Bill: Handy

At the corner of Academia and Practice

Be a Harvard Professor

I was given the opportunity to interview David Weinberger for KOSU, the State’s NPR station and I jumped at the chance. The kind folks at KOSU asked simply because they thought I might have some good questions. Little did they know Dr. Weinberger has had a direct influence on my engagement of online communications.

David is a fellow at Harvard University’s prestigious Berkman Center and is considered one of the nation’s foremost interpreters of technology’s impact on business and society – although when I mentioned that during the interview he kind of chuckled. I would argue he is also very modest.

I should point out all this came about because h0e will also be at Oklahoma State University for our annual Research Week where he will be a guest lecturer.

His latest book, Everything Is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder, discusses how the new rules for organizing ideas and information are transforming our culture and business. Its not just a rehash of Technology Determinism Theory but a full blown evaluation of how we try to create order in a digital world using tactile world techniques. This book, by the way, greatly impacted my outlook of organizational communications and really cemented my philosophy regarding a centralized vs. decentralized web presence – something I have been trying to wrap my arms around and apply in practice not just theory. More on that later.

I should also mention Dr. Weinberger co-authored The Cluetrain Manifesto. If you haven’t read it I would strongly suggest you do so. It is still timely even though it was written eleven years ago. And, as I shared with Dr. Weinberger, it really shaped my perceptions and approach toward digital communications, pushing me down a path which led me to where I am today. Today many might not consider it groundbreaking but we sure did way back then.

The point of this post
I thought I would share my questions for Dr. Weinberger. I can’t provide you the answers, at least not yet. I will as soon as the story airs but I am sharing them here in the hopes you will ask yourself the same questions – and answer them. I know I did a million times over and each time I worked through a bit more where technology is leading us.

If you wish, post your answers below or start a conversation on your own site and post a link below. Even better, if after giving it some thought you have a question of your own for Dr. Weinberger, post it! I will have another opportunity to interview him while he is here.

I look forward to your thoughts.

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Okay gang, those are the questions. Tell me your answers, post your own, take the conversation elsewhere (be sure to link to it) and I will be sure to keep you posted when his answers are available to listen to.

Reasons to avoid being an armchair quarterback

(What follows is an updated post based on feedback from my good friend Matt Galloway.)

With the Superbowl upon us I thought I might touch on the topic of armchair quarterbacking  - a person who offers advice or an opinion on something in which they have no expertise or involvement the process. I’ve seen this for a while on the blogosphere and now see it emerging in traditional media sites. In my opinion it just has a feel of bad form but the reality is, in the communications industry, badmouthing the efforts or lack of effort by others in our field verges on violating the high ethical standards all our respective organizations have set (PRSA, IABC, AC, etc.).

Let’s visit some reasons why being an armchair quarterback is a bad practice in general:

You don’t know the reasons why decisions were made (the basic premise) - I will be the first to tell you after attending a client meeting the tactical decisions which emerge might be nothing like what I would have suggested going into the meeting. Research, finance, human resources, audience profile, tech knowledge, culture and more all come into play making even the smallest strategic and tactical decisions. It is impossible for anyone outside the room to know all this. If you weren’t at the table you really just don’t know the real reasons.

There is a better format to review criticize - I had an old boss who had a practice of always praising in public and criticizing in private. People loved him and the best managers at this company learned from him. You can too. If you have a suggestion regarding how an organization might have done something different, send them an email. Trust me it will be easier to write and they will most likely appreciate your thoughts even more.

Regarding the “advice”, wise men don’t need it and fools won’t heed it - Nuff said, don’t waste your time. Better yet, go do something more productive.

Who asked you for your opinion? – Unless it was the company I say keep it to yourself. Better yet, write a review about an effort which totally rocks!

Who would you hire? - Think about it who would you rather hang with at a party, the bore in the middle with nothing good to say or the nice guy off to the side who talks about all the great things in the world?

What goes around comes around - Trust me on this one, I believe in Karma and see it all the time. To be honest, when I see an article of the armchair quarterback nature it makes me want to go out of my way and call all your work into question in a very public forum. I would never do this but trust me, someday someone will probably for the same reasons you are.

End-run
Okay, so you really, really want to be an armchair quarterback and write a blog post about what was wrong with someone’s efforts then go ahead. But let me offer some suggestions – don’t include names and talk about the topic from a theoretical point of view. Be sure your comments are grounded in fact and not simply conjecture and if you must write that blog post do some research. To be clear, there isn’t anything wrong with saying the emperor has no clothes but make sure you find out why he’s naked before telling him he’s doing it all wrong. Maybe all his clothes are simply in the laundry.

Peace.

What Teachers Make

I love this time of year, immersing myself in the new semester, seeing the students, meeting new ones, and hearing from those who have gone on to greatness as well as those who are struggling in this down economy. Bottom line, I love being a teacher… Professor as the case may be. The list of reasons why is long and someday I may compile my top ten or hundred as the case may be.

There is one thing about being in the education field I dislike – a simple saying, “those who can, do and those who can’t, teach.” Even I’ve been guilty of uttering these words adding my own fresh, snarky commentary, “those who can’t teach teach gym and those who can’t teach gym become… fill in your job title here.” Like many sayings, nothing could be further from the truth.

The reality is I’ve known and know some amazing teachers/professors. Their titles are varied; Tenured, Adjunct, Visiting, Clinical, Assistant, etc. but regardless of title they teach because they love teaching – the same reason I teach. We have a passion for the field of study and hope to leave an indelible mark on our respective industry by shaping and teaching its future, not because of any limitations in ability.

The topic of what I “make” came up in class the other day. For many, salary is an immediate roadblock to teaching. Most professors (especially the non-tenure) earn very little, receive limited benefits and all with no long term commitment from the Universities they work for. But, again, that’s not why we teach – at least that’s not why I teach. There are moments I wish I earned more – and then I talk with a student or meet with a group and am reminded that the compensation I receive, what I make, can’t always be measured in dollars.

Taylor Mali said it best (warning, language):

gapingvoid 2.0: Why I’ll no longer be blogging new cartoons.

From his email newsletter Hugh MacLeod will no longer be blogging his artwork. Why? After reading his letter it is my opinion his community simply got too big which reinforces that in social media communities size matters – inversely. (thank you @mattgalloway or Matt Galloway in the real world for forwarding his letter)

gapingvoid 2.0: Why I’ll no longer be blogging new cartoons.

1. In May, 2001, I blogged my first cartoon on gapingvoid.com. This is my TENTH year doing it.

Back then, it was like the dawn of a new era. The idea that I could doodle at night, and have the entire world see the work the next morning, was amazing and liberating to me. Cheap, Easy, Global Media.

Blogging changed my life. It also allowed me to share my work with people who understood and valued it. For the longest time, I felt as if gapingvoid was almost a “club” of like-minded, passionate, smart people. And wherever I traveled, blogging allowed me to meet lovely, smart, fun people who shared the same worldview. The blogosphere felt like a group who were going to change the world. And you know what? In our own way, we did.

2. But like a lot of the folk who have been blogging for a long time, I’ve started to feel that over the last few years, that the blogosphere has just gotten too big, noisy and anonymous. I’ve started longing for the days when things were ’smaller’, ‘clubbier’, intimate and, well, human. When the people I met were truly like-minded. This was one of the reasons why I originally started the “CDF” newsletter last year. I wanted that feeling back.

Though I’ve not emailed you guys consistently, we consistently get new sign-ups and I get emails daily that reinforce the idea that we are into the same stuff, whether we’re “artists” or not. We understand that what is gibberish to most people, is actually cool, powerful stuff to us- and somehow fits into the weird, existential angst of work, AND relationships, AND 21st Century life.

3. So, I’ve decided that I really only want to share my new work (cartoons) with ‘us’ i.e. Y’all. The folks that really dig and support what I do. Call it “Getting back to my roots” or whatever. But starting immediately, my new cartoons will be going out first to this email list, which will really be “Hugh’s Daily Cartoon”- a new cartoon emailed first thing out every day, so y’all can start with a bit of a chuckle when you open your Inbox. Simple. Easy.

Also, by making the cartoons available by sign-up, I hope that we can build this group and maybe do more together- Tweetups, conferences, geek dinners, drunken nights out, whatever.

4. These are still early days- there’s still a lot to figure out. But “Phase Two” of gapingvoid is now beginning, and it’s all very, very exciting stuff!

5. Feel free to blog, tweet, forward along these new e-mail cartoons at your leisure, make a friend smile etc…. and yeah, if you find something that inspires you enough to want it hanging on your wall, you can buy the print (Yes, every cartoon will come with a link to the gapingvoid gallery, where you can buy the print version if you wish). Regardless, the same Creative Commons terms still apply.

6. Feel free to opt out and unsubscribe at any time. I think it would be cool if one day there were 100,00 like-minded people who get the cartoons every morning. So again, feel free to share etc.

Wish me luck with gapingvoid 2.0,

Keep your eye on the marshmallow

Yesterday at the beginning of class (the first time for us to meet this semester) I gave every student a marshmallow and told them not to eat it.

Class progressed as normal and at the end I asked them what they thought the marshmallow represented (keep in mind I teach PR at Oklahoma State University). Answers ranged from “temptation” to “PR” (hard on the outside but sweet and fluffy on the inside). Then I told them it represented deferred gratification and showed them this video -

Afterward we talked about occurences throught their day and what the immediate gratifications were associated with those events:

When the alarm goes off in the morning the immediate gratification is to hit the snooze button and skip class. When you just ate lunch and would rather take a nap than go to class the immediate gratification is to skip class and take the nap. And, for my last class of the day, when all their friends are off to Joe’s and they have class the immediate gratification is to head to Joe’s. Then we walked through the day deferring gratification and what the long term impact was: class participation led to better understanding which led to better grades which led to better understanding in future classes which led to better grades which led to a high gpa at graduation which led to a “4.0″ job which led to more money which led to “Mo Money” which I assured them, contrary to popular belief did not lead to “Mo Problems”.

I promised them if they would delay their gratification I would do the same and for the rest of the semester we would all keep our eye on the marshmallow.

You can’t learn from my past because it isn’t yours (or, In life don’t be the indecisive squirrel)

Last week I was honored to be inducted as an honorary member of the Oklahoma State University Golden Key Honour Society. I was one of two this year, the other being Dr. K.D. Berlin who among other achievements led a team to develop new treatments for a variety of cancers, particularly ovarian and cervical cancers. Me? I help people talk pretty so, needless to say, I was very humbled to share the stage.

They tell me my selection was because of my commitment to higher education and outstanding job in my capacity as a visiting professor. Anyone who saw my tweet on this noticed my mention of being the first Journalism and Broadcast Professor to be nominated but more important to me was the fact I was the first Visiting Professor to be nominated. Visiting Professors at the University hold their position simply for the love of teaching with no commitment from the University other than a yearly contract. I won’t complain about this, it is by choice but I think it is reflective of the value Visiting Professors can have for all learning institutions.

I was asked to talk for 7-10 minutes about… me. What follows are my comments.

I want to thank everyone here today for this honor and I am truly humbled to share this with Dr. Berlin and even more humbled to stand before a group who has achieved such a high standard of academic excellence. My congratulations also to everyone in this room, those who are being inducted today and those with them who supported them in their efforts. I know greatness isn’t created in a vacuum.

I have been asked to talk a bit about myself and, “how I have gotten where I am today.” My background is in Public Relations and I have had the privilege to introduce and talk about some absolutely amazing people in my life – from heads of foreign state to my beautiful and intelligent wife who was honored as a “Woman of the Year“. It’s funny, in PR you never talk about yourself – it’s the first rule so I am a bit intimidated by this challenge.

It’s a good question and ironically one I have been asking myself a lot lately. Maybe it’s a rite of passage as you grow older.

I have a good friend who does some amazing things with technology, very dynamic and inspiring. He had helped me with a project of sorts and regarding one particular creation I said to him, “you have to tell me how to do that.” His response was great, “first you start by moving around a lot as a child then at the age of eight you get your first computer…” Bottom line, he didn’t get where he is overnight and he is very self aware of this.

Every person in this room also has a past, a history which led you to where you are now. But it’s my belief it’s not so much what happened to you but the experience and what you do with that experience, how you engage it at the moment and afterward which truly lead us to where we are.

We’ve all had good bosses and not so good ones, great professors and not so great ones, great moms and… well, my mom is great so I don’t have a comparison on this one. I value every moment I had with each. Sure, every lecture might not be the best but I assure you there is value in each one, in the moment, in the words, in the experience – find it and you will benefit. Every day took the opportunity to learn from others and from the experience of others. We have a role in these engagements, learning opportunities and I learned this early on. For that I am fortunate.

So let me answer the questions posed to me and then get to the good stuff.

Why do I love education so much? Easy, I walked away from it. After a year away at school I came home and told my mom I was dropping out. She didn’t kill me (did I mention she was great?) and spent the next year experiencing how important having a college degree was. I went back and finished my degree with high marks and fully embracing each course and professor. Working my way through school I also took every opportunity to learn from my bosses and the owners of each business.

Why am I a good professor? Thank you for thinking so. Let me tell you why this might be. I had great professors and I try to emulate those qualities I admired so much – more important I am passionate about what I teach. I love communications and public relations and the value it has in our society. My belief, as my students will tell you, is our country was founded on the principles of public relations and continues to shape its future – good or bad.

Why have I been successful in life and in business. The answer lies on a paperweight which sits on my desk and simply says, “Fortune favors the brave.” I’ve had it for more than 18 years.

I could tell you all the sordid details of my past but there isn’t much to learn from my past because it isn’t your past. It isn’t your experience.

So let me try to create an experience for you this evening. Let me share some advice, advice which isn’t mine but was given to me by others but shaped my life.

Do what you love but more importantly love what you do – Every job, every class, every professor, every boss has value. Find that value and every day you will love what you do, you will cherish those experiences. Even in the most mundane there is value and experience. This will benefit you every day you work.

Work is hard and not always fun – I remember lying on a couch as a young man and telling my mom I didn’t want to go to work one day because it wasn’t fun. She told me in only a tone a mother can have that work wasn’t fun. If it was fun we would get up every day and say, “I’m going to fun today, see you when I get home.”

Readers are leaders and leaders are readers – This advice was shared to me by an executive at State Farm Insurance where I started my corporate life. As I looked around the offices of those I admired both professionally and personally I noticed the large number of books and the fact that they weren’t perched on a shelf but were sitting on their desks and every day they spent time reading and making notes.

While you are looking for books, look up the name Peter Drucker – His philosophy, his words are timeless and now more than ever resonate in the real world. If I had to generalize one of his most important contributions to the business world it is that making the world a better place is a viable business model.

Be business savvy, understand how businesses work – It doesn’t matter what profession you are in, whether you are a chemist, a professor or employee of a large corporation, business will dominate your every move.

Regarding your future – look to the future to find your future – Meaning don’t focus on what is happening right now, focus on what is about to happen – the future of your degree or industry you want to work in. Read what industry leaders say the future will be – they are right because they are normally the ones who are defining the future. A side benefit to this is the candidate pool is much smaller there than it is in an area everyone is focused on.

Personal note – choose wisely your spouse or life partner – Make sure you support them and they support you. You never know when one of you is going to say, “Hey, I have this great opportunity to be a visiting professor, what would you think about completely shifting our lifestyle?”

Work hard, make good decisions and do the right thing – Advice you get almost daily. The question I get most often is how will you know which decision is the right decision? In my experience it’s normally the hard one.

Along that same topic, it is impossible to make a decision with enough knowledge to guarantee 100% success so quite trying and just decide – It isn’t until you make the decision that you will have enough information to make it correctly because at that moment information floods in. Here is the good news, if the decision was the wrong decision can, no, you must change it, fix it.

Strategy w/out tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat – That advice has been handed down since 500 B.C. and was first offered by Sun Tzu. To this I would add you need to know the difference between goals, objectives, strategies and tactics. My students know the difference because I preach it in every class I teach. Knowing this information will give them a competitive advantage for the rest of their life.

Support others and support those who have supported you – For a moment let me talk about Oklahoma State University. Yes, you paid tuition to attend but the University also supported you. They took a chance accepting you as a student, holding a seat for you, professors spending additional time for you and administrators going above and beyond, all for you. As you move on don’t forget about your experiences here and don’t forget to support those who have yet to have that same experience. Whether you financially support the University, the Foundation or Alumni or support it in other ways make sure you support it.

Finally, my last piece of advice is unique to me. Its impetus… well, a squirrel trying to cross the road. An indecisive squirrel which I will tell you now the outcome isn’t in favor of the squirrel. I was driving down a virtually empty road with one of my best friends and a squirrel started to cross. It got about half way and as I sped toward it I new it would make it across if I hit the brakes which I did. He wasn’t so sure and turned around but about half way back he decided to try to make it across after all and promptly turned around again and made its way back across my path. Even with my effort to slow down I ran over the squirrel – there was nothing I could do. Had he followed is first inclination, to cross the road, he would have survived but he was indecisive. The lesson from this is simply and probably obvious. In life don’t be the indecisive squirrel for he is the one which always gets run over.

In Social Media Communities Size Matters – Inversely

When I work with groups on their strategic use of social media I assure them, “size doesn’t matter” and they look at me funny. We have been told our whole lives that bigger is better.  As it turns out, when it comes to building a community via social media and specifically when you amass a vague community with no clear definition i.e. followers/friends that isn’t always the case. I blogged about this a while back but a few recent studies I came across  and a short conversation on twitter led me back to the research.

At this point I would like to remind everyone of a very technical term I use quite often when talking about what strategies to use regarding  Social Media engagement, “it depends”.  It depends on your goals and objectives and for as much as we might want to create a cookie cutter process for the strategic and tactical use of social media, what I find to be the case with every organization I work with is, their efforts don’t come close to mirroring any other organization’s use. (note to self, need to blog about the reasons why I think they are so different)

This leads me back to size. Too many folks focus on and talk about the size of their twitter followers. It’s for obvious reasons:

• It’s an easy metric to measure
• We start out on Twitter for the sole purpose of finding people to follow in the hopes they will find us
• Every added follower is… something, not sure what but we get warm fuzzies when we get that update email
• Even “Twitter graders” give us kudos for the number of followers.  Twitter “elite” strive to hit the one million mark.

But I go back to the question of goals and objectives. Specifically how does the size of your community support them? Are you selling a book, just released a movie – maybe size does matter but I would argue these folks are most likely using twitter as an rss feed for one-way or at best two-way asymmetrical communication. Sure, they might “engage their followers” but what about their community which we all talk about being so valuable in social media.

If we look at our community as a true community, one of engagement and collaboration and created for a purpose (go way back to the days of the Mayberry analogy) then we find smaller might actually be better. But, again, it depends on so many variables. How are you defined in this community? How are others defined in this community? Are you the leader (hint, you might think you are but…) is it a hierarchical community? And so on. All critical questions which need to be asked as you set the stage for your tactical use of any community based social media tactic.

Still shaking your head and thinking to yourself, “strong words Bill but prove it.”  Here ya go -

Research (link provided to original source)
Effects of spatial distribution and information transmission over cooperation dynamics – “Our results show that spatial structures affect the cooperation dynamics under horizontal information transmission and in some structures, particularly Small World Networks, cooperation is more sensible to information transmission.”

Social Networks and Collective Action – “The analysis finds that some metrics for networks’ influence—size, the prevalence of weak ties, the presence of elites—have a more complex interaction with network structure and individual motivations than has been previously acknowledged. For example, in some contexts additional network ties decrease participation. This presents the potential for selection bias in empirical studies. The model offers a fuller characterization of the role of network structure and predicts expected levels of participation across network types and distributions of motivations as a function of network size, weak and strong ties, and elite influence.”

Learning to Cooperate: Learning Networks and The Problem of Altruism – “Learning networks determine the spread of successful strategies; a larger,more connected population with more overlapping clusters of relationships averages72% mutual cooperation in our simulation, a 12 percentage point gain over the 60% averaged by the smallest, least connected, least clustered population. Larger populations and more contacts both increase the chance of learning from successful retaliatory strategies and hence increase the growth of retaliatory strategies whenever selection favors cooperation. Thus larger populations with more developed learning relationships should on average exhibit higher levels of cooperation. This would suggest that cooperation across longstanding cleavages would develop more rapidly in larger interactive legislatures, larger more established policy arenas, and larger integrated immigrant communities—in the latter case, however, analytic results for finite populations suggest that at some point larger populations may impede the  evolution of cooperation unless interactions are restricted into structured game networks.”

A few points:
To clarify some of the research above, there are cases when the size of the community is beneficial but very specific variables need to be considered and implemented.  I also find it interesting but self explanatory that most studies which involve or can be related to social media are geared toward Biology, Political Science, Anthropology, Mathematics, Psychology, etc.  What I find interesting about this is, in a social media world (PR/Mass Comm/marketing)  where we preach collaboration, seldom do we venture outside our comfort zone regarding research. Finally, there is one other study I am tying again to find. It is recent, within the last two months and from Europe and spoke specifically to mass communication and communities. It was dead and if I can find it I will add it to this post.

So what now?
No reason to start over but do ask yourself a few questions:

• Why am I tweeting? What larger goal or objective does it support?
• If I build a community, what kind of responsibility do I have to this community?
• When you visualize your community what does it look like?
• Now look at your followers and those you follow – what do you see?
• Insert a few dozen other questions which should be asked when building a community.

I can tell you what I am doing. For experimental reasons I am starting over from square one. Following no one and no one following me. I am taking into consideration so much more than when I first started tweeting. You won’t likely find me, especially if you are looking for folks who are also focused on a very small niche. I will continue to use Bill Handy for a number of reasons but I am also changing how I use this tool. If I want a community then I need to truly build it so, based on the research above, it can be successful.

Just an update

You might have noticed I haven’t been on line much lately and thought I would share the reason why. What follows is cross posted on dogdish.com:

A special note to all our Dog Dish friends – A New Chapter at Dog Dish

Exactly seven years ago this week, we opened Dog Dish.  We left our corporate jobs so we could work together and with our dogs.

It has been truly a labor of love as we worked to build our business and help all the wonderful customers we have met over the years.  We know this is why we have been so successful these last seven years.

As many of you know, Bill has not been around much as he began to focus more and more on teaching public relations and social media at Oklahoma State University.  We have been working together less and less which has been difficult for us both professionally and personally.

As a result of Bill’s work some new opportunities presented themselves to us.   We started a second company focused on public relations and strategic planning so that we could share our knowledge and help other organizations achieve the same success we have achieved at Dog Dish. As you know, we love to work together and make a pretty great team.  While initially Bill had the primary responsibilities for this new venture, we found that more and more he needed Shelli’s help. About the same time we started the new company and were wondering how in the heck we were going to do all of this, Jim, Juley and Emily Langdon (you may recognize the Langdon name as the owners of Langdon Publishing, publishers of Tulsa People, Tulsa Pets, and other publications) expressed an interest in acquiring Dog Dish.  After a few meetings, we decided it was a good move for us all.

We have always been believers that everything happens for a reason and it is true for this situation as well.  We cannot imagine a family better suited to take the reins of Dog Dish. They have been customers for many years and understand what a special place it is.  They share our love for pets, our commitment to making Tulsa a better place for pets and our vision for making Dog Dish the wonderful place it has become.  They will also bring some new and fresh perspectives to the business and we know that under their guidance, it will continue to thrive.

It is with mixed feelings that we share this news with you.  While we are excited about our new opportunities and what the future holds for us, it will be hard to imagine our lives without Dog Dish.  We’ve celebrated with you the new four-legged additions to your family and cried with you when you lost one. We’ve hunted Easter Biscuits, celebrated Barktoberweenfestivary and so many other holidays the way only dog lovers could.

We owe so much to you for making Dog Dish the place it is today and it has been our pleasure to serve you for the last seven years.  We cannot thank you enough for your loyalty and support and we truly wouldn’t be as successful as we are today, both at Dog Dish and in our new endeavors, if it wasn’t for you and the inspiration you have given us.

Some of you have been our customers since the day we opened and some of you recently joined our family.  Regardless, we know you will welcome the Langdon family as the new owners just as we have welcomed them.  We look forward to seeing all the talents and fresh ideas they will bring to Dog Dish.  They are wonderful people and you will enjoy getting to know them as much as they will enjoy getting to know you and your four-legged family members.  Emily Langdon will be managing the store and she would love for you to stop by soon and say hello.

We don’t look at this as change but more of a continuance. In fact, if you visit Dog Dish you will still see Jennie, Angie, Holly and Lindsay and on special occasions we are sure you will see us there as well. We will be around for the next several weeks as we transition the store to its new ownership.  We would love to say good-bye to you in person, but if that isn’t possible we would love to hear from you. You, of course, can find us on dogdish.com or by email at bill@hhhstrategicsolutions.com or shelli@hhhstrategicsolutions.com.

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In future posts I will share some observations about building a business from nothing and, of course, the value of setting goals, objectives, strategy and tactics in doing so .

Saxum Social Media Summit in review

I couldn’t attend the Saxum Social Media Summit but I followed along, while I could, on Twitter. The chatter seemed to be positive and as I scrolled through the tweets I ran across one of my favorite OKState students and Saxum Intern, Mindy Robson. Since Mindy was there I asked if she would mind sharing what she learned over the course of the morning. She agreed and her thoughts follow (thanks Mindy for your time and effort. I hope I can attend the next one):

People are talking about your business

It’s interesting how one can think they know social media, but because it is ever evolving there is always something new and interesting to discover.  I learned new things about Twitter, Digg and Delicious and how businesses can benefit from being engaged in social media from Jim Quillen and Renzi Stone at the Saxum Social Media Summit.

Here is a summary of some tips and tools I took away from the summit:

• I didn’t know that the purpose of a Tweetup is to network with people you follow on Twitter but may never have had the opportunity to meet and talk with in person. This is a great way to pull social media and face-to-face interaction together.
• I discovered that CoTweet is a way for a business to have multiple users on one account. CoTweet will identify who from the company Tweeted by putting a carrot symbol ^ and the initials of that person at the end of the Tweet.
• Business people need to create a LinkedIn account and make sure to thoroughly fill out the profile section.
• Digg is a tool you can use to customize articles of interest (news, videos, etc.) on an account you can access from any computer.
• Delicious is a tool you can use to bookmark sites on an account, rather than bookmarking sites on a personal computer and trying to remember the url to those sites when you’re away from that computer.

Business owners and employees need to realize that people are talking about their company and those people aren’t likely to pick up the phone and call the customer service hotline to let you know how they feel. Today, that’s too much trouble.  It is wise to find out what people are saying and engage them through social media because people love to talk about their experiences; the good AND the bad. The businesses who are engaged (Zappos, Comcast with comcastcares, Dell Outlet, etc.) are reaping the benefits. I don’t know about you, but I love great customer service. Engaging customers through social media will leave you with pleased consumers.

If social media is something you want to incorporate into your business and you need guidance on how to do it strategically, I recommend contacting Saxum Public Relations.

In case you’re wondering what the Saxum Social Media Summit (#saxumsms) was all about, watch this video and look to attend a social media summit in the future.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RhvQRtMsGEY&feature=channel_page

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Legal implications of social media

Yesterday I met with Ryan Lobato, and Rachel Blue both with the law firm McAfee & Taft. I will let you read their bios but both their areas of emphasis are IP (intellectual property) and Ryan has a special interest in Social Media. We spent almost two hours talking just about legal issues surrounding social media and another two hours (over dinner) continuing the conversation which ranged from virtual communities such as second life to legal doctrine applicable to other industries which went through rapid change. Rather than attempt a journalistic article of our conversation  I thought I would just share my notes – just the facts. Feel free to ask questions and post comments below and I will be sure to find the answer when appropriate.

Two things before I begin: First, what follows is not legal advice and shouldn’t be considered as such. If you have a questions related to a specific topic, give Ryan or Rachel a call – they are very affordable especially when you consider the cost ramications of a lawsuit. Second, in the interest of full disclosure, I have known and employed Rachel’s services for several years.

We started by talking about the high ranking official from MI6 who was released from his position as a result of what his wife was posting on her personal facebook page. Nothing horrendous, just personal stuff which, for a spy, isn’t a good idea. I asked about the feasibility, here in the United States, of being released from your position or transferred to another because of the actions/statements of a family member on a social media site. While the actions a company might take will depend on a number of variables the bottom line is, if someone is posting information which discredits a company in any way, the company has the right to take action to protect itself.

We talked a bit about some of the social media/networks. Obviously twitter was at the top of the list. One thing Ryan points out about Twitter (and is applicable to other social media services) is its terms of use/contract with its users is very minimalistic, probably for legal reasons. Furthermore, its policies are also pretty minimalistic and somewhat vague. For example, Twitter allows for Tweet Impostors so long as the the actions of the tweeter are for “parody.” However, there is no clarification of what “parody” is. A slippery slope to say the least.

What about your personal tweets, are they protected as your work? From a legal point of view they can’t be copyrighted simply because it is too short. At least that is the way it stands now. Consider  the person who is writing a book, backwards, on twitter so when you read through the tweets you have a completed work. Is that protected? Debate ensued and we all agreed that, “it depends” which was a common statement throughout our meeting.

We talked for a bit about lawsuits over tweets which might be considered libel. The bottom line, libel still exists and someone tweeting a libel statement can be held liable for their actions. Furthermore, anyone who might re-tweet a libelous statement could also be held liable for libel simply by republishing the statement. This, by the way, is not the position a national news station presented from another attorney and we discussed this. Again, it depends reared its ugly head but the bottom line was, the law of libel still applies. If a statement of fact was made and it was, in fact, not accurate, the tweeter could be held liable for libel.

This brought us to the issue of libelous comments in the comments section of a blog. By Ryan’s own admission, “this is where the law gets strange.”

If you allow comments on your blog, you are the “publisher” of those comments and can be held liable for libel statements. Like so many things we talked about, how liable depended on a variety of facts. For example, is it reasonable for you to monitor the comments on your blog, i.e. do you get just a few a day or hundreds per hour?), is your blog for commercial use (i.e. do you earn or hope to earn any income or do you currently have advertising on your blog? But what about disclaimers? Ah, you are thinking, a disclaimer will protect you.. not so fast. A disclaimer may prove you have a more active role in the creation and maintenance of your blog and actually hold you to a higher standard.

What I found interesting was it seemed the deck was stacked against the little guy. Ryan didn’t disagree but pointed out there are risks everywhere.

Everywhere, by the way, was our next point of discussion. Ryan talked about the fact that every avenue of social media you engage in opens up a new avenue of litigation. You use a picture on your site which is copyrighted, you are dealing with copyright law. Talk about your health issues or the health issues of your friend, by name, now we are dealing with HIPAA laws. Have a forum section where people can post information about items for sale and apartments for rent. You are dealing with fair housing laws. Want people to post references about work done by an employee… you guessed it, employment law.

Which brings us to Linkedin. For all you managers of employees who have asked you to write a positive review on their linkedin page, that positive review can be admitted into evidence should their performance ever subside and you decide to fire them and, in turn, they decide to sue you.

Our conversation meandered a bit at this point, going over scenarios, i.e. blogging about your neighbor and the difference between opinion (he doesn’t look good in plaid) vs statements of fact (he is a bigot) and the weird ways social media is being brought into trial, i.e. divorce/custody cases, etc. but when it came back to being a user of social media and specifically providing commentary, it was all about libel and in more and more circumstances, copyright violation.

I asked what the real risks were, if I were to copy and paste someone’s copyrighted work into my blog. If registered (keep in mind there is a difference between registered work vs work which you plan to register), statutory damages can equate to $150,000. Copyright also applies to images, music, etc. and every day lawsuits are filed over these infractions.

The urban legends of academic use

I was amazed at all the misinformation I had regarding academic use of copyrighted material. In fact at one point we joked there should be top ten list of fair use urban legends. It was pointed out there was. It was created by an attorney and can be found in several online locations in violation of the copyright. The irony.

Here is the bottom line, unauthorized copying of copyrighted material is in violation of the owner’s rights. Students and educators aren’t shielded. Ryan pointed out that several universities offer guidelines but reminded me that guidelines were not always complaint with the law and before using anyone’s work you should always get permission. What is the penalty for doing so if you don’t? You guessed it, it depends.

The use of social media by a business entity was also part of our discussion but will have to wait for another blog post. Time and tide wait for no one and I am just about out of the first.

Bottom line

Old laws do apply to new technology. There is a legal term, “Law of the Horse” that was applied to the time when vehicles started to replace horse drawn buggies. Both were forms of transportation so did the creation and use of a car need a new set of laws.

The laws of libel still apply. What we used to whisper we now broadcast with, in many cases, an amplifier. There are companies which do nothing but record every single statement made online regardless of who made it.

Keep in mind there are still arguments over the current set of laws and because so much “depends” many situations will need to be argued in a court or legislated at the federal level. The decisions will be left to appointed  judges or your congress. Pros and cons of both paths were also discussed and it is my opinion the latter is probably the best choice.

Although you might have rights to legal action you must consider the other variables involved. Often times taking legal action is the last resort.

Finally, when I asked Ryan if he would encourage someone to start blogging if they desired to to so, even taking into consideration all the risks he outlined during our meeting he said yes. His reasoning is in the video below.

(Disregard the interruption at 1:40)
Also, some light reading you might enjoy:

The Law of the Horse: What Cyberlaw Might Teach
Cyberspace and the Law of the Horse

That’s it folks, share your thoughts, questions and comments below.

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