always been a scarce commodity. It will continue to be scarce, and we can comfortably predict that the best in our profession will always have work.

And here's the great news: the pool of applicants will get even better. Clue: take a look at some of the social rules that govern online behavior. This is our own assessment, yes, but it's safe to say that in order for someone to be successful today in the online world, they will need to be particularly smart and/or sensitive about ethics, group dynamics, and some of the nice, mechanical efficiencies that exist in the online world. Today, at Eastwick, we're getting interest from recent graduates who studied things like social sciences, management, and public policy; those disciplines have always sent gifted people to our profession. But the anecdotal evidence suggests that for these new applicants, the connection between what they studied and what they can now do as professionals -- well, it's a lot more real.

But it's not just the young people that are excited. There appears to be a general reawakening for the entire profession, and it is energizing and redirecting many industry veterans, some of whom admit to have lost their way over the years. Shel Israel, who now calls himself a recovering publicist, is a hot item on the PR lecture circuit and appears to be genuinely happy playing the role of industry gadfly. And I've witnessed a change in my partners, my peers, and, yes, even myself. It's a good time to be in PR because we have an opportunity to not only transform the profession and elevate it beyond the point of ridicule, but to also direct its path toward some truly good and decent things for society. The best PR folks always had this sense of purpose (they are not "challenged" -- they are doing the challenging) but the hope is that now even more people will understand what we do, and why what we do is good. Who knows, maybe we'll even get better Hollywood role models.

Supernodes Drive Wiki Adoption

2006-03-08T07:20:00.000-08:00

Eastwick client Ross Mayfield (CEO, Socialtext) links to a great primer on wiki adoption. The author is Suw Charman, who has been working with Socialtext onsite at Dresdner Klienwort Wasserstein, home of one of the largest (if not the largest) corporate wiki. We like Suw's observation that a top-down strategy alone will not drive wiki adoption (that's been our experience at Eastwick). Behold the "supernode," one of the key drivers of wiki adoption:

2. Identify and understand key users Once you have identified key user groups, you need to know which users within that group are both influential and likely to be enthusiastic. Then consider how social software fits in to the context of their job, their daily working processes and the wider context of their group's goals.

What specific problems does social software solve?

What are the benefits for this person?

How can the software be simply integrated into their existing working processes?
How does social software lower their work load, or the cognitive load associated with doing specific tasks?

Ideally, key users will be 'supernodes' - highly connected, in contact with a lot of people on a daily basis, and heavily involved with the function of their department and the transfer of information within the group and between groups. This may not be the group executive, but could well be his PA or a direct report. Frequently, people's supernode status is not reflected by official hierarchy.

Into the Fold

2006-03-08T07:19:00.000-08:00

Here's a nice new take on an increasingly important idea. Fold provides computer users with a start page that incorporates most everything they need including favorites links, feeds, etc. Similar to MyYahoo, but a bit more Web 2.0-y. I've been experimenting with different start pages to better manage my professional and personal computing life, and I am going to give this service a shot.

Small Screens/Big Ideas

2006-03-06T18:04:00.000-08:00

We were surprised to hear Manohla Dargis (NYTimes) lament that Hollywood's embrace of the small movie ("Brokeback," "Crash," others) signals the end to the good old days when we could all go to a theater to enjoy "the oceanic feeling that comes with watching a film with a crowd, finding communion in the dark." You'd think that any film critic would be thrilled to see quality trumping size at the Academy Awards. But the way Dargis described the experience of sitting in a theater was even more interesting. "Oceanic," "dark," "communion" -- I felt like I was listening to someone talk about an old church -- another building that seems to be losing an audience, as more informal religious gatherings are beginning to happen in the home (see this great article in Time Magazine).

I can relate to what Dargis is saying, but I doubt very much that small screens will separate us in any meaningful way from the rest of humanity -- the damage, if any, has already been done by a medium that more often promotes values we detest. If anything, small films enable multiple audiences to commune with each other around things that really matter to them. And that's the true meaning of the long tail -- niche matters, and some niches are rather large. Is there any other way of explaining why some many people were disappointed when "Brokeback" lost and "Crash" won?

Trouble

2006-03-04T21:45:00.000-08:00

I enjoyed my time at New Communications Forum this year, and the best thing was the "hallway conversation." A few of my favorites:

The UK Phillips: David Phillips (Leeds Metropolitan University) and Philip Young (University of Sunderland) were two of the funniest and brightest barroom conversants on nights one and two. David (man with the mike) also participated in the Wiki 101 workshop, and posed the mightiest of the "Five Questions": Is Marketing Dead? The good professor examined the cadaver while debating with half a dozen PR, marketing, and tech folks who remain unconvinced. But I am so impressed that our new U.K. professor friend is committed to making trouble in this area.

Dr. Jonas: Jonas Luster, the new "community manager" at Socialtext (Eastwick client) is wild and wonderful. I was amazed at his ability to weave in and out of dozens of little stories and lecturettes on brain science, social computing, and neurologically-driven dating rituals. Jonas, who has a Ph.D. in social psychology, is our favorite kind of troublemaker: opinionated, passionate, personal. Make an appointment with the doctor today (he does house calls, I bet).

Tom Foremski: it is always good talking with Tom, the biggest troublemaker of them all. Tom thinks everything -- marketing, journalism, and PR -- is going to "hell in a handbasket." Cheerful guy. We chatted in the parking lot about the new world we're living in, a great bargain called Yahoo! Music, and my three-year old son's fixation on The White Stripes (supported in part by Yahoo! Music).

PR Peers: I got to speak with Phil Gomes (Edelman) and connected briefly with Jeremy Pepper (Weber Shandwick) and the Voce guys (Mike Manuel and Matthew Podboy). And it was nice to spend time with former Eastwick colleague Tony Obregon, who is now toiling at a small outfit called Cohn & Wolfe. Tony -- who on good days bears an uncanny resemblance to a Hollywood star -- has an excellent blog on research. I highly recommend it.

For a few weeks, our peers have been talking about starting a local meet-up for Bay Area PR people. At some point, all the great troublemakers will take part in this. You'll be hearing more soon.

Business Models Versus Role Models

2006-03-03T07:10:00.000-08:00

I moderated a New Communications Forum panel yesterday on the topic of new business models for online publishing. I agree with panelist Tom Foremski's assessment that there are no business models yet ... it's too early, and we're at a stage of experimentation. But there are new businesses, and some of them are doing quite well, as some of the other panelists demonstrated.

Colin Crawford, senior vp for online at IDG, is helping transform the publishing powerhouse's print properties into vibrant, profitable online properties, using a variety of leading-edge tools such as vertical search, communities, and lead-generation programs. Francois Gossieaux, president of Corante, gave a brilliant presentation of the many experiments that blog network has conducted as well as some of Corante's guiding principles (key = "subscribe to the person," not the content). Chris Alden, CEO at Rojo, spoke about how his company is enabling publishers to stay connected with readers with sophisticated uses of syndication (RSS with mojo, as he likes to say).

So, maybe there are no business models -- after all you can only model when there is a templated idea that can easily be replicated -- but a number of online publishers are succeeding, and we can certainly think of them as role models. Look for the common themes -- experimentation, innovation, community -- and see what we can learn.

The tour begins!

2006-03-01T23:38:00.000-08:00

We began our Winter/Spring tour tonight at the New Communications Forum, the three-day new-media luvfest brought to you by the most excellent Jennifer McClure and Elizabeth Albrycht. We led a Wiki 101 workshop this afternoon, and the assignment was to build out the NCF event wiki. It was a fun, engaging project, and you can see a live snapshot of it here (check out the "five questions").

Tomorrow, we're moderating a panel on the future of online publishing; the group includes Tom Foremski and folks from Corrante, IDG and Rojo. Then next week, we're on the road, with a first stop at PRSA Seattle, where we'll mix it up with people from SAP Labs, Microsoft, Port of Seattle, and others. And then, we're off to SXSW, where we will participate on Heather Gold's panel, "Open Source Marketing." Fun tour -- we're talking about some of the more interesting community experiments we're involved in at Eastwick.

Vyatta to the Public

2006-02-24T14:10:00.000-08:00

Last night, Om Malik pulled back the covers on Eastwick-client Vyatta, a start-up that has launched a community to create an open-source alternative to traditional routers. We like this project for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is that the community is using a wiki. Wikis have often been used in projects involving collaboration between developers, but the Vyatta community may bring new visibility and understanding for just how this works. The community is "vyatta" (Sanskrit for "open") to the public. Check it out.

Rubel joins Edelman

2006-02-16T07:04:00.000-08:00

Wow. A coup for the folks at Edelman, and congrats to Steve. This gives him a bigger platform to strut his professional stuff.

Does PR Matter? Yes, if PR Means Relating to the Public

2006-02-14T07:46:00.000-08:00

Posted this last night on eastwikkers

Since the beginning of the year, an interesting conversation has erupted about whether PR agencies have much of a future, now that more and more businesses are thinking about going DIY. The chief instigators of this conversation are new compadre Tom Foremski, and very new compadre Shel Israel, who I recently shared a stage with at a local VC firm.

It reminds me of the great and controversial thought piece that Nicholas Carr published a couple of years ago called "IT Doesn't Matter." In that piece, Carr argued that because IT has become a commodity in the corporate marketplace, no company can really enjoy any strategic advantage by using it; it might have been a differentiator for a few businesses years ago, but today it doesn't make a strategic difference for any company. What Carr didn't anticipate -- what he couldn't predict -- was the profound transformation that the software industry was about to undergo. He may have had the right message for the right time, but in this Web 2.0 world, user-centric world, we're not talking about about doom and demolition anymore. We're talking about the boom and building, and, yes, the kind of innovation for business that is making IT matter all over again.

IT was pronounced dead too early. It was undergoing a metamorphosis and Carr just happened to catch this butterfly in its dormant phase. The DNA for the user-centric software world was already there (lots of talk about Web services, open standards, Web-enabled applications), but few people knew what to make of them.

It looks like the PR industry is undergoing its own metamorphosis. And to the question "does PR matter," the answer has to be yes because as recent trends like blogging show, relating to the public -- something that most of us have never had to do, and that a few of us have forgotten how -- matters more today than ever. And teaching your clients to use blogs and wikis will not put you out of a job. It's not the tool that makes someone a good PR pro, but the social intelligence that's required to connect with the public at a time when so many things compete for attention. Great PR people have this intelligence, in abundance, and there will be plenty of work for them -- client-side and agency-side -- now that we are getting our priorities straight.

The only question is, what will happen to PR pros who fail to adjust to the new reality, and who fail to appreciate that the name of our profession, for the first time in history, may describe what we actually do. And it will only be a short time before the new PR becomes a commodity. As Carr's analysis of the IT industry suggests, it really hurts to be so late to the game.

To be fair to Tom and Shel, they agree that there's hope for the industry, and their brave challenge is helping to destroy the foundations of the world that must go away so we can begin building the new one. We'll be posting a longer piece on this subject. Hope you'll stay tuned.

I'm Back

2006-02-14T07:40:00.000-08:00

What can I say? First, I missed my old home, spam and all, and a colleague has convinced me that we can get rid of it over time. Plus, I was too lazy to start a new blog. I've been enjoying my "part-time" writing on eastwikkers, my agency group blog, and I still plan to post there. But this old home will be my new home.

Will be nice when the place gets fumigated, but I'll be patient.

We're Moving!

2005-11-20T10:52:00.000-08:00

Dear Reader -- in case you are wondering what happened to thegoodseed: (a) we've been super busy with client work, and (b) we've been struggling to repair what appears to be an intractable problem with blog spam. We've tried working with the blog vendor -- got no answer, btw -- and tried a few fixes of our own. We're giving up, and moving on. Destination tbd, but in the meantime, I'll be posting on eastwikkers, my agency's group blog, where I have been posting lightly over the past month. In a week I'll have a new personal blog -- same name, different location -- and I'll post the URL on eastwikkers.

The Wiki Way

2005-10-04T22:37:00.000-07:00

We're at Web 2.0 tomorrow, a show so hot, say the organizers, that the fire marshalls forbid them to sell another ticket. Client Socialtext is there, along with several other Eastwick compatriots, and they all plan to partake in what looks like the most fun, underground event of the three-day fest: an evening of dining, networking, and partying, "the wiki way." Guest of honor during the first leg is Ward Cunningham, inventor of the wiki.

Groupbytes

2005-10-01T17:06:00.000-07:00

The following article ran last week at Global PR Week 2.0. Again, if you want to join the groupbytes wiki, send me an email at giovanni at eastwick dot com. We'll be in a password-protected environment in the early stages, but going public soon.

Groupbytes

Digital/social rules for the post-Google Economy

…Technology and business leaders are now importing offline social rules into online environments. The winners will be those who best understand those rules, because the rules will influence all markets - online and offline. But how can we all get smarter?

It was a little less than a year ago that I began life as a PR blogger. I was, admittedly, a bit late to the game, and I quickly discovered that I had numerous peers in the blogosphere who had been plugging away for months (if not years), building quite a respectable online repository of insights, data and wisdom on new media. But my first glimpse into the world of PR blogging made a strong and formative impression: I understood that the endgame for all these vast and distributed experiments is collaboration, and this hunch - right or wrong - almost instantly shaped the approach I asked my agency to adopt. Since then we've been advising clients on how they can use new media to extend their market reach though online collaboration with their customers, partners and influencers.

Today we are launching a new collaborative project, but of a very different kind. With the help of the PR blogger community - which is showing up in full force at Global PR Blog Week 2.0 - we hope to begin capturing the rules, lessons and best practices that the PR industry is learning as it continues helping organizations to build online communities. We're launching a wiki, linking from the eastwikkers group blog, where we're inviting anyone and everyone from the business community to help us define and understand the rules that govern online behavior. Our earliest experiences in community-building taught us that, indeed, rules exist. And we're beginning the dialog here, by proposing twelve of these rules, which we are calling "groupbytes" because of the digital environment in which these rules are being tested, and because they are bite-sized and easy to digest (the key to new-media communication). More about that in a bit. First, a word about how we're approaching the project.

How we got here (the online world)

As a technology PR agency, based in Silicon Valley, we felt it was critical to place new media in an historical context. We'll post a great deal more on this subject on the wiki as the conversation gets going. In the meantime, we're offering this simple (perhaps simplistic) hypothesis about the evolution of new-media tools.

The three waves:
-the great migration
-the socialization of the Web
-back to the Old World

To understand the power and force of new media, it's important to appreciate what came before it. From our perspective, the most important driver and antecedent for new media is search, for this one technology alone has recruited many millions of people to go online for their many information needs. Granted, other technologies have helped to create the very large online population that exists today. But search is the dominant driver for the huge wave of recruitment we're calling "the great migration."

The second wave is where most of us - the PR bloggers reviewing this short paper - live. We're calling this "the socialization of the Web." In part, this socialization is a reaction, for one of the defining attributes of the first wave is that many people who have migrated to the Web for their many information needs have abandoned - willfully or inadvertently - offline communities. This has created both a crisis and opportunity for business and technology leaders. The groupbytes below are a distillation of the social rules that technology leaders have been importing or that have naturally arisen in a very large online experiment that's underway. Which leads to the controlling idea of this paper, and our wiki: technology and business leaders are now importing offline social rules into online environments. The winners will be those who best understand those rules, because the rules will influence all markets - online and offline. But how can we all get smarter?

Finally, we expect the lessons from the second wave to dramatically influence the third: the offline world's eventual adoption of lessons from the online world. This is already happening (the three waves are not exactly sequential), and it is one reason that the rules should matter to everyone, whether they are sold on the idea that they should have a new-media strategy. It's also the reason why we've chosen the New World/Old World metaphor to illustrate some of our thinking: as we'll see in the groupbytes below, the social experiments that are happening online are some of the most innovative experiments in representative governance, just as the New World provided an environment for testing some of the most radical notions from the Old World (nod to the Scottish Philosophers who influenced the intellectual U.S. Colonials), and later exported their findings to anyone in the Old World who cared to listen.

But one more pause before we start: the digital world is different. The reason we're calling this paper "groupbytes" - as opposed to the simpler "grouprules," or the snappier "groupwise" (which happens to be the name of a well-known collaboration tool) is that we felt it's important to remind everyone of the environment in which these rules are being tested. As many practitioners of new media know, certain social rules in the digital world thrive and flourish, while others could not have originated in any other environment; on the whole, the digital world is more inclusive, open and efficient. We believe this will have a dramatic effect on some markets - e.g., politics - where very few organizations have developed the strategies for being more open, inclusive and efficient. We've been surprised with the many market innovations/disruptions that many organizations have made - most notably, the Wikimedia Foundation - but our gut tells us that we ain't seen nothing yet.

As we have said, it's important to remember that the "waves" are not quite sequential, even though we can be certain that the third wave (Old World adoption) is just beginning to rise. And one thing we're noticing is that many of the giants from the first wave are the giants and innovators in the second wave. Still, there are others. But to simplify, we believe that the technology innovators to watch - the companies that will influence those who will follow - are market leaders or innovators in search and e-commerce. In fact, the innovators in online communities seem to have taken best practices from each of these worlds and combined them with the simplicity, low-cost and ease-of-use of new media. True, these attributes of the new-media toolset - simplicity, low-cost and ease-of-use - have made the development of online communities sure and swift. But new media is driven by the force that has made the leaders in search and e-commerce so forbidding. It is the force of the people.

Groupbytes

Here are twelve easy rules we've learned in our own work and in conversations with our peers. Many of these rules will be familiar to PR bloggers, but there should be one or two surprises for novices and experts alike.

Twelve: be inclusive

Many bloggers recognize this as the "rule of participation." In fact, it's one of the fundamental rules of new media, and you only ignore it at your peril. The PR precinct of the blogosphere was quick to organize around this principle, and it has punished newcomers for shutting down communication with unwanted or filtered visitors. This may not be the norm in every market — we are all becoming more lenient — but in the PR world, this has almost become the cardinal rule. Note: early corporate bloggers got extra credit for providing a free-and-open online forum for customers. And there were a few surprises from the world of brick-and-mortar. Our wiki will track the companies who improvise and innovate with this rule.

Eleven: be open

PR bloggers know this as the rule of transparency. "Conversations" - the preferred form of communication in our world - have forced businesses that blog to be more transparent. A few companies that proactively have embraced this rule have dramatically altered their brand. Again, there were surprises. A company that had earned a bad reputation with the public quickly and dramatically altered its identity with the help of an open, honest blogger with a human face. Our wiki will attempt to track others that follow and innovate.

Another reason to embrace rule eleven: among the many ways the Web is beginning to socialize is with what some folks are calling "reputation systems." New leaders in business will look at how to incorporate tools such as ratings and rankings to build trust for the content they provide.

Ten: Be purposeful with your technology

Many organizations have stumbled in their online experiments by providing the wrong tools for the wrong audience (cf. the L.A. Times and their failed experiment with "the wikitorial," with the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and their success with a different approach). The rule here is to know your audience, and provide them the right tools, and the right policies, for what you need it to do. For mixed groups of people - with mixed goals and purpose - provide the right mix of tools. (e.g. Yahoo!, which boasts numerous new-media tools and environments for its heterogeneous crowd of visitors; and eBay, which very recently stunned the business world by paying a very large sum to add Skype to its technology toolkit).

Nine: Focus on values, not selling

Remember - you are creating a community, and communities do not automatically organize to sell to one another; they organize around values, interest and trust. Build environments where people can join around the things that most matter to them. The "selling" (be open to what that means) will follow.

Eight: Don't be groupwise/self-foolish

The best online communities - which integrate a number of new-media tools - understand how to appeal to self-interest and community. Early experiments have engaged with young audiences, but other experiments will follow. The important thing to keep in mind when building a community is to understand the motivation of your constituents, and meet their needs. As the story goes, Craigslist began as a simple resource for friends looking for jobs, apartments and furnishings. That small circle of friends has grown into a large, market-disruptive community.

Seven: Leverage the wisdom and power of crowds

This is a rule that rests on the efficiency of online communities. With the right people, and the right scale, organizations can tap the power and intelligence that only communities can provide. Leaders are using this power to write one of the world's most reliable information sources, the world's largest corporate blogging initiative, and one of the first attempts to unleash the power of citizen reporters to conduct large-scale investigations.

Six: Wag the "long tail"

This is another efficiency rule. Organizations are learning to sell more "inventory" by providing online environments that better match buyers and sellers for niche products (the biggest success to date: Google Adwords, the financial engine of the company's spectacular growth). The same applies to conversations.

Five: Use community to build consensus

A group can scale by bridging the gaps - the differences that splinter and hurt groups, New media can also be used to mobilize communities to work on projects that build consensus for the common good. This is particularly interesting in organizations that have struggled for consensus.

Four: Integrate the offline community into the technology. We're calling this the "Reeses Rule" (80's commercial: "your peanut butter is in my chocolate … your chocolate is in my peanut butter)"

Search companies are experimenting with approaches that provide the wisdom of crowds in the technology itself. Make way for companies that provide guided search and collaborative search.

Three: integrate the technology into the offline community (the Reeses Rule, part II)

In the past few months, we've seen new technology offerings that are essentially integrating technology into the physical social world. First we got Google maps — the satellite edition, which literally enables Google to crawl the earth (we've always wondered if this was, in part, a PR move, signaling the direction for this company in a most surprising way). And now we're hearing about tech companies that are helping parents to locate and monitor their teens. And, as Jupiter's Gary Stein writes in his blog, Google is beginning to experiment with ways to apply its ad-serving technology — the financial engine of its incredible growth — to the print world.

Two: replicate the entire ideal social structure online … if you can

The next wave of innovation will come from online organizations that are attempting to replicate ideal social structures that may or may not exist in the offline world. The first experiments will occur in markets that are highly fragmented and inefficient (e.g., health care, education, government).

One: Because we are playing in a social world, aim for the big social causes … if you can.

Businesses, non-profits and governments will compete for the privilege of solving the most challenging social issues and concerns. The impact on the private and public sectors will be transformative.

Conclusion

We'll be on our wiki, looking for your edits and comments. But most of all, we look forward to you additions. There are many more groupbytes yet to be identified, and with the wisdom of this particular crowd, we can learn how to put them to practice.

Three Things You Need to Know About Frames

2005-10-01T16:47:00.000-07:00

[From Eastwick's Fall 2005 Newsletter]

When was the last time the art and science of PR made the cover story of The New York Times Magazine? It happened a few months ago, in one of the most widely discussed articles of the summer. The specific topic at hand was UC Berkeley Professor George Lakoff's recent efforts to educate the Democratic Party on a communications theory called "framing." The article arrived at the height of Lakoff's popularity this year, following a groundswell of support for his bestselling political PR primer, Don't Think of an Elephant.

We're not sure about this, but the last time a theory from our world got this kind of airplay was the 1960s, when Marshall McLuhan was counseling the New York intelligentsia on how the "medium is the message." And how many of us are old enough to remember that?

Lakoff's mission is a pretty big deal, and not just because it may have a lasting influence on political PR. The very fact that the New York Times and several other leading publications (like this one which picked a fight with Lakoff, and this one which used the theory of framing to build a cover story) have devoted so much space to this story has made framing, if anything, a cultural artifact. We can safely predict that framing will become a commonplace term in the PR vocabulary. But there are several things that the recent coverage has obscured, and we would like to address them here. As with many a cultural phenomenon, with framing, there's more than meets the eye.

One: Hard Wires

Simply put, a frame is a mental construct that defines – and limits – the way people communicate and receive information. In our world – PR – frames generally come in three varieties (Eastwick's translation of Lakoff): concepts, containers, and stories. Great concepts that both define and limit are easy to recognize ("utility computing," "open-source," "Web 2.0"). Containers are a bit trickier because they are designed to convey "in this article, you are getting all you need" (e.g., anything titled "Three Things You Need to Know …"). As for story, as any good PR person will tell you, this is the single most important communication tool of all. A great story, well told, will certainly define who and what are important, and exclude who and what are not.

If Lakoff had stopped right there, we wouldn't have much to talk about. The science of framing – whatever one might say about its merits – has also introduced the notion that frames are hard-wired, a part of our neural anatomy. What that means, practically, is that frames may be harder to make and harder to break. According to Lakoff and other cognitive scientists, the only way to break a frame is to make a new frame. It's simply not enough to tell someone they are wrong. You need to convey the new data in the context of another compelling idea. Anyone who has ever called a reporter to tell him that he "got the story wrong" will know that. Reporters trade in stories, not corrections.

Two: Customer Research

But what makes a compelling idea? Here's something that was almost completely obscured in mainstream coverage of Lakoff's work. The best and brightest framing pros do not rely on their imaginations. They are devout practitioners and pioneers in the field of customer research. Reporters who have written about the war of the political framers (George Lakoff on the left, versus Frank Luntz on the right) have glossed over the true role that quality primary research has played in successful, mass communication campaigns; the war-of-the-propagandists frame, perhaps, is sexier. But in Silicon Valley, where a surprising number of companies shun customer research – in product design, in sales, and, yes, even in PR – no one can afford to ignore this lesson from the trenches. If you care about frames, you need to speak with your customers. With new media, there are so many new and creative approaches to doing that.

Three: Bridges

There's at least one more thing that has been lost in all the sensational coverage. Framing, even in its hardest form, is not the invention of Professor Lakoff. Several writers have incorrectly identified Lakoff as the "father of framing" (the father frame is tough to break). But framing has been understood and practiced for many years in the world of negotiation and labor-dispute resolution, where legal professionals and laypeople are constantly challenged to break down assumptions that keep two sides apart. The world of ADR – alternative dispute resolution – has a rich history captured in articles and case studies that can greatly educate marketing pros on the practice of building communities. This is important. Community-building, in a frame-fatigued world, may in fact be the next frontier in PR innovation, and it is one reason that Eastwick has spent time developing expertise in collaborative media tools.

Our Own Community Frame

When drafting this article, we were reminded of a recent project at the agency, where we were forced to put aside our differences to work toward a common cause. The client, a research group at UC Berkeley (no connection to Lakoff), found an alarming discrepancy in the Florida vote in the 2004 presidential election. After several initial consultations, we advised the Berkeley team to use the study to influence the debate on electronic voting, rather than challenge the 2004 election. We didn't quite realize it at the time, but we were framing the debate in a way that encouraged many people – on the left and the right – to listen. In fact, at Eastwick, the new frame inspired both donkeys and elephants to join the effort. We're proud to say that we recently won kudos for this effort. But we are even more proud to talk about the Berkeley project as a case study in community-building. To paraphrase the celebrated-but-misunderstood Professor Lakoff, the community frame at Eastwick got "activated," and it is even stronger today.

Constantin

2005-09-25T16:58:00.000-07:00

Hats off to Constantin Basturea, producer and organizer of Global PR Blog Week. He pulled off this multi-country/multi-personality event again, while ably dealing with a lot of backstage drama. No surprise; he's a master gardener of his wikis, and no one else quite compares.

Wanna Wiki?

2005-09-20T10:26:00.000-07:00

Want to learn and share best practices in collaboration and new media? Think you've got what it takes, or just simply curious to learn how a wiki works? We're inviting leaders in the business, non-profit, and government community to take part in a small experiment on the eastwiki (powered by Socialtext) -- a project we are calling "groupbytes." For background on this project, go to the Global PR Blog Week site where we are presenting a paper today. If you want to sign up, send me an email at giovanni at eastwick dot com.

Global PR Blog Week 2.0

2005-09-19T17:30:00.000-07:00

Worth checking out. This is an annual event (now in its 2.0 edition :)), featuring online conversations about new media with PR folks all over the world. Several dozen bloggers are contributing articles for discussion (I am one of them), on a wide range of topics. Some very smart stuff was posted today, the first day of the conference. Among my favorites: Elizabeth's Albrycht's piece, "Blogs: Foundational Tools for Network Building." Very close to the topic I'm presenting. Networked minds think alike.

Business Week on the New Web

2005-09-19T00:22:00.000-07:00

Wonderful special issue coming next week, with articles on the leaders of the new Web, Ajax, tagging (why markerters love it), the power of participatory sites (with very cool snapshots of companies like Pandora and Postsecret), and blogging in education (a new interest of ours). Main story quotes Ross Mayfield, CEO at Socialtext, an Eastwick partner and client:

"'The Web isn't so much a place anymore', explains Ross Mayfield, CEO of Palo Alto (Calif.)-based startup Socialtext Inc., which offers services to create collaborative Web sites called wikis. It's more of a doorway into services, from the user-written reference site Wikipedia to the community organizing service Meetup to the folksy classifieds site Craigslist. As Mayfield noted in a recent blog post, 'They Google (GOOG ), Flickr, blog, contribute to Wikipedia, Socialtext it, Meetup, post, subscribe, feed, annotate, and above all share. In other words, the Web is increasingly less about places and other nouns, but verbs.'"

New Social Media Tool

2005-09-19T00:20:00.000-07:00

This is worth watching ... especially if you like Flickr. Software sits on your desktop and enables you to easily create and edit loops of images that travel across the screens of anyone in your "loop." You can also search the network for other loops. Intriguing prospects for marketing. Not available yet, but soon in beta (you can put yourself on the waiting list). Company was co-founded by Prescott Lee, formerly of eCircles (which went to Classmates).

But She Wanted to Write "Flak Like Me"

2005-09-18T09:12:00.000-07:00

Check out the New York Times Book Review on Barbara Ehrenreich's ("Nickle and Dimed") latest effort, "Bait & Switch," where the author again goes undercover, but this time in the white-collar world looking for a job in, yes, public relations (which she memorably calls "journalism's evil twin"). With serious gaps in her "resume," she never gets there (listen up, Ross). But she finds enough material along the way to skewer the people she hired to help her -- career coaches, motivational counselors and other denizens of a cottage industry that has emerged to serve (or exploit, depending on your point of view) the needs of professionals in transition. And she doesn't have much sympathy for her fellow job-seekers either. As the Times reviewer points out, for people who like Ehrenreich's work, this has to make for a different kind of reading experience. The people with whom she spent her sad, exhausting, soul-deadening days became the objects of her contempt. In the meantime, the number of critics for this brand of journalism -- the memoir's evil twin -- continues to grow.

The Big N Widens

2005-09-17T19:32:00.000-07:00

It was a quiet, thoughtful entrance into the blogosphere, and from our perspective it was done perfectly. Novell, a company that has fully committed itself to being all things open, has launched a blog run and managed by the PR team. That the PR staffers are the primary authors is a strong message that they aim to be open in their comms as well. I recently met Bruce Lowry, the Novell PR chief, at a small blogger dinner organized by another company that has made a commitment to open source (IBM). For Novell, says Bruce, the commitment extends to the tools they use, including the blogging software.

PR University -- Continued

2005-09-17T16:50:00.000-07:00

Interesting day yesterday at the SF Hilton and Towers. Big stars of the event were Craig Newmark of craigslist, and a panel of podcasters who made a pretty persuasive case for the technology, particularly it's easy-of-use. Craig's best line was a set-up: "I apologize for not being amusing enough," after paraphrasing Oscar Wilde earlier in the bit, "if you want to tell the truth, make them laugh, because otherwise they will kill you." The audience didn't kill Craig for telling the truth (i.e., that PR will undergo a transformation). In fact, a few lined up for photos, which Craig willingly obliged, though no one seems to have flickr'd. Afterwards, we retired to the hotel lounge where we grilled speaker/podcaster/one-man-brand Eric Rice on a whole bunch of issues, and the man debated so admirably -- with a table of semi-jaded PR pros -- we were in awe.

PR U

2005-09-16T14:43:00.000-07:00

I'm speaking today at a couple of panels at Bulldog Reporter's PR University at the Hilton & Towers in San Francisco. Topic: new media, and I'm planning to introduce -- for the second time this week -- an idea we've been brewing throughout the summer at Eastwick: that the endgame of new media is collaboration, and that in the next year we will see a number of interesting experiments in community building using lightweight new-media tools. That will place a significant premium on hard knowledge of the social rules that are taking hold on Internet communities. We've submitted a short article on this subject to Global PR Blog Week and will launch a wiki next week to begin developing and vetting those rules with the PR and greater business communities. In the meantime, here are twelve rules we are submitting for review:

Twelve: be inclusive

Eleven: be open

Ten: Be purposeful with your technology

Nine: Focus on values, not selling

Eight: Don’t be groupwise/self-foolish

Seven: Leverage the wisdom of crowds

Six: Wag the “long tail”

Five: Use community to build consensus

Four: integrate the offline community into the technology. We’re calling this the Reeses principle (80’s commercial: “your peanut butter is in my chocolate … your chocolate is in my peanut butter)”

Three: integrate the technology into the offline community (the Reeses principle, part II)

Two: replicate the entire ideal social structure online … if you can

One: Because we are playing in a social world, aim for the big social causes

MIA on Monday

2005-09-13T17:15:00.000-07:00

Well, we couldn't believe the news yesterday about Skype -- it was one of the most game-changing events of the year. Red Herring says that telcos should be worried. In the meantime, it's yet another victory for convergence (and the Internet giants that are moving into so many adjacent markets).

Other news yesterday (we were too busy to blog): Oracle's acquisition of Siebel, and a new CEO at Business Objects, a long-time Eastwick client. We've worked with this great company from the time it was a solid-but-young market leader, through its transformation into a billion dollar brand. We are looking forward to the next challenges for BOBJ.

Wiki Beats the News (For Many)

2005-09-07T07:43:00.000-07:00

Check out this article on the Reuters wire, posting some impressive stats on the rise of Wikipedia as a news source (quoted material below). How do they do it? We think there are a number of things at play here, including trust. Wikipedia has become a compelling alternative for many folks who use the Internet to find the best and most recent information on a particular topic. And Wikipedia's strict adherence to the "neutral point of view" sounds like an ideal that journalism has often tried to embrace but has given up on either because it does not make for interesting copy or simply because it doesn't sell. Might not work for news orgs, but it certainly appears to be working for Wikipedia.

Wikipedia recently attracted 22.3 percent of users searching for information on "Gaza Strip," tying the CIA World Factbook (http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/). It has drawn five times more U.S. traffic than Google News, Yahoo News or BBC, according to Hitwise analyst Bill Tancer.

Similarly, in April, Wikipedia tied with CNN.com as the No. 2 most visited site among U.S. Web users searching for details on the new Pope Benedict. Newadvent.org, a Catholic encyclopedia, was the most visited site among people seeking to learn more about Joseph Ratzinger, according to Hitwise data.

Mr. Chief Justice

2005-09-06T21:32:00.000-07:00

For those of you who know me personally -- or at least enough about my resume -- at one time I was a theater person. And at another time, I was a marketing person for law firms. Those two odd bullet points on my CV got me invited to make a pitch for promoting one of Stanford University's most interesting events in the late 1990's: the public acknowledgement/thank-you to the Crown family, for making a spectacular gift to the Stanford Law School. It was a big moment for the University and the law school, which boasts a great number of celebrity alumni. I won the job through a combination of ideas and connections -- how else does anyone find work -- and I got my first, and last experience, working with the two alums that made the event a great success: Justice (now retired) Sandra Day O'Connor, and, as I was instructed to say by the protocol police, "Mr. Chief Justice Rehnquist."

For those of you who know me personally -- or at least enough about my resume -- you will know that this was a funny moment for me, for my personal politics counter to the two justices. But it was one of my favorite experiences as a communications professional, and I thoroughly enjoyed my short brush with the Supremes (confession: Sandra was by far the tougher of the two). Turns out that the Chief and I had one thing in common: a love for theater. In fact, the robe he wore at all official court appearances was designed after a costume he admired from a production of Gilbert & Sullivan's Iolanthe. That theater was his love also helped with the overall concept for the Stanford event, the retrial of Lizzie Borden (I was the producer and writer, not PR person), in which both justices played the part of the original bench, and the audience played the part of the jury (Ms. Borden was acquitted again). At the end of it all, backstage, Mr. Rehnquist lifted a glass to the crew ... and nodded. It was a gentle gesture, and one that captured the essence of a gentle man, whose differences with his many collaborators that evening were bridged for a short but memorable moment.

New World/Old World -- It Will All Be the Same

2005-09-05T18:40:00.000-07:00

An idea we've been batting around at Eastwick has gotten a bit of attention in the last few days. Simply put: the success of online social experiments will force vendors to apply what they've learned to the offline world. First we got Google maps -- the satellite edition, which literally enables Google to crawl the earth (we've always wondered if this was, in part, a PR move, signalling the direction for this company in a most surprising way). And now we're hearing about tech companies that are helping parents to locate and monitor their teens. And, as Jupiter's Gary Stein writes in his blog, Google is beginning to experiment with ways to apply its ad-serving technology -- the financial engine of its incredible growth -- to the print world. And why not? The print-ad market is much larger than the world that Google serves, and Google needs to grow.

We have our own take on what's happening here, and we will discuss it at length this Fall, here, here, here, and here (yes, we are trying our best to get the word out). In the meantime, we'd like to float this idea: the success of the great social experiments in the new, online world (and they are, in fact, social experiments) is beginning to pay off in exports to the old world. This new world/old world analogy came to us this yesterday; we credit the semi-patriotic, bittersweet mood (homage to a more progressive, but difficult, era) that always seems to dominate this weekend.

Happy Labor Day. See you back in the old world, tomorow.

Killer Quote

2005-09-05T11:48:00.000-07:00

Did Steve Ballmer threaten to "kill Google" when a prized MSFT employee announced he was defecting to the Googleplex? It's not the most interesting allegation in a recently filed court document. The story is running pretty much everywhere (yes, on Google and MSN) but in many places it's been sanitized for a PG rating. See how it broke raw a couple of days ago on John Battelle's search blog.

Federate-It

2005-09-04T18:22:00.000-07:00

While we are on the subject of the long tail, check out The San Jose Mercury News's spread on John Battelle today. Three articles on the entrepreneur-wonk-journalist-impressario who is prepping for the release of his new book about the search market.... Battelle, as always, is keeping himself impossibly busy. In addition to the book, a widely-read search blog, and the Web 2.0 conference (co-producer), John is launching a new company this Fall, FM (Federated Media -- check out the "pre-alpha" site), that promises a new and better way to enable independent writers to publish and make money on the Web. We like the word "federated" -- it calls to mind how the word in being used to describe the Deep Web, like here (Groxis = client) -- and we are very interested to see how this particular business idea plays out. There's a very long tail indeed in the world of independent journalism/publishing, and this is perhaps one of the most groupwise ways of wagging that tail.

Leslie Moonves's Long Tale

2005-09-04T16:28:00.000-07:00

See Lynn Herschberg's profile of Leslie Moonves in this week's Sunday New York Times Magazine. The CBS chief aims to keep ratings up (CBS is now #1) by continuing to develop shows with mass appeal, versus niche shows that can only (but nicely) survive on cable. Reading this article, you get the feeling that Moonves has no choice but to flout the "long tail" (the idea, first advanced by Chris Anderson at Wired, that new distribution channels enable vendors to sell more niche inventory to better defined and segmented audiences) and instead focus on the mass-market hit: that's the nature of the game at the networks. The right tools, for the right task .... But we betcha anything that the folks at Viacom, the CBS corporate parent, are taking more of the, ahem, long view. After all, the CBS mass audience is just another audience (albeit still a huge one).

Smart Groups

2005-08-29T21:48:00.000-07:00

The two hottest online communities got major ink in the past couple of days. The New York Times profiled MySpace, a vibrant community for the 20-something set that recently surpassed Google in number of monthly hits (that's right -- they surpassed Google), while The San Jose Mercury News took a close look at thefacebook.com, the new rage on college campuses that already boasts several million members. The common theme: both sites have learned to serve well-defined communities with easy-to-use, easy-to-implement social tools. And they have also learned how to replicate, or complement, ideal social rules that may or may not exist in the non-digital world. As Merc reporters Matt Marshall and Anna Tong observe, "Facebook has firmly rooted itself in the offline lives of its members."

So what's next? A vibrant online community for the senior set? Don't rule it out: it's the demographic that everyone is moving toward, and it is becoming more and more Web-savvy.

Google Talk

2005-08-25T12:43:00.000-07:00

Open a new chapter in the ongoing story about convergence. Google has unveiled Google Talk, a text chat-plus VoIP application that, according to Wired, has the neither the features of the leading services in text chat, nor the capabilities of Skype. Does it matter, with Google's massive share of the personal computing world? We're going to try it ourselves, and get back to you.

Wikis Wule the Woost?

2005-08-22T10:05:00.000-07:00

This ran a couple of weeks ago, but worth rerunning here. InformationWeek looks at the use of wikis in the corporate setting, and discusses its value in the KM ecosystem:

Content management systems will always have their place in the publishing world, but they've never been the best tools for business collaboration. A simple open-source app called the wiki may soon rule the knowledge management roost.

The article also discusses Eastwick client Socialtext.

Bounced and Blogged from Berkeley

2005-08-13T18:48:00.000-07:00

Last night, at one of the season's most amazing local performances, we were reminded of the vulnerability of marketing in the post-TiVo world. The event was The White Stripe's opening night at the Greek Theater in Berkeley. The haute cool rockers are on tour, promoting their latest disc. Toward the end of an exhilirating set, indie station KCNL tossed a promotional beach ball into the pit. Lead man Jack White's reaction was swift. Here's how the Contra Costa Times reported it today:

"Hey, is this some (expletive) radio station promotion?" he asked, hurrying over to retrieve the ball. "What the (expletive) is that?" he said, tossing it off stage. At that point, it was the most he'd said all night. He looked like he was kidding. Maybe. Even after the song, he was still stewing, musing about facing blacklisting by the station for his outburst. "I would like to let them know that I would like a written apology from them tomorrow for interrupting my song."

But the CC Times neglected to note how the crowd howled and cheered after each of these remarks -- in fact, it was one of the high points of the evening. And it was a super embarrassing moment for the radio station, which clearly failed to read the artist and the audience. It wasn't long before some fans started blogging about it (like here and here). Doubt we'll be seeing any more beach balls in Berkeley (for a while).

UPDATE, Sunday, August 14: Well we were wrong -- the beachballs are back in Berkeley -- just one day later -- and this time they might have gotten the better of Jack White. Lesson? Everyone needs to read and respect the audience -- not just marketers.

Google Blacklist?

2005-08-05T10:40:00.000-07:00

In an otherwise innocuous story about the famed Google cooking crew (amazing this stuff gets coverage) , CNET reporter Elinor Mills writes,

Google could not be immediately reached for comment. (Google representatives have instituted a policy of not talking with CNET News.com reporters until July 2006 in response to privacy issues raised by a previous story.)

That previous story was a hard-hitting look at Google's alleged ability to collect and store confidential data from its users. Following the story, CNET ran an important correction:

The original article incorrectly implied that Google Desktop Search can track what's stored on a user's PC. The service does not expose a user's content to Google or anyone else without the user's explicit permission.

Was this the cause of Google's anti-CNET policy? And does this mean that CNET will be forced to report on safer subjects, such as the sample Google menu featured on a company blog and in Elinor's last story ( "Ahi Tuna & Avocado Poke, Calypso Rice Salad, Roasted Pork Loin and Hazelnut Shortcakes with Plum Compote")?

See the thread on Slashdot.

MSN Filter

2005-08-04T21:52:00.000-07:00

We saw this one coming a mile away. MSN has introduced a new service called Filter, where bloggers separate (i.e., "filter") the wheat from the chaff, based on user suggestions. Filter is a fitting metaphor for the post-TiVo age, where users -- for better or worse -- have greater control over what they listen to, watch, and read. But we're wondering if the folks at MSN got this one wrong, at least from a new-media perspective. Why should users get excited about delegating the job of filtering to someone else? Don't we have that model for info management already? Stay tuned ... other ideas are fast approaching.

The Wittiness of Crowds

2005-08-04T21:16:00.000-07:00

Check out David Weinberger's post re: Philipp Blom's Enlightening the World, a recent book about the 18th Century French Encyclopedia. Weinberger laments that Wikipedia's commitment to a neutral voice of view gets in the way of style, one of several things that distinguished the French project. He concludes, "I guess that's the price we pay for Wikipedia's approximation of neutrality." We agree -- and we agree it's a price worth paying for Wikipedia -- but something else may be at work here. Is is really possible to write anything witty by committee? The thing about style: the individual voice.

The Library of Tomorrow

2005-08-03T17:08:00.000-07:00

See Stefanie Olsen's (CNET) article on innovations in search for the library market. Interesting follow-up to our post about libraries and OpenCourseWare. Stefanie mentions Eastwick client Groxis, which is working with Stanford and other universities to connect the academic community with many different content sources -- all through a single search box.

Stanford is one of the universities working with Google, and it will eventually digitize the university's entire 8.7 million-volume collection. It's also working with the search technology company Grokis (or Grokker), which makes software that graphically depicts data and its relevant relationships. The university is testing Groxis software plug-ins for access to 350 different data sources, and it hopes to one day have hundreds of plug-ins available for students.

Cogito, Ergo Blog

2005-08-02T17:24:00.000-07:00

We have a new favorite radio show – Philosophy Talk, an hour-long program that airs locally on KALW (FM). Today’s show focused on "one of the great moments in philosophy": Rene Descartes's Discourse on Method, the 17th century philosopher's harrowing journey into doubt, which happily concludes with the most famous of Latin quotes, “cogito ergo sum” (“I think therefore I am”). Hosts Ken Taylor and John Perry (professors at Stanford University's Department of Philosophy) agreed on at least one point: despite the Frenchman’s political motives – to keep the Catholic Church at bay by constructing a reason-based (versus faith-based) foundation for accepting the existence of God -- the cogito (they actually say things like that; it's like Car Talk for the soul) is a reminder to everyone to take that occasional retreat, and subject your most cherished assumptions to doubt. A fitting lesson for the age of new media.... And yes, of course, the show does have a blog.

Through a Glass, Lightly

2005-08-02T10:04:00.000-07:00

See this week's issue of The New Yorker for a terrific review of Tom Standage's "A History of the World in Six Glasses." Standage, a technology reporter for The Economist, takes readers on a magical history tour through the glassy lens of six different beverages: beer (ancient Egypt), wine (Greece/Rome), distilled spirits (middle ages), coffee (17th century), tea (British empire), Coca-Cola (the American empire). What drink is next on the historical horizon? Water, says Standage, noting that Coca-Cola is already earning greater margins from Dasani than from its classic brew. But The New Yorker worries that bottled water will fail to inspire the great social and political experiments that make Standage's book such a fun read (quoting Horace: “No verse can give pleasure for long, nor last, that is written by water-drinkers.”)

Social Filters

2005-07-31T22:14:00.000-07:00

So, you'll be hearing a lot from the folks at eastwikkers about frames and filters. We were reminded of this topic this week when Yahoo!'s Jeremy Zawodny began an interesting conversation about blacklisting PR spammers. Not sure this is the right way to tackle what appears to be an increasingly difficult problem for journalists and A-List bloggers, and in some cases it might even be defamatory (we'd sure hate to wind up on a list like this). But PR bloggers take note: best way to get filtered -- literally, not just figuratively -- is to annoy your peers.

Open Source Education

2005-07-31T22:13:00.000-07:00

Lawrence Lessig waxes eloquent/romantic about the good old days, when libraries helped to level the educational playing field for all comers, rich and poor. A timely post, given the local-library budgetary crisis that the media is just beginning to notice.... But he points to MIT's innovative OpenCourseWare initiative, through which the university is making available -- free of charge --course materials from numerous departments. Similar experiments are underway at Utah State University, Johns Hopkins, and Tufts. Only a matter of time before this really catches on, and an enterprising soul proposes a way to distribute all these teachings.

The "Media and Economics" School

2005-07-31T22:11:00.000-07:00

See Richard Posner's recent roundup of eight -- count 'em -- recent books on the media. For those of you old enough to remember, Posner is the conservative academic/jurist who has led the "law and economics" movement since the dawn of the Reagan era. Posner and others have used L&E to do battle with many longstanding laws and precedents, interposing the economic cost/benefit analysis as the basis for deciding all manner of legal dispute. He's applying a similar economic lens today to the media scene, arguing that negative trends like sensationalism (think Michael Jackson) and polarization (think Fox, talking heads, and angry bloggers) are the result of "the vertiginous decline in the cost of electronic communication and the relaxation of regulatory barriers to entry, leading to the proliferation of consumer choices." But greater choice hasn't created a competitive market for truth and accuracy, says Posner. "[P]eople don't like being in a state of doubt, so they look for information that will support rather than undermine their existing beliefs. They're also uncomfortable seeing their beliefs challenged on issues that are bound up with their economic welfare, physical safety or religious and moral views." It's like a page from George Lakoff -- people generally prefer to listen to what fits their views, filtering out the rest.

A proponent of new media -- see his article for a lengthy and passionate defense of bloggers against charges from mainstream journalists -- the professor himself is a blogger, sharing a site with University of Chicago economist Gary Becker.

Framed and Filtered

2005-07-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

George Lakoff -- the linguistics professor-cum-communications consultant for progressives -- is the subject of the cover story in this week's Sunday New York Times Magazine. Author Matt Bai pulls no punches with the Berkeley prof, who has made as many enemies as friends in his quest to educate Democrats on the communication strategies used by Republicans. While generally dismissive of Lakoff's long-term influence, the article is certain to generate debate on the true art (if not science) of "framing," and whether it adds anything new to the theory and practice of "positioning."

We do think that Lakoff and company are onto something slightly new -- the notion that people generally vote based on their identities, which are formed largely by their notion of "family." True or false, this is worth investigating further, and it is worth exploring whether there are applications in the corporate context. In the meantime, Bai and other critics may have framed "framing" into disrepute; it'll be interesting to see if the term survives.

BTW, Matt ... the "father of framing" is not Lakoff, as you wrote, but Erving Goffman, an academic who came long before Luntz, Lakoff, and all the new propagandists. Looks like your "founding father" frame got "activated."

Outing the Outer

2005-07-11T20:34:00.000-07:00

Now that the secret's out -- Karl Rove was the source that outed CIA staffer Valerie Plame -- many people in and out of the blogosphere are wondering if Bush will keep his promise: to punish the perpetrator of this year's most famous anonymice case. Democrats are demanding Rove's resignation, but so far the word at the White House is mum. We predict an even more strident debate on the subject of anonymity, a debate we have contributed to (most recently here).

Fear and Blogging in Las Vegas

2005-06-24T09:27:00.000-07:00

We continue our tour of PRSA events with a stop in Las Vegas. It's our first visit to this city, and our guide -- or our Virgil, depending on your perspective -- is the erudite Jack Chappell, manager of community relations for Nevada Public Radio. Eastwick is sitting on a panel for government, non-profit and commercial PR pros who want to know what this blogging thing is all about, and why the PR profession needs to adapt. One thing we'll talk about is how the media -- one of our key constituencies -- is already adapting, out of fear, neccessity or opportunity. On that subject, check out Jon Fine's article in Business Week today, Net to Newspapers: Drop Dead.

Innovation at the Merc

2005-06-23T08:47:00.000-07:00

The New Throats
Tomorrow, the San Jose Mercury News will introduce a new Friday interactive edition that includes blogs, communities, and other ways for enabling their readers to make their views known. This comes on the heels of the troubled experiment at the LA Times (they suspended their wikitorial because of vandalism). In the meantime, the folks at BusinessWeek's "Blogspotting" are looking at using a wiki for a large-scale, "open-source reporting" project. An interesting development ... few publications have the budget or inclination to support budding Woodwards and Bernsteins, and collaborative journalism -- using talented citizen reporters -- might provide a great alternative.

Wiki Wacky Woozy

2005-06-22T20:51:00.000-07:00

What's a new-media practice without an official mascot, slogan, or, er, cocktail? eastwikkers got the latter today with the discovery of the Wiki Waki Woo, a concoction invented by the folks at Cafe Bernardo near U.C. Davis, and now publicized via the amazing U.C. Davis Wiki. Take a close look at the recipe, inspired by the success of its East Coast cousin, the Long Island Ice Tea. Should you try to make the drink at home -- perhaps this Fourth of July weekend, in honor of the state that gave the drink its name -- scroll way down to see a critical step that the author of the Davis post neglected to mention: a straw filled with 151. It's the "wisdom of crowds" in action, a community of like-minded people working together to get things right. [See also: Wikipedia (they also got it right)] .

Wikitorial Closes

2005-06-20T16:42:00.000-07:00

So, we spoke too soon. The wikitorial experiment at the LA Times has ended -- temporarily, at least -- after a tough bout with vandals. We expect an interesting post-mortem, with lessons learned about the implementation of wikis in the media world. Two quick lessons: (1) the need to restrict membership (there are acceptable ways to do that) and (2) alternative uses for media wikis.

Hail the Wikitorial

2005-06-18T13:07:00.000-07:00

In our world, this was by far the biggest story of the week: the LA Times is conducting an interesting social experiment on its editorial page, enabling readers to edit Times-authored editorials on a public wiki (managed by Wikipedia's Jimmy Wales). The reaction from top journalists and bloggers has been spirited, from jeers, cheers, to an inspired editorial in Slate calling for the outright abolishment of traditional editorials because they "then either toward timidity, at one extreme, or posturing, at the other." A Corante blogger opined, "there are better ways to bring the community into the paper." We agree -- sort of -- but still applaud the Times for this bold and fun experiment. Little ground has been broken in the new world of community journalism, and this represents a major if inconclusive step. In the meantime, there's much to figure out. When asked by Editor & Publisher to explain how the wiki works, Michael Kinsley (the Times editor who is leading the project) admitted, "I am not sure."

UPDATE: 1:30pm -- See Eastwick client Ross Mayfield's comment on Corante, about the flexibility of the wiki platform in news and editorial environments. You will learn about things such as forking, and fisking.

Media Guerilla Scores

2005-06-14T11:11:00.000-07:00

Congrats to fellow PR blogger Mike Manuel for winning MarketingSherpa’s Best PR Topic Blog for 2005. Mike's blog is a favorite of ours -- tough, opionated, smart (just like its author). Well deserved....

A Thousand Throats

2005-06-13T22:12:00.000-07:00

The latest cover story of Newsweek provides an honest look at the one of the biggest coups in journalism. The newsweekly -- a property of the same company that owns The Washington Post -- concludes that the Watergate investigation was less about journalistic heroics than a struggle for power (at a time when the fifth estate was poised well enough to wage a meaningful assault on government). It also provides a less-than heroic portrayal of Mark Felt, the subject of much opinion in this hyper-editorializing age. This dressing down comes at an interesting time, we think. The Internet has been particularly unkind to anonymous news sources, and it is doubtful that a Deep Throat today could survive the throngs of inquisitive bloggers. What will happen to the anonymous, now that their most famous brother has outed himself?

The Power of Us

2005-06-11T08:37:00.000-07:00

Check out this entertaining and thorough look at the collaboration craze, in the 6/20 issue of Business Week. Covers almost everything we've been obsessing about here at Eastwick, from groups blogs and wikis, to smart mobs, dumb mobs and the "wisdom of crowds." Things are going to get even more interesting in the enterprise, as businesses learn to integrate new media tools into existing knowledge-management systems (so predicts Gartner).

What's driving all this togetherness? More than anything, an emerging generation of Net technologies. They include file-sharing, blogs, group-edited sites called wikis, and social networking services such as MySpace and Meetup Inc., which has helped everyone from Howard Deaniacs to English bulldog owners in New York form local groups. Those technologies are finally teasing out the Net's unique potential in a way that neither e-mail nor traditional Web sites did. The Net can, like no other medium, connect many people with many others at the same time.

Pelosi Bashes Mainstream Media

2005-06-10T21:49:00.000-07:00

Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif) sounds off against mainstream media and lauds bloggers in an interesting profile in Raw Story. The U.S. congressional leader claims reporters told her that "journalists couldn’t tell the Democrats’ story because they feared losing access."

Time Magazine on Wikis

2005-05-31T20:19:00.000-07:00

The newsweekly finally weighs in with a story on wikis. Mostly about Wikipedia, but it does devote some space to Eastwick client Socialtext:

"Inspired by Wikipedia, a Silicon Valley start-up called Socialtext has helped set up wikis at a hundred companies, including Nokia and Kodak. Business wikis are being used for project management, mission statements and cross-company collaborations. Instead of e-mailing a vital Word document to your co-workers—and creating confusion about which version is the most up-to-date—you can now literally all be on the same page: as a wiki Web page, the document automatically reflects all changes by team members. Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield claims that accelerates project cycles 25%. 'A lot of people are afraid because they have to give up control over information', he says. 'But in the end, wikis foster trust'."