Dec
10

Links of the Week: Dec 10th Edition

Strained my eyeballs reading stuff this week. Let’s dig in:

6 Reasons Why Social Games Are the Next Advertising Frontier

Image via Mashable

One of my @Du4.llc clients develops episodic social games, and their data confirms how effective engaging, in-game ads can be. A lot of people pooh-pooh advertising in the social age on general principle, but given a certain degree of innovation, I think there’s still a place for them.

5 Predictions for 2011 From IDC

None of these are particularly eye-opening, but IDC’s expectation of 25 billion mobile apps sold via various app stores is something to think about. We’re moving to an app ecosystem where simple web tools that enhance users’ lifestyles are becoming a ubiquitous part of life. Imagine where that could take us in 20 years where we’ll be downloading apps directly to implants attached to our five senses. I’m not seeing much in app futures right now, but the premise is sound.

When Futures Thinking Meets Design Thinking

So one of my favorite reads is Venessa Miemis‘s blog emergent by design. Venessa is the first futurist-in-training I’ve met who sought a formal education in futurism. I got to meet her at Stowe Boyd‘s Social Business Edge earlier this year in New York, and I was blown away by her innate creativity and motivation to discover what’s next. It’s people like Venessa that we should be listening to as they punch through the bubble of the present mundanity and shape positive visions of the future. In this post, Venessa describes Jamais Cascio‘s (another AWESOME futurist you should be paying attention to) process for Futures Thinking. It’s a process I’m going to put to work on some of my client projects. For more, Venessa posted a follow-up called 3 Tools for Futures Thinking and Foresight Development that examines some things that can help you put Futures Thinking into practical application.

Always Be Thinking About These Things

Some excellent advice for creatives, independents and misifts from Chris Guillebeau at The Art of Non-Conformity. AONC is actually one of the coolest looking blogs I’ve seen in a while, and I’m having fun navigating Chris’s community and discovering old works of his. His commentary is soul food for creatives and wanderers.

Friday Five: Leading Digital Ethnographers

Every time I get ready to delete my content feed for Edelman Digital, they put out something like this. This post is a really great roundup of researchers conducting studies into the emerging field of digital anthropology. Each one has taken a slightly different approach to the task of segmenting internet users for study, and there are some fascinating links to their stories and work contained within. As an aside, last year I worked with a social networking research team at a company called Detica. My teammates were young, talented analysts with digital research aptitudes, culturally relevant skills in other languages, and a whole lot of code-monkeying savvy. Our work was very similar to what Edelman describes as digital anthropology but my teammates – ever the AWESOME crowd – coined the term “netnography” for the type of work we were doing. One of these days, I’m gonna get that to stick somewhere…

Why Wikileaks Is Good for America

4channers Go After PayPal, Swiss Bank in Defense of Wikileaks

I could go on and on with links to commentary about Wikileaks’ recent diplomatic cable dump and the subsequent storm of distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks against it and in defense of it. This issue is probably one of the most fascinating communications events I have ever experiences. I’ve been on both sides of this debate. Having worked in the Pentagon and understanding the necessities of operational security, I’m on one hand appalled by Wikileaks’ behavior. (Moreso, I’m appalled by the inflammatory anti-American statements Julian Assange has made, but that’s a separate issue.) On the other hand, I’m loving the debate this is creating about what government transparency really is and can be. In this world where some podunk, know-nothing ass-clown NCO can lift the entire SIPRNET via CD-ROM and get it published to the Internet, can the federal government truly afford to continue adhering to default security classification just because they don’t want to deal with information getting out to the public? I’ve certainly been in situations where documents were classified for political reasons and not actual security, so the motivation to break down barriers to transparency is understandable. I just don’t think the way to do it is the Wikileaks way.

Even more fascinating in this situation has been 4chan and the Anonymous community of hacktivists basically declaring war against the internet outposts of Visa, Mastercard, PayPal, Amazon, and any other online service provider that cut off its services to Wikileaks. This constitutes a citizen-galvanized retaliatory strike against perceived injustice, and most of the U.S. govvies I know who are monitoring this issue are literally left scratching their heads. I’m also astounded that the U.S. military, its component commands, and even its contractors have virtually stuck their heads in the sand to avoid dealing with the implications of Wikileaks: some defense outfits I know of are scared to death of mentioning Wikileaks in public conversations because they think they’re going to get hacked and lose their security clearances.

All this begs for more thought, so I may develop a separate post about in the near future. I definitely think Wikileaks is forcing us to redefine what we consider “free press,” “mainstream media,” and notions of transparency. It’s just going to be a long, ugly debate getting to any kind of common ground.

Anonymous's OPERATION PAYBACK call to arms (Image via Gawker)

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Dec
03

Links of the Week

Some interesting things I’ve read this week that bear mentioning:

These Screens Will Send You Back To The Future

Screenshot from new Back to the Future game courtesy of IGN/Kotaku

Telltale Games is developing a new internet browser-based video game adaptation of Back to the Future. I’m even more excited by the fact that this will be an episodic game with new weekly content AND an iPad version! Here’s an early screenshot on the left, and more higher-quality scans can be found at the link above.

The Anatomy of a Movement

David Armano talks about harnessing the power of movements for ad campaigns. Armano makes AWESOME graphics to help explain his points, and I find his style of visual thinking is among the most cogent on the web.

WikiLeaks Reveals Iran’s Secret, Worldwide Arms Hunt

The big news in DC this week was “Cablegate,” an unleashing of several diplomatic documents obtained illegally by WikiLeaks. These documents confirmed something I’ve known for quite a while because of my irregular warfare work: strategically, there is a Cold War-like balance of power between Iran and Arab nations like Saudi Arabia that hinges on nuclear capability and how the United States chooses to engage in the region. There is a lot more to this than anybody truly understands, I think. I believe the Persian/Arab divide is much more of a globally chilling problem than our own existential struggle with Islam.

Activate Wave-Motion Gun! New documentary takes you inside the live-action Star Blazers

Star Blazers was the first cartoon I remember seeing as a child that changed my perspective on animated storytelling from the pedestrian to the epic. Despite its somewhat cheesy American adaptation, Space Battleship Yamato (its original Japanese name) established a cool standard for serialized, mature storytelling in American cartoon programming. I’m super excited to see it being adapted into a live-action film that many are comparing to the AWESOMEness of Battlestar Galactica. It premiered in Japan this week, and it looks AMAZING. Here’s a clip:

I’m experimenting with PulseMeme, an app on my iPad that creates a much smoother way of reading RSS content. Through it, I’ve set up a share feed on Posterous where I’ll share various stories from time to time. You can find that feed at this link if you want to subscribe. I’ve pulled all the links in this post from that feed, as I’ll do on a weekly basis from now on.

Related articles
Enhanced by Zemanta
Jul
13

Engaging in a “Now Media” Continuum, Part 5

And now, the final video from my MountainRunner Institute talk at the “Now Media Seminar.” Let me know what you thought!

You can also find the slides from this preso by following this link.

Jul
12

Engaging in a “Now Media” Continuum, Part 4

Here’s Part 4 of my MountainRunner Institute talk from the “Now Media Seminar.” HOWF!

Also, you can follow this link to see the actual slides from the event.

Jul
10

Engaging in a “Now Media” Continuum, Part 2

Here’s the second part of my MountainRunner Institute talk from July 6th’s “Now Media Seminar.” Enjoy!

Enhanced by Zemanta
Jul
09

Engaging in a “Now Media” Continuum, Part 1

This past Tuesday, July 6th, 2010, I got the opportunity to speak as part of the MountainRunner Institute’s “Now Media” seminar at the National Press Club. For the less sharp-eyed out there, I’ve been proud to call Matt Armstrong (MRi President and a highly AWESOME blogger) a friend for some time… even before he provided the first forum for Must. Be. AWESOME!!! in its proto-stage. A few months ago, Matt asked me to help him transform his blog, MountainRunner, into a full-fledged nonprofit institute devoted to the study of and conversations about public diplomacy and strategic communication.

One of MRi’s key offerings is a seminar Matt honchos about “Now Media,” his concept of understanding the existing and emerging media environment as it relates to influence and engagement. These seminars give us an opportunity to wrap up everything we learn into something useful for communication practitioners. At this particular event, we had attendees from the U.S. Marine Corps public affairs team, the State Department, and even a contingent of Indonesian bloggers visiting the States on a State Department exchange.

Matt asked me to put together something to capstone the day, integrating everything from his lectures to the examples and information of our guest lecturers. I thought I would present that briefing, “Engaging in a Now Media Continuum,” here for everyone to check out. Accompanying the slideshow is the first of five videos of my actual presentation. I’ll deploy a new chapter of this video series every day for the next five days, so tune in or subscribe to the blog via RSS to get the whole story!

This was my first time presenting on behalf of MountainRunner, so I’d be really interested in everyone’s feedback: What do you think about engaging in a “now media” continuum?

(Note: Special thanks to Rob Watwood for his time and energy discussing the various ideas, thoughts, and challenges that I eventually cobbled together into this preso.)

Engaging in a Now Media Continuum – Du4 for MRi

View more presentations from Du4.

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta
Jun
10

Video: Du4 Talks Twitter Gov

I figured after all of yesterday’s conversations about the Twitter Gov Liaison position, I figured I owed everybody a “statement of purpose” of some kind for my candidacy. What happened instead, however, involved a broken camera, a bout of nausea, and two very angry cats.

So instead, here’s some “good enough” footage from my FlipCam where I talk about some of my thoughts on the job, the federal government, state and local government, citizens engagement, and a bunch of other stuff.

Thanks for watching.

Related articles by Zemanta
Reblog this post [with Zemanta]
Oct
08

A Panel Is Worth a Thousand Words… of Suckage.

Monday, October 5th, I attended an event at George Washington University billed as “New Approaches to U.S. Global Outreach: Smart Power on the Front Lines of Public Diplomacy (PD) and Strategic Communication (SC).” A mouthful of whaaaaaat?

The point of said “event” was to purportedly discuss strategic and tactical issues involved in U.S. government communication. Quite a few familiar and some new faces were on the panels, to include Rosa Brooks from DOD’s Policy shop, Daniel Sreebny from the State Department’s Global Strategic Engagement Center (GSEC), public diplomacy scholar Kristin Lord, some old guy from SOCOM’s Strategic Communication Directorate, and a Congressional lawyer that made me want to commit seppuku on the spot.

A bunch of other PD bloggers are going to scholarly and academically get into the nuts and bolts of this discussion, and the conversation will turn back to how sorry we all are that there’s no strategic leadership for PD/SC, how no one can agree on who owns what, how no one cares, blah blah blah.

I, on the other hand, want to know why this community is purposely avoiding AWESOME.

We’ve been having this debate about the delineations and roles/responsibilities of PD, SC, military information support, and all the other information disciplines for years. Like all good alcoholics, we know we have a problem… we just aren’t going to stop drinking because we’re such assholes. We always end up asking the same questions, arriving at a bunch of solutions, but then drop the ball at implementation. Oh sure, there are reams of reports out there analyzing specific problems with the USG’s communication apparatus… but to paraphrase Dr. Bruce Gregory, no one seems to want to actually LEAD this community and establish a SOLID BUSINESS PLAN for implementing reform.

Im here for yer publik diplomasees.

I'm here for yer publik diplomasees.

So what ends happening? Everybody putters about like a mass of retarded lemmings, hanging on the charity of others, hoping someone else will figure things out and give their lives meaning. Meanwhile, it’s Clown Shoes Day every day on the world stage, and the United States is Ronald McDonald.

The tragedy is that this is not even LAME. It’s just… mediocre. None of these people is purposely LAME. Some are weak, some assholish or crapulous. But ultimately, the community is just… meh.

It’s just a community that shows up. Do they care? Sure. Will they do anything about it? Not… really.

Well, wait, doesn’t it count that we’re talking about the issue? Sure. But we’ve been talking for YEARS. People have been railing against the State Department’s mistreatment of the public diplomacy field since the U.S. Information Agency was forcibly integrated into the department in 1999.

The point is, NO ONE’S DOING SHIT ABOUT IT.

The lawyer at the panel basically defended Congress’ abdication of responsibility for fixing the interagency legislation, oversight and budgetary authority. The SOCOM guy complained about antiquated laws. Sreebny said he was new on the job. The refrain was the same: “It’s too HARD.”

Well, you know what, taxpayer-paid-for govvies? THAT SUCKS.

We do not need more administrators managing the status quo. We do not need more lawyers to find new loopholes in the problems. We do not need more apologists for this bullshittery.

We need LEADERSHIP. Moreso, we need AWESOME LEADERSHIP. If this administration is truly about change, then get off your goddamn asses and FIX IT.

Stop the complaining. Stop the beauracratizing. Stop the crack-addled fantasies that this will all be taken care of by someone else.

If you claim to be a public diplomat, a strategic communicator, a PSYOPper, a Foreign Service officer, a counselor, a scholar, a believer… if you call yourself anything that tracks back to this venerable profession then get involved. I, and many of my fellow taxpayers, are tired of you bitching about how screwed up the communication disciplines are. FIX IT!

Defy mediocrity. BE AWESOME.

[Joker pic H/T to Ben @ LikeCool.com.]

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta